Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
LINDY
“Ooooh.”
“Mmm.” Lenore’s finger swatched a cherry pink color down the inside of her arm. It started delicate, but with each press of the powder, it became richer.
We sat at her kitchen table, the remnants of our take-home Italian dinner having been pushed to the opposite side of the table while we looked at lab samples of blush together.
Lenore swatched more blush colors on her arm. A deep, rich berry-brown and a peachy-melon color. I picked up the cherry pink one. The lab’s packaging was thin, no-frills plastic. “Could I swatch?”
“Of course. I’d love your opinion.”
I pressed my finger into the product. “How is it I’ve never known about your makeup line?”
“I haven’t been consistent with it. I have so many ideas, but not enough time or hands. I have the fragrance oils, the bath salts, and candles, and the makeup started with a finishing powder in a compact, which I have made in small batches. It keeps selling out, and I never have to advertise it. But I’ve been wanting to do a blush and a lipstick for so long, I finally went ahead with the blush, and these are the first samples from the lab.”
“So exciting.”
“Isn’t it?” She giggled, and so did I. We were co-conspirators indulging in a secret delight. Lenore seemed more like a girl my age in this moment than a woman my mother’s age. Her unusual blue-green eyes gleamed at me, and my face heated under her scrutiny. “What is it?”
“This is the first time I’ve seen you genuinely smile.” Her hand brushed my arm, and my back straightened. Was she going to dish out an it’s-okay-to-talk-and-let-it-all-out line now? Lenore lined up all the blushes. “Nothing like makeup.”
I burst out into laughter, my body shaking. “I think I have more makeup than I do clothes. Crazy, huh?”
Lenore leaned into me. “Lindy, it’s me you’re talking to.” She let out a small laugh. “Same here, girl. If it brightens you up, if it’s what you love, if it satisfies—yes, please. Give me more.”
“That’s exactly how I feel.”
“Yes to makeup, makeup brushes, tattoos, and, of course, fabulous underthings. They all simply make my heart sing, no matter what. And each one never fails to make me feel good about me, about life. Always has. All these delights have been a form of therapy to me. A playful place, a safe place. Me taking care of me.”
A whoosh rushed through my system at her words. “It’s that way for me too.” I cleared my throat. “What’s your plan with the makeup now? Are you going to come out with a whole line? Are you going to set up an online shop or only sell at the store?”
“I came out with the powder compact a few years ago and it did very nicely. I’m not making any kind of money off of it, but so far it pays for itself. I replenish the stock in small batches. It’s a blurring-setting powder in several shades. I want to expand the color range for many more skin tones and be able to have constant stock in the store, but I’m a one-woman show and not ready to handle all that it would require, let alone an online store.”
“But you’d like to?” I grabbed the darker blush color.
“I’d like to.” She smiled. “I want to see how the blushes do, and then a lipstick…I’m not in a rush. No need to be. I want to do things right.”
I smudged at the swatch of dark berry cocoa on my arm. “This is so silky. And the pigmentation is there but not overwhelming. It’s buildable, which I think is the best for blush. I like this formula. It’s so smooth.”
“You’re talking like a makeup artist. I love it.”
“That’s what I want to be when I grow up.” I let out a dry laugh.
“Fantastic. You should do it.”
“I’ve taken a few masterclasses, and I did a summer program in Lincoln a couple of years ago, and I recently started freelancing at the hair salon in Elk, but I want to get my license.”
“I had no idea. You absolutely should.”
A flutter in my belly tickled my insides. I never did this, shared my stuff, but Lenore was different. She understood. Sharing this with her was a shot of feel-good confidence in my veins. I took out my phone, hit my Instagram, and slid my phone in front of her.
Lenore honed in on my account and swept through pics. Pics of me modeling my looks. Intense looks. Simple fresh looks. Strange looks, strangely beautiful to me.
“You did all these?”
“Hmm.” I pointed to other posts. “These are a couple of friends of mine who I did for Halloween last year, and that bride was a friend of a friend. This girl was going to her prom…”
“Lindy, they’re beautiful. And you’re gorgeous.”
“Nothing like makeup.”
She raised her head in a sharp, quick movement, and met my gaze. “ You are beautiful with or without the makeup, and these photos show me the passion in you. Am I right?”
I only nodded.
“You have a tremendous sense of color and you’re not afraid of it. You can be restrained and delicate, and you’re not afraid of being bold.” She put my phone on the table. “Very talented.”
“That is the best compliment ever, especially coming from you, Lenore.”
“Does anyone know?”
“My dad knows. He helped me pay for the classes I took, and with staying in Lincoln that summer. I don’t talk about it much.”
“Why not?”
“It’s special to me. My happy place.”
She clasped my hand, and my pulse jumped. “I understand. That’s the best thing, and you found yours. When I was your age, designing and sewing clothes was that passion for me. Something I learned from my grandmother. It saved my life over and over again.” Her tone was colored with emotion, and on some kind of instinct, my other hand covered hers.
“I caught the makeup fascination from my mom,” I said. “We never had much money, but even at a discount dollar store, she’d find cool eyeshadows, all sorts of brushes. She’d mix stuff together, try different looks, different colors. See what she liked, and what she didn’t, and improvise. There were no rules, and she enjoyed the whole process. It was fun for her, and fun for me to watch, to shop with her, unwrap the goodies, play with them.”
“All those colorful pots and compacts,” murmured Lenore.
I grinned. “The packaging, the textures, the effect on your skin, the fluffy brushes in all sorts of sizes and shapes. It's a fun world to lose yourself in, and the result is that you can be whatever you want and create that for yourself.”
Her grip on my hand tightened. “Would you be interested in helping me with the makeup line?”
My heart jumped in my chest. “Really?”
“I need help, and you obviously know what you’re doing, and you deeply love it. I need to test things out on women your age as well as women my age. I have the old ladies here in Meager giving me their beta test opinions, and a couple of the dancers at the local strip club, which has been great because they need a formula that will last.”
“That’s a lot of data to keep track of.”
“And my time is limited. I have custom lingerie that I’m always working on, which is important to me. And, of course, there’s the club, my home. My man. I feel like I have to race to keep up, and I fucking hate that feeling, especially when I need to make the absolute right decisions. I need you, Lindy.”
My brain stuttered. “You need me…”
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s a hell yes.” I let out a laugh.
“Good.” Letting go of my hand, she slid back in her chair. “Every time I’ve seen you around the club you were never all glammed up.”
“I always kept things basic for working at the diner and especially when I’d have to go to the club.”
“You work for Lenore’s Lace now. Glam it up.”
Giggles spilled from my lips. “Yes, ma’am.”
“How about you test these blushes this week? Keep track of each color, when you put it on, and with what kind of brush and application technique you use. Check-in times for how it’s lasting on your skin. Use them over all kinds of foundation—powder, liquid, cream, stick—which I assume you have?”
“I have it all.”
“And on bare skin too. We want to know all the things—blending, texture, longevity.”
“I’ll spreadsheet it.”
“Fantastic. Make me one too, and at the end of the week, we’ll compare notes. I’ll let the old ladies know that they need to fill out the questionnaire I sent them and get them back to us.”
“Sounds good.”
“We can make a party of it. Finger is going to be out of town next weekend, so girls’ night is on.” She smacked her palms on the table, and my eyes shot to the beautiful tattoos she had on top of her hands.
Lenore was tattooed everywhere, which I found intriguing.
“I love your tattoos. They’re an amazing collection.”
“Thank you. This has been many, many years in the making. Another form of me making me, and me feeling good about me. Do you have any?”
“A couple. One for my mom, and another for a … a boyfriend gone bad.”
“Oh, sorry to hear that.”
“A life lesson. Never doing that again.”
“Never doing what exactly?” She stacked the blushes back in the small box. “Having a boyfriend?”
“Pretty much.”
“It’d be a shame to deprive yourself of a good man and deprive men of your beauty inside and out, sweetheart. Now you’re smarter, I’m guessing you know more of what you want, what’s important to you, than you did back then. And you’re stronger for it. Never say never. Trust me. You never know what life will fling at you.” She closed the box and slid it to me.
“That’s for damn sure.” My fingertips tapped on the box. “I know I sound negative.”
“A bit.” Lenore let out a laugh.
“Maybe one day I’ll find someone who makes me happy the way my parents were happy together. I still remember those good times. Those memories still warm me up inside,” my voice had become a whisper.
She touched my arm. “That’s good. That’s a real blessing that you had that. What a wonderful inspiration.”
“My mom liked you, Lenore. I wanted you to know that. She’d told me how, when we got to the Flames, you made her feel comfortable from the very beginning. You were generous and kind, and that meant a lot to her.”
“I knew it had to be hard on her and your dad, transitioning into a new club after all that went down. I liked Emmy. Loved her dry sense of humor.”
“Me too. I miss that.” I fiddled with the flaps of the small cardboard shipping box. “There are no guarantees about anything in this life, are there?”
“No. But you can choose to live in opportunity and positive energy.”
“Mmm.” I grabbed the dinner containers and brought them to the sink to rinse out for recycling.
“Your bad boy sent you reeling, huh?”
“Guys always seem to think they can take advantage of us, but I don’t play that game. I want things on my terms. I’m super cautious now, which is a good thing.”
“It’s good to be aware and to protect yourself. But if you ever really like someone, you shouldn’t let anything stop you from swimming in those waters. For a long while, I’d convinced myself that being alone was the best thing for me. I controlled everything where men were concerned, and it felt great. Clean sharp boundaries. Freedom from emotions, freedom from expectations.”
“No mess.” I stuffed the small cardboard boxes into the recycling bin under the sink.
“But if I looked under the surface of all that freedom, I wasn’t truly satisfied. Because at the core of it was the burning knowledge that there was only one man for me. My first love was my forever love, and if I couldn’t have him, I didn’t want anybody. I couldn’t go there. Couldn’t pretend. I think you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
Something pinched in my chest. I knew exactly what she meant because it was exactly how I felt deep, deep down. “I do.”
“I was around your age when I’d gotten caught up in a bad situation with a man and then another. I met Finger, he helped me get out, and along the way, we fell in love. Some very crazy shit went down, and we had to keep things under wraps. It was really difficult and dangerous to be together. Then he got arrested and sent to prison, and I found out I was pregnant. I was still on the run, and I gave up the baby for adoption so she’d be safe.”
“Zo?.”
“Zo?.” She grinned. “I took off, got myself a new name, created a new life, and years later, I ended up marrying someone else.”
“Beck’s dad?” Lenore had a son with her first husband. A son who was now a famous rockstar.
“Eric was a good guy, but…”
I sat back down at the table. “Doomed from the start.”
“From the start. My heart was branded with someone else’s name and always would be. Years later, when Finger and I crossed paths again, I wasn’t open to a relationship with anybody, but he kept insisting.”
“Oh boy…Finger insisting?” Letting out a laugh, I pretended to shiver.
Her features softened. “He was right. There was no reason not to be together anymore, no reason to be in shutdown mode. My biggest dream came true better than I ever imagined.”
“I’m so happy you got that second chance, Lenore. Happy for both of you.”
“Me too. It could happen for you too. I don’t mean a second chance with that guy, but you’re so young, Lindy. You could have your happy ever after. If you want it, you can make it happen.”
“Sounds like a fairy tale.”
“Let me remind you that Snow White and Cinderella, among others, all went through very tough times before they triumphed and found a good guy.” She touched my arm. “It’s smart to be careful, and I’m proud of you for standing up for yourself, but you don’t have to be alone to prove a point.”
“I guess I never saw it that way.”
“All I’m saying is be open to the possibilities. They always come from unexpected places and in unexpected ways.” She went to the sink, wet and soaped up a small microfiber towel, and wiped down the table. “I noticed Dawes has been paying lots of attention to you.”
“He’s only flirting with me because I’m the shiny new girl in town, and he can’t help himself.”
She laughed. “You’ve got him pinned.”
“He’s good-looking and a real charmer, but I’m not here to have myself a good time. Dating a Jack is a complication I don’t need, and I don’t think our clubs need it either. I wouldn’t want to create any problems over nothing.”
“That’s smart. But your feelings, your wants and desires, whatever they are, are not nothing. You deserve the things you want. You deserve to have the man you want.”
My face heated. “I do, huh?”
“Of course. You need to believe it.” She rinsed out the towel.
My vision blurred. What the hell? I’d stopped crying years ago. Talking to Lenore like this, the same way I’d talk with my mom, both of them strong women who understood the way my heart beat. That damned heart that still ached. Still yearned for one boy.
That boy was a man now.
Over the years, I’d carefully built my walls and marked my boundaries. But being in Meager, seeing Wes earlier today, talking frankly with Lenore, those walls, no matter how thick, how high, were quaking.