#and ALSO gave them colored eyeshadow!!!!!!! i just thought it would be cute to add that like

[gncrezan]

the photoshoot from @infamous-if !!!!!! it was such a cute scene that really showed how close the band is and the paint concept was so clear in my mind that i wanted to draw it <3

[babyboyblasty]

CHAPTER 9:

In the end it was Mina who had to take one for the "greater good" and promise to delete /all/ (and it was a lot) of her girl Kacchan pictures in order for Bakugou to agree to let them doll him up for the mall. The pink skinned girl had pouted when Bakugou made the bargain but agreed nonetheless because to hell she was missing out on this once in a lifetime opportunity.

"You have to let us do /and/ dress you however we want though, okay? That's the deal" Uraraka reminded and Bakugou rolled his eyes with a 'tch', crossing his arms over his chest.

"As long as you don't make me look stupid, do what you want. Let's get this over with" Bakugou grumbled and the girls squealed. Mina and Hagakure immediately started digging through their combined pile of clothing they each took from their own closets and piled up on Bakugou's bed. Mina had a bunch of animal print and vibrant, loud clothing that just screamed 'look at me' while Hagakure's was a bit more simple but still very girly and cute. Bakugou was dreading what they were going to dress him in.

Kirishima waved goodbye to the girls and they all thanked him for helping them move their things to Bakugou's dorm. Not only were they dressing him but they also brought over their own things to get ready in his room too (they were dressing in their own rooms though). There were makeup bags on his desk, straighteners and curling wands plugged in as they helped do each other's hair, etc. It looked like a disaster zone as pinky and invisible girl dug through their things and carelessly threw them on the floor as they looked for what to put on Bakugou while simultaneously also looking for an outfit for themselves.

"I'll be doing your makeup, Bakugou-san. Do you have something in mind?" Momo smiled sweetly as she sat down in front of him, placing her makeup bag on her knees. Momo by no means considered herself a makeup guru but she did know a thing or two from watching videos and practicing on herself.

"Do whatever you think will look best on me" was all the blonde said and Momo gave him a nod. Based on his facial features already, Momo didn't need to do much. His skin was flawless already so she wouldn't need to do any spot treatments for acne or blemishes. Any eye bags were close to nonexistent too. Bakugou obviously took very good care of himself. All in all, Momo didn't think Bakugou even needed any makeup to appear stunning so something minimal just to make his best features pop out would be the way to go. Momo took a cute bunny headband to push his hair back and out of the way while she applied a sheer tinted moisturizer to his face. She started off with brows then moved on to a light pink/peach eyeshadow look with a small wing. Blush and a tinted lip balm for a coral wash of color was her next move. Cherry flavored. After that all that was left was mascara to make his lashes longer and fuller and a subtle highlighter for a dewy look. His makeup was kept to a minimum to make his natural beauty pop and if it was possible Bakugou looked even prettier than before.

"Wooow" Momo heard from behind her and turned to see Mina, Ochako, Jirou, and the rest of the girls looking over Momo's shoulder at Bakugou in awe. The blonde had his eyes closed since Momo had been applying a bit of highlighter on his lids so he opened them and looked at the girls with a raised eyebrow. For once Mina had nothing to say as she just appreciated the sight of her friend looking like an angel instead of an angry pomeranian for once.

"You did good, Yaomomo" Ochako broke the silence, one side of her head straightened while the other was still curved, the straightener still in her hand. They all agreed, each asking the black haired girl if she could do their makeup next. Momo blushed a bit under the praise of her friends and of course agreed to help them with their makeup.

Bakugou took out his phone to open the front camera and look at himself. He smirked a little. "Not bad, Ponytail" he looked up. Even he knew he looked good.

Momo smiled brightly. "There honestly wasn't much to do. You're already so pretty, Bakugou-san, so I only had to do a few things" she explained.

"Oi Blasty! Look what we have for you!" Mina and Hagakure both came forward with two articles of clothing. "Try them on!"

He took them. One was white and the other pink. "Fine" he mumbled, no other choice but to agree, and went into the bathroom attached to his dorm. He got undressed quickly out of his school uniform and put on what they picked out for him. The top was a white, layed, ruffled, off the shoulder crop top. The bottoms were a pair of high waisted, wide leg magenta shorts that sort of looked like a skirt if he kept his legs together. The combination wasn't bad and as he exited the bathroom, Mina gasped, putting her hands over her mouth like the drama queen she was.

"You look so good, Bakubabe!!! Here, I got these from my room just now. I think they'll pair well with that outfit" she smiled and grabbed some tan sandals with an ankle strap and a small heel. Bakugou took them and sat down to put them on. After that all they had to do was his hair. They didn't really do much but just brush it and add some product to make it fluffy and softer (which Bakugou definitely did not make a note of to remember and buy later). Hagakure spritzed him with a sweet smelling perfume and then he was done. By that point most of the girls had picked up their things and left to change clothing except for Mina who was changing in his bathroom since all her clothes were in his room already and Jirou who was already dressed looking like every girl's e-girl dream aesthetic.

Once she was done, Mina texted the class group chat to check if everyone was ready and that they'll be meeting in the common room in ten minutes so they can head over to the mall together. "We'll see you in a bit, Bakubabeeee" Mina waved him goodbye and she and Jirou left to their own rooms. Once they were gone Bakugou laid back in his bed to rest and mentally prepare himself for the rest of the day. After eight minutes he heard a knock and went up to answer it.

"Hey are you rea- oh" Kirishima's mouth snapped shut as he just stared down at Bakugou with red cheeks and wide eyes.

"Oh?" Bakugou tsked, leaning against the doorframe with a smirk. "That all you have to say?" The blonde was just joking but Kirishima immediately shook his head no.

"No! I mean- I.. you.. you look good. Very manly" he smiled nervously and Bakugou rolled his eyes with a snort. ‘Darn it’ Kirishima cursed himself for getting so awkward and not coming up with something better. It was like he was going back to his middle school self.

"Yeah whatever. Let's go, shitty hair" Bakugou grabbed his phone and room key card then locked the door behind him and started going to the elevator to go down to the common room with a strangely quiet Kirishima next to him. ‘What's up with him?’ he thought to himself.

Next to Bakugou, Kirishima's head was going a mile a minute. Every rom com movie he's ever watched with Mina was flashing through his mind right now and he kept imagining himself and his best buddy in the main characters' positions. Him picking Bakugou up by the waist, their hair moving in the wind while his open button up flew behind him like a cape. Him shielding Bakugou from the harsh sun while he enjoyed a popsicle snack (spicy mango is his favorite). Him tucking a flower behind Bakugou’s ear. Him kneeling down to buckle the strap on his sandal when it came loose. Glancing over at the blonde when they were in the elevator going down to the first floor, Kirishima smiled shyly but then looked away with a frown when he realized he was royally 100% screwed.

[word count: 1428]

[scarah-screeeaaammss]

ITS CLEO TIME!! pt 1

it stopped raining :)

thanks to @madam-melon-meow for asking for more pics, I just love photographing my queen :)

Og versus reboot

first thing I noticed is that the originals were quite diverse i their outfits and colors pallettes, it all still made sense to her style and character yes one Cleo is wearing an outfit that isn't hers, I got her at a peddlers mall. from what I have of the reboot and what I've seen, its kind of hit or miss.

Some of the reboot outfits matched the theme she was given, but don't seem to match Cleo. I dont think ive ever said this but its no secret that the Electrified Cleo is my absolute least favorite. They did her so incredibly dirty. Actually they did all of them dirty, why the hell did they bring back crimped hair!?!?

but back to the clothes really quick, a good chunk of the og outfits had a bandage motif to it or added bandage bits to the overall look. None of the reboot dolls have that. Yes they have the molded bandages on her arm and leg (which i actually like, I think its a neat little detail) but it feels like an after thought, just left out. Shes a mummy!! Its apart of her you can't just leave it out!! Otherwise she looks like a very fashionable normie.

theres also the fact that og Cleos outfits had a lot of detail and were normally multiple pieces to create the look. Reboot ones are like maybe two pieces if that. Yea some og ones were just a dress but at least it looked good and felt right for her.

back to the hair: the quality of the hair also went down significantly. The reboot hair feels cheap and much more plastic-y and never wants to lay how i want it, I mean you can see that some of the bangs are messed up. I mean the originals weren't always the greatest, but overall I never had too much issue aside from some tinsel.

in regards to the face ups, holy heck it was so easy to tell what Cleo was what just by her eyeshadow!! there is so little difference in the reboot faces. Its really only the hair that gives it away. I do enjoy her reboot face somewhat tho, its cute but also Cleo is 5,000+ yrs old and in the reboot she looks like a child, I mean her eyes are so much larger too its almost a little off-putting. I much prefer the more mature looks of the originals. It gave her a more serious im-in-charge kinda vibe.

Also all the lip colors are practically the same. I mean you gotta match it to the outfit and that doesn't seem to be what happened.

Really quick umm I love the og outfit, its probably my fav but the og doll herself was uhh well... the re-release they did it my fav hands down. There was a time I brushed her hair religiously every day bc I was just so obsessed with her which also speaks to the quality. Its so soft and lays how I want it to this day and I've been carrying her around (yes sometimes she just lived in my bag) for years and she still looks good. The re-release outfit is lacking some minor details but nothing too serious.

Og Cleo versus reboot og Cleo. I gotta say, I kinda like it but it will never be anywhere near as iconic as her og outfit. Like nothing can top that tbh.

The details and colors are nice, but it doesn't feel her. Again its that feeling of aging her down and thats reflected in the color choices, not to mention the random pattern choices. That shirt with those pants? Og Cleo would eat you alive. The earrings slap tho, I want those.

You can also tell that the reboot Cleos are a lot more orange. I think they were trying to make her darker and failed in that respect.

Didn't know where to add this but also reboot accessories were seriously lacking in details. Like a lot of modern barbie stuff, its just a chunk of plastic that might have a neat pattern or design but it gets lost bc its just the one color. Also nearly all her shoes were just gold, like I get it but come on aside from the reboot og those were... a choice. quick note, one of the reboot Cleos isn't wearing her shoes which are my favs actually bc the heels are cats. That was the best thing to come from the reboot hands down, like I actually bought the doll just for her shoes. I'll see if I can find them for pt2.

I cant add anymore images, but I did want to talk about a few more things lol this is just an off the top of my head kinda info so consider this part one of two as the title says :)

[choco-glow]

Fall Like Rain On Sunday, Pt. 2

They’d agreed to meet up at four in the afternoon after a quick run back to their respective apartments to shower and change out of their patrol gear, and Steph bit her lip as she tugged the towel a little tighter around her chest, wondering just what would be best to wear out. She’d asked Jason for an idea of what might be best, thinking he’d probably want to go clubbing (their usual whenever Dick and Kate were in town) or go to barhopping (Roy and/or Artemis), but he’d paused, giving her question serious thought as he stopped the motorcycle outside her apartment building.

“Honestly? Wear something comfortable to walk around in, if you’re up for it? I…wanted to do something a little different. Kinda celebrate the weather, y’know?” And she did know…He’d been blushing at that, sweet and shy and a little more school boy, a little less sexy asshole, and she’d hopped off and given him a kiss on the cheek, beaming at the butterflies in her tummy. “Oh…”

“Alrighty, that sounds good. Make sure you’re the same?” She almost asked, but Steph decided to add a little more weight to that one; ninety percent of the time, Jason would pull off his armor and change tee shirts, but otherwise, it was always the black/gray camo pants, the tan jacket, and a black shirt. Every. Single. Time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hot as fuck, but I know damn good and well the man has more in his closet than just that. Jason had been a mob boss himself for a time, and she still lusted over the thought that some day, she might see him in the black and red suits…But for today?

Today was casual cute, for both of them.

“Deal, only fair. I’ll be back at four, okay?”

“Sounds good; are we going on your bike?”

“Actually, I had a different plan for transportation, if that’s okay?” She nodded, actually a bit relieved, and he beamed, then leaned in and kissed her, full on the lips…and oh, that made those butterflies burst into life all over again. She’d floated up to her apartment in a daze, and after a quick pause to do her dishes (just in case, y’know, she might have company later) and a shower, she’d put up her hair in a curly soft messy pony, bangs fluffed out and cute, then followed that up with some classic make up. A touch of mascara, a wickedly sharp wing on each eye’s liner, a brush of purple eyeshadow, then rosy red (because why not make sure he knew she was interested too?), then a soft pale pink to brighten  just under her eyebrows.

Rose red lipstick completed the look, and she grinned a little, feeling vintage and sexy and cute, then strolled out, still in her towel, to peruse her clothes. After a long conference with herself, she was left with three possibilities. All were cute; all were comfy, and only one required a heel higher than an inch to look fabulous in. That one, the bodycon dress in deep amaranthine, she put away after a long look; it was super cute, but definitely more club than ‘about town’. She also decided against the denim short-shorts and purple crop top; not quite the look she was going for, to be honest, and as pretty as the shimmery crop top was, it might actually be too cool for today.

That left her with the dress she’d bought a month ago, and she smiled as she undid the buttons on the front of the bodice, pulling out a matching set of lingerie in dark red to put on first. She’d found it in a shop just outside the Narrows, and lusted over it for weeks before working up the courage to go in. Thankfully, the woman who ran the shop was from a similar background, and rather than most boutiques, who looked at Steph’s eclectic style and judged, this lady had helped her pick out the right size dress, a cute pair of kitten-heels to go with it, and even a shawl to match. Purple linen, with black polka dots, soft and cool against her hand, made up a lovely day-dress with a sweetheart neckline, fluttery cap sleeves, and a lovely, knee-length, full skirt. With pockets.

And it was easy to step into, sliding up her hips with a whisper of linen on her skin, buttoning with no gaping (which, from experience, Steph could tell anyone was a fuckin’ miracle.) Steph stepped into the matching heels, and gathered up a cute flowered handbag she’d picked up at the thrift store that rather accented her new dress, matched some studs to the color of the dress, and pulled the wide-brimmed sunhat out of her closet, giggling as she spun in her mirror, feeling cute and happy and just…girlish in a way that she’d never felt. Even when she was a little girl…

Thankfully, a knock sounded at the door, rapping in the familiar Bat-pattern they’d all been taught, knocking her melancholy out of orbit and Steph glanced at her phone. 3:58…I love a man who’s never late. She happily danced her way to the door, and when she opened it…Stephanie Brown froze, jaw dropping.

Because standing at her door, holding a bouquet of purple roses (and where the fuck did he find  PURPLE roses, of all things?!) was Jason Peter Todd, looking as starstruck as she felt, dressed down in a pair of soft gray jeans that hugged his glorious thighs and ass, a pair of slightly battered red Converse, and a red cotton button down over a soft black tank top, buttoned up almost all the way, but left free on the last two buttons, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his shirt tucked in, wonder of wonders…She felt herself start to drool a little, and snapped out of it with difficulty, because UNF.

“Oh…Jase…are those for me?” He suddenly snapped back to himself too, looking absolutely adorable as he blushed and nodded.

“Oh, uh, yeah…Thought you might like these, given that your favorite color is pretty much a dead giveaway.” He grinned as she laughed, the ice between them melting once more into easy friendship, and she took the flowers, beckoning him inside as she pulled a vase out of her cupboard. She smiled to see him looking around with interest at her books, her game systems, even her tentative bits of crochet with the soft yarns she’d bought months ago, and still hadn’t quite finished.

“…See something you like?” He blushed, glancing up from reading the back of one of her fantasy books, and grinned sheepishly as she finished putting the last of her roses in their new home. They smelled so so good, and already were opening up, and she hugged her arms to herself shyly as she walked back to him. Jason shelved the book with infinite care, and his eyes seemed to warm even more, his smile creasing his eyes in all the ways she’d always loved in her fantasy guys.

“I do indeed…you look…God, you look absolutely amazing in that dress, you know that? It’s so fuckin’ cute.”

“You look amazing in that shirt and those jeans…I mean it!” He turned away, blushing at that, looking shy now, and she caught his hands in hers, blue eyes trained on his. “Seriously. It’s a good look.”

“…Thank you.” He murmured, smile returning to his lips, and she took a risk, rising up on her tiptoes to press a soft kiss to his lips. He kissed her back, just as soft and sweet, and Steph didn’t know if she wanted to go out after all; this was…this was really nice. Jason pulled back, though, and she sighed a little, making him chuckle as he wrapped an arm gently around her waist. “Believe me, babe, I hate to stop kissing you, but I did make us some nice plans for dinner, if you’re still up for it?”

“Oh? What might dinner be?” He grinned at that, so much more in his own comfort zone now, and nodded his head to the west, where the sun was starting to lower in the sky, just a little.

“Care to let me surprise you?” Steph smiled, and put her arm around his waist in return, scooping her handbag up again.

“I suppose I can, this one time…” She rolled her eyes and he laughed, letting her lock and close the door before guiding her to the stairs, and walking down them in time with her, which, given his longer legs, was definitely something she appreciated.

“I promise, you won’t be disappointed.” As they walked out of the building, Steph was surprised to see a nice, large red truck waiting for them, and Jason’s hand up into the cab was just as nice as the interior, though it wasn’t leather, thankfully, but comfy heavy cotton seats. Dark grey with white accents, made it look a little more typical while still appealing to his color scheme, and Steph wasn’t surprised to spot a very, very well hidden (but not if you’re a Bat) gun compartment just under the dash. He gave her a worried look when he realized where her eyes were looking, but she met Jason’s worry with a smile, and kissed his cheek.

“You know me, Jase; I’m not gonna lecture you.” Jason’s tension melted away at that, and he chuckled, turning on the truck and backing neatly out of the space.

“I should, by now; but I still…panic, I guess? Too many years of being lambasted by B.”

“Don’t I know it…but…eh, we both grew up here. We both know what really stops criminals.” She murmured, and he breathed an ‘Amen’ at that, his right hand gently squeezing her left hand as he drove them towards the livelier market side of the bay.

“Still, I appreciate your…I guess, kindness? Tact?” Steph just smiled, twining her fingers with his, and grinning a little when his big thumb began to rub circles in the side of her hand.

“Let’s go with understanding.” She replied softly, and he gave her a flash of a smile and a squeeze.

“Deal.”

[jawnjendes]

i’m not usually like this | shawn mendes

university au, shawn x goth gf

if theres anything you wanna see happen in this series, let me know!

masterlist | series playlist

It all started because he asked a simple question. “Do you ever wear anything that isn't black?”

I've heard this question many times in my life, from family members, to coworkers, to strangers in my classes. The context in which Shawn asked me, however, was different than normal; He was pulling off my sweatpants and noticed my dark underwear. I told him to shut up and proceeded to ride him into oblivion.

When I wasn't surrounding myself with a brick wall to keep me safe, when I was not being stone cold and expressionless, I was quite the sex fiend. I'll take it anytime, and just about anywhere. I mean, you already know the story of those three hours Shawn and I spent in my bedroom, knowing that my roommate was home. That's not even the worst of it. We've had sex in his car, my car, outside my car, my living room, his kitchen, a bar bathroom, and a stranger's dorm room.

Listen… Shawn Mendes is a man of many talents. If he wasn't my boyfriend, he would be a fuck buddy.

Anyway, he liked to tease me about my wardrobe choices just as much as he liked to praise me. Sometimes he would ask who I’m about to sacrifice to the dark lord, and other times he would thirst over my black skirt and tights. Even better, sometimes he put on his black floral shirt as an attempt to match my ensemble. But this story is about his teasing.

After going at it for an hour at his apartment (my thighs were incredibly fatigued and shaky), I had to get ready for work. It was easy to get out of Shawn's hold since he was so loose and sleepy. As soon as I was ready, I kissed him goodbye and left his apartment in spirits so high it was considered abnormal for me. How did I know it was abnormal? My manager kept pointing out how chipper I was as I answered phones and helped customers. When people notice, that’s when you know things are changing.

It wasn't until I stopped by Walmart after my shift did Shawn's words sink in. I do wear black all the goddamn time. My closet is 99% black t-shirts, button ups, pants, leggings, and even underwear! The 1% is when I'm slacking on doing my laundry, that's when I would wear white.

That's not to say I don't like other colors. I used to experiment with bleaching my hair and dying it blue or green. I was a sucker for neon eyeshadow, and I was an absolute slut for red lipstick. Things are fluid, nothing is ever set in stone.

I looked through some of the clothing racks, but it’s Walmart, so nothing really stood out to me. Then I found myself in the underwear department. I was trying not to laugh at myself in front of other shoppers, because this was mildly insane. Was I really considering buying Walmart lingerie to prove a point to my boyfriend? There were some decent options after all.

My eye caught a black, sheer nightgown with a matching g-string. I studied it for a minute before deciding that I had a lot of black lace already, and half of it wasn't even intimate apparel. The next set I noticed was a simple sheer bra and underwear, also black. Getting there, but it wasn't enough. There weren't any in my size, anyway. I dug through the racks until I spotted something girly.

The first thing that put me off was that it was pink… baby pink. It was another nightie, but it was made of sheer tulle instead of lace. There were little pink and red hearts all over the skimpy fabric, and it came with a lace thong. It was cute, but it was the least Me thing here. On any other day, I would not be caught dead wearing anything pastel.

That's exactly why I ended up taking it home.

I quickly raced back to my dorm, feeling like I had some dangerous weapon hiding in the bag I was carrying. I didn't stop to speak to anyone I knew, and I was very glad that Shawn wasn't currently on campus. However, he did text me asking me to spend the weekend at his place. It only added to the butterflies in my stomach.

“Stella!” I frantically called once I had shut myself in my room.

She came practically running, bursting through the door. “What happened? Who died? Oh - oh my god.”

I was facing the full body mirror that was leaning against the wall. I tried on the daring piece of lingerie, testing it out on whoever was willing to see me like this. Stella was the only person who had seen me in my underwear apart from my boyfriend. However, I still had the decency to cover my breasts with my hands because the nightgown showed a bit too much.

“You trying to seduce me, ‘cause it's working,” Stella teased, wiggling her perfectly sculpted eyebrows.

“Listen!” I turned to face her, trying to justify my outfit choice. “This was probably a stupid idea! It, it was an impulsive buy!”

“Dude, if he sees you in this, you're gonna end up pregnant.”

“Don't say that!” I looked down and twirled my body from side to side, watching the fabric swirl. I felt and looked a little too nervous.

“Seriously, you look hot. Just, y'know, maybe skip the heavy eyeliner and add more perfume. He'll link the scent to the time he had the best sex of his life.”

I chuckled and rolled my eyes. “I'll do the perfume thing, but I can't skip eyeliner. I need something to make up for all the pink I'm wearing.”

Stella nodded. “Yeah, that's another thing. I know this is something you wear when you wanna get dicked down, but you look so soft and adorable!”

“Shit, if you keep saying things like that I just might spend the night with you instead.”

~

It was night by the time I was at Shawn's apartment. He was in the middle of songwriting, and he wasn't alone. His friend, Teddy, was over. I guess she helped him write sometimes. The two of them were singing to themselves and throwing potential lyrics back and forth at each other. Teddy was frequently writing on a scrap of paper or typing on her laptop. Shawn was strumming his guitar, and sometimes he would glance at me and wink.

I sat silently on the couch and half listened to them brainstorm. I was glad I decided not to leave my Switch at home.

“You're so quiet, is something wrong?” Teddy pointed out. I don't know why I wasn't expecting it.

“Don't wanna bother the artists at work,” I said, keeping my eyes on my intense game of Smash Bros.

“She's like that,” Shawn told his friend. “She'll warm up eventually.”

“That makes me sound like an asshole,” I replied with a chuckle, and then I gasped as my character on screen got knocked out.

Still, I remained quiet as they continued their session. I stayed in the same spot on the couch, curled up and thoroughly entertained. Shawn insisted I sit closer though, considering that I was on the opposite end of the couch from him. He liked my company I suppose, even if I wasn't speaking.

Eventually, Teddy got her things together and left. She gave me a hug, said it was nice to meet me, and then gave Shawn a look that said “have fun you two.”

When we were finally alone, I went into Shawn's room, telling him I wanted to change into my pajamas. It was sort of true, I mean. I grabbed my overnight bag and dashed into the en suite bathroom. Normally, I would have started with taking off whatever makeup I had on, but I only had on some intimidating winged liner and mascara. I needed that tonight.

Fixing up my hair and spritzing on a ridiculous amount of perfume helped keep my nerves at bay. My stomach fluttered when I pulled out the frilly pink item of clothing. This just might be my demise.

Once I was dressed, I looked at my reflection in the mirror and placed my hands on my hips. A wise lady in a hospital drama said standing like a superhero helps increase confidence, so that's what I did. I tried to channel my inner dominatrix, despite the fact that I was probably very far from being just that.

“I'm a strong lady,” I whispered to myself, then I huffed out a breath.

I ruffled my hair one last time before going to the door. I had my hand on the knob, but I could hear the sounds outside this very room. I could hear Shawn's footsteps, I heard the bed creak as he sat down. I heard the sounds of his guitar.

My heart started to race. It was ready to beat out of my chest.

I don't know why the first thing I thought to do when I finally opened the door was to unattractively clear my throat. It's not like Shawn wouldn't notice if I quietly left the bathroom.

He looked up from his guitar, and it took a second for him to process what he was looking at. His eyes lit up, and his jaw went slack.

Awkwardly, I placed one hand on the doorway and the other on my hip. I didn't know what to do with my face, so I slapped on the mock composure. I looked at my boyfriend, unsure if I should say something or not.

“No way,” Shawn finally spoke, a grin forming on his face. He set down his guitar and moved so he was sitting at the foot of the bed. “Come here…”

His eyes were moving up and down my body as I timidly stepped towards him. The look on his face was full of surprise and wonder, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. I mean, I was in skimpy attire and none of it was dark. Anyone who knew me wouldn't believe it.

Shawn took my hands when I was close enough, and he shamelessly checked me out. His eyes stuck on my tits just long enough to raise the tension in the room.

I was still finding my voice. I was probably more flustered than he was.

“You're too cute,” he told me, finally looking at my face. “When did you get this?”

“Today,” I said softly. “I don't know, I looked for something black… this was all I could find in my size.”

“I'm really glad you went with this. You're so cute. The pink makes you look almost innocent. Turn around for me.”

A shy smile crept up on my face as I slowly spun around. I quickly came to realize that I was willing to do just about anything he wanted. Wow, and I thought I was going to have power tonight.

“So adorable,” Shawn mused when I was facing him again. “You're the cutest fucking thing ever, you know that?”

My roommate had said similar things, but it hit me different hearing it from my boyfriend. My face was probably redder than the hearts on this stupid nightie, and Shawn could probably see that.

“I don't wanna be cute,” I mumbled, looking down at our hands. “I wanna be sexy.”

“Trust me, you're very sexy. I, I don't even know what to do. That's why I keep talking. God, you're so pretty.” His hand went up and stroked my cheek.

Stop fucking talking and just take me already!

The only way I could express that was by bringing Shawn's hands to my waist, giving him permission to touch me wherever the fuck he wanted. His breathing picked up a little more as he ran his hands down to my lower hips, reaching around to grab my ass.

I delicately placed my hands on his shoulders, and he leaned in to kiss my collarbones. He kept mumbling about how pretty I was, and it made me feel some kinda way. I could feel just how hot his body was getting being so close to mine, it made me even hotter. His hands moved up to my stomach, moving under the nightie, and running along my skin. My body felt so alive and ablaze.

“Your heart's going fast,” he pointed out, placing a hand on my chest. “You nervous?”

I nodded. “More than I'd like to admit.”

He smiled warmly, and then showed me his hands. Seeing them tremble gave me some kind of relief and an ounce of confidence. I made him feel like that. He was turned on because of me.

Shawn stopped me when I grabbed the ends of my nightie to take it off. “No. Leave it on.”

“Really?” I asked. “Won’t it be in the way or something?”

He shook his head, looking up at me with something like desperation in his eyes.  “I… wanna do unspeakable things to you in this thing. We're leaving it on. Now get your ass on the bed.”

I would have fainted if he hadn't given me an order.

[psychosistr]

Sparks Fly- Part 2 (CaeJose Dancer!AU)

Summary: It’s date night and poor Joseph is all kinds of nervous! Will Caesar see through it long enough to turn this date into a success?

Also: Didn’t state it before, but the name for this part is based off of the song Sparks Fly by Taylor Swift because I felt that it fit the general mood of the date with how confused and nervous but excited and happy Joseph is about all of it. Then, for the dance later, this is the sort of music I picture them dancing to.

Saturday soon arrived and Joseph found herself waiting downstairs in the lobby of her apartment building. Caesar had texted her saying he would be there to pick her up for their date about thirty minutes ago and that he would be there within half an hour. She’d actually been waiting in the lobby for the past five minutes, wanting to make sure she was ready to go when he arrived. She wasn’t normally one to worry about punctuality, but her nerves and the desire to make a good impression on the Italian Casanova gave her the energy to make sure she would DEFINITELY be ready on time.

While waiting, Joseph caught the sight of herself in one of the large glass windows of the lobby. She decided to check her reflection one more time to make sure she looked fine.

Her dress looked as gorgeous as the first time she’d tried it on, so that was good. The jewelry she’d picked out complimented the dress perfectly- the cocktail ring, earrings, and necklace looking lovely next to the green of her gown. She’d decided on a pair of black silk thigh-high stockings to cover her legs and a nice pair of glittery golden mary jane high-heeled platform shoes. She’d argued with herself constantly on the heels, worried that they would make her too tall and that she would fall over as she didn’t have much practice in them- they were almost brand new and she’d only worn them two or three times before- but, in the end, her mother talked her into it and said they added a nice flare of color to her look.

Speaking of her mother, Lisa Lisa had been a big help when it came to Joseph’s hair and makeup. They’d decided to go simple but elegant for the makeup, using deep green eyeshadow in a soft smokey-eye style to match her jewelry, black eyeliner and mascara, black nail polish with both of her index fingers painted glittering gold to offset it, a touch of amber colored blush applied to her cheeks to soften her cheekbones and jawline a bit, and, simply because Joseph couldn’t resist going a LITTLE flashy with her makeup, her lips were painted ombre style with ink black around the edges that melted to gold for the main color. Then, for her hair, they’d decided to smooth down most of her shorter locks and take the bulk of her hair that usually stuck up in the front, braid it, loop the braid around to the side of her head, then pin it there using one of her flower hair pins- this one was a yellow ranunculus with two green leaves.

Logically, she knew that she looked drop-dead gorgeous. Emotionally, though, she was fretting over her appearance. Caesar was way too charming and way too good at flirting (and kissing) to not have gone on several dates with countless women already. Would she measure up to his standards? Would she look like she was trying too hard? Would she-?

Her thoughts were cut off by the muffled sounds of “Mambo Italiano” by Dean Martin.

Joseph looked down to her shimmering golden clutch bag in her hands and opened it up to retrieve her phone. She saw Caesar’s number displayed on her screen and quickly answered it. “Hello?”

“Hey. I just pulled up out front, but I can go park somewhere else if you need a few more minutes.” She could hear the soft sounds of music and the thrum of an engine in the background when he spoke.

“Oh, what a coincidence!” She said with her best “surprised” voice. “I’m actually down in the lobby already. I’ll be right out!” She hung up, took a deep breath, and put her phone back in her bag. “Okay..” She said to herself. “You can do this!”

She took one more breath before going out through the front doors. She looked around, expecting to see Caesar on his bike, but was surprised to see him standing beside a silver Mercedes SLR with the passenger-side butterfly door already open.

Caesar himself was dressed in a rather flashy white and purple suit with the jacket and pants being white and the buttons, some stripes on the pants, and the inner flaps of the jacket being purple; also, when he shifted slightly, she noticed that the shirt beneath the jacket had a dark gray and black striped color scheme. His accessories were equally eye-catching with a green belt decorated with a metallic silver sun, a purple bow tie on a black choker, and a pair of brown fingerless gloves with odd holed-metal plates on the back, the brown gloves matching his surprisingly tame-in-comparison brown dress shoes. The finishing touch, she saw, was that for once he was without his headband, but he kept the feathered clips and donned a black and white checkered top hat on top of his head.

Caesar looked at her as she walked up to the car and his eyes widened as he took in her appearance. “……” Oh god…he wasn’t saying anything…was that bad? Should she go back upstairs and change? Was he having second thoughts? Maybe she should- “Dio mio..” He breathed out as he gazed at her, the earlier wide-eyed look of surprise melting into something filled with awe and adoration. “Sei come qualcosa da un sogno..” He blinked and quickly shook himself out of whatever trance he’d been in from seeing her and stood up straight to greet her properly. He took off his hat with a flourish and bowed. “Sorry to keep you waiting, signorina.”

She smiled a bit, relieved that he seemed happy with how she looked, and walked the last few steps over to him. “Eh, don’t worry about it. Like I said, I was already down here.” She looked him over with a smile, glad that she’d decided to add a bit of flare with her makeup and shoes so as not to be outdone by this showy charmer. “You look really good- I love the hat.”

“Grazie.” Caesar said with that charming smile of his as he flicked the hat skillfully so that it flipped back up onto his head. He took her hand that wasn’t holding her purse and kissed it sweetly. “And you look absolutely stunning, mia splendida dea.”

She blushed a bit, not knowing what the new adjective meant but, knowing Caesar and the context of the compliment, it was something really sweet (she made a mental note to look it up later). “Heh, thanks- thought I’d pull out all the stops, y’know?”

“I’m honored you would go so far for me.” Caesar said with one last kiss to her hand before moving to help her into the car. “Shall we be on our way?”

Joseph couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up inside of her- he was just so cliché and cheesy sometimes, though she found it was cute- but she managed to restrain it to a small chuckle. “Heh, sure.” She held his hand as she got into the passenger’s seat and he even closed the door for her after she made sure none of her dress was sticking out. After he got in on his side and they were both buckled up with the radio turned down to a dull hum so they could talk, Joseph took a good look at the expensive car. “I thought you said you didn’t own a car?”

“I don’t. This belongs to a close friend of mine. I set him up with his girlfriend about a year ago, and now they’re engaged. Seeing as I helped him find the love of his life, he figured it was only fair to loan me his car so I could attempt to do the same.” Caesar said while driving down the street, eyes on the road but one hand reaching over to hold her own hand. “Besides, I wanted to pick you up in something stylish: I do love my bike, but it is hardly suitable for a romantic evening in formal wear.”

Joseph’s cheeks felt warm as she smiled and held his hand. The comment about finding the love of his life was not lost on her and it made her heart flutter in her chest. “Well, maybe we can save it for next time. After all, first dates are supposed to be fancy, but second or third dates can be more relaxed, right?” She said as she watched the scenery go by.

“Ah, you are quite right, mia bellisima angela.” Caesar said with a smile, his thumb stroking along the back of her hand. “Perhaps next time we can go for that race I promised you.”

She looked back at him with a challenging smirk. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot! I’ve still gotta kick your ass and show you the brilliance of British engineering!” Joseph froze up slightly after realizing what she’d just said. Shit! She shouldn’t be swearing on a date! That wasn’t very dignified or lady-like at all and she was trying to make a good impression on him! She decided to quickly change the topic, her smirk trying to force itself down into a calmer smile. “So, where are we going tonight, anyway?” She tried to be smooth with her word choice, but she still felt nervous over her earlier slip up.

Caesar cast a slightly confused and curious glance in her direction while they were stopped at a red light, but his eyes quickly snapped back to the road when the light turned green and they continued driving. Crap, was she too obvious? “Oh, I know a good place that prepares actual, authentic Italian food- not this Americanized junk that some New Yorkers try to pass off as Italian.” The way his face scrunched up briefly in distaste at the apparent “junk” he’d tasted before was adorable and it made Joseph muffle a quiet laugh behind her free hand as he continued. “Anyway, the owner is an old family friend and I pulled some strings to set up something special.”

“Something special?” Joseph echoed with a curious tilt of her head and a grin. “What did you do, you clever Casanova?”

He merely smirked and winked at her using the side of his face closest to her. “That, my dear, is a surprise that you shall have to wait and see.”

Joseph gave him a fake pout and barely resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. “Fiiiine. I’ll be patient, I guess.” She said with a sarcastically fake put-out tone of voice before breaking into a grin alongside Caesar.

So far so good. Joseph could do this, no sweat!

Arriving at the restaurant blew Joseph’s previous round of nerves out of the water…and replaced them with an even bigger ball of straight-up anxiety.

Joseph had seen the small brick restaurant with ivy growing along the walls several times on TV and in magazines. It was one of the most well-known places in the city, but she’d never actually eaten there because it was the kind of place where if you didn’t have a reservation set up weeks or months in advance, then there was absolutely NO WAY to get a table. It had been a fixture in the city for decades, was one of the top ten most romantic restaurants in New York, and was located right beside the river to give a gorgeous view of the water, as well as the city.

Joseph was about to ask Caesar if they were in the right place because, seriously, there’s no way he actually got them a table here, right? They’d only made plans to go out a few days ago, so there had to be some mistake, right?

But, no, it was very clearly the right place as Caesar got out of the car, greeted the valet with a smile that spoke of familiarity while handing off the car keys, then walked over to Joseph’s door and opened it for her while offering her his hand. “Come, we should head inside before they give our table away.” He joked with that charming smile once again.

“Uh, y-yeah, right..” Joseph took his hand and stepped out of the car. She was still stunned to think that Caesar went to so much trouble for her and her mind was trying to catch up to the situation at hand.

Joseph allowed Caesar to guide her to the front doors, walking confidently past the long line of people outside and going straight inside. Caesar ignored the glares sent his way for getting to skip the line of impatient socialites and Joseph did her best to avoid eye contact with them (several of which she recognized due to her own social status) as they went towards the host’s stand.

The dark haired host seemed to recognize Caesar as quickly as the valet had and greeted him with a smile. “Caesar! Good to see you!”

Caesar smiled back at him. “You as well, Ricci. Is Emilio still here? He had a table prepared for us.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” The host nodded and gestured at one of the waitresses. “I’ll let him know you’re here. In the meantime, why don’t you two go have a seat?”

“Grazie, amico.” Caesar said with a tip of his hat before leading Joseph to follow the waitress.

Along the way he also ended up waving to the bartender, the live band playing in the corner of the restaurant, and a few of the waiters- each person he greeted smiling and waving or nodding back to him.

“Wow..” Joseph commented as they carefully walked through the busy restaurant. “You must come here a lot.” She was partly curious about that, but, mostly, she was trying to distract herself from the odd stares that people were giving her.

Her body must have tensed slightly from her nerves, because she felt Caesar’s hand giving her own a reassuring squeeze as he replied to her comment. “As I said, the owner is a good friend and he often keeps a special table set aside for me.”

To Joseph’s relief, they were led outside to a much quieter, and far more intimate, location. The waitress took them through a side door out to a small veranda overlooking the river. There was only one table set out there, kept tucked away by the wall just out of sight of the patrons within, giving the guests who used it a chance to eat and talk and enjoy the same view without all the noise of the full room inside.

Joseph smiled a little as she looked at the table, it was small enough that they would be able to hold hands or lean in close if they wanted to while still being big enough to accommodate them both properly. It was covered by an embroidered red table cloth and even had a three-candle candelabra burning in the middle. ‘Damn, that’s REALLY romantic.’ Joseph thought to herself as the waitress set their menus and silverware down for them.

Caesar pulled a chair out for her and gave a bow of his head. “Ladies first.”

“Thanks.” Joseph couldn’t help but grin as she took her seat, Caesar pushing the chair in for her before taking his own across from her. “I swear, you must watch nothing but cheesy romance movies.”

“I would say I watch a healthy amount.” He replied with a wink. He then turned his attention to the waitress. “Could you ask Gabriele for one of my usual bottles?” He paused a moment before looking at Joseph. “Oh, sorry, I should ask first- are you okay with red wine? I can order something else, if you’d prefer.”

Joseph quickly shook her head. “No, no, red wine’s fine- I’ve had it plenty of times at parties and stuff.” She gave him a slightly challenging smile, the urge to tease him a little bubbling up again. “Besides, I wanna see what sort of ‘special treatment’ they give you here, Caesarino.”

Caesar’s cheeks turned the tiniest bit red from the nickname and when the waitress hid a giggle behind her notepad before he dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Very well, then- you shall have the full experience.”

“Oh, now I’m excited.” She teased again before she decided to reign it back in. Guys got annoyed if you teased them too much, right? She should change the subject and try to seem more grateful for being here (which she was, definitely, she just couldn’t help her natural disposition). Picking up her menu, Joseph read through the choices. There was almost nothing she recognized on here, even with her mom’s cooking history. She recognized some of the basics like caprese salad, spaghetti, and mozzarella sticks, along with certain soups and salads, but she was otherwise lost. “So, since you’re a regular here, what would you recommend?”

Caesar gave her that same look he had in the car earlier when she tried to change topics, but he quickly shook it off and his face lit up as he reached over and pointed out a few things on the menu as he spoke, clearly happy to show off his knowledge of authentic Italian cuisine. “Well, there’s a good variety to choose from depending on what you are in the mood for. I grew up eating a lot of my mother’s Neapolitan style cooking, so I’m a bit partial to certain dishes they have here, but the variety in general is excellent. For an appetizer, I would recommend anything with their buffalo mozarella- it’s made fresh every day and has excellent flavor and texture. My favorite appetizers are the fresh caprese salad when the tomatoes are in season, and the fried mozzarella the rest of the year- the actual slices of pan-fried of mozzarella, that is, not just the deep fried sticks.” His hand moved over to the main courses section as he continued. “You mentioned before that your favorite food is fried chicken, right? Then you would probably enjoy the mozzarella stuffed chicken parmesan they serve here, or the spicy chicken cacciatore. If you want something exotic, I’d recommend the spaghetti al nero di sepia.- it’s spaghetti in a squid ink sauce.”

Joseph made an odd face at the idea. “Squid ink? Does that actually taste good, or is it just something Italians use as a way to make fun of tourists?” Seriously, squid ink on pasta? That just sounded weird…

Caesar grinned and laughed at her words as well as the face she made, but shook his head. “No, it’s an actual dish and it’s quite delicious. Though, it does startle a few people who try it for the first time when it turns their mouths black.” He tapped a few other entries, his smile looking almost nostalgic. “My personal favorites, though, are the pasta ai fagioli- that’s pasta with beans-, their ragu dishes- pasta with a delicious meat and tomato sauce-, and the pasta alla Genovese- that’s ziti pasta with a white sauce and beef and onions.”

Joseph smiled fondly as she listened to him talk. “Are those some childhood favorites?”

Caesar’s smile softened as he looked down at the words on the menu. “Yes. Those were my mother’s best dishes. She would often make those for special occasions, such as holidays or one of our birthdays. That was the one advantage of coming from a big family- we had plenty of birthdays spaced throughout the year, so we got to have her special recipes fairly often, but not so often that they became any less special.”

Joseph noticed how Caesar’s smile, while fondly nostalgic, held a bittersweet sadness to it. “Has it been a while since you’ve had any of it?” She guessed, knowing she had hit the mark when he glanced away to the river.

“Yeah..” He sighed a little, bringing his hand back to lean against it as he gazed wistfully at the water and passing boats. “Coming here is nice, but I do miss the home-cooked quality her meals had..”

Joseph felt a tug on her heart strings seeing the slight sadness in Caesar’s eyes. She knew a bit about his past, the part about him being a street thug when he was younger, but he hadn’t really talked much about his family before. Hell, she didn’t even know why he left home, both his family’s home and his home country, to come all the way out to America. She imagined it must have been a painful story for him…

“Well then,” She began while reaching across the table to gently grab his other hand, catching him by surprise and making him look back at her. “I guess you’ll have to teach me how to make them sometime. That way you won’t have to go out and spend a fortune here whenever you want something to eat, and I’ll get to impress you yet again with my culinary genius.” She grinned at him and squeezed his hand in what she hoped was a comforting gesture.

Caesar gave her that same look of awe he’d had when he picked her up earlier. “……” His expression melted back into a smile that spoke of adoration and fondness once again, his hand turning over so he could lace his fingers together with hers. “Si…I would like that, Jojo.”

They smiled and gazed at each other, the only sound around them the muffled chatter from inside and the gentle crashing of the waves from the riverbank.

They decided on the fried mozzarella- both the slices and the sticks, simply because Joseph was still a bit of a kid at heart- for their appetizer. Caesar ordered the weird squid ink pasta just to goad Joseph into trying a bite. It was actually GOOD! Who would’ve thought?! She ended up stealing a few more bites just because she liked the taste, though it was funny to see Caesar’s lips turning black as he ate- their lips almost matching by the end of the meal. Joseph herself decided to try the bowtie pasta (she already forgot the fancy Italian name that Caesar told her for it) with the ragu sauce that Caesar seemed so fond of. She gladly shared some of hers, too, since she’d taken a fair share of bites from Caesar’s plate already.

Everything was delicious, from the wine Caesar ordered to the main courses. Even the free bread was tastier than most places she’d been to! Caesar happily showed her how to serve it with the olive oil and balsamic that was placed on the table for the bread and it made it taste even better.

Part of her felt a little bad for not being aware of how much everything cost. This was one of those fancier restaurants where they didn’t put the prices on the menu- one of those, “if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford to eat here anyway” deals, she presumed. She knew that she could definitely afford it, but she didn’t want to make Caesar pay that much for her. Joseph brought up the subject of paying for herself or splitting the bill, but Caesar firmly yet politely informed her that he would not allow a lady to pay for herself on the first date, no matter the cost. After a brief debate on the matter, Caesar ultimately won and reaffirmed that he would be paying this time, but Joseph only allowed it on the condition that she pay for him the next time they went out.

When it came time to order dessert, a short, older man with tan skin and dark hair walked out with a big smile on his face. “Haha! There he is! E 'bello vederti, bambino!”

“Emilio! Bello vederti, amico mio!” Caesar looked at the man with a big smile and stood to greet him, the two engaging in a quick, friendly hug.

When they separated, the shorter man looked at Joseph with what could only be described as a proud smile. “Ah, and this must be the lovely signorina you spoke so highly of!”

Caesar’s cheeks turned a touch red and he coughed into his fist to clear his throat, muttering something in Italian that Joseph wouldn’t really understand or remember. “Potresti tenerlo segreto, Emilio?”

“Io non la penso così.” Emilio shot Caesar a smirk before returning his attention to Joseph. “Caesar was awfully excited to bring you here- he kept calling every night to make sure we’d remember to set his table aside for you two.”

Joseph smirked conspiratorially at Emilio, her tone clearly teasing Caesar as she took in this new information. “Oh did he now?”

Emilio chuckled as he pretended to think back on their conversations. “Si. He kept insisting how important tonight was, and how he ‘could absolutely not afford to mess this up for any reason or he would never be able to forgive himself’- though I may be paraphrasing a bit.”

“You don’t say..” Joseph grinned at Caesar, the blonde’s face now completely red as he hid his head in his hands.

“Per favore..” Caesar groaned as the two continued to grin and chuckle at his expense. “Please stop..I am literally begging you..”

Emilio laughed and patted Caesar on the back good-naturedly while continuing his conversation with Joseph. “I haven’t seen l'insalata del bambino blush like that since he was smaller than me! Haha! It is too cute!”

Joseph couldn’t help giggling at Caesar’s flustered state- it was nice to see him losing his cool for a change. “What does that name mean? I got ‘bambino’, but what’s the rest?”

Caesar looked up from his hands to glare at Emilio. “Rispondetela e non parlerò mai più con voi!”

The shorter Italian just smirked wickedly while leaning close to Joseph as if whispering a secret. Joseph happily leaned in to hear him clearly. “It’s a nickname from when he was a little bambino. He HATES it. It means..” He leaned in closer and she cupped a hand around her ear exaggeratedly to hear his stage-whisper. “Baby salad.”

A hysterical fit of laughter rang out from Joseph and she threw her head back to let it out properly. “BABY SALAD?!!” She laughed so hard that she had to grip the table, otherwise she would risk falling out of her chair. “OH MY GOD!! That is too funny!”

Caesar’s face turned a darker shade of red and he buried his face in his hands once more with a muffled scream. “Auugh! Ti odio!”

Emilio laughed along with Joseph, the two having tears in their eyes by the time they were done. The short man wiped his eyes with his hand while Joseph pulled a tissue out of her purse to dab at her eyes and, mostly, avoid smudging her makeup. “I hope you make good use of that nickname, signorina.”

“Oho, I definitely will, thanks.” Joseph said with a devious grin. Oh, she already had plans for all manner of teasing floating through her mind.

Caesar shoved at Emilio with a glare, his cheeks still red. “You just had to say something, didn’t you?”

Emilio easily ignored the half-hearted shove while looking up at Caesar. “But of course! No one else is around to embarrass you in front of your date, so I have to do it myself!” He laughed again at Caesar’s annoyed glare before looking back to Joseph. “Now then, signorina, I am certain you can handle yourself..but, if this boy gives you any trouble or treats you like anything less than a proper gentleman, you come right in and tell me and I’ll set him straight, alright?”

“You’ll be the first to know.” Joseph replied with a smile, one that was born from both amusement at Caesar’s embarrassment and the genuine sweetness and concern of the older gentleman.

Having said what he wanted to say (and thoroughly embarrassed Caesar), Emilio took their dessert orders and let them be once more.

Caesar sat back down heavily in his chair, holding his face with one hand. “I am truly sorry about that interruption. Emilio, he…” He heaved a long suffering sigh and rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and index finger “He does what he wants, despite what others ask him.”

Joseph grinned smugly and reached across the table to flick the blonde’s hat playfully. “Oh, I don’t mind him one bit, my little salad~<3” She teased with a wink.

He looked up at her with a light glare and readjusted his hat, muttering something in Italian under his breath. “Accidenti a te, vecchio…”

Joseph flinched slightly at the glare and pulled her hand back. Crap, was that going too far? She should probably save the teasing for later in the relationship. Was there a set time limit on when it was okay to tease your boyfriend like that? Wait, was it too soon to be thinking of him as a boyfriend? She didn’t know any of the rules for this! Damn it, she needed to change the subject before she blew it!

“Sooo..” She began while placing her hands on the table in front of herself, desperately searching for anything else to talk about. “I know I got that tasty looking chocolate panna cotta for my dessert, what was that pastry thing you’re getting called again? You said something about it looking like a shell?”

Again, Caesar gave her a look that was partly curious, but mostly confused. “It’s called sfogliatelle.” He answered shortly before reaching across the table to gently touch her hand. “Jojo, is something wrong? That’s the third time tonight you’ve done that.”

“Huh? Done what?” She tried to bluff her way out of the situation by playing innocent.

The act apparently failed when Caesar gave her a troubled, worried frown. “You keep changing the subject. On top of that, you keep choosing safe, generic small talk to distract from what you said before.” His frown grew a bit more and he looked even more worried. “Are you..not enjoying yourself..?”

Joseph quickly shook her head, holding his hand with both of hers to get her sentiment across clearly. “No! I mean, yes, I am, and no, that-that’s not it at all! I’m having a great time with you, Caesar, really! It’s just…” She trailed off, glancing away nervously.

Should she tell him? He was always so patient and understanding with her. Then again, everyone’s patience had a limit. Would this be his? Damn it, she wasn’t used to feeling this confused!

“Just what?” Caesar prompted while bringing his other hand closer to cup the back of hers and rub it soothingly. “What is troubling you, mia dolce angela?”

Ah, another new adjective she’d have to look up later. “……” She took a deep breath to calm herself, as she had done earlier in the night. She still couldn’t meet his eyes, choosing instead to focus on their joint hands. “It’s just…I..I don’t want to mess this up..”

Caesar raised an eyebrow, looking more confused than concerned now. “Mess it up? How on earth do you think you could manage that?”

“I don’t know.” She answered with a slightly annoyed sigh, the annoyance focused completely against herself. “I’m just freaking out because I really like you and I want to make this work and I don’t want to make a fool out of myself by saying something stupid or doing something that pisses you off because then you might get annoyed and won’t want to go out with me again and then I’ll be kicking myself for screwing things up so badly with the first guy that ever asked me out-” God, she was rambling now, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop the words that just continued falling from her lips. “-and you clearly put so much thought into all of this with the fancy restaurant, and the car, and the outfit, and I’m freaking out more because I don’t know if I’m actually worth all the trouble you went to for tonight and it just all freaks me out because this is all new to me and I have absolutely NO idea what I’m doing and now I probably sound like a crazy person to you for worrying so much over what must seem like nothing to you since you’ve clearly been out on a bunch of dates before, but I haven’t so I don’t know what’s okay and what’s not okay and I just REALLY want you to like me enough to go out with me again because I’m really happy being with you, damn it!” She finished her rambling and gasped hard, trying to replenish the air she’d just drained from her lungs.

“……” Caesar seemed stunned, busy taking in and processing everything Joseph just told him. When he finally finished sorting through her mashed together words, though, he lifted his hand and gently tipped her chin up with one finger to make her look at his face again. He had that warm, kind, patient, understanding smile on his face that instantly put her at ease. “I think we both may have been trying too hard tonight.” Then, to Joseph’s surprise and slight confusion, Caesar got to his feet and walked around to her side of the table. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, brought something up on it that she didn’t have a chance to see, then set it down on the table before gently pulling her to her feet. As Joseph rose out of her seat, she heard music fill the air around them from speakers hidden along the sides of the building that she couldn’t see- it was a beautiful waltz melody, but a bit more upbeat and modern with a slightly gothic sound. Looking at her with a far more relaxed smile, Caesar kept one hand clasped around hers while the other moved to her waist. “How about, instead of trying to be something we’re not, we both just relax and do what comes naturally?”

Joseph felt her heart skip as she looked him in the eyes. She looked into those gorgeous green eyes and saw no ulterior motives, no flirty playfulness, no charming mask- she only saw Caesar. She saw a man who was clearly enjoying having her with him and who wanted to relax and enjoy himself with her.

A relaxed smile slid across Joseph’s face to match Caesar’s as she held his hand and brought her own free hand up to rest on his shoulder. “I think I’d like that, Caesarino.”

They began to sway in time with the music, already finding the rhythm with it and each other almost instantly. The swaying quickly turned into measured steps and quick turns. Before long they were dancing together with the same energy, passion, and chemistry they always had when they danced together in class.

Caesar would guide her down into a graceful dip, able to easily hold her weight without breaking a sweat. He would raise one hand above both of their heads so she could spin smoothly on one leg, the slit in the dress allowing an ideal range of motion for her legs. He would grab her around the waist and lift her off the ground as they spun together in large circles.

At one point, a sly grin slipped across his face and he moved his thumbs a certain way and she heard a “click” sound come from his gloves. She gave him a questioning look, but before she could voice her curiosity she noticed the holes on the back of those odd metal plates opening up as well as a couple of smaller panels on the sides that she hadn’t noticed before slipping open too. She noticed some sort of clear liquid moving just beneath the surface of the holes.

Then, on the next spin they executed together, she saw them:

Bubbles.

As they moved together seamlessly, the gloves on Caesar’s hands seemed to take in air from the panels on the sides before coming out through the holes on the back of the metal plates as bubbles. Soon the floating orbs filled the air around them, catching the lights from both the city in the distance and the windows of the restaurant that neither noticed they’d moved in front of while dancing due to being caught up in their own little world.

“So, what do you think?” Caesar asked while dipping Joseph down gracefully, the sly grin still on his face. “I used to do odd jobs as an engineer- I made these using some spare parts I found.”

Joseph was still in awe of the bubbles floating around them, but she soon came back to herself and smiled at Caesar as he brought her back upright. “Flashy and fashionable. I like it!” She laughed while spinning around on one leg, trusting Caesar to keep her from falling. “You certainly planned for every possibility, didn’t you?”

“Yeah..” Caesar’s earlier grin softened into something calmer and even a touch melancholic. “I was nervous about tonight too..” He admitted as he let her finish her spin, ending it with her back to his chest and the hand that was still holding hers crossed over her waist as he held her close. “I ran through countless lists in my mind about what could go wrong and how to prevent it, as well as ways to impress you whenever the opportunity presented itself.” He held her to him while they swayed to the music, his free hand tracing along the lace of her sleeve to hold her other hand as well. “As much as I hate him for saying it, Emilio was right: I was sweating over every little detail because I knew that if I messed this up..I would never be able to forgive myself..”

Joseph spared him a confused glance over her shoulder. “Huh? How could YOU mess this up? You clearly know what you’re doing- hell, I’d bet you’ve dated at least fifty girls before me!” She was joking slightly on that part, but, in reality, she supposed it could be possible- he never really talked to her about any past girlfriends, after all.

She felt a quiet chuckle rumble through his chest where it was still touching her back. “I stopped counting a long time ago, but you might be right.” He was silent for a little while after that, slowly turning her around in his arms so that they were facing each other properly again as they moved together in slow steps and spins across the ground. “I did not want to say anything before, when you thought that I was dating Suzi behind your back..but..there was a time not too long ago when you may have been right to assume such a thing about me…” He looked so pained, like he had a deep, burning guilt on his conscience that was eating him alive. “During my street thug days, I was…well, to say I was not a good person would be putting it mildly..” He lamented with a sad smile. “I went through each day not caring if I would live to see the next or not and thought little of the consequences of my actions. I got into fights without caring if I was attacked later for revenge. I stole from people without caring if I would be arrested. I hurt and used people without caring if I would ever see them again.” He looked down, avoiding her eyes like he was ashamed to meet her earnest, caring gaze. “I went out with many girls and women when I was young, but I never truly felt anything for them. I would see women who looked lonely and woo them with a charming smile or a flashy gesture, then leave them after I’d had my fun..I never thought I did anything wrong, even though I’m sure now that I left many of them broken hearted and alone..” Joseph could tell how much it pained him to admit that, and she couldn’t blame him- admitting you used to date girls only to leave after a one-night stand wasn’t exactly the coolest thing to talk about, but he seemed like he needed to get it off of his chest. “I lived my life that way for a while..but..I have tried to distance myself from the person I used to be: I still fight, but I try to only do it for a good reason. Earning an honest living can be hard at times, but I feel better knowing that I am no longer stealing people’s wallets just to get by. Also…” He took a slow, even breath before looking up to meet Joseph’s eyes once again, his own bright green eyes shining with a sincerity and strong sense of conviction that made her breath catch in her throat. “You are the only woman I have had any interest in at all for the past two years. If I am being completely honest, you are really the only woman whom I have EVER had any genuine feelings for. I wanted tonight to go perfectly so that I could prove I was worthy of your time and attention- so that I could continue seeing you as often as possible and hold you and kiss you and tell you how lovely and amazing you truly are.” His smile lightened slightly at his confession, one hand sliding around her waist again as he leaned her back slowly. “You may find it a huge cliché for me to say such a thing, but..”

Joseph reached up and put one hand on his cheek, gazing up into his eyes with a playful but understanding smile. “Now you’ll say ‘You’re different from the other girls- you are the first woman I’ve ever fallen for, Jojo’, and then you’ll lean in for a kiss.”

“You’re different from the other girls- you are the first woman I’ve ever fallen for, Jojo.” He said before leaning down with her in an elegant dip so he could kiss her lips. Just as his lips made contact with hers, he finally realized what just happened. “!!”

He seemed mildly startled, looking like he might pull away to say something, but Joseph was having none of that. “Mhh..” She moved the hand that had been on his cheek around to the back of his neck and held him in place so she could kiss him properly.

She’d done research since their last kiss and now had a better understanding of what to do between that and what she’d learned from kissing Caesar already: Tilt the head slightly to find a more comfortable angle. Breathe through the nose to make the kiss last longer. Purse the lips in smooth motions back and forth, responding to how your partner moves theirs.

Caesar was again surprised by her boldness, but did not seem to mind if the way he held her closer and sighed silently through his nose was any indication. “Hmh..” The kiss lasted much longer than their first one, the two of them taking their time to fully enjoy the experience. By the time they finally pulled apart (only by an inch or two so they were still practically breathing each other’s air), they had matching red cheeks and black lips- a combination of Joseph’s lipstick and the squid ink from Caesar’s pasta. “Jojo..” Caesar said while gazing at her with awe and pure, loving adoration. The smile on his face was so warm, so genuine, so clearly and completely Caesar that it made Joseph’s heart melt. “I may grow tired of that trick one day, but I don’t see that day coming for many years.”

Joseph’s heart pounded at the meaning behind his words and she smiled back up at him, sharing that hope and desire for the future with him. “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

<-Previous Part Next Part->

-From the Beginning-

Italian Translations:

“Sei come qualcosa da un sogno..”  - “You’re like something from a dream..”

“E 'bello vederti, bambino!” - “It’s good to see you, boy!”

“Bello vederti, amico mio!” - “Good to see you, my friend!”

“Potresti tenerlo segreto, Emilio?” - “Could you keep that a secret, Emilio?”

“Io non la penso così.” - “I don’t think so.”

“Rispondetela e non parlerò mai più con voi!” - “Answer her and I’ll never talk to you again!”

“Ti odio!” - “I hate you!”

“Accidenti a te, vecchio…” - “Damn you, old man...”

Also, the new nicknames he drops for her are “splendid/gorgeous goddess” and “sweet angel”.

[abdicatedarchive]

Winter Trip || Juliette and Marina

SETTING: Marina’s room.

Juliette: Juliette went to Marina's room, hoping to avoid Chanel and the other cheerleaders. "Hey so I finished my book and I didn't pack my kindle" said the girl tucking her hair behind her ear. "Please tell me you packed an extra book?" she asked. Juliette had just finished her rereading of Carry On, and just needed something else to pass the time in her room without her computer.

Marina: Marina was by herself in the room as she was getting ready for the party. She liked to take her time when she put on her makeup, it was a whole process. "Ooh what were you reading?" she asked curiously. They were always talking about the books they were currently reading. "I brought the book I'm reading now, but it's Carry On and I know you've already read that. You can reread it if you want though, I don't mind."

Juliette: Juliette laughed, of course they were like this. "You have to be kidding me, that's what I packed" said Juliette, "why are we the way we are?" she joked. "I packed it because I was like ... oh I'm going to be so preoccupied all week, but my rooming situation is super dark" Juliette added, "so I whipped through that so fast, you know how I get about Simon and Baz" said the girl.

Marina: Marina gasped and laughed along with Juliette, "Having such good taste can be a blessing and a curse all at the same time, who would've thought?" she grabbed her book that was laying on the table and held it up to show Juliette. "Simon and Baz have a very large place in my heart. They're just so cute!" she said with a big smile. "Yeah your rooming situation is kinda sucky. I'm pretty happy here but I would've preferred being with you, Rosie, Gabrielle, Olivia. Oh and Stevie. She's really cool."

Juliette: Juliette giggled at the comment, "Right? Their enemies to lovers is everything to me" said the girl. That room situation sounded perfect to her "That would have been so much fun, in another universe I'm sure it happened" she said throwing the thought out there. She liked thinking about the Juliettes in other universes and what they were up to, it gave her something to do in her free time. And without her laptop, she had a lot of it. "Stevie is great, I just started to get to know her" Juliette added before changing the subject. "I was thinking ... I kind of want my makeup to look ... less basic? Could you maybe do my makeup for tonight? I want to look cool" she asked.

Marina: "Ahh isn't enemies to lovers just the best?" Marina asked, smiling to herself as she thought of Simon and Baz. It was one of her favorite tropes. "Wouldn't it? We should all have a sleepover one night. I know Rosie would love it and it would be nice for all of us to hangout." she suggested. She was pretty happy about her room situation though, being with Rose and some of her teammates was good enough for her. "Oh yeah, she and Rose have been good friends for a while so I've known Stevie through her." Marina's eyes practically lit up once Juliette asked if she could get her makeup done by her. It was a real confidence booster to know someone trusted her to do their makeup. "Of course! I could definitely add a pop of color to match your outfit. Very pretty, by the way." she complimented Juliette's outfit. She loved her style. "Okay, I'm thinking maybe I could use either one of these two palettes, which one do you think?" she asked, opening both eyeshadow palettes so her friend can see the colors. 

Juliette: Juliette smiled at the idea of a sleepover, first of all ... Stevie over at her house? Sneaking around? That would be all too fun. Second of all, she actually had friends. Juliette had girl friends for the first time in her life. A group of them even. It made her feel good about herself. "I would absolutely love that" said Juliette, smiling brightly at the idea. Juliette sat down next to her, "Could you do the cool eyeliner on me? Like kinda ... like a bad b?" she said as she looked at the palettes, "that one for sure" she said. "I've been working on elevating my style" Juliette said smiling kindly at the compliment, "Pinterest surfing is like ... all I do".

Marina: "Cool! I'll bring it up in groupchat and we can plan from there." Marina then thought about how Rose and Stevie weren't in that groupchat. "So I'll let Rosie know, and maybe you could let Stevie know?" she suggested innocently, of course Marina had no idea what was going on between the two girls. Marina giggled once Juliette said bad b and nodded in response, "Of course! You're gonna look so hot." she said, grabbing a couple different colored eyeliners. "Here's the one's I brought. I of course have a black and brown too. Here they are." she placed them on the table. "Nice choice." she smiled as she grabbed a makeup brush and got some pigment on it. "Close your eyes, please." she said politely. "Have I never told you before? I absolutely love your style. You wear the cutest skirts for school."

Juliette: "Yeah Gabrielle is ... well she's a little picky" said Juliette, honestly sometimes she worried that Gabrielle would drop her. But then she remembered that she knew Gabrielle's biggest secret ever, so at least they had that to share. They also shared the Griffin thing, which was sad .. but it bonded them together more than ever. Juliette shut her eyes so that Marina could do her makeup, and smiled at the skirt compliment. "Thanks, I get compliments sometimes. I usually think no one notices, but I've been getting a lot of attention from people recently" said Juliette, unable to contain her excitement over it. Her kind of fashion was definitely becoming more mainstream, she liked her monochrome outfit sets and playing with colors and accessories. "How are things since you've been back? Good?" Juliette asked hopefully. 

Marina: "Yeah? I pretty much just know her through you and Chase but she seems really cool. It would be nice to get to know her more, and you have great taste. If you're friends with her, she must be awesome." Marina remembered that Juliette had been friends with Gabrielle for years, so she knew Gabrielle had to have been a really cool person. Her smile widened once her friend mentioned getting more attention, "Oh yeah? Any attention from anyone special?" she asked slowly. Her and Juliette didn't really talk about boys that much but that could always change. Marina knew what it was like to suddenly get more attention. Sure, she got a good amount her freshman year cause of cheer, but she was so much more outgoing now. It helped a lot. Marina's smile faded a bit once Juliette asked how things have been. "It's been a little... different I guess. In good ways and bad, honestly." she said softly as she applied the eyeshadow to Juliette's eyelids. She hadn't really talked about this with Juliette yet. 

Juliette: "Yeah we used to vacation together, and hey now she lives here so that's nice. I was close to her when we were smaller and she was ya know, more like me. Then she had these wild years and went crazy, and now she's back to normalish" said Juliette, "I dated her brother for a while, on and off in the summers" she added. "We were mostly just best friends, you know like that summer camp type close". She didn't like talking about Griffin, but it was less painful now. "Mostly just female friends" said Juliette honestly, not that Stevie wasn't her friend. She definitely was. But she was also not her girlfriend, which lowkey sucked. But Juliette wanted to let that be it's own special thing sometime in the future. "Different how?" she asked, not being able to see that Marina was no longer smiling, the cadence of her voice had changed a little. But Juliette assumed she was maybe turned around or something to dip into a palette. 

Marina: Marina listened to Juliette as she started adding another color onto the girl's eyelids to blend. She felt bad for not really being there for Juliette, she remembered how close her and Griffin were. But Marina just started talking to her old friend again and she was still going through a lot. She felt bad for pushing away so many friends. "It's nice that you and Gabrielle are able to see each other a lot more often now." she stated. "Compliments from girls are the best kinds of compliments though. Hits a little different." she smiled even though Juliette couldn't see. Marina wasn't sure how to answer Juliette, she hadn't really opened up about it and she wasn't ready to. Not now on this trip at least. "Just trying to adjust to a lot of changes." she said vaguely before finishing up her friend's makeup. "Okay, take a look and let me know what you think." she grabbed a handheld mirror and passed it to Juliette. "You look amazing! If you want me to fix anything, let me know. But I'm ready for the party when you are." she said as she touched up her lipgloss.

Juliette: "Compliments from girls are the best" said Juliette, in complete agreement. She didn't know how to tell Marina that she was gay, but maybe she would get the hint? Probably not at all. She didn't want to go around telling everyone, it was just hard to keep the secret when she wanted to tell everyone about Stevie. "That makes sense, you don't have to talk about it" said the girl to the other, she didn't want to push Marina too much. She was mysterious herself, they were a good pair. Juliette looked at herself in the mirror, "I look amazing! Thank you" she said giving the other girl a hug. "Let's do this" she said, "I think people are playing truth or dare" Juliette added as they headed out to the party.

[unsettlingshortstories]

The Faery Handbag

Kelly Link (2004)

I used to go to thrift stores with my friends. We’d take the train into Boston, and go to The Garment District, which is this huge vintage clothing warehouse. Everything is arranged by color, and somehow that makes all of the clothes beautiful. It’s kind of like if you went through the wardrobe in the Narnia books, only instead of finding Aslan and the White Witch and horrible Eustace, you found this magic clothing world–instead of talking animals, there were feather boas and wedding dresses and bowling shoes, and paisley shirts and Doc Martens and everything hung up on racks so that first you have black dresses, all together, like the world’s largest indoor funeral, and then blue dresses–all the blues you can imagine–and then red dresses and so on. Pink-reds and orangey reds and purple-reds and exit-light reds and candy reds. Sometimes I would close my eyes and Natasha and Natalie and Jake would drag me over to a rack, and rub a dress against my hand. “Guess what color this is.”

We had this theory that you could learn how to tell, just by feeling, what color something was. For example, if you’re sitting on a lawn, you can tell what color green the grass is, with your eyes closed, depending on how silky-rubbery it feels. With clothing, stretchy velvet stuff always feels red when your eyes are closed, even if it’s not red. Natasha was always best at guessing colors, but Natasha is also best at cheating at games and not getting caught.

One time we were looking through kid’s t-shirts and we found a Muppets t-shirt that had belonged to Natalie in third grade. We knew it belonged to her, because it still had her name inside, where her mother had written it in permanent marker, when Natalie went to summer camp. Jake bought it back for her, because he was the only one who had money that weekend. He was the only one who had a job.

Maybe you’re wondering what a guy like Jake is doing in The Garment District with a bunch of girls. The thing about Jake is that he always has a good time, no matter what he’s doing. He likes everything, and he likes everyone, but he likes me best of all. Wherever he is now, I bet he’s having a great time and wondering when I’m going to show up. I’m always running late. But he knows that.

We had this theory that things have life cycles, the way that people do. The life cycle of wedding dresses and feather boas and t-shirts and shoes and handbags involves the Garment District. If clothes are good, or even if they’re bad in an interesting way, the Garment District is where they go when they die. You can tell that they’re dead, because of the way that they smell. When you buy them, and wash them, and start wearing them again, and they start to smell like you, that’s when they reincarnate. But the point is, if you’re looking for a particular thing, you just have to keep looking for it. You have to look hard.

Down in the basement at the Garment Factory they sell clothing and beat-up suitcases and teacups by the pound. You can get eight pounds worth of prom dresses–a slinky black dress, a poufy lavender dress, a swirly pink dress, a silvery, starry lame dress so fine you could pass it through a key ring– for eight dollars. I go there every week, hunting for Grandmother Zofia’s faery handbag.

The faery handbag: It’s huge and black and kind of hairy. Even when your eyes are closed, it feels black. As black as black ever gets, like if you touch it, your hand might get stuck in it, like tar or black quicksand or when you stretch out your hand at night, to turn on a light, but all you feel is darkness.

Fairies live inside it. I know what that sounds like, but it’s true.

Grandmother Zofia said it was a family heirloom. She said that it was over two hundred years old. She said that when she died, I had to look after it. Be its guardian. She said that it would be my responsibility.

I said that it didn’t look that old, and that they didn’t have handbag two hundred years ago, but that just made her cross. She said, “So then tell me, Genevieve, darling, where do you think old ladies used to put their reading glasses and their heart medicine and their knitting needles?”

I know that no one is going to believe any of this. That’s okay. If I thought you would, then I couldn’t tell you. Promise me that you won’t believe a word. That’s what Zofia used to say to me when she told me stories. At the funeral, my mother said, half-laughing and half-crying, that her mother was the world’s best liar. I think she thought maybe Zofia wasn’t really dead. But I went up to Zofia’s coffin, and I looked her right in the eyes. They were closed. The funeral parlor had made her up with blue eyeshadow, and blue eyeliner. She looked like she was going to be a news anchor on Fox television, instead of dead. It was creepy and it made me even sadder than I already was. But I didn’t let that distract me.

“Okay, Zofia,” I whispered. “I know you’re dead, but this is important. You know exactly how important this is. Where’s the handbag? What did you do with it? How do I find it? What am I supposed to do now?”

Of course she didn’t say a word. She just lay there, this little smile on her face, as if she thought the whole thing–death, blue eyeshadow, Jake, the handbag, faeries, Scrabble, Baldeziwurlekistan, all of it–was a joke. She always did have a weird sense of humor. That’s why she and Jake got along so well.

I grew up in a house next door to the house where my mother lived when she was a little girl. Her mother, Zofia Swink, my grandmother, babysat me while my mother and father were at work.

Zofia never looked like a grandmother. She had long black hair which she wore up in little, braided, spiky towers and plaits. She had large blue eyes. She was taller than my father. She looked like a spy or ballerina or a lady pirate or a rock star. She acted like one too. For example, she never drove anywhere. She rode a bike. It drove my mother crazy. “Why can’t you act your age?” she’d say, and Zofia would just laugh.

Zofia and I played Scrabble all the time. Zofia always won, even though her English wasn’t all that great, because we’d decided that she was allowed to use Baldeziwurleki vocabulary. Baldeziwurlekistan is where Zofia was born, over two hundred years ago. That’s what Zofia said. (My grandmother claimed to be over two hundred years old. Or maybe even older. Sometimes she claimed that she’d even met Ghenghis Khan. He was much shorter than her. I probably don’t have time to tell that story.) Baldeziwurlekistan is also an incredibly valuable word in Scrabble points, even though it doesn’t exactly fit on the board. Zofia put it down the first time we played. I was feeling pretty good because I’d gotten forty-one points for “zippery” on my turn.

Zofia kept rearranging her letters on her tray. Then she looked over at me, as if daring me to stop her, and put down “eziwurlekistan”, after “bald.” She used “delicious,” “zippery,” “wishes,” “kismet”, and “needle,” and made “to” into “toe”. “Baldeziwurlekistan” went all the way across the board and then trailed off down the righthand side.

I started laughing.

“I used up all my letters,” Zofia said. She licked her pencil and started adding up points.

“That’s not a word,” I said. “Baldeziwurlekistan is not a word. Besides, you can’t do that. You can’t put an eighteen letter word on a board that’s fifteen squares across.”

“Why not? It’s a country,” Zofia said. “It’s where I was born, little darling.”

“Challenge,” I said. I went and got the dictionary and looked it up. “There’s no such place.”

“Of course there isn’t nowadays,” Zofia said. “It wasn’t a very big place, even when it was a place. But you’ve heard of Samarkand, and Uzbekistan and the Silk Road and Ghenghis Khan. Haven’t I told you about meeting Ghenghis Khan?”

I looked up Samarkand. “Okay,” I said. “Samarkand is a real place. A real word. But Baldeziwurlekistan isn’t.”

“They call it something else now,” Zofia said. “But I think it’s important to remember where we come from. I think it’s only fair that I get to use Baldeziwurleki words. Your English is so much better than me. Promise me something, mouthful of dumpling, a small, small thing. You’ll remember its real name. Baldeziwurlekistan. Now when I add it up, I get three hundred and sixty-eight points. Could that be right?”

If you called the faery handbag by its right name, it would be something like “orzipanikanikcz,” which means the “bag of skin where the world lives,” only Zofia never spelled that word the same way twice. She said you had to spell it a little differently each time. You never wanted to spell it exactly the right way, because that would be dangerous.

I called it the faery handbag because I put “faery” down on the Scrabble board once. Zofia said that you spelled it with an “i,” not an “e”. She looked it up in the dictionary, and lost a turn.

Zofia said that in Baldeziwurlekistan they used a board and tiles for divination, prognostication, and sometimes even just for fun. She said it was a little like playing Scrabble. That’s probably why she turned out to be so good at Scrabble. The Baldeziwurlekistanians used their tiles and board to communicate with the people who lived under the hill. The people who lived under the hill knew the future. The Baldeziwurlekistanians gave them fermented milk and honey, and the young women of the village used to go and lie out on the hill and sleep under the stars. Apparently the people under the hill were pretty cute. The important thing was that you never went down into the hill and spent the night there, no matter how cute the guy from under the hill was. If you did, even if you only spent a single night under the hill, when you came out again a hundred years might have passed. “Remember that,” Zofia said to me. “It doesn’t matter how cute a guy is. If he wants you to come back to his place, it isn’t a good idea. It’s okay to fool around, but don’t spend the night.”

Every once in a while, a woman from under the hill would marry a man from the village, even though it never ended well. The problem was that the women under the hill were terrible cooks. They couldn’t get used to the way time worked in the village, which meant that supper always got burnt, or else it wasn’t cooked long enough. But they couldn’t stand to be criticized. It hurt their feelings. If their village husband complained, or even if he looked like he wanted to complain, that was it. The woman from under the hill went back to her home, and even if her husband went and begged and pleaded and apologized, it might be three years or thirty years or a few generations before she came back out.

Even the best, happiest marriages between the Baldeziwurlekistanians and the people under the hill fell apart when the children got old enough to complain about dinner. But everyone in the village had some hill blood in them.

“It’s in you,” Zofia said, and kissed me on the nose. “Passed down from my grandmother and her mother. It’s why we’re so beautiful.”

When Zofia was nineteen, the shaman-priestess in her village threw the tiles and discovered that something bad was going to happen. A raiding party was coming. There was no point in fighting them. They would burn down everyone’s houses and take the young men and women for slaves. And it was even worse than that. There was going to be an earthquake as well, which was bad news because usually, when raiders showed up, the village went down under the hill for a night and when they came out again the raiders would have been gone for months or decades or even a hundred years. But this earthquake was going to split the hill right open.

The people under the hill were in trouble. Their home would be destroyed, and they would be doomed to roam the face of the earth, weeping and lamenting their fate until the sun blew out and the sky cracked and the seas boiled and the people dried up and turned to dust and blew away. So the shaman-priestess went and divined some more, and the people under the hill told her to kill a black dog and skin it and use the skin to make a purse big enough to hold a chicken, an egg, and a cooking pot. So she did, and then the people under the hill made the inside of the purse big enough to hold all of the village and all of the people under the hill and mountains and forests and seas and rivers and lakes and orchards and a sky and stars and spirits and fabulous monsters and sirens and dragons and dryads and mermaids and beasties and all the little gods that the Baldeziwurlekistanians and the people under the hill worshipped.

“Your purse is made out of dog skin?” I said. “That’s disgusting!”

“Little dear pet,” Zofia said, looking wistful, “Dog is delicious. To Baldeziwurlekistanians, dog is a delicacy.”

Before the raiding party arrived, the village packed up all of their belongings and moved into the handbag. The clasp was made out of bone. If you opened it one way, then it was just a purse big enough to hold a chicken and an egg and a clay cooking pot, or else a pair of reading glasses and a library book and a pillbox. If you opened the clasp another way, then you found yourself in a little boat floating at the mouth of a river. On either side of you was forest, where the Baldeziwurlekistanian villagers and the people under the hill made their new settlement.

If you opened the handbag the wrong way, though, you found yourself in a dark land that smelled like blood. That’s where the guardian of the purse (the dog whose skin had been been sewn into a purse) lived. The guardian had no skin. Its howl made blood come out of your ears and nose. It tore apart anyone who turned the clasp in the opposite direction and opened the purse in the wrong way.

“Here is the wrong way to open the handbag,” Zofia said. She twisted the clasp, showing me how she did it. She opened the mouth of the purse, but not very wide and held it up to me. “Go ahead, darling, and listen for a second.”

I put my head near the handbag, but not too near. I didn’t hear anything. “I don’t hear anything,” I said.

“The poor dog is probably asleep,” Zofia said. “Even nightmares have to sleep now and then.”

After he got expelled, everybody at school called Jake Houdini instead of Jake. Everybody except for me. I’ll explain why, but you have to be patient. It’s hard work telling everything in the right order.

Jake is smarter and also taller than most of our teachers. Not quite as tall as me. We’ve known each other since third grade. Jake has always been in love with me. He says he was in love with me even before third grade, even before we ever met. It took me a while to fall in love with Jake.

In third grade, Jake knew everything already, except how to make friends. He used to follow me around all day long. It made me so mad that I kicked him in the knee. When that didn’t work, I threw his backpack out of the window of the school bus. That didn’t work either, but the next year Jake took some tests and the school decided that he could skip fourth and fifth grade. Even I felt sorry for Jake then. Sixth grade didn’t work out. When the sixth graders wouldn’t stop flushing his head down the toilet, he went out and caught a skunk and set it loose in the boy’s locker room.

The school was going to suspend him for the rest of the year, but instead Jake took two years off while his mother home-schooled him. He learned Latin and Hebrew and Greek, how to write sestinas, how to make sushi, how to play bridge, and even how to knit. He learned fencing and ballroom dancing. He worked in a soup kitchen and made a Super Eight movie about Civil War reenactors who play extreme croquet in full costume instead of firing off cannons. He started learning how to play guitar. He even wrote a novel. I’ve never read it–he says it was awful.

When he came back two years later, because his mother had cancer for the first time, the school put him back with our year, in seventh grade. He was still way too smart, but he was finally smart enough to figure out how to fit in. Plus he was good at soccer and he was really cute. Did I mention that he played guitar? Every girl in school had a crush on Jake, but he used to come home after school with me and play Scrabble with Zofia and ask her about Baldeziwurlekistan.

Jake’s mom was named Cynthia. She collected ceramic frogs and knock-knock jokes. When we were in ninth grade, she had cancer again. When she died, Jake smashed all of her frogs. That was the first funeral I ever went to. A few months later, Jake’s father asked Jake’s fencing teacher out on a date. They got married right after the school expelled Jake for his AP project on Houdini. That was the first wedding I ever went to. Jake and I stole a bottle of wine and drank it, and I threw up in the swimming pool at the country club. Jake threw up all over my shoes.

So, anyway, the village and the people under the hill lived happily every after for a few weeks in the handbag, which they had tied around a rock in a dry well which the people under the hill had determined would survive the earthquake. But some of the Baldeziwurlekistanians wanted to come out again and see what was going on in the world. Zofia was one of them. It had been summer when they went into the bag, but when they came out again, and climbed out of the well, snow was falling and their village was ruins and crumbly old rubble. They walked through the snow, Zofia carrying the handbag, until they came to another village, one that they’d never seen before. Everyone in that village was packing up their belongings and leaving, which gave Zofia and her friends a bad feeling. It seemed to be just the same as when they went into the handbag.

They followed the refugees, who seemed to know where they were going, and finally everyone came to a city. Zofia had ever seen such a place. There were trains and electric lights and movie theaters, and there were people shooting each other. Bombs were falling. A war going on. Most of the villagers decided to climb right back inside the handbag, but Zofia volunteered to stay in the world and look after the handbag. She had fallen in love with movies and silk stockings and with a young man, a Russian deserter.

Zofia and the Russian deserter married and had many adventures and finally came to America, where my mother was born. Now and then Zofia would consult the tiles and talk to the people who lived in the handbag and they would tell her how best to avoid trouble and how she and her husband could make some money. Every now and then one of the Baldeziwurlekistanians, or one of the people from under the hill came out of the handbag and wanted to go grocery shopping, or to a movie or an amusement park to ride on roller coasters, or to the library.

The more advice Zofia gave her husband, the more money they made. Her husband became curious about Zofia’s handbag, because he could see that there was something odd about it, but Zofia told him to mind his own business. He began to spy on Zofia, and saw that strange men and women were coming in and out of the house. He became convinced that either Zofia was a spy for the Communists, or maybe that she was having affairs. They fought and he drank more and more, and finally he threw away her divination tiles. “Russians make bad husbands,” Zofia told me. Finally, one night while Zofia was sleeping, her husband opened the bone clasp and climbed inside the handbag.

“I thought he’d left me,” Zofia said. “For almost twenty years I thought he’d left me and your mother and taken off for California. Not that I minded. I was tired of being married and cooking dinners and cleaning house for someone else. It’s better to cook what I want to eat, and clean up when I decide to clean up. It was harder on your mother, not having a father. That was the part that I minded most.

“Then it turned out that he hadn’t run away after all. He’d spent one night in the handbag and then come out again twenty years later, exactly as handsome as I remembered, and enough time had passed that I had forgiven him all the quarrels. We made up and it was all very romantic and then when we had another fight the next morning, he went and kissed your mother, who had slept right through his visit, on the cheek, and then he climbed right back inside the handbag. I didn’t see him again for another twenty years. The last time he showed up, we went to see “Star Wars” and he liked it so much that he went back inside the handbag to tell everyone else about it. In a couple of years they’ll all show up and want to see it on video and all of the sequels too.”

“Tell them not to bother with the prequels,” I said.

The thing about Zofia and libraries is that she’s always losing library books. She says that she hasn’t lost them, and in fact that they aren’t even overdue, really. It’s just that even one week inside the faery handbag is a lot longer in library-world time. So what is she supposed to do about it? The librarians all hate Zofia. She’s banned from using any of the branches in our area. When I was eight, she got me to go to the library for her and check out a bunch of biographies and science books and some Georgette Heyer romance novels. My mother was livid when she found out, but it was too late. Zofia had already misplaced most of them.

It’s really hard to write about somebody as if they’re really dead. I still think Zofia must be sitting in her living room, in her house, watching some old horror movie, dropping popcorn into her handbag. She’s waiting for me to come over and play Scrabble.

Nobody is ever going to return those library books now.

My mother used to come home from work and roll her eyes. “Have you been telling them your fairy stories?” she’d say. “Genevieve, your grandmother is a horrible liar.”

Zofia would fold up the Scrabble board and shrug at me and Jake. “I’m a wonderful liar,” she’d say. “I’m the best liar in the world. Promise me you won’t believe a single word.”

But she wouldn’t tell the story of the faery handbag to Jake. Only the old Baldeziwurlekistanian folktales and fairytales about the people under the hill. She told him about how she and her husband made it all the way across Europe, hiding in haystacks and in barns, and how once, when her husband went off to find food, a farmer found her hiding in his chicken coop and tried to rape her. But she opened up the faery handbag in the way she showed me, and the dog came out and ate the farmer and all his chickens too.

She was teaching Jake and me how to curse in Baldeziwurleki. I also know how to say I love you, but I’m not going to ever say it to anyone again, except to Jake, when I find him.

When I was eight, I believed everything Zofia told me. By the time I was thirteen, I didn’t believe a single word. When I was fifteen, I saw a man come out of her house and get on Zofia’s three-speed bicycle and ride down the street. His clothes looked funny. He was a lot younger than my mother and father, and even though I’d never seen him before, he was familiar. I followed him on my bike, all the way to the grocery store. I waited just past the checkout lanes while he bought peanut butter, Jack Daniels, half a dozen instant cameras, and at least sixty packs of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, three bags of Hershey’s kisses, a handful of Milky Way bars and other stuff from the rack of checkout candy. While the checkout clerk was helping him bag up all of that chocolate, he looked up and saw me. “Genevieve?” he said. “That’s your name, right?”

I turned and ran out of the store. He grabbed up the bags and ran after me. I don’t even think he got his change back. I was still running away, and then one of the straps on my flip flops popped out of the sole, the way they do, and that made me really angry so I just stopped. I turned around.

“Who are you?” I said.

But I already knew. He looked like he could have been my mom’s younger brother. He was really cute. I could see why Zofia had fallen in love with him.

His name was Rustan. Zofia told my parents that he was an expert in Baldeziwurlekistanian folklore who would be staying with her for a few days. She brought him over for dinner. Jake was there too, and I could tell that Jake knew something was up. Everybody except my dad knew something was going on.

“You mean Baldeziwurlekistan is a real place?” my mother asked Rustan. “My mother is telling the truth?”

I could see that Rustan was having a hard time with that one. He obviously wanted to say that his wife was a horrible liar, but then where would he be? Then he couldn’t be the person that he was supposed to be.

There were probably a lot of things that he wanted to say. What he said was, “This is really good pizza.”

Rustan took a lot of pictures at dinner. The next day I went with him to get the pictures developed. He’d brought back some film with him, with pictures he’d taken inside the faery handbag, but those didn’t come out well. Maybe the film was too old. We got doubles of the pictures from dinner so that I could have some too. There’s a great picture of Jake, sitting outside on the porch. He’s laughing, and he has his hand up to his mouth, like he’s going to catch the laugh. I have that picture up on my computer, and also up on my wall over my bed.

I bought a Cadbury Cream Egg for Rustan. Then we shook hands and he kissed me once on each cheek. “Give one of those kisses to your mother,” he said, and I thought about how the next time I saw him, I might be Zofia’s age, and he would only be a few days older. The next time I saw him, Zofia would be dead. Jake and I might have kids. That was too weird.

I know Rustan tried to get Zofia to go with him, to live in the handbag, but she wouldn’t.

“It makes me dizzy in there,” she used to tell me. “And they don’t have movie theaters. And I have to look after your mother and you. Maybe when you’re old enough to look after the handbag, I’ll poke my head inside, just long enough for a little visit.”

I didn’t fall in love with Jake because he was smart. I’m pretty smart myself. I know that smart doesn’t mean nice, or even mean that you have a lot of common sense. Look at all the trouble smart people get themselves into.

I didn’t fall in love with Jake because he could make maki rolls and had a black belt in fencing, or whatever it is that you get if you’re good in fencing. I didn’t fall in love with Jake because he plays guitar. He’s a better soccer player than he is a guitar player.

Those were the reasons why I went out on a date with Jake. That, and because he asked me. He asked if I wanted to go see a movie, and I asked if I could bring my grandmother and Natalie and Natasha. He said sure and so all five of us sat and watched “Bring It On” and every once in a while Zofia dropped a couple of milk duds or some popcorn into her purse. I don’t know if she was feeding the dog, or if she’d opened the purse the right way, and was throwing food at her husband.

I fell in love with Jake because he told stupid knock-knock jokes to Natalie, and told Natasha that he liked her jeans. I fell in love with Jake when he took me and Zofia home. He walked her up to her front door and then he walked me up to mine. I fell in love with Jake when he didn’t try to kiss me. The thing is, I was nervous about the whole kissing thing. Most guys think that they’re better at it than they really are. Not that I think I’m a real genius at kissing either, but I don’t think kissing should be a competitive sport. It isn’t tennis.

Natalie and Natasha and I used to practice kissing with each other. Not that we like each other that way, but just for practice. We got pretty good at it. We could see why kissing was supposed to be fun.

But Jake didn’t try to kiss me. Instead he just gave me this really big hug. He put his face in my hair and he sighed. We stood there like that, and then finally I said, “What are you doing?”

“I just wanted to smell your hair,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. That made me feel weird, but in a good way. I put my nose up to his hair, which is brown and curly, and I smelled it. We stood there and smelled each other’s hair, and I felt so good. I felt so happy.

Jake said into my hair, “Do you know that actor John Cusack?”

I said, “Yeah. One of Zofia’s favorite movies is ‘Better Off Dead.’ We watch it all the time.”

“So he likes to go up to women and smell their armpits.”

“Gross!” I said. “That’s such a lie! What are you doing now? That tickles.”

“I’m smelling your ear,” Jake said.

Jake’s hair smelled like iced tea with honey in it, after all the ice has melted.

Kissing Jake is like kissing Natalie or Natasha, except that it isn’t just for fun. It feels like something there isn’t a word for in Scrabble.

The deal with Houdini is that Jake got interested in him during Advanced Placement American History. He and I were both put in tenth grade history. We were doing biography projects. I was studying Joseph McCarthy. My grandmother had all sorts of stories about McCarthy. She hated him for what he did to Hollywood.

Jake didn’t turn in his project–instead he told everyone in our AP class except for Mr. Streep (we call him Meryl) to meet him at the gym on Saturday. When we showed up, Jake reenacted one of Houdini’s escapes with a laundry bag, handcuffs, a gym locker, bicycle chains, and the school’s swimming pool. It took him three and a half minutes to get free, and this guy named Roger took a bunch of photos and then put the photos online. One of the photos ended up in the Boston Globe, and Jake got expelled. The really ironic thing was that while his mom was in the hospital, Jake had applied to M.I.T. He did it for his mom. He thought that way she’d have to stay alive. She was so excited about M.I.T. A couple of days after he’d been expelled, right after the wedding, while his dad and the fencing instructor were in Bermuda, he got an acceptance letter in the mail and a phone call from this guy in the admissions office who explained why they had to withdraw the acceptance.

My mother wanted to know why I let Jake wrap himself up in bicycle chains and then watched while Peter and Michael pushed him into the deep end of the school pool. I said that Jake had a backup plan. Ten more seconds and we were all going to jump into the pool and open the locker and get him out of there. I was crying when I said that. Even before he got in the locker, I knew how stupid Jake was being. Afterwards, he promised me that he’d never do anything like that again.

That was when I told him about Zofia’s husband, Rustan, and about Zofia’s handbag. How stupid am I?

So I guess you can figure out what happened next. The problem is that Jake believed me about the handbag. We spent a lot of time over at Zofia’s, playing Scrabble. Zofia never let the faery handbag out of her sight. She even took it with her when she went to the bathroom. I think she even slept with it under her pillow.

I didn’t tell her that I’d said anything to Jake. I wouldn’t ever have told anybody else about it. Not Natasha. Not even Natalie, who is the most responsible person in all of the world. Now, of course, if the handbag turns up and Jake still hasn’t come back, I’ll have to tell Natalie. Somebody has to keep an eye on the stupid thing while I go find Jake.

What worries me is that maybe one of the Baldeziwurlekistanians or one of the people under the hill or maybe even Rustan popped out of the handbag to run an errand and got worried when Zofia wasn’t there. Maybe they’ll come looking for her and bring it back. Maybe they know I’m supposed to look after it now. Or maybe they took it and hid it somewhere. Maybe someone turned it in at the lost-and-found at the library and that stupid librarian called the F.B.I. Maybe scientists at the Pentagon are examining the handbag right now. Testing it. If Jake comes out, they’ll think he’s a spy or a superweapon or an alien or something. They’re not going to just let him go.

Everyone thinks Jake ran away, except for my mother, who is convinced that he was trying out another Houdini escape and is probably lying at the bottom of a lake somewhere. She hasn’t said that to me, but I can see her thinking it. She keeps making cookies for me.

What happened is that Jake said, “Can I see that for just a second?”

He said it so casually that I think he caught Zofia off guard. She was reaching into the purse for her wallet. We were standing in the lobby of the movie theater on a Monday morning. Jake was behind the snack counter. He’d gotten a job there. He was wearing this stupid red paper hat and some kind of apron-bib thing. He was supposed to ask us if we wanted to supersize our drinks.

He reached over the counter and took Zofia’s handbag right out of her hand. He closed it and then he opened it again. I think he opened it the right way. I don’t think he ended up in the dark place. He said to me and Zofia, “I’ll be right back.” And then he wasn’t there anymore. It was just me and Zofia and the handbag, lying there on the counter where he’d dropped it.

If I’d been fast enough, I think I could have followed him. But Zofia had been guardian of the faery handbag for a lot longer. She snatched the bag back and glared at me. “He’s a very bad boy,” she said. She was absolutely furious. “You’re better off without him, Genevieve, I think.”

“Give me the handbag,” I said. “I have to go get him.”

“It isn’t a toy, Genevieve,” she said. “It isn’t a game. This isn’t Scrabble. He comes back when he comes back. If he comes back.”

“Give me the handbag,” I said. “Or I’ll take it from you.”

She held the handbag up high over her head, so that I couldn’t reach it. I hate people who are taller than me. “What are you going to do now,” Zofia said. “Are you going to knock me down? Are you going to steal the handbag? Are you going to go away and leave me here to explain to your parents where you’ve gone? Are you going to say goodbye to your friends? When you come out again, they will have gone to college. They’ll have jobs and babies and houses and they won’t even recognize you. Your mother will be an old woman and I will be dead.”

“I don’t care,” I said. I sat down on the sticky red carpet in the lobby and started to cry. Someone wearing a little metal name tag came over and asked if we were okay. His name was Missy. Or maybe he was wearing someone else’s tag.

“We’re fine,” Zofia said. “My granddaughter has the flu.”

She took my hand and pulled me up. She put her arm around me and we walked out of the theater. We never even got to see the stupid movie. We never even got to see another movie together. I don’t ever want to go see another movie. The problem is, I don’t want to see unhappy endings. And I don’t know if I believe in the happy ones.

“I have a plan,” Zofia said. “I will go find Jake. You will stay here and look after the handbag.”

“You won’t come back either,” I said. I cried even harder. Or if you do, I’ll be like a hundred years old and Jake will still be sixteen.”

“Everything will be okay,” Zofia said. I wish I could tell you how beautiful she looked right then. It didn’t matter if she was lying or if she actually knew that everything was going to be okay. The important thing was how she looked when she said it. She said, with absolute certainty, or maybe with all the skill of a very skillful liar, “My plan will work. First we go to the library, though. One of the people under the hill just brought back an Agatha Christie mystery, and I need to return it.”

“We’re going to the library?” I said. “Why don’t we just go home and play Scrabble for a while.” You probably think I was just being sarcastic here, and I was being sarcastic. But Zofia gave me a sharp look. She knew that if I was being sarcastic that my brain was working again. She knew that I knew she was stalling for time. She knew that I was coming up with my own plan, which was a lot like Zofia’s plan, except that I was the one who went into the handbag. How was the part I was working on.

“We could do that,” she said. “Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.”

“Can we please just hurry?” I said.

Zofia just looked at me. “Genevieve, we have plenty of time. If you’re going to look after the handbag, you have to remember that. You have to be patient. Can you be patient?”

“I can try,” I told her. I’m trying, Zofia. I’m trying really hard. But it isn’t fair. Jake is off having adventures and talking to talking animals, and who knows, learning how to fly and some beautiful three thousand year old girl from under the hill is teaching him how to speak fluent Baldeziwurleki. I bet she lives in a house that runs around on chicken legs, and she tells Jake that she’d love to hear him play something on the guitar. Maybe you’ll kiss her, Jake, because she’s put a spell on you. But whatever you do, don’t go up into her house. Don’t fall asleep in her bed. Come back soon, Jake, and bring the handbag with you.

I hate those movies, those books, where some guy gets to go off and have adventures and meanwhile the girl has to stay home and wait. I’m a feminist. I subscribe to Bust magazine, and I watch Buffy reruns. I don’t believe in that kind of shit.

We hadn’t been in the library for five minutes before Zofia picked up a biography of Carl Sagan and dropped it in her purse. She was definitely stalling for time. She was trying to come up with a plan that would counteract the plan that she knew I was planning. I wondered what she thought I was planning. It was probably much better than anything I’d come up with.

“Don’t do that!” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Zofia said. “Nobody was watching.”

“I don’t care if nobody saw! What if Jake’s sitting there in the boat, or what if he was coming back and you just dropped it on his head!”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Zofia said. Then she said, “It would serve him right, anyway.”

That was when the librarian came up to us. She had a nametag on as well. I was so sick of people and their stupid nametags. I’m not even going to tell you what her name was. “I saw that,” the librarian said.

“Saw what?” Zofia said. She smiled down at the librarian, like she was Queen of the Library, and the librarian were a petitioner.

The librarian stared hard at her. “I know you,” she said, almost sounding awed, like she was a weekend birdwatcher who just seen Bigfoot. “We have your picture on the office wall. You’re Ms. Swinks. You aren’t allowed to check out books here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Zofia said. She was at least two feet taller than the librarian. I felt a bit sorry for the librarian. After all, Zofia had just stolen a seven-day book. She probably wouldn’t return it for a hundred years. My mother has always made it clear that it’s my job to protect other people from Zofia. I guess I was Zofia’s guardian before I became the guardian of the handbag.

The librarian reached up and grabbed Zofia’s handbag. She was small but she was strong. She jerked the handbag and Zofia stumbled and fell back against a work desk. I couldn’t believe it. Everyone except for me was getting a look at Zofia’s handbag. What kind of guardian was I going to be?

“Genevieve,” Zofia said. She held my hand very tightly, and I looked at her. She looked wobbly and pale. She said, “I feel very bad about all of this. Tell your mother I said so.”

Then she said one last thing, but I think it was in Baldeziwurleki.

The librarian said, “I saw you put a book in here. Right here.” She opened the handbag and peered inside. Out of the handbag came a long, lonely, ferocious, utterly hopeless scream of rage. I don’t ever want to hear that noise again. Everyone in the library looked up. The librarian made a choking noise and threw Zofia’s handbag away from her. A little trickle of blood came out of her nose and a drop fell on the floor. What I thought at first was that it was just plain luck that the handbag was closed when it landed. Later on I was trying to figure out what Zofia said. My Baldeziwurleki isn’t very good, but I think she was saying something like “Figures. Stupid librarian. I have to go take care of that damn dog.” So maybe that’s what happened. Maybe Zofia sent part of herself in there with the skinless dog. Maybe she fought it and won and closed the handbag. Maybe she made friends with it. I mean, she used to feed it popcorn at the movies. Maybe she’s still in there.

What happened in the library was Zofia sighed a little and closed her eyes. I helped her sit down in a chair, but I don’t think she was really there any more. I rode with her in the ambulance, when the ambulance finally showed up, and I swear I didn’t even think about the handbag until my mother showed up. I didn’t say a word. I just left her there in the hospital with Zofia, who was on a respirator, and I ran all the way back to the library. But it was closed. So I ran all the way back again, to the hospital, but you already know what happened, right? Zofia died. I hate writing that. My tall, funny, beautiful, book-stealing, Scrabble-playing, story-telling grandmother died.

But you never met her. You’re probably wondering about the handbag. What happened to it. I put up signs all over town, like Zofia’s handbag was some kind of lost dog, but nobody ever called.

So that’s the story so far. Not that I expect you to believe any of it. Last night Natalie and Natasha came over and we played Scrabble. They don’t really like Scrabble, but they feel like it’s their job to cheer me up. I won. After they went home, I flipped all the tiles upside-down and then I started picking them up in groups of seven. I tried to ask a question, but it was hard to pick just one. The words I got weren’t so great either, so I decided that they weren’t English words. They were Baldeziwurleki words.

Once I decided that, everything became perfectly clear. First I put down “kirif” which means “happy news”, and then I got a “b,” an “o,” an “l,” an “e,” a “f,” another “i,” an “s,” and a “z.” So then I could make “kirif” into “bolekirifisz,” which could mean “the happy result of a combination of diligent effort and patience.”

I would find the faery handbag. The tiles said so. I would work the clasp and go into the handbag and have my own adventures and would rescue Jake. Hardly any time would have gone by before we came back out of the handbag. Maybe I’d even make friends with that poor dog and get to say goodbye, for real, to Zofia. Rustan would show up again and be really sorry that he’d missed Zofia’s funeral and this time he would be brave enough to tell my mother the whole story. He would tell her that he was her father. Not that she would believe him. Not that you should believe this story. Promise me that you won’t believe a word.

[sweetnestor]

You Look Happier | Chapter 7

university au, teamiplier + jack

platonic/romance/angst/(smut at one point but it’ll only be on ao3)

previous chapter

I didn't see Ethan at all the next day because I was knee deep in marching for basic human rights. The day after that, Ethan was busy at his place, prepping videos for an upcoming convention. He only had time to send one heart emoji in the span of a couple of days.

Now, my usual self would feel super discouraged because this was a new relationship and we were hardly talking to each other. But this wasn't your typical relationship. Our jobs were pretty demanding, especially Ethan's. I was trying to upload videos twice a week now, but he was uploading every day alongside working for Mark. I knew what this meant, and having the experience of dating in these circumstances made me deal with it a little better.

The biggest downside at the moment, though, was refraining from speaking about it in a video. I always tried to find something to ramble about when I filmed a tutorial, but the only topic in my head was my new relationship. Either that, or my depression, but there was nothing new to add there.

“I'm gonna do something simple, but different,” I said to the camera. “I used to do this in high school a lot - which reminds me, should I do one of those ‘how I did my makeup in high school’ looks? Let me know - anyway, we're making a wing from eyeshadow. I'm feeling fucking wild today, so we're using this.”

I held up a single, bright blue pigment that was cased in black packaging. I couldn't flat out say I had a boyfriend, but I could do things like this.

“All you'll need is your shadow, a liner brush and setting spray,” I explained. “This color is called ‘Paranoid.’ Just like me,” I added, smiling sarcastically. “Okay, but for real, the KVD single shadows are amazing for things like this.”

At first, I was joking about the “paranoid” comment, but after I had finished the video, I couldn't help but feel exactly that. It wasn't a secret to the Internet that Ethan and I knew each other. Some people from his community had migrated towards my channel recently, what if they found out he and I were dating now? What if they knew from a single eyeshadow? God, I could see the memes now: “remember when Bella outed her relationship with a blue shadow?”

Needless to say, I scrapped that video and started over. I used bright pink eyeshadow and talked about the Women's March. Had to act like I was single and sad.

~

I finally got to see Ethan the night before he left for PAX South. It was nearly our one week anniversary, and he was flying off to San Antonio the next day. Missing anniversaries and important dates were expected. I didn't mind, despite that I missed him every time we were apart. I know, how gross.

It was another car date. These were becoming a regular thing, and I liked it. There were plenty of drive-thru places around town. We just sat there, eating and listening to music.

“So when do we start telling people?” I asked in thought.

“Um, who knows right now?” Ethan replied. “Because I haven't told anyone, not even my parents.”

I wasn't sure what that meant. Although, I realized I didn't have many people to tell, or any. Was that sad?

“Well for me,” I told him, “Jack is probably the only person I have right now, and he already knows. But he won't say anything to anyone.”

“The only person?” Ethan asked. “What about Mark?”

I raised my eyebrows. “You sure you want him to know just yet?”

He hesitated and then shook his head. “Maybe later.”

I decided to change the subject. “So what classes did you pick for this semester?”

“Editing… lecture.” He shook his head like that was a ridiculous thing to say. “Video production… and biology. One of those things is not like the other.”

“Yeah, those general ed policies are kinda useless,” I said with a chuckle. “But I'm taking biology too, so maybe we'll have that class together. I also have psychology, video production, and I might try to crash a Spanish or LGBTQ+ class.”

“Hm, nice.”

Just then, Intertwined began to play on the radio. My heart fluttered, and I looked at Ethan, who had broke out a smile.

“Can’t believe it’s been almost a week,” I spoke. “And I haven’t seen you in almost week.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean for… I don’t know, I just got busy. And now I’m leaving for the weekend, too, and… agh, I’m sorry.”

I reached over and placed my hand on his arm. “Hey, it’s totally fine, I understand. There’s things that need to be done, things we both have to do. We just have to make time for each other. Besides, I’d rather see you once a week than not at all.”

Ethan slipped his hand into mine and nodded. “Okay. We’ll make time. Just… text me when I’m gone.”

“Okay.”

At that moment, I really just wanted to kiss him. I was looking at his face, and then his neck and down his chest. In the past, I usually tried to resist the indulgence, but now I really couldn’t help it. By the time my eyes were trailing back to his face, he caught me.

“What?” he asked.

My cheeks flushed. “You’re just really cute,” I admitted shyly.

Now Ethan was the one blushing. Seeing him sheepishly duck his head made me smile disgustingly huge.

“I’m not cute,” he mumbled. “I’m… a man.”

“Shut up, you’re adorable,” I told him, poking his cheek.

Ethan grabbed my wrist before I could retract it. He smiled and then kissed my hand. This was absolutely cheesy, but I was melting at the gesture. I felt like I was sixteen again.

~

Honestly, I expected complete silence from Ethan over the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised to find a text from him. It was a selfie with his friends, Brian and G.

“They didn’t believe me when I told them we’re dating! :(“

So he was telling people now. It made my stomach turn, because I knew that meant that I would have to meet them at one point. It also meant that there were more chances of this getting back to Mark before we were ready to tell him.

That was a conversation for another time, though.

“Well duh! I’m not your actual girlfriend, you’re just paying me to hang out with you! :p”

I giggled to myself, and even more when he responded again.

“No one is supposed to know, though!”

Having a constant smile on my face was something I wasn’t used to anymore. It was strange. I tried to hide my tiny grin as I met up with Jack by the front door.

“Can you believe the semester starts in two days?” he said as he opened the door to step outside.

“I know! We’re dying,” I replied, following his trail. But I suddenly stopped when I felt drops of water hitting the top of my head.

I looked up and saw nothing but grey clouds to accompany the bitter and cold air. Any attempts I had made to hide my cheesy smile disappeared as I continued walking to my car. Once we were in, engine on, I adjusted the volume on the radio. I bopped my head to the song playing and then took off down the street. Things felt… not so terrible, for once. Wasn’t sure if I should get comfortable with it just yet.

At one point during the ride, I noticed Jack looking at me. When I reached a stoplight, I returned the gaze. “Can I help you?”

“You’re singing again,” he pointed out in a teasing voice.

I didn’t notice until he had said that, and all I did was shrug in response. “So?”

“You seem… less down,” he said. “That’s all. It’s different, I like it.”

Don’t overthink it. But I thought I was always singing. Wasn’t F.U. by Little Mix something I always belted out in the car? The only thing I had noticed about myself was the fact that every time I thought about Ethan, I couldn’t stop smiling.

This month started badly, but it felt like things were starting to look up.

At least, I thought that. We got to campus - or, rather, we were down the street from YouTube University, stuck in a line of cars. I was so used to driving here without traffic issues, I had forgotten it was moving day for most of the student body.

“Are they still doing schedule handouts in front of the fountain?” Jack wondered. “Because I do not want to stand in those fucking lines again.”

“You and me both,” I replied.

A knot was forming in my stomach as the line of cars moved forward. I didn’t want to stand in a crowd of loud, pushy people. With how insane vlogger mentality had gotten over time, I was terrified of stepping foot on campus. I had heard horror stories from Aria, of how people would sneak her and her ex-boyfriend into vlogs. I was afraid of stepping on campus with Jack now.

As soon as the thought hit me, guilt covered the knot in my stomach. Did I really have any other choice, though?

“Hey, why don’t you get off here while I find a parking space?” I offered as we got closer to the roundabout in front of the office.

Jack was surprised. “Uh, are you sure?”

“Yeah, I mean… you said you wanted to get recording as soon as possible today, right?” I tried to sound casual and calm.

“Well, yeah, but are you gonna be okay by yourself?”

Probably not, but why would I tell him that? “Yeah, I’ll meet you back at your dorm.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’re missing the roundabout! Line is moving!”

“Okay!” Jack quickly grabbed his backpack and got out of the car.

I took a deep breath as soon as he was gone. I also tried not to regret making him leave. I tried to ignore how vulnerable I felt now that I was alone. New generation vloggers were scary. Big crowds were scary. My best friend/safe buddy was a comfort, but he was also hard to miss, which gave a bigger chance of people approaching and possibly vlogging him.

Finding a place to park was hell, as always. But as soon as the car was stationary, I found myself not wanting to get out. I suddenly felt like I was twenty two again. First semester, fearing the unknown so badly it made me vomit. The only difference now is 1) I had a friend waiting for me, and 2) I was trying to fight off the unnecessary suicidal thoughts. Or, “intrusive” thoughts, to make them seem less daunting. They were just thoughts after all, and those were far less intense than actually acting them out.

I nodded to myself and pushed myself out of the vehicle. So far, I hadn’t seen anyone I knew. I put my hood on for good measure, hiding my pink hair inside my sweater. It was an odd comfort to be covered and concealed by a huge piece of fabric.

As I got closer to the building, I heard music booming from within the campus. I knew YTU was a party school, I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.

However, once I was past the office doors (swimming past groups of people), I saw that it wasn’t a party, but the dance team. It appeared to be the same group I had seen perform on stage a year prior, and I couldn’t help but smile. I hadn’t seen Sophie and Aria since that day in my apartment, and they looked ecstatic and graceful performing in front of the fountain. It was actually impressive, given that the ground was slippery from the rain. The whole team held their ground.

A crowd was forming around them, blocking my view from where I was standing. I wanted to get closer, but I hesitated. Did I want to risk crowding myself to see Sophie and Aria, or did I want to risk looking like a bad friend and walking away? I took a few steps closer to the source of the sound, not really watching where I was going until I practically ran into someone.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry!” I frantically said, nearly scared out of my wits.

“It’s okay,” replied a familiar voice.

It was Amy. I was already mildly distressed. Now, I could feel myself short circuiting.

She seemed just as surprised that I was here. Instead of just shrugging it off and moving along, we stood there staring at each other in shock. Why was she here, if not with Mark? That had to be why she was here, right?

Think later, I reminded myself. Then I turned on my heel to go to the boys’ dorms, until:

“Bella, wait!”

Fuck.

Hesitating at first, I turned to her again, trying to keep the fear out of my eyes. Panic was crashing into my like a tidal wave.

“Can we talk sometime?” she asked.

If you want to punch me in the fucking face for talking to your boyfriend, then just do it! Knock me unconscious! I wanted to say.

“W-Why?” I stammered out instead.

Amy hesitated, but then took a step closer to me.  “Mark wants you back in his life. I think we have some things to talk about too, if that’s gonna happen.”

This wasn’t helping at all. She somehow picked up on it.

“It’s nothing bad, don’t worry,” she added. “Just… at one point, we should… meet up, over coffee?”

I’m making amends with Mark, not you, I thought bitterly. But if I’m going to be friends with him again, then you’ll be apart of the mix regardless.

“Okay,” I said softly.

“Okay, great,” she said, looking like a weight was lifted off her shoulders. The air was still pretty awkward, though. “Keep your… Twitter open.”

My head was spinning wildly by the time I made it to Jack’s dorm.

~

“Don’t I look dreamy when I sleep?”

Attached was a rather interesting picture of a sleeping Ethan, although he didn’t exactly look asleep. His head was shoved into a pillow, and his eyes were half open. It was a little shocking, to say the least.

“Hermoso,” I replied with some heart eyes. Then I sent, “When do you come back? I miss your dumb face.”

“Later tonight. I miss your dumb stupid face too.”

“You missed the first day of the semester! D:”

“I know lol luckily my classes start tomorrow! And I can see you tomorrow too :D”

“Excited ♥”

________

next chapter

[cutiecrates]

Cutie Reviews: NMNL June 19

“This June we’ve curated a box filled with Japanese and Korean beauty and makeup products that will come in handy for your morning beauty routine. Wash your face, style your hair and apply your makeup: Get ready for your day with nomakenolife!“

Prize

For this months contest, the featured brand is Peripera (which I can’t even type without being reminded of PriPara). 2 grand prize winners could receive a Peripara Ink Writing Eyeshadow Peach Palette. 5 runner-ups received the Peri’s Ink Velvet no. 12 peach Lip Tint.

Meanwhile, for the

Glam Gift

subscribers were automatically enrolled to win a set of various cosmetics from the brands Makanai and Vecua.

Horoscope

This month, the Horoscope suggests Treating Yourself by getting the following:

Aries - a new hairstyle

Taurus - pizza

Gemini - a car

Cancer - a new lipstick

Leo - a spa day

Virgo - a new dress

Libra - chocolate (I love chocolate, and as a Libra I approve~)

Scorpio - a new perfume

Sagittarius - a new pair of heels

Capricorn - a sheet mask

Aquarius - a new bag

Pisces - a new phone.

(I like the concept behind this, but don’t some of these seem a little unbalanced?) 

Okay, so without further-ado, let’s get started with the review ;3

Juicy Bottle Mask

These face masks by Sizena are catered for a quick morning job. Each one only takes 10 minutes and they come in several scented varieties, each with its own properties; for example, mine is Lemon, and as you can see it says it focuses on Firming and Refining the skin.

If you’re curious like I was, here are the other varieties I could find on the Japan Haul website:

Green Tea - Firming + Health

Pearl - Moisturizing + Convergence

Shea Butter - Firming + Mild

Aloe - Soothing + Nutrition

Tea Tree - Transparent + Health

Hyaluronic Acid - Firming + Mild

Manuka Honey - Nutrition + Refining

Rice - Moisturizing + Health

Pomegranate - Moisturizing + Mild

The packaging says the mask is an airbag type? Which I guess means its a large size? I’m not really sure, but it smells really good :3 like lemon dish soap.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

As nice as it is to relax when using face masks, I kind of prefer the ones that don’t take as much time because I’m forced to sit back or lay down to keep the mask on. I can’t really do anything when I use them (unless I use one of those covers I got from a past box to keep it on), so a ten minute mask is pretty decent. I didn’t use this during the morning, but I did use it after a particularly painful experience (see further in the post) and I felt so much better afterwards. It was a great distraction and my face feels cooled and refreshed.

If you’re interested in checking these out, here’s a link to the Japan Haul website. You can also use the search box on the page if you’re interested in any other item.

My Beauty Tool Eti Hair Band & Oshima Tsubaki Hair Cream

Our next item is this hair band by Etude House, themed after an adorable white pair of cat ears. It’s very soft and has a stretchy band on the back to help it fit most heads. These are ideal for those days when using facial products or applying makeup, but if you can tolerate the feel, I think it’d also be a cute sleep mask.

Rating: ♥ ♥

It’s very well made and I like how it feels, the problem is that it’s a little too tight for my head. I know masks are supposed to be firm-tight, but not squeeze your head like rubber-bands on a watermelon or pumpkin tight. It’s uncomfortable to wear, and while I can get it on to use, I find myself sliding it further up to lessen the pressure.

It does however, make a cute bracelet. But in terms of head wear, I don’t think this would be the first thing I reach for...

-----------

Made from Japanese camellia oil to moisturize the hair, our next product will add a healthy-looking shine and smoothness. This can be used on damp or dry hair and it has a typical hair product scent, it’s not overbearing or flowery in my opinion.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

It definitely delivers as promised, I’ve used it a few times, testing it on someone’s full head of hair, and then a portion of mine prior to writing this for comparison. I can see a difference right away, it’s very shiny, smooth and condensed, giving it the appearance of just being washed. It dries and returns to normal fluffiness over time, but I’d suggest using it after a bath if you’re in a hurry and don’t want to leave with a wet head look.

Oh M’Eye Line Liquid Eyeliner

I don’t know if these boxes are trying to help me, or if they’re making fun of me by giving us so any eyeliners; but as I’ve said before I’m always up for trying. It comes in a cute, sleek bottle that reminds me of a skinny nail polish, or maybe a vase and has the name written in light pink cursive.

Rating: ♥ ♥ 

The smaller the tip is, the higher my hopes are, and sadly this one didn’t really do much for me. It has a lot of product, even after I wiped it off a little, and it just came out the same as usual, a huge sloppy, spotty, mess; as this rate I don’t think I could even use a needle-sized tip.

But I will say that it seems to dry quickly, and it was very stubborn to come off. I used two of my cleansing wipes I got a few boxes back, my makeup removal stick (both of which usually works wonders), and a tissue; and I still have a small amount of it there. It flakes off with a bit of scratching but who wants to do that? I lost a few eyelashes in the process too so there’s that.

I think for now I’m going to be sticking to eyeshadow eyeliner <_<

Lip Moist Oil

Besides the face mask, this was the item I was excited for :3 I love lip products and it looked really promising. This is available in cool lime and mellow orange and comes from the brand Crayon Touch-Me, a brand that we’ve been seeing a lot of lately haven’t we?

Like most products, it can be used as a standalone or on top of another lip product.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

I was right, this is great! I smells like yummy lime jello/gelatin, but the scent only lingers on your lips for a few minutes. It does a good job moisturizing and gives you a very noticeable shine that lasts for a while. As an oil it does stay wet, but it isn’t sticky and goopy at all.

Angel Heart Cheek, Eye & Lip Cream & Choonee Water Lip Tint Balm

Our next two items are also lip products, again I see no problem in that cause I love lip products x3 especially cutesy ones like these.

First up we have a cute, lip-shaped lip, cheek, and eye product that was available in several pink and red shades, the one I got is Coral Apricot (if I translated that right). The product is made from minerals to ensure the skin its applied on stays smooth and moisturized. I feel like i pick up a tiny scent from it, but I’m not sure what it is.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

The color is a bit too-coral for my skin tone, but I think it’s quite pretty. It’s a little more vibrant on my face than on my hand, but it blends out to a more natural shade on the cheeks. It’s light and feels very nice.

-----

Next up is the cute Choonee Water Lip Tint Balm, which was also available in several shades and includes ingredients like shea butter, jojoba seed oil, sweet almond oil, and grape seed oil. In the booklet, I only see raspberry and grapefruit, and I got raspberry. Like our previous 2 lip products, this one also moisturizes.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

It goes on very easily, the color is a pretty raspberryish magenta and it feels really nice on my lips. Even after wiping it off, my lips feel pretty good.

Lucky Trendy Hair Curler Set

This item is the reason why it took me a few days longer than I would have liked to write this. I couldn’t find my blow dryer (its somewhere in our mess of a hall closet) and I was trying to wait, but I gave up.

This is a set of hair curlers, and it was available in 2 sets... I’m not sure what the difference was, other than it seemed like the smaller size set came with more?

Anyway, this seem really easy to use. All you do is pop open a curler, then wrap a segment of hair, then you roll it up and shut it. You’re supposed to use a hair dryer/blower on them for a few minutes (supposedly 5) then when you take it out they should provide you with gorgeous wavy curls.

Rating: ♥

That didn’t happen!

I got the idea “hey, because I can’t ind my hair blower why don’t I just try to put them in for an hour or so, then take them out?“ BIG MISTAKE. I did that and you know, a first I thought “wow I’m impressed, this is a lot of fun! They don’t  feel heavy or anything, the hairstyle is even kind of cute!“

So then, about an hour and a half later, I go to remove them... it HURT extremely bad and probably took me ten minutes per-curler to remove and each one hurt. I only put in 2 and by the time I was done I had a hairball next to me and several BIG knots, and I brushed my hair before putting them in so you can’t say its my fault.

I had a lot of high hopes for these and I don’t know if they would have come out better if I blow dryed them like instructed or if it would have happened regardless. I don’t know if I want to try these again.

I will say that while I did notice a slight curl where I used them, it wasn’t worth it because my hair is already a little curly and I could get the same effect just braiding my hair before bed with better results.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Content - 4 out of 5. I loved all of the items, except for the eyeliner, hair curlers, and the head piece. The eyeliner and head piece would fit for some people, I admit, but those hair curlers are pure torture devices!

Theme: 5 out of 5. Yeah, I could see how people would use these items more towards the morning. I kind of feel like that wouldn’t be a practical summer theme though cause don’t most people like the idea of relaxing during summer? But if you had plans or work or something, it’s fine.

Total Rank: 8 out of 10. I liked the theme and thought they did great nailing it, and I really liked the items I could get to work, I’d say it was worth it.

♥ Cutie Scale ♥

1. Lip Oil - It’s not as decorative as the other items, but I’m in love with its scent~

2. Juicy Bottle Mask - I like the unique bottle shaped package and it smells wonderful, I’d recommend this :3

3. Choonee  Lip Tint Balm - It’s very pretty, even though it’s bright, I didn’t think it looked bad. I also like the packaging again.

4. Cheek, Lip, Eye Cream - I love the lip-shaped container, it’s so cute in a silly kind of way. The color is lovely and feels nice on the skin.

5. Hair Cream - I like how it makes my hair feels, but as I said above it takes a while before your hair returns to normal. It might just be because I used a little too much...

6. Hair Band - very cute and soft, but too tight <_<

7. Eyeliner -  It’s very neat looking but I won’t use this again, it just didn’t work for me.

8. Hair Curlers - It should be obvious right...?

[thepennydarling]

Hello Penny Darlings!

Welcome to 2018 with me! Thank you for letting me live my dream life & helping me see my dreams in totally different way! We brought in the New Year quietly, but surrounded by good friends, warm energy, and a few drinks that landed me with a hangover that I haven’t had in years.

However, I have a few things cooking for early 2018 – but I alwaysalwaysalways appreciate feedback! I love hearing what you want to see!

And, as I mentioned in my last post – we set a date! Ah! I have a post coming up next week to fill everyone in with the wedding planning stage of my life! Now that the date is set, everything seems a lot less daunting!

So let’s see, what else? Hmm, blah, blah, blah, – check me out on Instagram here! I also started a Twitter account! Find that here! Follow Preston’s brand new fashion Instagram here! I also have a selling Instagram page where I sell some of my old clothes/styles so that I don’t drown in my own wardrobe. I just listed a few new things – so check that out!

  Let’s move on to the content of the day, shall we?

In 2017, I signed up for Ipsy after becoming obsessed with doing my own unboxing, being gifted a Benefit mascara from someone else’s Ipsy bag, and realizing that I don’t know anything about make-up or brands and that I was always nervous to spend $17 on a liquid lipstick that I would hate, or that wouldn’t last all day, or whatever.

I heard that you could sign up for Ipsy for only $10 a month and you’d get FIVE sample size beauty products + a cute pouch every single month. And GIRL, let me tell you, I found some of my new fave beauty products this way and have even gone on to buy other products and find some of my favorite brands this way!

So today, I wanted to share some of my fave Ipsy GlamBag finds!

First of all, let’s talk about my fave glam bags so far.

So every month, your five products come in these adorable pouches (perfect for make-up!) I usually have three or four in my purse at a time. I use one for on the go make-up, one for tampons, one for the cords to my camera, one for hair bands and chapstick. They are the perfect purse sized accessory.

My two faves so far are this Admit One ticket (perfect for a theatre nerd like me) and this sunny side up egg Gudetama pouch. This melting sunny side up egg is my spirit animals most mornings.

  So there’s a bunch of different categories you can select from, but I have mine set as face (make-up/foundation/lips/eyes/etc.), skin care (masks, toners, scrubs, etc.) and hair care (oils, leave in conditioner, dry shampoo). There’s bunch of categories where you can select what type of products you’re interested in trying.

So I rounded up some of my fave beauty products that I’ve gotten in 2017 in each category to show you what type of products you’d be getting!

Check out my referral link to sign up here! 

  Face

Caked Lip Fondant in Color: Low Key

I am obsessed with this color/liquid lip. It dries matte, smells like cupcakes, and has REALLY low transfer of color but with super high pigment. I even went on to buy this lip magic in two additional colors, and even have a few others in my cart. 10/10 I’ve been wearing this non-stop since May. I’m literally wearing this as I type right now.

Benefit – They’re Real Mascara

This was what actually introduced me to Ipsy in the first place. I usually have a tough time with mascara to the point where I usually NEVER wore it. I thought it added such a minimal difference to my face for SO much extra hassle, ugh. But during a show I was doing, my darling friend, Cassidy, gave me her Benefit They’re Real mascara from her Ipsy bag and I became OBSESSED! And then, miracle of miracles, one came in my December bag so I’m set for at least a little while longer! 10/10 my fave mascara. I also bought the full sized of this!

Glamour Dolls X Lisa Frank

Glamour Dolls x Lisa Frank Eyeshadow in Stargazing or Heartthrob is AMAZING. First of all, the packaging was ALL of the things my nostalgic, 90’s girl heart needed from Lisa Frank. But second of all, I am obsessed with the color. It’s this deep copper/bronze-y color with some definite color. It’s not TOO intense but it definitely adds another layer. I literally haven’t worn eyeshadow in my day to day life since….never? I used to wear glitter on my lids in college but that was about it.

TARTE Amazonian Clay Waterproof Bronzer

This bronzer is a total game changer. I love it. I sort of get why people pay an arm and a leg for the brand. It’s matte, it lays so clean, and it doesn’t make me look orange in the least. It’s the perfect bronzer. I always find that grabbing bronzers makes me look streaky or weird – but this one helps matte out my foundation, is waterproof (and smear proof!), and has a slight shimmer in it.

  Hair

BRIOGEO HAIR Rosarco Milk Reparative Leave-In Conditioning Spray

 The product is smells SO good and left my hair feeling super soft and silky. This is another one that I’ve bought the whole product of. It’s very mild, but it does help with some serious tangling, gets rid of flyaways and split ends and is perfect to throw in before bed on damp hair for a treatment!

MARC ANTHONY – Hydrating Coconut Oil & Shea Butter Oil Treatment

This is a great oil treatment. It seriously is reparative, not too greasy or slimy, helps me get rid of frizz (which my curly hair always needs) and I use it when I put my hair up or into braids to prevent breakage and to keep it smooth!

   SKINFOOD Egg White Perfect Pore Cleansing Foam

This product was a total throwback to slumber parties when we used to mix egg whites with a bunch of other goop in the kitchen to get really tight pores and this lives up to the hype! It’s a cleansing foam, as opposed to the slumber party masks, but it gives that same tight pore feeling.

PROMISE ORGANIC – Nourishing Coconut Milk Daily Facial Scrub with Walnuts and Sugar

This is an amazing facial scrub. I have super sensitive skin and it’s perfect. When I use the scrub, it really makes my face soft and clean feeling. I tend to get bothered by facial scrubs – but this one is very moisturizing and not harsh at all! And bonus: not a heavy smell.

FEEL – Brilliant Bamboo Charcoal Facial Sheet Mask

This mask makes my face feel so clean and refreshed and lovely. I love a good mask because they make me feel so fancy in only one item. I always like to listen to some good music, put a mask on, and turn the heat up. This one is not goopy or weird in anyway!

  Eyebrows

BENEFIT COSMETICS – gimme brow volumizing fiber gel

CHELLA – Eyebrow Pencil in Beautiful Blonde and Elegant Ebony

As a girl who absolutely had never done her eyebrows before May of this year, these two products are blonde eyebrow game changers. Makes them look more defined and exciting! That fiber gel helps give me volume (which my blonde eyebrows desperately needed) and the taupe Chella pencil is the perfect tool for someone who is figuring out eyebrows or someone who wants precision eyebrows.

  Honorable Mentions

TOUCH IN SOL – Advanced Real Moisture Liquid Foundation SPF 30 PA ++ in Shade #23 Natural Beige or Shade #21 Nude Beige

SKYN ICELAND Berry Lip Fix with Wintered Red Algae

Firma Beauty 103 Angled Contour Brush

LUXIE BEAUTY Precision Shader Onyx Brush 239

IT COSMETICS – Bye Bye Pores Pressed Powder

SMASHBOX COSMETICS PHOTO FINISH RADIANCE PRIMER

  And fun fact, I did my WHOLE face in JUST ipsy products and it came out AMAZING, don’t you think?

I love ipsy! For a non-make-up-guru, I desperately love getting to sample things for a low cost to see how I like it, how it mixes with my skin or my other must have make-up products, and without feeling like I wasted $25 for a primer I end up hating.

It’s totally perfect and makes make-up shopping a lot less daunting. Truthfully, then I know what brands/types I like. I used to think I would NEVER wear liquid matte lipstick until I started wearing one every single day. And I used to think I’d never find a blonde eyebrow and I totally did!

If you want to check out Ipsy  – you can use my referral link to sign up!

For everyone from the make-up obsessed who want never ending new products or the cosmetic illiterate, like myself, this service is AMAZING.

*This post may contain affiliate links, however, all thoughts & opinions are my own*

SO HERE’S THE “END OF BLOG” SPIEL!

Follow me on Instagram: @thepennydarling

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Comment for topics you would like to see me cover! Like to help my self esteem! What do you think so far? More fashion? More lifestyle? Do you like the mix?

Thank you for all that you do. You are truly extraordinary.

Love all you wonderful ladies (and gents!) out there!

How Very,

Abby

I share my best of 2017 @ipsy products I received and review! Hello Penny Darlings! Welcome to 2018 with me! Thank you for letting me live my dream life & helping me see my dreams in totally different way!

[cutiecrates]

Cutie Reviews: NMNL Jan 19

If you guys have been around here for a while you might remember me posting a “teaser” on this; NMNL has decided to upgrade/remake itself and here it finally is, our first box of the brand newly styled NMNL/NoMakeNoLife box!

I’m so excited~!!

Okay, so I thought first I’d start with the various changes made to the box and booklet. So obviously the first change is that the box/color scheme has gone from a basic, classy looking black to a more... lively, apricot-pinky color. They have also added cute designs to the box and booklet to fit the beauty and makeup theme.

The next big change is that the theme of the box has broadened itself, not only will it still use Japanese beauty items, but it’s also decided to include Korean products too! I also think there might be an increase of items we receive too~

As much as I liked NMNL I often thought “why can’t the items be a bit more cuter? I like cute products.“ two of my favorite brands are Tony Moly and Etude House- so knowing they might start appearing more often was part of the reason why I supported this change to the box. I also like the idea that we, as customers, can experience more of a variety of items. Some items also provide an English explanation.

Now the booklet, I wish I could have included pictures but with the limit I can only do so much.

So first of all, we still have the contests:

We still have a page for giveaways, a little section on the box theme, the point system they made a few months back, customers pictures, and they still have a page featuring a person or popular brand. The pages for the items are still here too, but they gave them an overhaul and made it look cleaner. Each item also has a tip and key point feature, and a symbol to tell you if it’s a Japanese or Korean product.

There is a new page added to the book (which may just be for this month, I’m not sure), explaining the differences between Korean and Japanese beauty products.

Another fun page is that they have added monthly horoscopes based on cosmetics! They give you a suggestion of what sort of makeup item you should wear that will benefit you in various ways; for example, I’m a Libra and for January it says “Try a cute rose gold eyeshadow this January, it suits your kind and gentle personality perfectly!”

Some suggest lip product, facial products, lip product was very popular for January. Unfortunately I don’t have this months box yet, so I can’t go over that.

Okay! We can finally start this review! If you didn’t skip the wall of text above then you should give yourself a piece of candy :3

Missha 3D Mascara

Our first item is a black mascara by Missha that promises to lengthen and volumize ones lashes. Their tip is to heat your curler with a blow dryer, then curl the lashes before applying to further enhance the effect. It’s key point is to crease a 3D effect by forming a protective layer over each lash.

Okay, so... my intentions weren’t to put on makeup today. I didn’t have any plans and I was just going to take things easy. I also don’t have a blow dryer so I can’t say whether or not the tip works. 

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

After a few coats of this I didn’t really notice too much of a change. But after comparing one eye with the one I didn’t put it on, I could see a difference. The lashes don’t look any thicker or anything, but they did curl a little and look longer. It dries very quickly, and it doesn’t feel heavy at all so I like it. I really needed a new mascara and wasn’t too crazy about the alternate options I had, so I’ll take it.

Also, I noticed it’s scent was sort of different than other mascara, so after smelling it again, I thought “this smells like playdough”. 

Melliesh Denkyu Lip Tint

This was our spoiler item we saw in emails, everyone got this Healthy Red color for this box and it has a lovely apple scent~ It’s made from argan and castor oils.

It comes in a cute light bulb shape and is filled with 10ml of product. The tip is to take a selfie using this product, and it’s key point is the pretty red color perfect for day or night wear.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I had high hopes after seeing how kawaii it was in person~

It smells really good and it’s small size makes it perfect for smaller carrying items, like a pouch, a clutch, a coin purse, even a pocket. It has an oily feel on the lips much like lip gloss, and after testing it I noticed that my lips stayed like this for maybe thirty minutes after application. It feels light on the lips as the booklet said, and I didn’t see any real issues when I tried drinking. Even after I eventually rubbed it off, I did see a little bit of tint remaining for a good while after, and my lips felt really smooth.

Soy Milk Extract Facial Cleansing Foam

(Okay, so we’re kinda in a different setting here. What happened was that after I left my picture area, I realized I forgot an item. So I just hurried up and took a picture while at the table.)

Anyway, this is a facial foam that moisturizes the skin and cleans away the dirty skin cells and germs hiding in those pores. The tip is to use this in the morning and once at night, and it’s key point is that the soy milk extract can also improve skin elasticity.

There is 200g of product, and it comes from Kumano Cosmetics.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

As a facial wash product, it does the job. I’ve been using it as it suggests and I haven’t really noticed any problems or significant changes, although it does make my face feel nice~

It smells really good too... at least until after you apply it and wash it off, then it kind of smells like soy beans or something <3< I’m not a big fan of that. It’s also kind of difficult to get out of the tube because it’s ultra-thick, but squeezing from the bottom makes it a little easier, and it is fun to play with.

Watering Cosmetic Wedges

They were spoiling us with items this month. This one is a trio pack!

As anyone who uses makeup will tell you, wedges like this can be really helpful. Not only can you apply makeup with them- but they can also be used to remove it. It’s tip is to apply water and gently squeeze it before applying some foundation, while it’s key point is that it’s multi-functional.

What else makes these little sponge so nice is that they can also grow in size just from getting soaked in water!

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ 

Okay so... I’m not sure what I did wrong, but I’m not sure how much it’s supposed to expand. I had my hand in water for 5 minutes and saw barely any change- although to be fair, it might be warm/hot water. I didn’t think it mattered, and nothing says what temperature to use. Either way it’s still usable and in the end, that is what matters.

A day later I noticed that the wedge is still damp, even though all of the water is out.

My Beauty Tool Lovely Etti Shower Ball

An adorable, high quality bath puff by Etude House. It’s tip is to lather it with soap before use (I mean obviously...), and it’s key point is the cute wittle kitty-witty sticking out of it~

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

I didn’t really need a new shower/bath ball right now, but I can appreciate this because not only will it add more cuteness to the bathroom- but it’s my exact favorite color, a soft shade of pink~

It’s firm, but still soft and it feels really nice~

Kiss Kiss Lovely Lip Patch

This is a well-known Tony Moly item, I’ve seen several people try it out and I'm pretty sure I even spotted it in a few stores, or something resembling it.

It’s suggested that you use this 1 to 2 times weekly for 15-20 minutes. It contains collagen, Vitamin C, and extract from strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries. This was one of the items with full English instructions and ingredients though, so if you ever try it out just check the back.

In saying that, it had a little bit of a scent, but it wasn’t fruity or anything. The tip is that you try these out with friends at a sleepover (but keep in mind you only get one, they expect you to have multiple packs or buy more). Their key point is to moisturize and plump the lips while keeping them soft and smooth.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

It felt really nice using it, but if you sit up or move around much, including your mouth, it struggles to stay on. In comparison to those by another brand I tried (and reviewed a few times on here), where I could be sitting up and it stayed put.

It’s also really fragile, mine was full of nail holes by the time I was done with it. I also noticed my lips were soft, but a dry patch came back not too long after taking it off, and a day later my lip are almost like they were prior to using it. But to be fair again, I think this would work better if you had multiples and could follow a regimen with them. Or at least did it a few times.

Flower Bouquet Face & Body Soap

A cute, moisturizing body soap. I think it might come from a brand/series/company called Florence Soap and is in the scent Flower Bouquet. It’s the perfect soap for winter because it will help your skin stay moisturized and smelling fresh- perfect for a spring pick-me-up~

The tip is to lather the soap and gently wash (I feel like for the ones they can’t think of something creative, they just state the obvious). While its Key point is the lovely scent.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

It’s so small and cute, I love looking at it. it also smells amazing~ it’s like a light floral rose note. It feels good on the skin and comes off really easy. I noticed a little bit of griminess/soap residue on my hands after using it, but it was completely gone after I dried them off.

Fruit Slice Sheet Mask Pack

Our final item for the month. Long-time viewers might remember that a while back I reviewed an item like this before, last time I had watermelon- and this time our options were pineapple, kiwi, and banana.

I’m not a huge banana fan, especially if it tastes artificial, so I could only imagine an artificial banana smell >3<

Anyway, there is 12 in total and it’s recommended that you use them once a day. The tip is that you can also use these not just on your face, but all over the body. The key point is that it includes natural ingredients such as hyaluronic acid, allantoin, and herbs.

Ratings: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

The pineapple scent is wonderful~

I really like using these, except for how difficult it is to get them back into the package if you don’t use all 12 of them at once. I just gave up and used them all. Besides that little hitch, I love how they can be used in a variety of locations, so now the rest of your body can feel what your face does while you relax~

I’m not sure they helped any with my dry forehead, but everything else is has felt nice. I put a couple on my legs, arms, and face.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Quality/Pricing - 5 out of 5. I was so surprised by how many items we got this month, and they each came in a variety of sizes and shapes, and some are reusable, which is always a bonus. I know the lip patch is cheap, although I’m not sure about the rest.

Content - 5 out of 5. I loved them! Especially because not only can they all be useful (and were/will be), I didn’t hate or dislike anything.

Theme - 5 out of 5. I don’t think there was meant to be one but I noticed many of the items had a pink sorta theme and thought that was really cute the way they matched the box. Many of them also deal with moisturizing, so I kind of consider that a theme too.

Total Rank: 15 out of 15 cuties. Am I being too nice? I’m not sure, but I really, REALLY liked this box. It did have some tiny touch-ups it could have made, but if you’ve been considering getting this box and enjoyed what you saw in this review I’d recommend signing up! It set the standards pretty high for this months box though~

♥ Cutie Scale ♥

1. Lip Tint - I can’t get over it’s adorable shape and size! The box is also really cute!

2.  Flower Soap - It’s elegant and cute, a great combination~ I couldn’t bring myself to destroy it’s packaging.

3. Shower Ball - It’s so sweet and kawaii~

4. Fruit Slice Mask - I like how they just sort of throw the fruit/food into your face. It adds a bright pop look that makes it stand out against all those plain or boring packages.

5. Facial Foam - it’s not cute or anything, but I like it’s gentle color palette.

6.Lip Patch - It’s cute, but it feels scattered with its designs. 

7. Watering Cosmetic Wedges - They’re cute and squishy~ they’re perfect for making cute little custom squishy cakes too~

8. 3D Mascara - It’s so plain looking, but the wand is much longer than what I’m used to.

Alright Cuties, we’ve come to the end of our review :3 I hope you found it enjoyable/informative and remember, you can ask me if you have any questions. I’ll do my best to try to respond.

Next up will be officially the box I left off at, ironically it was a beauty box too, but not NMNL, it’s Kira Kira Crate! Then I’ll be taking a break from the beauty boxes so if you’re getting tired of them I promise we won’t have to look at them for a while.

Until next time, stay cute!