“Red is your color.”
“I’ll look like a painted whore.”
“You’ll look desperate.”
“Barbara!”Cleo turned and glared at her best friend in the whole entire world and fought the urge to shove her face-first into the makeup display.
“Desperate is good.He’ll like desperate.”Barb grabbed her hands and peered deeply into her eyes and intoned with the voice of their ancestors, “Desperate is a good thing.It may get you laid.”
“Barbara Hault!”
“You do want to get laid, don’t you?”
Cleo narrowed her eyes and glared.The fact that Barbara was right didn’t make Cleo’s glower any lighter.
“You have been pining after this guy since you hooked up with his company to produce, quick pause for dramatic intrigue,The Game!”
Cleo seriously wanted to hurt her best friend.She really did.If only she wasn’t the keeper of all her most precious secrets.
“I am not pining.”
“Oh, Barb --” Her sort of good friend sighed.
“I don’t sound like that!”Her friend’s imitation was spot on with her heartfelt sigh, but Cleo would never let her know that.
“Oh, Barb,” Barbara continued in a simpering, lilting voice, “Isn’t my Boffin just the greatest?He’s really the best when it comes to this kind of animation.Look how wonderful the creature system for my characters is.He has the actual skin tones looking human.I wanna die!”
“I don’t sound like that.”Cleo sniffed, crossing her arms over her chest as she tried not to laugh.Barb might be right… just a little bit.“And he does good work.”
“His team and his company do good work.”
“But he is the lead designer and the company head.The rest just follow his lead.”
“And he was willing to take a chance on an indie game designer with more butt than common sense.”
“My butt is not that big!”
Yes, it was, but it was nicely rounded and stayed toned with frequent stress-relieving trips to the gym… and masturbation.Lots of masturbation.Speaking of which…
“I need to get more batteries,” she grumbled.
“You wouldn’t need them if you told Evan how you felt.”
“I’ve never even met the man face-to-face, Barb.”She ran a frustrated hand through her long golden brown locks.“And I fell in love with his brain before I even knew what he looked like.”
“Ha!”Barb shouted, causing a makeup artist, wandering over to help them, turn and abruptly walk away, a wooden smile on her face as she changed direction to assist someone less crazy.“She admits it!”She was waving around a mascara wand like a sword, and for a moment, Cleo remembered why she had made her best friend the Big Boss villain in her game.
“I admit nothing.”Was she blushing?’Cause she thought she might be blushing.
Cleopatra Cockie pivoted to look in the tall mirror beside her on the killing floor -- the makeup department of Sophia’s, one of the city’s largest makeup superstores -- and examined her face.
She was a bit better than average, she supposed, as she frowned at her reflection.
She had no problem with the bold eye makeup her writer friend had plastered on her, as it made her almond-shaped eyes appear huge and mysterious.She could do without the feel of the foundation that Barb had gladly slathered on her rich mahogany skin, the hint of color from the crap dusted on her high cheekbones making her slight blush look deeper than it was.
Her full lips were outlined in a wince-worthy color with liner and awaited filling in with the flaming red, glossy goop that Barb held in one hand while she gestured wildly with the other wand-holding appendage.
Her hair was a long fall of neatly twisted locks that fell nearly to her waist in a riot of earth-tone coils, currently held back from her face in a loose ponytail.
