Elliott Miller is your average 23 year-old, only with a lost father and a resentful mother. When he goes back to his hometown to make amends, he inadvertently gets dragged into the activities of an illicit criminal group.
Enter Marcel Nixon, 25, wh...
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"What!"
"Pleaseee, it won't even be that bad. Besides, this is supposed to be a glow up."
"Why would I let you of all people put makeup on me?"
"Because I have a cosmetology degree," she said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm quite literally qualified for this."
It wasn't that I didn't like makeup. In fact, I did one of those smoked out eye look thingies on myself for my very first runway gig. My main fear was that Viv would go berserk and I'd end up as an unidentifiable sparkly thing.
"I'll even let you pick a reference photo."
Now that was a different story.
"Gimme that."
I took her phone and scrolled through the reference images she'd saved on Pinterest. There were quite a few but nothing particularly stood out from the lot.
"Wow, you really assembled a whole catalogue, huh."
"Just pick something, at this rate it's going to be midnight before we get there."
I playfully flicked her hand away and continued looking through the pictures. I clicked on one that seemed alright, but one of the pictures in the 'you might also like,' list caught my eye.
It was perfect. The eyeliner was flawless, as were the brows. The nude lip was elegant, tying the whole face together beautifully. I visualized myself with this look knowing that I had to feel the fearlessness it represented on myself.
"This one," I turned the screen to Viv and her eyebrows shot up.
"This wasn't on the list but holy..." she muttered, and I blushed.
"Can you, uh, do it?" I asked sheepishly.
"Can I? Please, have some faith in me."
She gave me a half- smirk and I blushed once again.
I got up and walked towards my desk pulling out a chair and dragging it over to where Viv was assembling her supplies.
First, she squeezed out some transparent gel-like thing from a tube, which she told me was the primer. Then she pulled out foundation and concealer and used some to apparently "cover the fact that I looked like a depressed sloth." Her words, not mine.
It was inexplicable, the feeling of the brushes against my skin, but I relaxed into the process. Usually, there would be a team of stylists rushing around me, fixing something or the other every second. There was nothing relaxing about that. It was chaos. I didn't believe in art made from chaos.
She instructed me to shut my eyes as she swished liquid eyeliner over my eyelids. It tickled at first but once it dried up, that went away. Next came a variety of things, blush, bronzer, highlighter, and many more, not specifically in that order.
