What’s that mean, you ask? Just me telling interesting memories I remember from the past. Usually “story time” comes up when something or someone happens to remind me of something I totally forgot about until it popped into my mind for whatever reason again. If anyone’s curious, you can read my last story time here.
Anyway, if you’ve been reading my blogs, you know that a few weeks ago I went to a family reunion. Well, while I was hanging out with all my cousins, we were talking about how fun it is when all the family’s together. Then we brought up all the parties we had and then one of my cousin’s decided to bring the thing up to me:
“Hey, remember that one family party when you were like flirting with that one guy?”
And this, my friends, is where the story begins.
Okay, at first I didn’t know what he was talking about until he mentioned “porch swing” and then I finally remembered the exact family party he was talking about and the exact guy. But psh, I didn’t remember everything like the guy’s name or what we talked about or anything. who am i kidding of course i know and i kept walking away from my cousins trying to play it off like it was nothing but they ain’t buying shit
The party they mentioned happened way back in 2009. Several months after I discovered Bring Me the Horizon and several months after I started writing Hayliver. I was in eighth grade and still a little emo kid with black hoodies, band tees, skinny jeans, vans, blinding bangs and all. I think I got a picture somewhere. Lemme look...
Found it!
This was taken the day of the party. Oh god this is embarrassing. Just look at me.
We were all gathering in San Jose to celebrate my great uncle’s 75th(?) birthday and it was a surprise party. Some family flew in and all that and my family being big and fun, the house was packed (we ended up staying at a hotel), my uncle was DJing in the backyard, and of course, my relatives invited some of their friends over. Well, my godmother invited her friend, who decided to bring her son and her brother. Her brother’s the guy I ended up talking to that night.
He was much younger than her, that much I knew from the way he looked. I thought he was cute. And yeah, get this. He looked like Oliver Sykes. YEAH, I KNOW. Well, yeah, Oli at the time. He had on a fucking beanie and the hair and the eyes and he even wore a Drop Dead shirt. HIS NAME EVEN STARTED WITH AN “O”. LIKE. I JUST.
So for probably a good thirty minutes or so, while everyone was hanging out in the backyard, I’d just look at him and each time I tried to go up to him to talk, I’d chicken out and go inside or walk away or something. Like hide behind all my cousins. One of my cousins was all, “Just got talk to him” which is easy for everybody in the world to say when it’s not them and I was all,
But while I was being an awkward and emo idiot, I noticed that he kept looking at me and kept walking near me but nothing happened. So I decided to just forget it and avoid him and ended up sitting down on the porch swing. Then he ended up sitting on it, too. The first thing that came to my mind was like can you not I’m trying to avoid you so I don’t look even more stupid than I already am, ‘kay. We still didn’t talk because we’re both awkward emo teens duh. That was until my godmother came up to us and was all, “Aliya, this is my friend Nancy’s brother.” Alright, for this blog let’s just call this boy Oliver. She introduced me to him and she went on to say, “Oliver, this is my goddaughter, Aliya.” And just like that she walked away and we shook hands and started talking. Guess we needed a little push.
Then I decided to admit to him that I wanted to talk to him but didn’t know how to and he just laughed and replied, “Yeah, don’t worry. I was trying to talk to you too but didn’t get around to it. All I was thinking was huh, this girl looks like she wants to talk. Should I...go to her...or should I wait...for...her...to go to me...?”
I laughed at this and kind of blushed a little. For the rest of the night, we ended up hitting it off. We started talking about music and surprise surprise, he told me he liked Bring Me the Horizon and told me the shirt he was wearing was a Drop Dead shirt and then he showed me his Myspace (GOOD TIMES) and I told him he looked like Oli. Too bad I don’t look like Hayley. Apparently I wasn’t the only one to tell him that. Then I told him how I like to sing and how I was shy about singing in front of people and he told me he played guitar and how one time he was playing a song alone in his room and was singing until he got caught. We had a lot in common and he was really sweet.
Though I was reminded that I was at a family party because some people decided to cock block me. First my younger cousins were telling me they were taking shots of Sprite, then my uncle came to sit next to us. I guess Oliver’s sister knew better because she told my uncle to leave us alone. And like even one of the relatives came up to us and took a picture since they were like capturing all the moments of the party. Don’t know what was so special about our moment to get a picture, but Oliver and I just awkwardly smiled and looked at the camera. To this day, I still never saw that picture.
That’s all I did for the rest of the party. I sat with him on that porch swing until the end of the night. It was even to the point where it was just us in the backyard because everyone else went back inside. I sadly had to go and gave him a hug goodbye, then walked away smiling. Obviously, my parents saw this and when we were driving to the hotel, my parents were all, “Who was that guy you were talking to? What were you talking about? Is he nice?” Yeah, they just wanted to look out for me because I forgot to mention this to you guys.
At the time I was 14. He was 19.
Yeah...
The next day when we went back to the house, some of my cousins and relatives talked to me about it. My godmother was the first one. She was all, “So Aliya, how’d it go with Oliver last night?” and I just said it was nice getting to know him and my cousin was all, “You guys were definitely flirting. Like come on, you two were on the porch swing together.”
Even my great uncle apparently saw us talking last night because he even brought up, “Aliya, I see you met Oliver. He’s a really nice boy and seems like one you’d talk to. He likes music and plays guitar.” FYI, he knew Oliver because he lived down the street. Whatdoyaknow. I haven’t seen him since. I remember he told me to add him on myspace but my stupid self didn’t bother to write down his info to find him on there. I’ve seen his sister a couple of times and even his nephew (her son) but not him. Maybe I’ll see him one day, maybe I won’t. If I ever do, though, I guess it’d be pretty cool. At least I’m not that weird emo kid anymore. I’m barely more mature now. I wonder if he’s changed a lot since then, too.
Ah, well. That’s my boring story for you guys. Hope some of you liked it. Or nah. I’m still writing my Hayliver and I have no idea why it’s taking me forever, but I know I suck. I hope to get it done by the end of the weekend since it’s a four day weekend for me because of Labor Day. Still fun to write it, too. Right now at this point, Hayliver and Melex are conversing. The perfectness is so strong.
Okay, I’m out.
Deuces.