A Crybaby in the Badlands: HALSANIE

3 - the New Americana likes Sippy Cups

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P

You know how this ends, the rest of the twenty-six letters that make up the alphabet. Why was that relevant? It really wasn't, but it's the song I sang while waiting for Melanie to arrive at my house.

When she finally did, I greeted her with a solemn expression, and a flower between my fingertips. "Melanie, can we talk?"

"Well, that's why I came here, right?" Melanie asked, looking at me through her long, mascara-pulled lashes.

"Yeah, right." I brazenly took her hand, leading her through my house and to the garden in my backyard. She pushed the glass door shut behind her and looked at me.

We stood silently on my patio for a long while, my eyes on the flowers, and Melanie's eyes on me. She might've thought I was too afraid to speak, but I was just hyping myself up for what I was about to do. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could...

m w u a h

My lips were attached to the two-tone haired girl's, my eyes forced shut while I assumed hers were the size of saucers, and staring at me. She didn't seem to push me away, but she may have just been as shocked as I was.

I slowly pulled away, my cheeks bright pink, just like hers were. I didn't actually feel anything from the kiss, I'd just applied rose blush beforehand and hoped that she would only notice it after I kissed her. She said nothing, simply stared at me, bewildered.

"Mela—"

"Ashley, I get it, you're lonely right now, I'm gay, but I really don't think—"

"Mel," I cut her off. "I am lonely, but that's not why I kissed you." I imagined myself looking into an imaginary camera, as if I were in a movie, but I didn't really look off, I just looked down, as if the camera were positioned below me. "When Josh broke up with me, I had a lot of time to myself to think about things. Like, why I was with him, and what I could have done if I wasn't..."

I grinned to myself, as she seemed to be buying it.

I took her hands and looked back up into her eyes, batting my eyelashes. "Melanie, before now, I didn't think I could ever like a girl, but you... You've been there for me through a lot, even if I haven't done the same for you. It may be a little soon, and my wounds from Josh are still healing, but I don't wanna heal alone..."

Melanie frowned at me, shuffling awkwardly. "Ash, I... I don't wanna hurt your feelings, or undermine them, but, I think you're just confused. I think that's it. This isn't some cheesy rom-com, or fanfic on Wattpad. You know I'm a realist."

"I know! Which is why I'm not expecting you to say yes immediately, but... Can I at least take you on a date first?" I asked, wrinkling my nose and sniffling softly.

Melanie sighed softly. "Yeah... We can go on a date.."

"Now?" I asked, eyes wide. I began bouncing up and down, flashing my signature smile.

"Y-Yeah. We can take my car, i-if you'd like," she offered, smiling softly and looking away. She was pretty cute, man. I didn't like girls, but she was adorable. "We can go to that little diner on Vermont."

I sniffled again and nodded. "And, Mel? I should have asked before kissing you. If you had your first kiss all planned out or something, I didn't mean to stea—"

"No, my lips lost their virginity to a game of spin the bottle when I was fourteen. That's when I figured out I was lesbian," Melanie explained, blushing a bit as we started back to the front door. "I mean, I had a feeling before then, but that simply confirmed it."

I nodded. We head out to her car and I climbed into the passenger's seat, having grabbed my purse when leaving. I checked it for my wallet and found I had a hundred-twenty bucks in cash. That wasn't bad. The diner was pretty cheap.

She started driving after applying two lipsticks. Purple to her top lip, and blue to her lower one. Her face just always seemed to pop. Her eye shadow was three-toned, and she always had small shapes of some sort drawn under the corners of her eyes in black eye liner, which distracted people from her perfect eyeliner wings. She slipped on some circular shades and then began cruising down my street, sipping on some iced tea she had in the cupholder from before she got to my house. I noticed how her lipstick stained the top of the straw, both colors equally visible.

Melanie was like her own walking piece of art, and I liked that. She wasn't a typical wannabe boss-bitch like the other girls that attended our school. She cared about what other people thought, sure, but it wasn't like she cared what people thought about her appearance. She dressed however she wanted, her face a canvas in her eyes.

"You know, Mel, you could be an artist. A make-up artist, maybe," I told her, reclining in the passenger's seat, kicking my feet up on the dashboard. I played with the car deodorant that dangled from the mirror, then retracted my hand to admire my neat nail polish. "You're really good at it."

"Without make-up, my face is as plain as anyone's... Our faces are made to be decorated, not our Intsagram pages."

I quickly turned off my phone screen, as it had been sitting in my lap, on my Instagram page. "Aha, yeah, exactly. Instagram? Psh, totally for losers." I scratched behind my neck awkwardly and licked my lips, contorting my face at the taste of gloss. "Do you think you could do my make-up sometime?"

She looked to me briefly, then back ahead to the road. "Really? Your make-up is more typical. Mine is sort of... exotic one might say."

"That's what I like!" I laughed, turning to her and beaming. "Just like you, your make-up is extraordinary!"