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 yellcome inat 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.”
