Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
AURELIA
Beatrix and Margaret jump from their own chairs and are by my side in half a second as I turn into a total sobbing mess.
Margaret climbs into the recliner with me and wraps me in her arms while Beatrix holds my hand and strokes soothing circles with her thumb.
I hear the door click quietly as my friends hold me.
“Shh, shh,” Margaret coos as she wipes away my tears. “Let it all out, dear.”
I hiccup and snuffle like a child for several minutes while my friends murmur encouragement and affirmations, calming me with soft touches and gentle rubs.
It’s like the whole day has weakened all my defenses, and everything I’ve been trying to keep pressed down for the last few weeks is leaking out from every pore.
All the fear I had about opening up to a man is now screaming at me for my stupidity.
The affection I felt for Friedrich is threatening to crush me under the pain of losing him.
Shame tries to battle its way through, and I don’t think I’m mentally capable of batting that down right now.
Mostly, I’m angry at myself for even letting things get so far.
This was supposed to be casual and fun, and I let emotion get in the way and all I have to show for it is brokenness and a deep aching hole in my chest. How could I have been so freaking stupid?
“I’m the worst idiot,” I croak when I’ve cried all I can.
“No, sweetheart.” Margaret swipes away the hair that had fallen in my face. “You’re just a woman, and we women feel things deeply, no matter how hard we try not to.”
I can feel Beatrix nodding next to me. “We were wondering when this would happen today. Nothing like putting your body in such a state of relaxation that your mind finally loses its grip, too.”
“You wanted me to lose my marbles all over these poor spa therapists?” I sniffle.
“We wanted you to let yourself feel.” Margaret hands me a tissue, and I try to be delicate about blowing my nose, but it’s no use. I’m a total snot monster when I cry.
“Y’all, I’m so ashamed.” I drop my head in my hands, unable to even look at them
“Don’t be darling. I’m sure you’re hardly the first, even this week, to have a good cry in here.”
“No,” I mutter behind my hands. “It’s not even that.”
Margaret pries my fingers away and holds my hands so I can’t hide again. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“No, really,” I insist, my voice getting a little stronger. “I should have never gotten involved with him. And I definitely shouldn’t have given up my body to him like that.”
“Fuck that,” Margaret and Beatrix say in unison. They giggle, but I can’t resist the shame welling up in me.
“No, it’s exactly like they always said, my body is a temple and I defiled it.”
“I’m sorry, who the fuck said that horse shit?” the princess sputters.
“Her fucked up church and her batshit crazy mother.”
Beatrix stands and practically stomps over to an ice bucket with a bottle of white wine stuck down inside. She pours a glass for each of us, filling them much higher than wine etiquette dictates.
“I think we’re all going to need a little help for this particular conversation.”
We each take a glass, and the princess settles in on the arm of my recliner, an arm draped around my shoulder, while Margaret is still cuddled against me on the other side.
I take a long drink to steady myself. “So, you know I grew up in the United States, right?”
“I mean that much is blatantly obvious.”
Margaret shoots Trixie a glare and waves for me to continue. She’s heard the story of my childhood in bits and pieces throughout the years of our friendship, but watches me with rapt attention.
“In the Deep South, religion is everything. Churches everywhere, prayer even in public schools and before football games, that kind of stuff. I mean, heck, the measure of your social standing is graded by who your family is and which church you go to.”
“Well, the family part I fully understand, but the church you attend?”
I nod. “It’s the way of life there. My dad wasn’t particularly religious, but after he left when I was thirteen, my mom got deeply involved in a local Baptist church.
Like, very deeply. She was there any time the doors were open, as long as she wasn’t working and always made sure there was someone to bring me when she couldn’t.
“And mostly it was fine. I made friends and stuff. I had a place that I sort of belonged and people who looked out for me when my mom was working a lot. The church was its own little community.”
I take another fortifying sip of my wine.
“But I was always bothered by how much they talked about sex. The pastor preached on it at least one Sunday a month, it was a frequent topic in youth group, even in middle school, and every February the youth group would have a whole weekend retreat at the church and talk about purity and waiting for marriage and all that.”
Beatrix mumbles something I can’t quite make out, but I understand the sentiment.
“They would have demonstrations like taking a single rose and passing it around the room, and tell us to do whatever we wanted to it. Touch it, smell it, lick it, whatever. And then by the time the rose got back to the speaker, they would hold it up, and of course, it was all mangled and broken. They would say something like imagine this as your purity. This is what you’re giving your future spouse when you allow others access to your body. Who wants this rose now?”
“Sickening,” Margaret grumbles.
“And that’s what they’re comparing your bodies to?” Beatrix sneers.
“Yeah.”
“Fucking bullshit,” she sputters. “I’m so glad you got out of that purity culture cult.”
“That isn’t even what finally got me to leave.
” Margaret clutches my arm. She knows this part of the story.
I can’t look at either of them, and neither presses.
My wine forms tiny rivulets on the side of the glass as I nervously swirl it.
Soothing music still plays in the background, but it does nothing to calm my thudding heart.
“No one believed me after my boyfriend, who was the pastor’s son… Well, he…”
“Darling,” Beatrix says, running her hand through my hair and pulling me against her chest. “You don’t have to share. I think I get the picture.”
A single tear slips down my cheek. “I wasn’t raped or anything,” I whisper.
“Shh, now,” Beatrix soothes, hugging me tighter as Margaret rubs reassuring circles on my back. “You don’t owe anyone your story until you are ready to tell it. But I swear if my cousin did anything to retraumatize you, I will personally see to his castration.”
I choke out a laugh because I can vividly imagine the princess giving Prince Friedrich what for if he had hurt me.
“No. No, nothing like that,” I sniffle and push myself to sit up again.
Margaret tops off my wine, and I take another drink, feeling stronger even just kind of talking about it.
“I really was doing good with it all, or so I thought. I was enjoying what I had with the prince, but, well, those teachings still rattle around in my mind sometimes. I can still recite a lot of the verses they used to drill into us. I still get a little weirded out when I masturbate.” Friedrich had been helping me on that front, too.
“You were brainwashed, darling. Pure and simple. Sexuality is beautiful,” Beatrix proclaims with big waving gestures. “Bodies are meant to be enjoyed. And I will not let you wallow in false shame over learning to embrace that.”
Margaret gives my hand a squeeze. “You’ve been free from all that bullshit for a long time now.
I know it takes time to undo years of teaching and change your way of thinking, but hasn’t this time with Friedrich helped you see that there’s nothing wrong with having desires and acting on them?
Especially when you have a partner who’s so devilishly gorgeous and so very willing to participate. ”
“Devilishly gorgeous might be a stretch,” Beatrix drawls. “And besides, even in that fucked up way of thinking, you’re still mostly okay since you didn’t even have sex.”
My face is instantly warm, and my heart pounds against my ribs. I hate the way I always blush and give away every thought or emotion.
“Oh. My. Fucking. God! You fucked the prince!”
“Announce it to the whole spa, Margaret.” I cringe, trying to curl up and hide.
“Aurelia Something Sumner, if I didn’t see that mortification on your face, I would call you a goddamn liar,” Beatrix shrieks. “What the hell did you do?”
I wish I could sink into the crease of this chair and disappear right now. They might have done a decent enough job trying to chase away any feelings of shame, but I’m still not ready to gab about this like it’s the latest juicy gossip.
“What do you mean, what did she do? She did your cousin, obviously.”
“First of all, ew. Second of all, Fritz doesn’t fuck anyone.” Beatrix slides closer against me and fake whispers, “Do you have some kind of magic pussy down there or something?”
I clap my free hand over my ear. “Good night! Who knew princesses could be so vulgar?”
We all fall into a fit of giggles, and I feel lighter than I have in weeks. It feels good to sit with friends and hash it all out. The memes about wine night with the girls are actually true.
There’s a tentative knock at the door. We all yell come in at the same time and break into more laughter.
“It sounded like you might be ready to resume,” one of the facialists says after we contain ourselves again.
Beatrix jumps up from her perch. “Oh, please, all this laughing is going to give me crow’s feet.”
Margaret plants a huge smooch on the top of my head and extracts herself from my chair, too. The ladies get back to working on our faces, and the vice around my chest is noticeably looser. Still there, but perhaps a bit more bearable.
“Okay, but there’s one more problem,” I whisper as we link arms and walk to Margaret’s waiting car an hour later.
“What is it, darling?”
“I think I really want to do it again.”
“The spa or the fucking?” Margaret cackles.
“Well, both really, but definitely the latter.”
Beatrix smirks and gets a little gleam in her eye that only spells trouble when I see it from her. “Don’t worry, my sweet little southern belle.” She pinches my cheek like a doting grandma. “I’ve got just the thing.”