ඩTheHolyBunඩ

“Quit blinkin’.”

“My eyes are closed.”

“Yet you’re still managin’ to blink n’twitch like crazy! How’m I gonna perfect these damn lines if ya don’t stop flinchin’ every time the brush comes near?!”

Odessa sighs deeply. She could point to one huge pink and glittery reason she was flinching, and that reason would be her best friend perched on her thigh like it’s nothing, who had insisted on doing both of their makeups for the first day of a weekend-long music festival in New Junk City.

“Hurry up. My leg’s fallin’ asleep.”

“Ugh,” Rosie rolls her eyes, glitter on her lids flickering tiny bits of light, “I’m doin’ ya a favor outta the kindest of my lil’ heart and all ya do is whine. You’re lucky you’re pretty,” she tacks on sarcastically, finishing a pointed stroke of black along Dez’s eyelid.

Oh, great. And now here was the prettiest girl she’d ever known, sitting on her lap, calling her pretty.

Wait. Did she think that Rosie was the prettiest girl she’d ever known?

Well… she did have a cute face, nobody would deny that. Her smile was adorable, little double-teeth that made her look fanged in the same way that a puppy had incisors. Freckles on her nose and the tops of her high, round cheeks that were always pink from laughing too hard. Green eyes the colors of flora neither had ever been privileged enough to see.

“Oh, uh. Thanks. I guess. Um.” Dez frowns a little, chewing the inside of her lip while she picks at dried blood under a nail. Pretty. Not the usual category of words selected from to describe her. “What do you even, uh… think is… pretty? About me.”

She tries not to sound too curious. It doesn’t matter, because Rosie probably would’ve told her without being asked.

“Where do I start?” Rosie says with an innocent enthusiasm, face lighting up as she leans closer. Dez almost flinches when Rosie’s hand brushes back a stray lock of dyed hair.

“You’ve got a really nice bone structure,” Rosie says as she traces a line along Dez’s brow bone, down her cheek and back to her temple, then down her jawline. The light, ticklish sensation of her nail and fingertip makes goosebumps crawl up her arms and neck which she prays Rosie doesn’t see or comment on. “Like, really nice. Pretty cheekbones, nice eyebrows…”

“And I like your nooose,” she says as she runs her finger down the bridge, making a little pop sound with her lips as she boops the tip.

“S’been broken at least twice.”

“At least,” Rosie agrees, “but I like it. I think it suits ya.”

“Oh, and your lips!” she exclaims, “first of all, love what you’ve done with the whole piercing there,” she nods as she looks at the silver ring through Odessa’s bottom lip, “but also, wow, I mean, I just think they’re so pretty!” Absentmindedly, as if she doesn’t realize how intimate the gesture is, Rosie cups Odessa’s chin in her hand and places a soft thumb on her lips, carefully outlining the peak of her Cupid’s bow. As she says something else complimentary regarding their color or something, Odessa feels her pulse hasten, blood draining from her face and rushing elsewhere as her thoughts zone in on the feeling of Rosemary touching her lips. So soft. So sweet.

“Alright, alright, enough already,” Dez says loudly, laughing with an awkward tension in her chest as she puts her hands up between them. “Jeez, you’re such a girl.”

Rosie gives her a flat look, lips pursed into a line. “So are you.”

“Whatever, you know what I mean,” Dez replies as with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We’re gonna miss the first set of fuckin’… fairyland drug traffickers or whatever you called it.”

“MANIC PIXIE ACID TRIP,” Rosie assertively corrects. “Fairyland Drug Traffickers goes kinda hard as a band name, though.”

“Same difference. You look like a fairyland drug trafficker right now.”

“Thank you. You’re right though!” She agrees as she quickly hops off Dez’s lap, carelessly tossing the purple blush and brush into her open makeup bag. “Let’s go, let’s go! Up, up!”

Dez rolls her eyes and sighs with a smile, standing to follow her colorful closest companion.