So I started watching tutorials in secret, hundreds of them.
I taught myself contouring from a girl in Australia and eyeliner from a guy in Seoul. I practiced on my own face until my dad thought I had a rash.
I never told anyone at school.
“You know,” I said, opening a palette, “if you back out now, I’m eating that entire lasagna in the fridge by myself. Out of spite.”
“Theo.”
“Out of grief.”
My grandma swatted my arm and finally smiled. Dad was out running errands, which was probably good because my stepmother Melissa’s phone call was reaching the part where she called somebody “unbelievable” for the fourth time.
I remembered, weirdly, a conversation I’d had with Dad a few weeks earlier.
I’d mentioned that Grandma had stopped coming down for dinner. I’d just mentioned it, like a weather report. Dad had gone quiet, stirred his coffee for a long time, and said, “Thanks for telling me, bud.” I didn’t think about it again.
Grandma reached for her tablet on the nightstand.
She pulled up a message. The name at the top said “Thomas.”
“Who’s Thomas?”
Grandma Aria took a breath as if she were about to jump into cold water.
“He was my high school sweetheart.”
“Wait. What?!”
“His parents didn’t approve. They moved him away the summer before senior year. I haven’t seen him or heard his voice in 55 years, Theo.”
“And he sent you a message?”
“He found me online. A few months ago.”
I looked at the screen. It was a short, polite message from last Saturday, asking if she would have dinner with him. Tonight. There was a phone number at the bottom and a little line that said, “I never forgot, Aria.”
I felt something warm hit me right in the chest.
“Grandma!”
“I almost said no.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I almost deleted it, Theo. Twice.”
“I didn’t.”
My grandma looked at me; her eyes were shiny, and her hands were shaking just a little around that tissue.
“I agreed, but now I want to cancel.”
“No, you can’t!”
“Theo, he remembers me at 15,” she whispered. “What if he sees me and feels disappointed?”
Grandma Aria’s social media profile didn’t include any photos of her, just family.
I picked up my biggest brush and held it up like a magic wand.
“You let me do my job. That’s what. Let’s show him how beautiful 70 looks.”
Grandma Aria stood in the middle of her closet, hands hovering over a floral dress that still had the tag from a store that closed 20 years ago.
“I can’t believe I’m even considering this,” she muttered, pulling the dress off the hanger and holding it against her shoulders.
“You look good already, and you haven’t even put it on,” I said.
She let out a shaky laugh and sat down on the little velvet stool she’d had forever. I lined up my brushes the way the YouTube tutorialists always did.
“Okay, ground rules,” I said, unscrewing a bottle of primer. “Don’t sneeze during eyeliner, or you’ll look like a raccoon who lost a fight.”
“I’m serious. Also, don’t cry. I didn’t buy the waterproof one because it was $18, and I’m 14.”
Grandma Aria actually laughed. Her shoulders dropped an inch.
I worked slowly. A soft base, a warm peach on the cheeks, and a brown that was almost pink on the lids. Nothing loud. Grandma wasn’t a loud person. She hadn’t been that way since Grandpa Paul’s death, and I wasn’t about to paint over the woman she actually was.
“Close your eyes,” I murmured, blending the crease.
“That was one time.”
Grandma smiled with her eyes closed, and I saw the little crinkles at the corners. Those crinkles were the whole point. I wasn’t covering them. I was framing them.
I finished the lipstick last. A soft rose. The kind of color she used to wear in the pictures from before I was born, back when she still owned dresses that weren’t gray or beige.
“Okay,” I said. “Open.”
My grandma opened her eyes. She didn’t move. She just stared at herself in the mirror, and for several seconds, I thought I’d messed up.
Then she smiled.
I’d known Grandma my whole life. I’d never seen her smile like that, as if she recognized somebody she hadn’t seen in a very long time. Her eyes sparkled!
“Oh, Theo,” she whispered.
“Told you.”
My grandma reached up and touched her own cheek, careful not to smudge anything.
I was about to say something dumb and cocky when I heard heels on the hardwood.
My dad’s new wife appeared in the doorway. Her eyes swept over Grandma once, from top to bottom, and then she started laughing. Not a giggle. A really loud, mean laugh.
“Seriously?” she said. “You’re 70. At your age, I’d stay home, knit, and be grateful anyone remembers I’m alive!”
Grandma’s smile fell off her face as if it had never been there.
“Melissa,” I said quietly.
Then she noticed the brushes in my hands.
My stepmother laughed harder.
“Fourteen-year-old boys used to play football! Your father must be so proud you’re painting old ladies’ faces!”
I felt my ears grow hot. Grandma reached for a tissue on the vanity, her fingers trembling, already moving toward her lipstick to wipe it off.
I caught her wrist. Gently. My hand was shaking a little too, but I made it stop.
“Don’t,” I said. “Please.”
“Theo, it’s fine, sweetheart.”
“It’s not fine.”
I looked at Melissa. My voice came out smaller than I wanted, but it came out.
“He’s going to be the lucky one tonight. That’s what you look like.”
Grandma’s eyes filled up. She blinked fast, remembering the mascara.
Melissa smirked, her arms crossed while she leaned against the doorframe as if she owned the whole house.
“Cute little speech. Wait until Lucas hears his son spent Saturday afternoon doing drag makeup on Grandma.”
“It’s not drag makeup,” I said. “It’s just makeup.”
Melissa wasn’t done.
She leaned more comfortably against the doorframe as if she were starring in her own show, arms crossed, smirk locked in place.
“Why don’t you try a normal hobby? Basketball. Video games. Literally anything else.”
“I like this one.”
“Your father is going to be so embarrassed when he hears about this. A boy your age, playing dress-up with Grandma. It’s weird, Theo. I’m saying it because nobody else will.”
I looked at her.
For a second, my throat went dry, and that old worry crept in, the one that whispered maybe she was right, maybe Dad secretly agreed, maybe I’d been kidding myself in front of a bedroom mirror for years.
Then I looked at Grandma Aria, sitting there, trying so hard to hold on to the smile I’d just given her.
And the whisper shut up.
“Grandma spent years making other people feel loved,” I said. “Forty years, Melissa. Tonight is her turn. That’s it. That’s the whole story.”
My stepmother blinked.
I think she expected me to cry, run, or apologize. When I didn’t do any of those things, her smirk tightened into something harder.
“Well,” Melissa said, straightening up. “We’ll see what Lucas has to say when he gets home.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it. I’m going to wait for him downstairs, and we’re going to have a very long conversation about this little family art project.”
