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“Okay, let’s get started!” Jade claps her hands excitedly, and I follow her to her room.
For a college apartment, it’s quite a setup. There’s a ring light set in front of a blank wall, a chair facing the ring light, and a stool next to that. It’s a lot for a small room, given that there’s still a bed and a dresser in here, but the real setup is the entire desk covered in makeup supplies. Tons of brushes and pencil-looking items, and small and large compacts with colors that I could try to match to all the gels in the light lab and I’d stillcome up short. I’m familiar with a number of these tools, having sisters, but not to this extent.
“How long does this usually take?” I ask, taking a seat in the chair against the wall as she wedges the phone into the ring-light holder.
“You got somewhere to be?” Jade asks as she sorts through her supplies, opening various containers and plucking brushes out of random pouches.
“Yep. Hot date,” I say.
“Hotter than me?”
The heat in my cheeks and neck comes back again. “Oh yeah,” I lie.
She sucks in air through her teeth. “You sure about that?” She spins on me, pointing a brush at my face, the pointy end dangerously close to my eye.
“I take it back.” I hold my hands up in surrender.
“Good.” She smirks and it’s contagious, because I’m smiling now too.
Before she turns around, I catch the tiniest dimple on the left side of her face. It’s unreasonably adorable, and I don’t know how I never noticed it until now. I want her to turn back around and smile at me again so I can see it fully.
“So what’s the character you’ve got in mind?” I ask.
“The dance department is doingAlice in Wonderlandin the spring, and I wanted to try a Mad Hatter look. The idea came to me last night.”
“Wow. So you’re doing the makeup for the show?”
“I’m designing and consulting.”
“I didn’t know you did that. I knew you did makeup for the theater department, but not the dance department too.”
She shrugs, turning back around, holding a small sponge with a bit of skin-tone-colored goo on it. “I take the opportunities that come my way. Ready?”
“Do your worst.”
She smirks, and inwardly, I count it as a victory. I really like making Jade smile.
Before she begins, she hits record on her phone and perches on the edge of the stool. She’s not rough with me as she applies makeup all over my face. Her intense focus on me, but not really on me, is both familiar and odd.
“You’re doing a great job of being still. This must be weird for you.”
“Sisters, remember?” I try to move my mouth as little as possible as she blends the makeup into my hair and jawline. “I was the youngest by eight years, so they really saw me as more of a baby doll than a human.”
Some of my earliest memories with my sisters are of them bribing me to play Princess Dress Up by telling me they’d clean up the playroom, which was always covered in Legos, and which I was always getting in trouble for not tidying up. I always said yes. It seemed like a fair trade. The first rule of Princess Dress Up Makeup Time was “no wiggling,” so I got really good at sitting still while having my makeup done. An almost useless skill as an adult.
“You don’t have siblings, right?” I ask.
“I have a half-brother, apparently. He’s my dad’s son, but I don’t really consider him family. We don’t spend time together or anything.”
I make a noise of acknowledgment, but once again, I have trouble putting myself in Jade’s shoes.
“Are you close with them?” she asks. “Close your eyes.”
“Despite our age difference, yes.”
Even during the years my dad was separated from my mom, my sisters and I kept in touch. Dad got me a phone and a texting plan just so I could talk to them. Sometimes they’d hang out with me when Dad had to go to work or took Mom out on dates. I wasold enough that I didn’t need to be babysat, but Dad preferred that I wasn’t alone. My sisters and I would play board games or get ice cream or dinner.
Thinking of them now reminds me I should text them soon. Maybe one of them can help me figure out why I have a crush on someone so different from me . . .
