Today, traffic is heavier than usual. The bus ends up pulling into school a few minutes later than normal. It’s not late enough that you have to rush to class or anything, but it’s late enough that by the time you make it to your locker, Madison has already left. You open your locker glumly to reveal that she has at least left your lunch in the locker, along with a small card, this one soft blue and cut out in what you’re pretty sure is meant to resemble a little angel.
A warm feeling runs through you. You’ve been meeting her every morning for the past few weeks, and she had no reason to expect that would be different until you hadn’t turned up on time today. Has she been making these cards every day just in case?
You send her a thank you text, then head towards class. It might be a waste of time to bother sending the text, considering you’re going to be seeing her in a couple of minutes, but somehow it feels like you should be thanking her straight away.
The bell rings just before you get in, but Madison is already there when you arrive. She’s bent over her desk, concentrating fiercely on her phone. Watching her fingers fly over that phone screen, you’re jealous of how fast she can type. You’re lucky if you can type twenty words in a minute on them, while she’s done in twenty seconds.
You don’t bother reading the text yet, though; she looks up when she hears the chime of your phone and gives you a brilliant smile. You give her a little wave, then make your way over and slide in the seat beside you, where she immediately grabs your hand beneath the table.
School that day is boring. You spend most of your time in class looking through your business textbooks, but you only have a small handful of them. With five hours each day to read through them, you’re starting to burn through them very quickly. But hey; at least you have those books from Victoria to read, too. You end up putting your textbooks away during fifth and sixth periods to read some more of them.
It’s a way to keep yourself occupied during classtime, at least. And it serves to largely distract you from thinking about Victoria’s visit tonight until you get home—the only time you allow yourself to think about it for more than a few seconds is when you suddenly realize that you’d never told her when to arrive, and you hurriedly have to send her a text telling her to get there around six.
That evening, when you finally get home after tutoring, you zip around the house trying to tidy it before Victoria gets here. It’s all messy—you haven’t done any dusting in what feels like a month, and Dad hasn’t done the vacuuming in at least three days. It feels like there’s a light coating of dust hanging over everything in the house, even though you know that objectively, that’s not true.
You’re still feeling a little anxious by the time it gets to five fifty-six and the doorbell rings. Dad’s barely up out of his chair when you fly past him, scraping your hair back out of your face to try to make yourself look a little more presentable when you open the door to greet Victoria.
Victoria looks—you’re hesitant to describe her as plain, because Victoria could never look plain, but she looks a little less gorgeous than usual. You can’t quite tell why, though. It’s no one thing. Her clothes don’t complement her quite as well as normal, and her skin looks a little rougher. There’s more, you’re sure of it, but you can’t tell what. She is holding a backpack in her hands, probably her schoolbag. All up, she doesn’t look very much like Glory Girl. Just your average, incredibly attractive high school girl.
“Hey, Taylor.” She sounds amused at the way you’re staring at her. You flush lightly and step back, gesturing for her to come in.
“Hi,” you reply. Then you hear a cough behind you, and you flush harder. Right. Dad. You’d forgotten about him. “Uh, hey, Dad!” you say brightly. “This is Victoria. She’s a friend of mine.”
He stares at you for a long moment, his brow knitted. For a moment, he seems like he’s about to say anything, but then he bites his tongue. You’re feeling a little nervous when he finally does speak. “Hello, Victoria. It’s nice to meet you.”
Victoria steps forward easily, taking his outstretched hand in her own and shaking it as she gives him a warm smile. “Hello, Mr Hebert. Taylor has told me a lot about you,” she lies smoothly.
He nods. “Will you be staying for dinner?” he asks. “I was just about to order something, so if you like-“
But she’s already shaking her head. “No, but thank you. I’ll be having dinner at home, around eight.” That part, she directs towards you.
You nod. “Yeah, okay,” you say agreeably. You can’t argue against her having dinner with her family, even though you want to. It’d be nice to have dinner with Victoria. Stupid complicating factors. “We should go get started, then.”
“Alright,” she agrees easily. “Lead the way, then.”
You know she’s expecting you to lead the way to your bathroom—that’s where you put makeup on, after all—but you deliberately misinterpret her words and head to your bedroom. She raises her eyebrow when she gets in, but trundles in anyway, placing her bag on top of your bed.
“Not quite what I had in mind,” she says, amusement heavy in her voice. “It might be a little hard for you to see how you look in here.”
“I know.” You give her a devious little grin. “I just wanted to get you in here for a moment.” She raises her eyebrows at you, but doesn’t look surprised. “Alright, the bathroom is this way.”
She follows you, a grin tugging at her lips to match yours, although you imagine yours probably looks a little more perverted than hers. Once the two of you get in there, she nudges you over until you’re sitting on the edge of your bathtub—a towel beneath you to make your seat slightly more comfortable—as she rummages through her bags, looking for something.
Eventually, she pulls out a long, thin plastic box wider than her handspan. Opening it, you can see it’s full of… makeup-y things. Tubes of lipstick, little brushes, those circular plastic tubs filled with colours and stuff— look, you might be a girl, but that doesn’t mean you ever paid much attention to makeup. It always seemed kind of silly to you, to focus so much attention on it.
If Victoria thinks she can make you look good with makeup, though, you’re willing to give it a try. You don’t think it’s possible to make you look less plain than you do now, but it probably can’t hurt. Unless you’re allergic to it.
God, you hope you’re not allergic to it.
“Alright!” she declares. “We’re not going to do anything complicated today, just the basics, okay?”
You nod. “What are the basics, though?”
She moves over to you, kneeling in front of you and placing the makeup on the ground beside her. “Nothing complicated,” she says easily. “Some foundation, some lipstick…” She inspects your face for a moment. “No lipliner. Some eye shadow, maybe some mascara. You don’t need that much.”
A mirthless smirk makes its way across your face. “That sounds too simple.”
Victoria just shrugs. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
And you have nothing to say to that, just a quick nod.
“Okay then.” She tilts your head downward so she can see it from her position on the floor. “I’m going to start. You might want to close your eyes.”
For what feels like the next six hours, but in reality is only fifteen minutes, Victoria labours over your face. You quickly lose track of what she’s doing— she dabs something on your face, then pulls out a brush, then what looks like a pencil, then some lipstick, and at that point you just give up trying to follow what she’s doing and resign yourself to your fate.
Eventually, though, she makes a pleased noise. “Alright, I’m done,” she says, satisfaction thick in her tone and in her emotions. “Come on, pretty girl. Come take a look at yourself.” She cheats, floating up and just stretching her legs down. Damn it. At least she offers you a hand to help you to your feet.
Once the two of you are up, she leads you to the bathroom mirror, moving back some to allow you to stand in front of her and look at yourself. You can see her standing behind you, biting her lip, but your attention is distracted by your own reflection.
You look… different. Reaching out, you trail your hand softly over your reflection. Is that really you?
It can’t be anyone else, but that can’t be you. The person looking back is actually— actually not that bad-looking. Your mouth doesn’t look so wide, looking thinner and fuller. Your lips are darker than you remember them looking, a deeper red. Your eyes are—thinner, somehow, not quite so wide and round. They seem longer. Even your skin looks subtly different, less… it looks smoother, and darker, somehow. Not too dark, but not quite as pale.
A pair of arms circle around from behind you, and you tilt your neck to the side to let Victoria rest her head on your shoulders. “See?” she asks. “I told you you’re pretty.”
And she believes that. You can’t deny it—there’s nothing strong in her emotions right now but contentment, arousal and a lesser amount of what you think is nervousness.
“I…” You trail off.
It’s the makeup, you know it. It’s hiding your flaws, covering up everything that makes you ugly and enhancing everything that makes you not look so bad. And you’re okay with that.
It might be fake prettiness, but it’s still better than looking like you normally do.
Victoria just calmingly rubs her hands over your stomach, pleased with your response. “I’ll show you how to apply it yourself if you want,” she promises you, murmuring her words directly into your ear. “On Saturday, if you want. Or after book club on Sunday, but I want to take you shopping on Sunday.”
You tilt your head, catching her gaze in the mirror. “Why do you want to take me shopping?” you ask cautiously. “I can buy the makeup myself.”
She shakes her head and presses a quick kiss to your neck. You let her, but warningly squeeze her arms, causing her to smirk slightly for a moment before she regains a serious expression. “Makeup’s only half the job,” she replies. “You look pretty enough to eat now, but if we can get you in some better clothes, I promise, you’ll see what everyone else sees when they look at you.” She doesn’t try to kiss your neck again, but she does nuzzle it some, closing her eyes briefly. Which is good, because that way, she misses the scowl you can’t refrain from sending at her.
You want to say that you can buy clothes yourself, but— you can’t. You’re way too poor for that. Still— “I don’t want you to buy me any clothes,” you tell her firmly.
She just shakes her head, squeezing you again. “I know,” she says. She pats your stomach gently, as though trying to calm you down. The worst part is, you do feel a little calmer. Damn it. “I’m offering. You wouldn’t be taking advantage of me, don’t worry about that.”
That isn’t what you’re thinking about, but it derails your train of thought a little. She is offering to use her own money, even if she’s also trying to push you into it. That shouldn’t change anything, but somehow, it does.
You’d like to be pampered a little.
You let out a soft groan. You can’t make this decision now. Later, when you don’t have Victoria pressed against you and your thoughts aren’t clouded by the realization that you don’t have to look like a scarecrow.
“I’ll let you know later,” you say eventually. “I’ll text you on Friday if I’m up to it.” With that, you tug impotently at her hands until she finally releases you. Unfortunately, you still can’t move until she also floats backwards, at which point you sidestep. Your breaths come easier now. “Come on.” You hold out your hand for her to take, but end up having to retract it when she instead bends down to pack up her makeup kit. Oh yeah. You forgot about that.
A couple of minutes later, she reaches for the hand you’d dropped. You reach over again, taking her hand firmly and pulling her out and back to your bedroom, ignoring the startled glance Dad gives you when you pass him in the hall. No, you can deal with him later. You make sure to close your door behind you. Dad won’t open it, you’re pretty sure.
“Your room is nice,” Victoria says, looking around. You flush. There’s not much in here, so you’re not sure if she’s making fun of you or not. If she is, she doesn’t seem to want to hurt you with her words, so you let it pass this time. “Very neat. I wish my room was half as clean as yours.”
“You could always try cleaning it,” you offer dryly. She gives you a mock-offended look, and you offer her a charming grin as you jump up on your bed. “It does tend to help.”
“It’s so much effort, though. I have other things I need to do, you know?” She floats towards you, giving you a wicked grin. Your mouth goes dry, and her grin grows more devilish. “There’s this cute girl who keeps demanding my attention. It makes it hard to focus on other things.”
You hum slightly, pretending to pout and cross your arms as she floats closer. “A cute girl, huh?” you say, mock-irritation hanging in your voice. “Should I be jealous, hm?”
Finally, she floats close enough that you could reach out and touch her. She does it before you can, though, reaching over to caress your jaw. You clench your mouth shut, waiting to see what she does.
After a moment, she speaks in a low voice, “You of all people have nothing to be jealous of.”
