Page 8 of Nothing But the Truth

She eyed the clock and saw that she was ahead of schedule. What a pleasant surprise when her mornings were usually wall-to-wall with her fitness and beauty routines.

Speaking of beauty, she prepared to put on her face.

Lucy enjoyed makeup, but she had to admit, it came with a price. Literally, the steep one she paid across several retail chains that amassed her an embarrassing number of rewards points. But also the price that meant she couldn’t touch her face, sweat, cry, blow her nose, wear sunglasses, or even blink too hard without messing any of it up. Making up her face was a form of artwork, except art held still and didn’t perspire, sneeze, get a watery eye, or occasionally itch. Even with the best setting spray, scratching her cheek meant coming away with a fingernail full of foundation. The slightest sniffle meant erasing all the hard work off the tip of her nose with a tissue. Forget wiping her brow if she got sweaty; she’d leave a streak on her sleeve. Summertime heat left her eyes smudged with melting mascara and liner like a raccoon.

Why do I put up with it?she wondered as she opened her tacklebox of pencils, powders, creams, wands, and brushes. She’d been wearing makeup long enough—since her mother finally caved when she started high school—to feel naked without it. She’d lost track of the line between makeup being her choice and something society expected of her, and maybe it was both, honestly, but she suddenly had perfect clarity on the ridiculous expectation that she was supposed to just put up with the inconvenience of layering her face in an untouchable, sweaty mask every day—even if it was pretty.

She stared at her makeup and saw the same thing she saw when staring at her hair tools: time, effort, and a small mint worth of products designed to make her look like someone else.

She picked up her primer and had a sudden and overwhelming urge not to use it. Same went for her eyeliner and mascara. She considered her go-to tube of rose lipstick and decided lip color was the least egregious of the options, and she actually did not mind the tinted moisturizer.

As she painted her lips soft pink, liking the way she looked, she wondered how she would be received at her company, which held very high standards for physical appearance. But did she need to, for all intents and purposes, put on a costume to prove she was competent at her job?

The thought took her into her bedroom, where she had laid out her outfit.

She considered her dress, the one she picked out specifically for Lily Chu. It was beautiful, but the maintenance required to wear it was not. It would constrict her arms, and she’d have to squat instead of bend over to reach for anything below her knees. Without her shapewear, she’d be sucking it in all day because the sky-blue slip left no room for mystery, and just the thought gave her a backache.

She decided, definitively, the dress was not worth the hassle.

She returned to her closet and scanned her options. She’d wanted something special for her big day, something her coworkers hadn’t seen her in before. A statement piece for her birthday and promotion. But suddenly, making a statement seemed far less important than wearing something functional. Her favorite little black dress caught her eye, a bodycon scoop neck with cap sleeves, but even that felt too restrictive. She considered a respectable emerald green number of a similar cut, but when her eyes landed on her favorite non-work dress, a midi-length floral print that reminded her of Sunday brunch with Nina, a summer concert at the Hollywood Bowl, the decision to wear it was so obvious, she wondered why she even shopped for different options in the first place.

When she looked at her rack of heels, she laughed a little hysterically, like it was a joke that she’d even consider stepping into one of the toe-crushing stilts. Instead, she slid her feet into soft, suede d’orsays.

Thanks to her low-maintenance morning, she was ready to leave for work a whole fifteen minutes early. The slack in her normally frantic morning struck her as a welcome surprise. She might even have time to get a coffee.

She grabbed her work tote, noticing the easy flow of loose fabric around her legs, something markedly different than the constricted dresses and skirts she normally walked out of the house wearing. Her feet didn’t click down the hall but pleasantly whispered. She noted how much faster she could walk as well and wondered why she didn’t dress so comfortably every day.

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