The last day before turning 21
It’s my last day as an underage woman and my life is about to change. I can feel it, in the blood that pumps through my veins!
Or, at least, in the ingested-animal-blood-enhanced-with-supplements that is slowly flowing through my veins. All the same.
There’s nothing to do with the fact that from tomorrow on I’ll be able to legally consume alcohol (my parents wouldn’t mind if I wanted to do it before, even if I didn’t think it smells like cleaning supplies and tastes like DDT, which I do).
Nor have anything to do with driving buses, becoming entitled to a minimum wage or being able to start learning how to fly a gyroplane. It has EVERYTHING to do with the handsome blond quarterback that lives three houses to the left of mine.
Michael Simmers. 22 years old, Pisces with a Cancer rising, volunteers with the elderly on weekends, star player of Carnegie Mellon’s football team, owner of the cutest yellow lab in the neighbourhood and of the cutest dimples in the world, my crush ever since fifth grade. He makes my heart beat faster.
(Or not, since it’s dead, but you get the drill.)
Michael Simmers, the younger brother of the impossibly cool, tall and talented Meaghan Simmers, who happens to be the new girlfriend of my long time best friend, Jules. And that’s why I happened to be at the same car that he was yesterday, while his sister gave him a ride home, where he heard Meaghan asked me if I the big plans for my 21st birthday (which there was none), and interjected saying that “he and the guys'' were going to celebrate a bunch of birthdays on O’Donahue’s on Friday (which is a pub, which from tomorrow on I’ll be able to attend!) and that I should “stop by''.
Just like that.
And this time I’m not going to let fear stop me, so I decided that I’m going to that pub on Friday. And I’m going to have a good time, and I’m going to flirt with the guy I’ve been in love forever, because I have a full life in front of me (probably a full eternity, but who knows). No more Lianna that hides in her room listening to sad indie songs and regretting all her life decisions. No more Lianna that is so terrified of someone asking why she is so cold that fakes a foot injury to avoid dancing, even though she was elected prom queen. No more Lianna that withers to the far end of the car seat when the boy she likes is seated on her side, even though he smells so good up this close.
That’s what I am explaining to my parents over dinner when my mom, mouth still full of chicken, interrupts me.
“Smelled good as in ‘you could almost eat him’?”
She smirks at her clever joke. I choke.
“Don’t be crude! You know that’s not what I mean!”
Offended, I get back to my plate of Chicken in Blood Sauce (leave it to Gothic literature professors to figure out how to prepare each and every recipe of food made out of blood for the vampire they accidentally adopted). My father adjusts the glasses over his nose, and cleans his throat.
“She meant that his smell made him a more attractive male, Karla. It probably means that she would like to do to him things that are more unspeakable for parents that drinking his blood would be”.
I choke even harder.
“You weirdos! I don’t know why I still tell you two anything!”
He is still smiling, satisfied with his take on the joke, delicately cutting a tiny piece of chicken, as he answers, right before guiding the fork with the tiny piece of meat to his mouth.
“Because you can’t tell Julia about your fears of her brother-in-law recognizing you as a vampire.”
Yep, that's definitely why.
My parents teased me mercilessly until the end of dinner, but as I laid in my coffin to sleep
(Just kidding, I sleep in a very regular bed.)
As I laid in my bed to sleep, I knew at the bottom of my heart, that my life was going to change irrevocably in the next day. And it was just about time!
