“Precisely. I gave it toyou,who won’t feel the need to give me a bunch of details I don’t need, whereas if I gave it to Qi, I’d have to hear things no sibling should ever have to hear.”
“But if you didn’t give it at all…” he trails off, probably trying to figure out why I opened the door to a conversation he knows isn’t one of my favorites.
“Do you want the book?” I ask, getting just a tad bit irritated.
“I mean, yeah,” he says, tucking the book a bit closer to him as though he thinks I’m gonna change my mind and take it back. I can’t help but roll my eyes at the ridiculousness of the movement.
“It’s absolutely no wonder the two of you are together. If ever there were two people created more for each other than you two, then I’ll eat my favorite fuchsia lipstick.”
He blanches at that and frowns. “I think your digestive tract will thank you if you don’t do that.”
I roll my eyes and laugh at that. “Come here,” I motion him forward and grab a band to hold his hair out of his face.
“Are you gonna make me look like Farrah Fawcett?” he asks me with a trace of amusement.
“Have youseenFarrah Fawcett?” I ask, the ridiculousness of his question evident in my tone.
“Yes. I was curious when everyone said my hair looks like hers whenever I fix it.”
I nod at that because the comparison is sound; at a glance, it really does give those vibes, but there are also significant differences if you pay closer attention.
“Yes and no, hers is more curled, and yours is straighter and more feathered. I’m also not much of a hairstylist, so if you want to take the look that far, then that part will be up to you.”
“Oh,” he says simply, his eyes scanning my counter of products.
“Besides, I have no intention of feminizing you. I’m simply going to even out your skin tone, do a little work around the eyes to make them pop, and accentuate your jawline and cheekbones,” I tell him, slipping a bit into my influencer persona.
I’m not actually recording today because I know what he wants to talk about, and it doesn’t need to be publicly aired. Still, it’s a habit for the personality to slip on after so many years of doing recorded makeovers.
“Oh,” he says again, and I almost laugh at how out of his depth he is.
“Oh? You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?” I ask with amusement.
He laughs and shakes his head. “No, not really.”
“Okay, so do you want to just lean back and let me do my thing like Qi does? Or would you rather I tell you what I’m using and why? I usually do that when I’m recording, but since we’re not recording, I can leave out the tutorial.”
Tristan shakes his head a bit. “I’m not really all that curious. This is more for fun, so I’ll just trust you to do your thing. If I’m curious about anything, I’ll ask. Although if you ever do one of these with Marcus, I definitely want to be here for it.”
I raise my eyebrow at that. “Why?”
Tristan shrugs. “Makeup isn’t his thing, but he googled about ten thousand videos and bombarded his mom with a million questions about makeup and makeup channels after he found out that's whatyou're into, so I kinda want to see how many questions it takes before he annoys the shit out of you,” he laughs at that.
“No wonder his mom knows all about me,” I mutter under my breath.
Tristan chuckles and shrugs. “Qi talks a lot about you, too, and she already had a healthy level of respect, but there was no missing Marcus's interest, and since that was the first time he'd ever shown interest inanyone, it caught everyone's attention.”
I swallow that down, torn between the butterflies and the itch that I shouldn’t have butterflies, but this isn’t a moment for spiraling. I take a deep breath and just go with a more pragmatic attitude towards the conversation. Giving in to curiosity without revealing any of my emotions. I shouldn’t even do that much, but there’s this thin line between should and shouldn’t when it comes to Marcus that I can’t seem to stop walking along.
“So what you're saying is it was a like-at-first-sight thing?” I ask him, grabbing some moisturizer to get started.
“I don't think so. I think it was lust at first sight, definitely, but I think the obsession came from knowing you two shouldn’t be messing around but you were gonna live in the same house and he was trying to find some way to rationalize how to be in your space without wanting to be in your space, if you catch my drift,” he says with a pink tint highlighting his cheeks.
“Didn’t work,” I unhelpfully supply, more focused on getting his face prepped for makeup application than on the conversation. I’m taking everything he says in; I can’t help it, considering the subject matter, but my brain is focused more on listening than on replying at the moment.
“No, definitely not. I think he was trying to tackle you like a class assignment. Find the problem, research everything about it to figure out how to solve it. The flaw is you're a person, not an assignment, so it made the obsession worse instead of finding a solution,” he says.
I furrow my brow at that. “I was like a class assignment?”
