Potionate Love (3 page)

"I do,"
he replied, grabbing and then pulling me toward him.

Gracella
gasped, covering her mouth with her hands.

Before I could
react, Nathan planted a kiss on my lips. But what began as a quick peck soon
turned into a long smooch. The worst part—or the best part—was that
Nathan used his lips like a kissing god. Who would have thought he had it in
him? I tried not to be affected, but I couldn't help moving my lips beneath
his. Almost as if I had no control over them, my arms wound around his neck and
I clung to him as sparklers ignited in my brain. I could have lost half the
gray cells controlling math prowess, and I wouldn't have cared.

Me. Clinging.
Incredible.

I
wanted
my best friend's kisses.

Surreal.

Reality intruded.
Nathan doesn't care about you. He's not
attracted to you. It's that darn brown sprinkle that caused this.
How could
I take advantage of him like this? I didn't want him to kiss me just because he
was under the influence of a love potion.

I pulled away from
him.

"Oh no,"
I murmured.

"Oh
yes." He grinned. "You're my girl now and you're going to the dance
with me, not that jerky jock."

* *
* * *

Standing in front
of the school that night waiting for Ronny to show, I resisted the urge to put
my head in my hands and tear my hair out. First, it would do no good to break
down and go crazy. Second, if I was going to go crazy, I might as well do it
with hair and make-up intact.

After the kissing
debacle, we'd bundled Nathan into
Gracella's
car with
the idea she would drive him out to her aunt's house in search of a cure. He'd
protested.

"Cure?"
he'd said. "I don't need a cure. I feel free. I'm free to finally show
what I've felt since freshman year."

"It's worse
than I thought,"
Gracella
had responded.

"Please do it
for me," I pleaded with Nathan. "Go to see Aunt
Vandi
."

Giving a reluctant
nod, he'd stopped struggling and subsided into the passenger seat.

When I suggested
going with them,
Gracella
shook her head. "No.
You'll only make things worse. We should minimize the effects of this potion
thing."

"What does
that have to do with it?" I demanded.

"Having you
around only accentuates its effects."

"I guess
you're right," I said.

"Besides,"
Gracella
leaned in to whisper as Nathan strained to
listen from the car. "You can't stand Ronny up."

"I
suppose." Suddenly, going to the dance with Ronny was the last thing I
wanted to do.

Five hours had
passed since Nathan and
Gracella
left, and I hadn't
heard a thing from either of them. Neither of them answered their phones or
responded to my texts. Was no news good news or just no news?

Fear clenched at
my stomach. I should go after them, but how? With no car and parents who
weren't going to loan me one, I had no options. Ride around on the bus?
Hardly an effective vehicle for a widespread search.

After taking my
cell phone from my purse, I examined the face. Still nothing.

"Ring you
stupid thing," I shouted at it.

A footstep sounded
behind me, and I heard Ronny laugh. "Is that the factory installed voice
activation command or did you specialize it?"

"Ha.
No," I tried to joke. "I'm just expecting a call."

As if on command,
the face lighted and my ring tone played. A name displayed on the screen:
Gracella
.

"This is
it!" Turning my back to Ronny, my fingers shook as I punched at the accept
call button. "What's happening?"

"I lost
him."

"What!
When?"

"Two hours
ago."

Issuing a noise I
classified between a groan and a whine, I pounded the cell phone against my
forehead. Nathan was out there wandering around in a drugged state. Anything
could happen to him. Fear made me lightheaded...or maybe it was the blows from
the cell phone.

Gracella
was still talking, and I put the phone back to my
ear. "I thought I'd find him again."

"Come get me
and we'll look for him together," I said.

"No. Stay
put. Before he jumped out of the car, Nathan said he had to get ready to take
you to the Science Fair Fiesta. More than likely he'll come to you at the
dance."

"If something
hasn't happened to him," I choked, blinking back tears.

"Nothing's
happened to him,"
Gracella
replied.

"Have you at
least located your aunt?"

"Not
yet."

"Fantastic."

"I'll be
there as soon as I can,"
Gracella
said.
"But I don't know if Aunt
Vandi
can do
anything."

"We have to
try. I don't want Nathan to love me because he's drugged."

"But you want
him to love you."

"No. Yes. I
don't know." Holding my head, I groaned. "What a mess. Just
hurry."

I punched the end
call button and turned back to Ronny.

"Is something
wrong?" Ronny asked, concern shadowing his eyes. "Do you want me to
take you home?"

"No."
Gracella
had been right. Nathan would come here. "No.
It's no big thing. Let's go in."

"You look
really great by the way," Ronny said. "Is that an Angelo
Arguella
dress?"

Blinking, I
glanced down at the purple silk mid-thigh length dress I'd thrown on. "Is
it? I'm not sure. I don't really know designers."

"I don't
either. But my sister has one of his and makes a big deal of it."

His hand went to
my waist, and he led me into the school and to the gym where the dance was
already well under way. The place was packed. Who would have thought there'd be
such a turnout for a science related event?
Any
excuse for a party, I guess
.

Bruno Mars'
It Will Rain
played over the speakers as
couples hung on each other on the dance floor.

We stood in
awkward silence at the entrance until a couple of kids came up behind us. The
guy stepped on my foot and hit my shoulder as he pushed past.

"Excuse
you," the boy said in a nasty tone. He glared at us, before he walked away
pulling his laughing girlfriend behind him.

"We should
get out of the way," I murmured.

Ronny nodded,
staring off across the room. "You
wanna
..."
He cleared his throat before finishing. "Dance?"

"Sure. I
guess."

He didn't even
wait for my reply and was already heading in the direction of the swaying
couples. I trudged after him.

Worry about Nathan
ruined any enjoyment I might have had in the moment. And Ronny wasn't nearly as
fun to be with as I thought he'd be. He didn't have that acerbic sense of humor
I loved. By this time, Nathan would have made insightfully amusing comments
about half the people in the room.

When we reached
the edge of the dance floor area, Ronny took hold and pulled me to him. His
hands rested at my waist, and mine lay on his shoulders as we moved with a
six-inch gap between us. Our dance steps consisted of shifting the weight from
one foot to the other.

The brownie sure
didn't seem to be working. Not that I wanted it to anymore. I was so over this
whole thing and now bitterly regretted I'd ever started it. However, if the
love potion had worn off Ronny, could it have worn off Nathan too?

I couldn't think
of anything to say, and the silence stretched. Finally, I recalled something
Ronny had said earlier.

"So
ummm
. What did you want to talk to me about?" I asked.

"Oh
yeah," Ronny said with a smile. "You're really great at math."

"Thank
you." He'd asked me on a date to say that?

"And I'm
really trying to keep my athletic team eligibility," he continued.

"Okay? But
what—"

"I'm really
bad at math. So I thought you might agree to help me."

"You want a math
tutor?" If he hadn't eaten the brownie, I would have thought he'd only
asked me to the dance to get my help to pass math.

"I'd pay
you," he offered.

"Yeah. I'll
tutor you. I already have a lot of other kids I tutor. What's one more?"

"Really?
Great," he said, a relieved
sigh
escaping him.

Another slow song
started, and we danced with neither of us seeming to make the conscious
decision to continue. As we moved, the tutoring thing bugged me more and more.

"Is that why
you asked me to the dance?" I asked. "So I'd be your math
tutor?"

"Well..."
Ronny stared at his shoes, his head hanging. "Yeah."

When I didn't
respond he hurried to add, "Don't get me wrong, you're
kinda
cute. And you're very sweet agreeing to be my math tutor but I..." His
eyes strayed to a guy standing at the edge of the dance floor. I knew him as
one of Ronny's teammates, but I couldn't remember his name. I didn't know much
about the guy except that I'd seen him with Ronny. A lot. Then, I remembered
I'd never seen Ronny with the same girl more than twice. Like tumblers of a
lock falling into place, the truth occurred to me.

"You're
gay," I said. Obviously, the love potion couldn't trump sexual preference.
No wonder it hadn't really worked on him. "I should have seen it before
when you mentioned the dress."

"What?
No," he protested, fear filling his eyes. "I'm so not gay. You can't
believe I..."

"It's
okay," I reassured him. "I won't say anything. I'm totally not into
outing anyone."

"No one would
believe you anyway," he said almost to himself.

"You're
right. But, you know, there's nothing wrong with being gay."

"Don't say
that." He pushed me away. "I'm not...what you said. Just because I'm
not attracted to you, you get all insulting."

"Okay, okay.
You're not...what I said. Just don't get so upset."

"I'm not
upset!"

Out of the corner
of my eye, I saw a movement as someone approached us: Nathan.

"Hey."
Nathan grabbed Ronny's shoulder and whirled him around. "You better not be
yelling at my girl."

"Your
girl?" Ronny shook his head as if to clear it.

"Yeah she's
mine, and you better keep your
jocky
hands off
her," Nathan shouted.

"Whatever,
man." Ronny held his hands up in surrender and stepped back. "You can
have her."

"Just what do
you mean by that?" Nathan demanded, taking two steps forward, his fists
clenching. "Are you insulting her now?"

"No, dude.
Chill."

"Let it go,
Nathan," I pleaded, putting my hands on his shoulders and holding him
back.

My best friend
twisted around and smiled down at me. "For you, I will."

Taking me by the
waist, he swung me further onto the dance floor. I fell against Nathan's chest,
and my arms went around his neck, clinging. As we moved, I couldn't help
noticing how different dancing with Nathan was. No awkward distance spanned
between us. We were plastered together as we moved in rhythm with my head on
his chest. And I wasn't bored. Even though the dance was slow, my heart pounded
and my breath chugged in and out as if I was doing a tap routine.

Suddenly, I lifted
my head so I could examine Nathan. Something I'd vaguely noticed during the
altercation now became more important. "Hey," I said. "You look
different."

Nathan was dressed
in a blue sport coat over dress shirt paired with khaki pants. His famous mop
of hair had been dyed back to its normal color and styled into a tamer version
of itself. Instead of a nest of tight curls, his inch-long hair was a shiny
mahogany wave decorating his head.

"You cut your
hair," I observed. "And you aren't wearing glasses. Can you see
without those things?"

His
lips quirked into a wry smile.
"Contacts. I had '
em
at home but never bothered with them. But I wanted to
look good tonight. For you."

He did look good.
He looked great. This
hottie
version of Nathan
overwhelmed me.

Oh Lord.
Why couldn't he want to impress
me because he wanted to and not because of some root doctor spell?

Flinching, I
jerked out of his hold, pivoted and marched toward the exit.

"What's the
matter?" he asked as he followed behind.

"What do you
think? You ate the brownie. This isn't you."

Just outside the
gym, I almost collided with
Gracella
and her Aunt
Vandi
.

"Thank
heavens, you're here." I said to the older woman. "You have to do
something about Nathan."

"I don't need
anything done about me," Nathan protested. "Things are just
fine."

"No—"
I began and he interrupted by grasping my arm and pulling me to him for a quick
kiss. I twisted in his grip, turning tear filled eyes to Aunt
Vandi
. "See what I mean?"

"Come
on," Nathan said. "You like me. I know you do."

"Of course I
like you," I replied. "You're my best friend."

"It's more
than that." He gave me a little shake before placing a hand against my
cheek.

My eyes rose to
his and our gazes locked.

"You
responded to my kisses," he said. "You enjoyed dancing with me. You
like me
like me. You don't just like
me."

"Yes," I
admitted. Tugging out of his hold, I felt my face twist in misery. "But
you don't
like me
like me. You just
like me. It's the brownie that likes me likes me."

"How can a
brownie
like you
like you?" he
joked. "A brownie is inanimate...except for those singing ones in the TV
commercial."