but when I lift the tissue way, her skin looks splotchy and uneven.
Shit.
With my finger, I transfer more from one cheek to the other and use the sponge to smear the product around. But that leaves her face looking streaky. “What am I doing wrong?”
“All right. One hint. One,” she stresses. “Bounce the sponge. Don’t drag it.”
“Bounce.” Like a ball? “Okay.”
Hoping this doesn’t fuck everything up more, I start bopping it across her skin.
It looks better…though not great. But at this point, I’ll take any improvement. So I move to the other parts of her face, working the liquid over her eyelids, around her jawline, and down her neck since I have so much. I don’t want to swipe it again with the tissue, so I just keep bouncing. But foundation oozes down my thumb and fingers. How does she wear this shit on her face? It feels like a coating of blech to me.
“What are you doing?” she asks. “Narrate for us.”
“Blending. Blending…”
Finally, I step back to survey my handiwork. The foundation looks like a coat of shellac, thick and unnatural. What the hell? It says “natural” in the title. Either they lied…or I used too much.
Hoping it will sink in over time and dry down to something better, I smile. “The color looks good on you.”
“Does it?” Masey sounds dubious.
“Yeah.” She looks as if she’s got a tan. Isn’t that something makeup is supposed to do? It doesn’t match her shoulders or the top of her chest, but maybe that doesn’t matter?
“Let’s blend the concealer now.” It should be dry. I’m not sure how something so pale will look all right next to the darker shade of her foundation. Do they mix together?
I dab at the liquid—and I discover it’s mostly dried in two randomly shaped blobs, one under each eye. So I rub harder. But it’s not working.
“Fuck.”
Masey lets out a hysterical laugh. “You can’t say that.”
“Family friendly. Right…”
I try not to panic. Maybe if I add some viscosity back under her eyes the concealer will spread. So I turn the sponge to the wet side. “Let’s blend some foundation in with the concealer.”
When I start bouncing the sponge there, she rears back. “Gently.”
Right. Don’t give the pretty girl a black eye. But hey, this method is working. Kinda. It’s not perfect, but the shit is spreading. A little.
After a few minutes, I give up. It’s all dried down again, and now it’s not budging. It looks cracked and thick, but…
Time to move on.
“Let’s do blush. We’ll start with a brush and this compact of stuff by Glowtasmic in the shade…” I flip the package over. “Climax. They seriously gave a blush that name? How are we supposed to keep this thing family friendly?”
Masey looks ready to burst out laughing. “It’s just a name. Get back to my face, mister.”
Vaguely, I recall that blush goes on with a brush, so I take a skinny, dense brush—the handle says it’s a blending brush—and swipe it across her cheek. My eyes flare wide. The cheerful blush I chose to match her hot-pink shirt now looks like a dime-size, clown-colored swatch.
Shit.
Oh, well. I already suspected I would screw this up, so I might as well roll with it and deal with the cringe factor later.
“But you’ll want the color diffused, of course.” I grab a really big, fluffy brush from the stack. “So put the little blending brush down and get this thing that looks like a cat’s tail and swipe it around the face.” I make big circles on her cheeks, and thankfully the color starts to soften and spread.
“Perfect. Let’s repeat the process.”
I do. Her cheeks aren’t quite even, but hey, it’s not a bad first effort.
Before I do the next step, I get smart and take a brushful of bronzer and test it on a nearby white tissue. It’s pigmented. I need to be careful with this.
“All right. Now bronzer. Masey doesn’t need much since her foundation gave her a good tan.” That seems to be getting darker by the minute. How is that possible? “So we’ll just barely dip in with this big brush we used to blend the blush.” I tap into the bronzer. “Let’s sweep this across the nose and chin and dust it along the forehead. Yeah. And maybe this will make her chest look the same shade as her face, so some down here, too.”
Her face looks artificially tan now, but that’s nothing compared to the seemingly splotchy dark shimmer over the