Page 69 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
Even now, her palms itch to run up those pale, plush thighs, they flex to squeeze Delphine’s arse and hips, to toy with the overflowing cups of Delphine’s tits. She wants to make Delphine expose those tits right here in the car, right here in the City so that Rebecca can suck them while unknowing pedestrians walk by with leather satchels and phones glued to their ears.
She wants to coax those legs open and stroke Delphine’s cunt; she knows from Imbolc night how charmingly mindless Delphine gets with pleasure. How eager. How wet. How willing.
Why have I been denying myself again? Rebecca thinks dizzily as Delphine starts chattering about a book she’s been reading for the book club she’s started with her Instagram followers. Why haven’t I just taken what I want? What she wants?
These past seven, nearly eight, weeks, Rebecca has avoided Delphine, avoided her quizzical expressions and adorably clumsy come-ons. She’s answered Delphine’s texts as curtly as possible, manufactured excuses so that they’re rarely alone together and especially never alone together at Thornchapel, where the temptation to fuck is nigh overwhelming . . .
What a stupid waste, Rebecca thinks suddenly. And all for what? Because she’s afraid to peer too deeply at what she feels for Delphine? Because she’s afraid that what Delphine really likes about her is what Rebecca can do for her and that she doesn’t like Rebecca simply for herself? That Delphine will just be another person who expects Rebecca to be perfect and tirelessly selfless? To give of herself without complaint?
That fear again.
And Rebecca is sick to death of it.
After all, what has protecting herself gotten her but seven weeks of hell? What has denying them both saved her from?
Something untwines deep in her chest as she realizes she’s made up her mind. It goes loose and floaty, like her heart wants to bob up into her throat and glide out of her mouth right on up into the sky, and the car turns into traffic to drive them to Thornchapel.
Chapter 21
Delphine
Equinox
* * *
Rebecca is quiet during the long drive to Thornchapel, which is not unusual—Rebecca is often quiet during the drive. But today is different. Anticipatory, maybe, even though every time Delphine looks at her, Rebecca is on her iP
ad answering emails or scrolling through something important-looking—just like any other drive—and so maybe Delphine is wrong and there’s nothing different about this silence at all.
No matter how much she’d like to imagine there is.
Imbolc was perfect, Imbolc was magical—and it was so perfect and magical that Delphine had refused to listen to the warnings in Rebecca’s voice, to the warnings that Rebecca actually uttered.
Tomorrow we wake up ashamed.
Delphine knew only the most remedial etiquettes and manners around sex, so she’d assumed that this was the kind of excuse-like thing one said before sex, much like how one might say sorry about the mess when one had friends around to visit, even if the place was spotless. A dance people did before the act so they could talk themselves into doing it.
She never considered that Rebecca might mean it. That Rebecca might actually wake up and feel shame at the thought of fucking Delphine.
Am I so shameful? Delphine wonders. Is fucking me . . . embarrassing?
Delphine doesn’t have nearly three million Instagram followers because she worries about lovers being ashamed of her, she has nearly three million followers because she does precisely the opposite. Because she talks about all the times she feels dishy and delicious. Because she tells other people to feel good about their bodies too. Because she reminds her followers that any clothing brand, airline, celebrity, doctor, or lover who makes them feel less than fully comfortable in their own skin is an arsehole, and that it’s never too late to burn everything to the ground.
And right now Delphine is the biggest hypocrite in the world, because she’s spent the last seven weeks unable to believe any of her own puppies-and-rainbows, all-bodies-are-good-bodies shit.
Now whenever she posts a picture of herself, she’s wondering how Rebecca would see her, how Rebecca thinks of her body. Does Rebecca see the dimples on her thighs and that hip crease, that one hip crease that Delphine spent years sighing at—and then regret taking her to bed? Does Rebecca wince at the memory of sleeping with her? Does Rebecca look at her own body—which is perfect, it’s the kind of body a teenage Delphine used to ache to have, all svelte and high-breasted and lean—and long for someone else, someone thin, to sleep with?
And the worst and bleakest and unhealthiest thought of all—a thought so grim and horrid she can barely even think it to herself—does Rebecca remember the horror Delphine lived through in Audra Bishop’s back garden and then think of Delphine as damaged goods?
Delphine doesn’t recall any hesitation from Rebecca on Imbolc (at least not after she’d finally convinced Rebecca to have sex) and she knows Rebecca enjoyed it. She remembers how Rebecca made sure she enjoyed it too. But maybe something’s changed. Something must have changed, because Rebecca has spent the last two months avoiding her as much as possible—and pretending nothing happened between them when she can’t avoid her—and it hurts. It’s making her doubt everything she’s told herself and her followers for the last four years.
Maybe she’s not beautiful.
Maybe she’s not worth someone’s time and affection.
Maybe what happened to her at university has made her . . . less than. Beneath someone as sophisticated and unbroken as Rebecca.
You know that’s not true, a reasonable voice says. It sounds a lot like her therapist. You’re thinking the meanest things possible about yourself because it’s the easy way out. It’s easier than pushing through this while believing good things about yourself.
