And he still didn’t love her, she’d wept before she’d passed out among the silk and chiffon, her cuts no longer bleeding.
“You’re perceptive as always, Sofia,” her mother said now. Plastic surgery had removed the faint scarring along her forearm. “It’s one reason I find your presence unpleasant.”
Sofia had stopped flinching years ago.
“But there’s another reason,” her mother continued airily. “I hate that you never need anything. You are smart, beautiful, composed, kind, accomplished...all on your own.” Only her mother could make the compliments drip with insult. “You certainly don’t need me. As you grew, in that first flush of womanhood when the average girl is consumed with crushes, you made it clear you didn’t need a man. And I hate you for that.” As she spoke, her words became sharper. “How dare you have more than me when you come from me? How dare you position yourself as better than me when I have worked so hard and sacrificed everything to be the woman I am?”
The queen’s fingernails were clenched into the wood.
Then, like a sieve, the queen let her fury fall away. She relaxed, leaned back in the chair, and raked her nails down her long, shining hair. “But now, I see you with this American rock star and maybe I’ve been wrong all along. Maybe you do need. Maybe you will prove to be as weak and stupid as I am. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but, Sofia, I might enjoy watching it happen to you. You’re falling in love with a man who’s going to destroy you.”
Sofia felt the punch of her words like a witch’s curse. There was martyr’s blood and pagan rituals mixed into the stones of this castle and those who respected that did not make predictions lightly.
Her mother meant every word.
Only three decades of training allowed Sofia to pull off the world’s best performance now. “Will that be all, Mother?”
But the pleased smile on her mother’s face showed that she wasn’t fooled. “For now, hija.”
Sofia turned on her heel and focused on taking measured steps out of the room. Back in the hall, away from her mother’s gaze, she faced again her childhood bedroom door, all of her enthusiasm for entering it drained away.
Her mother had ruined it for her.
Just as her mother had ruined perfumes and pretty, girly dresses for her. Because later, years later, Sofia finally paired her childhood memories with adolescent understanding to realize that those cuts on the inside of her mother’s forearm and at her hip, where she said she had a birthmark that the king used to kiss, had not been an accident. Sofia probably had that empty decanter to thank for the cuts not being deeper.
Her mother had loved her useless husband so much that she’d been willing to take herself away from a little girl who had actually desperately needed her.
September 26
Part Two
Aish fingered the fluttery silk that fell from the gilded wood top of the canopy bed, thinking how much this pink princess bedroom must have chapped young Sofia’s hide. She was nowhere to be seen among the claw-foot Louis XV furniture, pink silk, and crystal chandeliers. A beady-eyed ballerina doll stared back at him from a mound of pillows on the bed when he knew for a fact that Sofia preferred chemistry sets and was only a so-so dancer.
The only thing in the room that even hinted at her was the wooden box on the floor near her dresser, the size of a couple of shoeboxes, carved and inlaid with ivory. It was a haphazard spot for something that looked old and precious.
He’d believed he’d made her omnipresent in Young Son’s first album, with his guitar tuned to the microtones she’d introduced him to, with lyrics full of stars and cinnamon and tempting skin. He’d sung about the rub of soil against her body and the green of the vines she’d been surrounded by.
But as he sat on the edge of her bed and surveyed this silk and lace room, as he thought about the woman he’d gotten to work alongside and laugh with and make love to and admire over the last several days, he realized for the first time that those songs no better reflected her than this room did. His songs were what he wanted her to be; just like this room was what the queen wanted her to be. And he’d shown up in her kingdom still wanting that girl he’d set in the amber of his lyrics: smart, hardworking, pushing him to do better, yes. But also unquestioningly adoring. And loving. She’d loved him without reserve because he told her she could, that she could trust him.
And then, when push came to shove, when the manager said they could have the tour spot but only on the condition that Aish broke up with his girlfriend because “leashed dicks don’t fill seats,” when Aish had to choose between Sofia and all the things he wanted for himself, he’d chosen himself. Yeah, John had harassed and hounded him, had shoved the girl into his lap when Sofia had come into the bar, because Aish had already waited a week and the manager was threatening to walk. But it was Aish, stone-cold sober, who’d broken up with her.
He’d never worked as hard at anything as getting famous. Never had to. Surfing, the state-tournament-winning three-point shot, sex, it all came easy. But each song, each performance, each multiplatinum-earning album, had to be fucking perfect. Because he’d given her up for them. He needed to be more famous than famous because of
