The Circle Ch. 08

Eventually, Sheila sat up from Zoey holding her. She sniffed out, "I guess it's the roots of why I became an ice princess."

Her three friends nodded in understanding, but didn't really understand what her statement meant.

Matt said, "You don't have to tell us if you don't want to."

Sheila shook her head. "I want to. I need to." She sounded desperate.

Zoey stroked her cheek with a tissue and soaked up some tears.

Sheila said, "When I was a freshman I was very naïve. I thought I knew it all – big ego and all, but it turned out I didn't know shit. I started to date a guy from California. His name was Cody, and he was a dreamboat and in the top fraternity. He even knew a couple of actors who were friends of his parents."

"Cody was smooth, and it wasn't long before we were fucking up a storm. We couldn't get enough of each other. For me, I had just discovered what sex was all about, and I couldn't get enough of it. I would do anything Cody asked. A couple of months after we were at it hot and heavy, he told me he had a fantasy of seeing me fuck his best buddy Ian. I told him I would just to make him happy, and so we had a threesome. Soon we were having threesomes almost every night, and sometimes in the afternoon too after classes."

"We were fucking all the time. Cody and me. Ian and me. A threesome. I thought it was great. I was getting such ego strokes from the two men. Imagine a lowly freshman with two upperclassmen, and I was fucking them both and they said they loved me."

Sheila sighed, "And then one day I was supposed to meet them at the student union before we went off to make love – and by then I thought we were all in love. I saw them talking to a couple of other dudes, so I listened in."

"What Cody and Ian were saying about me was terrible. It destroyed me. They called me a slut, a slag, a cunt, and a prostitute with Cody as my pimp. They told the two guys they were talking to that if they all played their cards right, Cody thought he could get me to fuck them too. They were going to manipulate my mind so I wanted to be a slut and fuck more men. They stood there and plotted out how to get me to agree. It was diabolical and I felt so used. They were even laughing about how I'd spread my legs for this one, or give a deep throat blowjob to that one. They were callus about it. There was no love there. I was just a fuck hole for them to masturbate into."

Matt said, "What did you do?"

"I came out from behind my post, walked up to Cody and Ian, and slapped each of them so hard I thought I might have knocked some teeth out. I did the same to the two guys they were talking to. I walked out, walked home – ten miles, and cried for two weeks. I didn't want to go back to campus, but my mother helped me get it together and go back."

Bob said in an off-hand way, "And so you became an ice princess."

Sheila sobbed into her hands and nodded. "In self defense."

Bob sat beside her and pulled her onto his lap. "I promise, with all my heart, swearing on everything I know and am, that I am not like Cody or Ian – and neither are any of us in The Circle. We really do love you. If you want, I will drive you – right now – to the airport, and we can fly to Vegas and I'll marry you."

Sheila sobbed into his shoulder. Matt and Zoey rubbed her back.

Matt said, "I'd marry you in an instant. Any of us would. The women would marry you as well. We all love you. What can we do to show that we are committed to you, that we love you, and that we are not a Cody or Ian?"

Sheila shook her head, "Just hold me." She broke into uncontrollably sobbing again.

As Bob held his friend, Jim and Monica arrived. They looked concerned.

Monica guessed in a low voice, "Ice princess ghosts?"

Zoey nodded. "She finally told us. It was pretty bad. Two guys worked her over in her freshman year. It wasn't rape, but it may as well have been. She's got PTSD in a way."

Bob hugged Sheila. "Honey, try to listen to me and let me explain some things to you with the best of what I remember from psychology – which is really just human nature."

Sheila nodded as she wiped her eyes.

"Some of what we do together is similar to what you used to do with Cody and-or Ian. The whole idea of group sex is reminiscent of what they were proposing to induce you to do, without your full consent. We do group sex. We do threesomes. We have wild and abandoned sex with you. We do orgies, so to speak. We do a lot of things that trigger the same areas of your brain where those terrible memories of your past are stored."

"What do I do?" Sheila sobbed.

"It's hard. You need to substitute a good memory for bad one. Cody used you and abused you." He looked at Matt. "Matt loves you and makes love to you, and worries about you." Put that memory in place of the old one. You know computers. Erase the memory location that holds the bad memory and write over it with the new one."

"But there are so many. I went with Cody for months."

Bob nodded. "I bet there are – weeks and weeks worth. You'll just have to hang in there with this circle of friends and lovers, and allow us to write over all those nasty old memories with hot new ones. They don't have to be sexual either."

Sheila sighed deeply, "But I love the sex with everyone."

Zoey knelt beside Bob. "Then every time when you're making love and some memory of Cody or Ian flashes by, you say to yourself, I'm replacing that memory with the memory of what's happening right now. See yourself wiping out and erasing, and then physically writing in the new memory, or think of it like a blackboard you erase and write over."

Sheila sniffed, "I'll try."

Bob picked up Sheila in his strong arms, and the group went to their cars. Bob held onto her, as Jim drove the six of them to Alice's apartment as he cradled her in his lap. Alice wasn't there, but they let themselves in with one of the keys she'd given them.

Bob curled up on the bed holding Sheila tightly. Matt and Jim were right there too: Jim with a wet washcloth, and Matt with tissues. Monica and Zoey rubbed her in a non-sexual way. Everyone told Sheila how much they adored her.

Eventually, Sheila fell asleep. No one even raised the specter of sex.