Almost a Boring Night
By Adrian Griffin

It was New Year’s Eve of 2013, and I was set to have a meltdown. It had been almost a full year since my first and only girlfriend by then had broken up with me, never bothering to tell me herself that the guy she had started dating after our break-up was the guy she started dating before our break-up. Needless to say, I was a bit disillusioned by the concept of love. and my head was ready to explode from all the pressure to “get over it” and “grow up a bit” that was pushed on me by everyone I knew. My Mom was in a band, playing a gig in Dallas, Texas, and she, her partner, my twin brother and I were all set to have a great week-long vacation after that, except for me, because I didn’t have great weeks back then. They called me the emo kid many years after that because I had a tendency to wear a lot of black, but they had had no idea what real emo was, at least as far as I’m concerned.
It was all set to be a boring night playing video games at the guesthouse when I head over into the hallway and meet a girl about my age, a little out of place considering my Mom’s band’s main demographic is “middle-aged lesbians or older”. Anyway, I walked over to her and introduced myself, and could immediately tell from the first words out of her mouth that this night was going to go a little different from what I was expecting. “I’m guessing you’re the emo twin, right?” Okay, maybe those weren’t her exact words, this was a few years ago, anyway. The message still conveyed her personality pretty well. Her name was Shea, and she was gruff, confident, old for her age, basically my polar opposite and someone that I, for all intents and purposes, should have absolutely hated. But my God, she was awesome.
As you could probably tell by the way I describe myself in these months, she didn’t really think much of me at first. But she changed her mind not long after that. You see, she had a sibling there as well, and I didn’t realize that her sister was normally pretty shy, so I asked her to dance, and she said yes. That basically did it for her.
So by the end of the night, I somehow went from being a lonely sad sack perfectly willing to skip what actually turned out to be a really great party, to singing, dancing, and having someone to kiss on New Year’s Eve. Two people, actually. First Shea kissed me on the cheek, then my Mother out of jealousy, then Shea kissed me on the lips, and I’m quite glad my Mother abstained from that one.
I never saw her again after that, and maybe it’s for the best. She was somewhat intimidating, I’m not going to lie. And while I won’t say that she changed my life necessarily, I will say that she helped speed me through a time in my life that I’m kicking myself over to this day. For that I say, truly and dearly, thank you Shea. I kind of miss you.