They’d never talked. not really. Thomas plays football, though Amber doesn’t remember what position. Once, Amber and her best friend, Casey, were talking by their lockers when the subject of football and everyone’s obsession with it came into play.
“It’s just fetch!” Amber said, probably a little too loudly. “It’s fucking fetch. The ball goes over there, and they run after it. No one else is allowed to have the ball. So they tackle each other. Then they call time to make sure that they’re supposed to tackle like that, which takes ten-fucking-minutes, and then the ball goes somewhere else!”
Somewhere in Casey’s giggling, Amber heard a quiet snort. She’d turned around, and Thomas stopped his laughing and walked away. So, yeah, technically, they know of each other’s existence, in a you-made-fun-of-my-shot-at-a-free-ride-through-college way.
The problem was that Amber had, and still has, a bit of a crush on Thomas.
“Maybe change your style?” Casey suggests as she and Amber lay on the floor of Amber’s bedroom. “Jocks tend to like their girlfriends preppy, if they can’t get them directly from the cheerleading or dance teams.
“I dunno. I’ve never been very good at makeup,” Amber answered. She rolls onto her stomach and eyes her lonely plastic makeup box. It sits high on the shelf, with the rest of the forgotten relics of her middle school years, when she wanted to be a princess.
Nowadays it collects dust with a few porcelain dolls, some frilly thing she’d made for christmas one year, whose hook had broken years ago, and that one picture of her and her dad from the father-daughter dance from her two year stint in choir.
“You can always learn,” Casey offers. She rolls her Revlon 610 in her fingers and holds the tube out to Amber. “Red is a good look on you.”
“I dunno. It always seems like a lot of work,” Amber answers, eyeing Casey’s perfectly done makeup. Never, in their whole three years of knowing each other, has Amber seen so much as a makeup line along Casey’s job. It always looks so complicated, and while Casey’s tried to show Amber once or twice, they were long past the days of tutorials.
“Nah. practice makes efficiency, you know? This,” she says with a gesture towards her face, “is ten minutes. Eyeliner is another two. Highlighting and contour for special occasions.”
The next day, Thomas is lurking around the library instead of with the rest of his friends. He looks nervous about something, and it’s obvious that he’s only pretending to look for a book. Amber’s eyes arch a bit. It’s not that obvious, not unless you spent a lot of time either doing or seeing people do makeup, but there is a line at Thomas’ jaw, almost as if he didn’t blend properly in that area. The rest of the makeup is... almost unnoticeable, actually. Amber would bet money on Thomas’ younger sister being involved in this.
“Hey,” Amber says. She keeps her voice low, meant only for Thomas. The other kid jumps a bit, but he tries to hide it. Amber musters through her butterflies and offers up a smile.
“You have a makeup line on your jaw. Do you want me to fix it?” Clear hesitation flashes across Thomas’ face before he’s nodding. Carefully, Amber steps around and rubs until the line is gone.
“Thanks,” Thomas says. His smile is wobbly, like he expects Amber, in her giant sweatshirt, to make fun of him. Some of her nerves go away, and Amber gives off another, much more confident, smile.
Maybe... maybe they could learn together.
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