by P. R. Mason
"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 i
mpress 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."
"You know what I mean," I screamed in frustration. "The brownie made you like me like me when you don't really—"
"Before we's lost in 'like mes'," Aunt Vandi inserted. "I tell you nothin in dat potion I gave you 'cept cinnamon, mint and a few red pepper flakes."
We all fell silent at her words. A few shocked seconds passed before I fully realized the importance of what she'd said.
"Then Nathan wasn't drugged," I mumbled.
"Yeah," he said. "I already told you that eating that brownie only gave me the excuse I needed to act on feelings I've had since freshman year."
A happy bud of giddiness took root inside me. "So really, there was no magic at all involved."
"I won give powerful magic to the irresponsible hands of chil'en," Aunt Vandi said.
I couldn't really protest the irresponsible part. We had accidentally poisoned Nathan. Or we would have if the brownie had been truly tainted.
Aunt Vandi gave an enigmatic arch of her eyebrow and one side of her lips curved up. "But aint it nice you got zactly what you wished fo?"
I thought about it, and she was right. She'd said the love potion would get Ronny to take me to the dance and that I'd get love. Even though she hadn't given me an actual love potion, I couldn't help thinking the root doctor had done something magical. But anything she'd done had only nudged Nathan into admitting feelings he already had and had kind of made me do the same.
"You're right." I said. "I didn't get what I thought I wanted but I got what I really wanted. Thank you."
Aunt Vandi inclined her head. "You mose welcome, chile."
Nathan took my hand and dropped a kiss on my smiling lips.
"Come on, Istanbul. Let's go back and finish our date. There's a refreshment table to explore. Maybe they have my new favorite food: brownies."
"I think they're my new favorite too." Squeezing his hand, I went up on tiptoes and kissed him back.
# # #
FATED HEARTS
Chapter One
"Let's go behind the bleachers and do the nasty, Eve." Hot breath tinged with spittle sprayed against my neck as Quinn shouted in my ear to be heard over the booming throb of the music.
My date was ruining the song—one of my favorites by Kanye.
Quinn sidled closer, pulling at the open collar of his white dress shirt as if to give me a view of the expanse of his hairy chest. He pressed against my side, making me cringe. Inching backward, my spine met the cold concrete block of the gym wall.
Almost the entire high school might be here at the Fall Fling dance, but it wasn't so crowded that he needed to invade my personal space. Bad enough the perennial dirty-sock smell of the gym threatened to overcome me, but Quinn and his liberally applied cologne made me want to gag.
Oh why had I agreed to go on this date? Just because Lashonda pushed me?
"He's popular," she'd said. "And your school rep could use a infusion of popular."
A small bit of help with my social standing at Richard Johnson Academy— known to students as Double Dick—now didn't seem any kind of inducement. Heck, being voted home coming queen wouldn't be worth this horrid date.
"Come on, Eve. I'll play Adam," Quinn said with a chuckle. "Get it? You're Eve and I'm Adam? Adam and Eve?"
"Yeah," I drawled. "Hilarious. I've never heard that one before."
He hooted a laugh, grabbed my upper arm and tried to pull me into an embrace. In response, I twisted out of his grasp.
"Back off, buddy."
"Okay," Quinn said. "You don't wanna do the full tilt boogie. We can just go make-out a little. We gotta capitalize on this sitch, ya know? No one'll notice if we sneak away." He paused for effect before continuing. "I'll even let you touch it."
Eww. That was supposed to be an enticement?
Before I could even flinch, Quinn's hand shot toward me and he molested my breast.
"Hey, stop it." I twisted and stepped way from the wall pushing against his chest with both hands. His big body barely moved. My strength was puny against his two hundred pounds, but I slapped at him anyway. The impact on his rock hard bicep had no more effect than would a gnat wing. "Do I have to scream?"
His eyes widened and his mouth opened. Of course Quinn had a slack-jawed expression even at the best of times, but I detected genuine surprise at my rejection. Why did most of the girls at school think he was so handsome?
"Wha'sup?" He demanded. "Riding the red dragon?"
"What?"
"Your period."
"No, you jerktard," I shouted.
At the moment I flung the insult, my eyes collided with a gaze from a few feet away. A guy I'd never seen at school before was staring at me with a scary intensity, but at the same time I found his gaze exciting. With furrowed brows, the guy turned an angry glare on Quinn, which gave me a chance to appraise his looks without being too obvious.
I couldn't find anything to criticize. His blond hair had a slight wave to it and when combined with his high cheekbones and full lips, the effect was definitely hot. Something about the guy was so familiar, but I couldn't place him.
Just then his eyes returned to me. The word Holden drifted into my head almost as if I knew his name. We'd never spoken...had we?
I would have thought I knew the guy from elementary or middle school but my family had only moved to Savannah, Georgia, in the last year.
Dragging my attention from the hottie, I turned back to my date. "I don't have a red dragon. And I find you extremely gross."
Mrs. Gazardi, the school's guidance counselor who was chaperoning the dance, approached us and spoke.
"Everything okay here, Eve?"
Wanting with every fiber of my being to rat out Quinn for his bad behavior, I nevertheless said "I'm fine, Ma'am."
My date examined his feet and mumbled something unintelligible.
Mrs. Garzardi must be old— at least fifty by my estimation— and she didn't possess particularly beautiful features. But she was striking and unusually graceful. The way she wore her silvery hair pulled back into a chignon and the long flowing robe dresses she favored, accentuated the fluidity with which she moved.
For a few moments she examined me with a penetrating thoroughness. Her perusal gave me the feeling she could see the handprints on my dress from Quinn's groping. Mrs. Gazardi's lips compressed in an angry line and her brows knitted as she turned to cast a disapproving glare on Quinn.
What I saw next caused me to start in surprise. It was as if a light bulb switched on inside her, illuminating her skull so that it became faintly visible under her skin
.
The spotlights in the otherwise dark gym must be shining on her face in a funky way to cause such an eerie effect, I thought.
After a few rapid blinks, the illusion faded as quickly as it had come.
Mrs. Gazardi turned back to me with a placid smile. "Have fun you two." Then she addressed Quinn. "But not too much fun."
She spun on her heel and started away and as she moved the lighting had more tricks for me. Along her shoulder blades there seemed to be a ripple of movement under her dress, as if she'd trapped birds in that voluminous garment and they were struggling to break free.
Ridiculous. Could someone have slipped me a roofie? No. Impossible. Not that I'd put it past Quinn, but I hadn't had anything to drink that night.
Quinn muttered, "Nosey biddie."
"She's very nice," I defended. "And if you pull any more crap on me, I'll report it to her."
"Whatever." With a pfffffffft sound Quinn waved a hand and rolled his eyes. "I'm gonna go get some punch and give you time to remember you're here with a star of the football team. Maybe when I get back you'll be less agro and more with the gratitude and appreciatin'."
"Starting your Christmas wish list early, are you?"
"Huh?"
"Never mind. Go get the punch."
As soon as he walked away, Lashonda hurried over from across the dance floor. Well, she hurried as fast as someone could as she teetered on six-inch stiletto heels.
"How's it going?" she asked, clapping her hands and giving an excited wiggle in her skin-tight, spandex, purple mini-dress.
I wasn't the DUFF in our friendship, but Lashonda was definitely the more gorgeous of the two of us with her cocoa skin and dark eyes. By contrast my skin was pale and my hair a feathery, flyaway brown mess unless trapped in a ponytail. My frame was slight where Lashonda had curves in all the right places. I was a pre-makeover version of Cinderella to her Nubian princess or a wren to her peacock. Like tonight for instance. My flouncy-skirted cream dress paired with ballet slippers washed out in comparison to her flamboyance.
I'd long ago gotten used to the way guys drifted from me to her almost as if I'd turned invisible.
So when she wiggled, Lashonda drew the lustful gaze of every guy within fifty feet—and some gals—except, that is, the gaze of the guy I thought of as Holden. He still had his attention firmly on me.