Single.

Halloween Party

When I was twenty-two, I dressed up as a flapper for Halloween. I actually rented a costume, and because I'm tall, it was short. My hair was also short and bleached out platinum as part of the my-parents-are-divorcing rebellion phase.

The coif housed the headband with a feather perfectly. Speaking of feathers, my hair was more of a baby chick yellow color rather than what I had intended, which was an Annie Lennox bad-ass leading female look.

I truly felt like this costume was a huge step up from when my mom dressed me up as a bag of garbage when I was twelve.

My brother showed up in his everyday corduroys, a yellow cropped football jersey shirt, an Afro, and sunglasses. He walked down the stairs and struck some kind of disco pose. We all looked at one another with raised eyebrows and a stunned look of confusion.

"Um. What are you?" I was equally perplexed and pissed off that he put in minimal effort while I ran all over town completing my look down to the last detail.

"I don't know. I just found this stuff in the costume box." Great. He literally spent zero dollars. So typical. He'll show up at the party in true Brando fashion, and everyone will think he is SO COOL.

We were all invited to a house party, hosted by a guy that my brother graduated high school with. My friend Ryan was going to pick me up, and he was bringing his friend Jack who I had a massive crush on. The big issue is that Ryan had a massive crush on me. But Jack looked like a movie star and went to the rival high school, which was really sexy in a very inaccessible kind of way.

We got to to the party, and everyone had already been snacking on loads of specialty baked goods. You could hear that there was an active keg stand happening with a brownie-induced audience cheering wildly.

I opted for a wine cooler because that level of class is what my costume called for.

The keg was in the garage, so I slowly made my way down the rickety wooden stairs ... hyper aware that 87% of my legs were hanging out of the cobalt blue tasseled frock. When I reached the bottom, I was met face to face with Michael. Oh my god, Michael.

Flashback to seventh grade, when I accidentally left my binder in the girls' bathroom. Some horrible pre-teen found it and delivered it to Michael, a sixth grader. All someone had to do was pop open the cover to see that the binder belonged to me, but it was the content drawn all over the front cover that had me wishing I could enter a witness protection program in Nebraska.

"I ❤️ Michael"
"Michael Forever!"
"Aly+Michael"
"Aly Krug"

I could go on, but you get the level of humiliation. So this lands into Michael's hands without me knowing. I was still running around school, frantically looking for this lost item when Michael approached me and simply handed over the item in question. He didn't say a word, and on his face was a terrified blank stare.

Back to the Halloween party and ten years after "the incident". Shit was still weird. I don't think that situation is recoverable.

"Oh...hey Michael. (Tugging at the length of my dress) Um...how's the party?"

Small pleasantries were exchanged and after I completely sweated through my dress, I returned up to my comfort zone: The kitchen with all of the baked people. I immediately locked eyes with Jack and he motioned with his head to follow him. Which of course I did, because I was already drinking wine coolers so my good decision-making skills weren't exactly spot on.

He pulled me into the bathroom which was only lit by a Jack-0-Lantern plug-in night light.

We immediately started kissing, and his hands started to make their way up my legs. All I could hear were my flapper tassels swinging back and forth in a "she she she" kind of fashion.