Pretty Sweet - Christina Lee Page 0,1

like my mom, minus the whole troubled childhood. No one batted an eye when Mom married Dad’s best friend after his death, which…yeah, was obviously weird.

“You okay there, kid?” Harold said, and I realized he’d been talking to me. Maybe I did have my head in the clouds. “I said good for you. Let people be who they are, if you ask me. You wanna wear makeup? Wear makeup.”

“I’m sure he feels much better now that he has your permission, Harold,” Elsie said to him with a smile.

“I’m being supportive.”

“Again, I’m sure he appreciates it,” she replied.

“Are you trying to say that I think my opinion is overly important?” Harold countered, and I had to bite back a laugh. They were always arguing and nitpicking at each other, but you could tell they loved each other something fierce. I hoped to have something like that one day.

“How’d you end up here, doing makeup for grouchy old ladies like Elsie?” Harold asked, and I leaned back to give them room because I knew Elsie would swat him. She proved my point when she popped him in the thigh. We were in the common room at the facility, where there was a television, couches, and chairs. The next room over was more like a social room, with tables for games and a piano and dance floor.

“I’m not grouchy or old!” Elsie griped.

“I was kidding, woman! Stop getting violent.”

“Am I going to have to separate you two?” I teased. “I started doing makeup here for a few of the women when they complimented me on mine, which they saw when I came to play piano.” I liked to keep busy. I used to come more than once a week, but with my new job at the Underground, the downstairs speakeasy in the popular Portland gay bar, the Playground, my time was more limited. Now that school was out for the summer, I had more freedom.

My mom and stepdad didn’t know about my job. They would lose their minds if they found out I was working in a bar—especially Mom. I would do just about anything to make sure that didn’t happen.

“Well, that’s nice of you. I know Elsie appreciates it, and it keeps her out of my hair.” Harold winked. “I’ll leave you guys to it.”

He walked away, and I smiled at Elsie. “Should we finish now?”

“If this is what you want to do, why aren’t you doing it?” Elsie asked. She and Harold had moved here only two and a half months ago, and I already loved her. She was like the grandma I never had.

“That,” I told her, “is a story for another day. I have to head out soon, so we need to finish.” I didn’t really need to leave soon, but it was a good excuse for avoiding the truth. I didn’t want to talk about the fact that I was a twenty-one-year-old guy who still lived under my mom’s thumb. That she was overprotective because she thought I couldn’t take care of myself, that I was flighty like my father, and was afraid it would somehow lead to my death like it had with him, even though I didn’t have a wild bone in my body. I’d escaped all the way from Philadelphia to Portland, where my dad had gone to college, so I could try and be independent, while still ridiculously following her rules.

I would never get to be a cosmetologist. I would finish school and go to work for the family company, in financials. Even the thought made me nauseous. Cutthroat businessman I was not.

“We’ll pretend I don’t know you’re changing the subject. I didn’t live to seventy-three without learning a thing or two.”

I smiled at her. “Thanks, Else.”

I’d already played the piano for the day, so I finished Elsie’s makeup—she was my only regular; the other ladies were hit-and-miss—before packing up for the day. She hugged me, and I said goodbye, feeling pretty good about her look and, well, being there at all. It was the one thing I really appreciated about how I’d been raised. They’d always made me get involved in so many things, it was automatic for me to do it as an adult, and out of that, I realized how much I liked volunteering and helping people.

“Hey, you,” I heard from behind me as I was finishing. I turned around to see Bonnie, one of the CNAs. She was in her late forties or early fifties, with cinnamon-colored hair and kind