Love Potion

"May the man who drinks this tea
Fall hopelessly in love with me."

Tanya felt sillier than she ever had in her life as she whispered that rhyme. She poured the contents of the tiny rose colored vial into a cup of tea and stirred it exactly three times.  She wondered if it really made any difference if you stirred it three or four times.  However, the old woman in the dusty little shop where she had bought the vial had given her very strict instructions.

I paid for this so I'm going to do it right, Tanya thought as she finished the ritual.  Lord knows, I've done everything else I can think of to get Jeffrey's attention.  If a love potion doesn't work I'm out of ideas.

Tanya had been fascinated with Jeffrey since the first day he had come into the cafe where she worked.  It was a fascination she didn't really understand.  He wasn't the best looking man she had ever met.  Except for extraordinary eyes the color of blue spruce trees, he was an average looking guy.  His personality was nothing special, either.  He was polite and quiet, usually sitting alone with his face stuck in a newspaper or book. He would not have interested Tanya in the least, except he treated her in a way no other man ever had.  He ignored her.

Nearly six feet tall, with a beauty queen's body, ice blue eyes, and a cascade of black curly hair, Tanya was not used to men ignoring her.  She had been able to turn them into salivating idiots since she was thirteen.  Men didn't come to the cafe for the food as much as they came to watch Tanya deliver it.  However, her repertoire had no effect on Jeffrey.  Sometimes she thought that she could have stripped naked and danced on the table in front of him and he wouldn't have noticed.

"Forget about him," her best friend Carol advised.  "He's probably married or gay or something." 

Tanya doubted that he was either one.  If he was married, he didn't wear a ring.  Besides, married men still enjoyed looking at attractive women, even in the presence of their wives.  She was pretty sure that he wasn't gay because she had seen him on dates with women before, although never with the same one twice.  When he was with a woman, he was Mr. Chivalry, holding doors and pulling out chairs.  When his date talked to him, he looked directly into her eyes as if what she was saying was the most important, interesting thing he had ever heard.  That made Tanya furious for some reason.  She told herself that he looked into their eyes because none of them had breasts that were worth ogling.   

Well, here goes nothing, she thought as she placed the tea on a serving tray along with Jeffrey's food.  With my luck, it will be poisonous and he'll fall over dead after drinking it.  That thought almost made her pour out the tea and replace it but she shook her head, picked up the tray, and carried it to Jeffrey's table.

"Here's your order, Jeffrey," she said sweetly as she placed it in front of him, leaning down to give him the best possible view of her cleavage.

"Thank you," he mumbled, picking up the teacup and turning back to the book he was reading.

"Hey Tanya, you have orders getting cold back here!" yelled the cook. 

As Tanya waited on other customers, she watched Jeffrey out of the corner of her eye. She half expected him to start choking and gagging, but he just sipped the tea and read his book. I wonder how long it will take the potion to work, if it works at all, she thought. I probably paid that old woman fifty dollars for a vial of water.

Suddenly, there was a clatter of silverware falling to the floor as Jeffrey jumped out of his chair, threw a twenty dollar bill on the table, and rushed out of the cafe, his face red.

Oh no, it made him sick, Tanya thought, her heart racing. She was ready to run after him, but the door opened and he returned.  His face was no longer red, but pale, as if he might throw up or faint. 

Tanya almost fainted herself, because Jeffrey walked up to her and said "Tanya, may we talk privately?"

"Of course," she said and led him to a table in the back of the room.

"I-I'm sorry to cause such a commotion," he said.  "I just--Oh I'm just going to come out and say it!  I think you're beautiful and I was wondering if I could take you to dinner, sometime, soon, tonight if you want--I'll understand if you don't want to--"

"Of course I want to," Tanya interrupted, taking his hand.  She wrote her address on a napkin and handed it to him.  "Pick me up at seven.  I have to get back to work now.  See you later."  She kissed him on the cheek and watched his eyes light up like candles. On his way out of the cafe, he bumped into the door as he turned to wave to her.

I guess that potion wasn't water, Tanya thought as she watched him go.  She hadn't really thought about what she would do if the potion did work. Until now, she had just wanted Jeffrey because she couldn't have him. She wouldn't be ready to settle down with one guy for years, if ever.  Jeffrey was sweet, though, so it might be fun to go out with him a few times. She went back to work, looking forward to seven o'clock.

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Jeffrey walked down the street with thoughts of Tanya racing through his head.  He wondered why he had never noticed how beautiful she was before.  He vaguely remembered being turned off by her confidence and in-your-face sexuality, but he no longer felt that way.  When he looked at her now, he saw the love of his life, the woman he wanted with him forever.  He had been in love before, but all of those women had been afraid of commitment.  He had just wanted to make them happy, but each of them had rejected him for reasons he did not understand. 

"We've only had one date!" one former lover had shrieked.  "You want to get married after one date?"

They had all disappointed him, so much that he could no longer bear to see them.  He took them all to places where he would never have to look at them again.  One was buried in the woods outside of town, one was at the bottom of a lake, and a third was deep in a cave upstate.  Now he knew that those relationships did not work out because he was destined to be with Tanya.  It would be different with her. He knew that when he proposed to her tonight, she would say yes. They would be together forever and she would never disappoint him, because he was hopelessly in love with her.  Hopelessly.