Love Potion No. 19
Alicia Blade

I'm so glad you're enjoying so far! Hope this story will continue to meet your fancy!

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Okay, now you can read.

Love Potion No. 19
Chapter 2: Love is Mom Knows Best

"I think she's coming around."

"Is she okay? Usagi-chan? Can you hear me? God, I hope I didn't poison her…"

Usagi groaned and her eyes slowly fluttered open. The world was still spinning around her, but it gradually stilled, leaving only a light pounding in her head. She rubbed sleepily at her eyes and forced herself to sit up. She was in the back room of the arcade, spread out on the old thrift store sofa. Motoki was kneeling beside her with a glass of water and Minako stood behind him, chewing nervously on her fingernails. Mamoru stood in the doorway, rubbing his head with a dishtowel.

Her heart jumped in her chest as she looked at him, though he wasn't paying attention to her. Her throat ran suddenly dry; her palms became sweaty.

"Look how flushed you are! Usagi-chan, drink this."

She shakily took the glass from Motoki and held it to her lips. The water was cold and refreshing on her tongue, but when Mamoru's eyes suddenly focused on her, she found herself choking. Turning away as blood crept quickly into her cheeks, Usagi tried desperately to calm her spinning emotions.

"Are you okay, Usagi-chan?" Minako whined nervously, kneeling down beside her.

"Y-yeah. I'm okay," she breathed, analyzing the ugly brown pattern of the sofa, anything to keep her mind away from Mamoru's gloriously piercing stare. "What happened?"

"You passed out."

"Passed out?"

"Don't you remember?" asked Minako nervously. "You passed out right after you…"

Usagi looked up to see her friend biting her lip and looking back at Mamoru. It was obvious that she was trying not to laugh hysterically, but a short chuckle escaped, anyhow. Mamoru rolled his eyes.

"Right after I what?"

She turned to Motoki, who was beginning to turn pink in his own attempts not to laugh.

"What did I do?"

Minako burst into a fit of mad giggles. "You dumped your shake on Mamoru's head! Don't you remember? It was the funniest thing I've seen all week!"

At the girl's outburst, Motoki broke down as well.

Mamoru sighed in irritation. "I'm glad someone found it amusing." Then his eyes met Usagi's once more and he frowned, the towel draped around his neck. She was staring at him with wide eyes and all color drained from her face. The glass was held, forgotten, in her fingers as her parched lips quivered in shock.

"I did what?" she whispered.

Mamoru quirked an eyebrow in the annoyingly sexy way he normally did and Usagi tried to keep the butterflies in her stomach calm. Her attempts were in vain.

"She doesn't remember," he snorted, shaking his head. "How convenient."

After setting the glass down on the floor, Usagi raised her hands to her mouth, still peering at the dark-haired man as the first signs of tears appeared in her eyes. "I… I'm so sorry."

Motoki and Minako's laughter ceased abruptly and they turned to stare at her. Mamoru took a startled step back.

"You're what?"

"Excuse me?"

"She must have hit her head when she fell."

Clenching her jaw, Usagi stood and clutched her fists together. "I'm so sorry, Mamoru-san. I… I don't know what I was thinking. I… Please forgive me!" Sniffling, she buried her face in her hands.

Baffled, Mamoru turned from the crying girl to the other stunned occupants of the room. Clearing his throat, he thrust both hands into his pants' pockets. "Fine, Odango Atama, just cut out the drama queen routine, would you?"

She inhaled shakily and bit her tongue, desperately trying to comply with his request.

"Minako, maybe you should take her home?" Motoki suggested.

"Yeah, that sounds… good…" Minako began, suspiciously looking from Usagi to Mamoru, before abruptly shaking her head and mumbling beneath her breath. "No way. Just no way. Come on, Usagi, let's go home."

Wiping her eyes and avoiding Mamoru's gaze, Usagi let Minako usher her out the doorway. She sucked in a sharp breath as her arm brushed Mamoru's sleeve.

Confused, Mamoru and Motoki watched the girls until they had disappeared from sight, then Mamoru turned to his best friend.

"What do you suppose that was all about?" he asked nervously.

"No idea," Motoki responded, scratching at the back of his head. "Maybe we did switch to a new brand of ice cream."

"Usagi, are you sure you're okay?" Minako asked as they meandered up Usagi's driveway.

"Of course, I'm fine. Just tired. Why do you keep asking me that?" Though she tried to keep her tone carefree, even Usagi could tell she had a biting undertone in her voice. She was just so tired of Minako's prodding. Couldn't she see that Usagi didn't want to talk about what had happened?

At least, not before she had the chance to figure out what had happened herself.

Minako tugged on a stand of hair. "Because you still look really pale. And… I mean, come ON. You apologized to Mamoru! It's like the Twilight Zone!"

Usagi cringed. "It's not that strange. I really shouldn't have dumped that shake on him."

Her friend snorted. "Oh, please. Shoulds and Shouldn'ts have never factored into your relationship with him before!"

Usagi halted on her doorstep and swung around to face Minako, her eyes wide. "Relationship? What relationship? We don't have a relationship, Minako! Whatever you think you know, you're wrong! There's nothing between us at ALL!" Usagi clamped her lips shut and lowered her eyes. "At all," she repeated quietly.

Minako nodded suspiciously. "Right, Usagi. Maybe you should go lay down."

Nodding, Usagi sighed and turned away, disappearing into her house without so much as a goodbye. Minako shook her head in disbelief and turned to begin her jaunt to the Cherry Hill temple. She was dying to tell someone about the day's events, and couldn't wait to see the look on Rei's face when she heard about Usagi dumping a shake on Mamoru's head. She would go ballistic!

Usagi threw herself onto her bed, buried her face as deep as she could into her pillow, and screamed. When she ran out of breath, she craned her neck, took a deep breath and looked around the room to see that Luna wasn't there, then clutched the pillow up around her ears and screamed again.

Her life was over.

The world should have stopped turning. The sun had no reason to go on shining.

Everything was useless. Pointless. Helpless.

She kicked her feet roughly at the comforter and pounded her fists into her mattress. When the aggression died down a moment later, she pulled the dejected blankets close to her and cried into them for a long time, wishing she could suffocate herself. Feeling that even the tears she couldn't stop were pointless, because they could help no one, least of all herself.

Her life was over.

He hated her.

"Usagi, honey, are you alright in there?"

The tears she couldn't stop, stopped. Sitting up, she rubbed at her nose with a sleeve. "Yeah, Mom, I'm fine."

"Can I come in?"

She hesitated, catching a glimpse of her swollen, red eyes in the vanity mirror.

"Yeah."

Ikuko opened the bedroom door, took one look at her daughter, and rushed to her side, cooing, "Oh, sweetheart, what happened? What's wrong?"

Her sympathy went straight to Usagi's heart and she collapsed onto her mother's chest, sobbing desperately again. Ikuko patiently soothed her hair and whispered all the right words that moms know to say, but Usagi's crying hardly ebbed.

"Oh, Mom!" she managed to gasp out in between her sobs. "It's not… fair!"

"I know, honey. It's just not right. It's not fair at all. I know. I know."

She had no idea.

But Usagi believed her, anyway, and after a few more minutes of painful crying, she managed to pull her breath under control and pry herself away from her mom's comforting arms.

"Tell Mama what happened," Ikuko prodded when she thought her daughter's breath was steady enough.

Usagi bit her lip and fought to stay calm, feeling that every second brought the threat of more tears. She stared numbly at the checkered pattern of her bedspread as she wrung it between her fists. "Well…," she gushed miserably, "there's this boy."

Ikuko forced down a smile. Of course there was this boy.

Usagi inhaled a deep breath, and it was as though that one simple confession had removed the blockade on her voice. She had to tell someone or she would explode, and who better to tell than her mother who loved her and would never judge?

"And I love him!" she wailed. "And he's everything to me, Mom, everything! He's night and day and life and death and he's perfect! And I'm so crazy about him I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about it, because he makes me so nervous and so giddy and my life isn't worth living without him in it. And he's smart and he's witty and he's charming and dashing and chivalrous and tall and, oh, mom, he has this face that you would not believe! It's the kind of face you just want to stare at and never stop staring at and when he smiles, which, okay, isn't all that often, but when he does! It's like…. It's like…" Usagi sighed longingly and fell back against her pillow, hugging her comforter tightly to her chest. "It's like nothing I've ever seen before."

Reaching forward to hold onto her daughter's hand, Ikuko asked gently, "So why were you crying?"

The pain came crashing into her daydreams and Usagi blinked back more tears. "Because he hates me."

"Oh, don't be silly, Usagi."

"He does! It's true! I swear it! He thinks I'm stupid and klutzy and ditzy and now he thinks I'm rude and immature to boot! And I can't take it. I can't survive without him. Knowing that he thinks… that he hates me!" She wailed and pulled her pillow from underneath her and held it tightly over her face again.

Sighing, Ikuko gently patted her daughter's leg, thinking of all the things she could say that wouldn't help. There are other fish in the sea. You're still too young to be thinking about love, anyway. If he doesn't like you, he doesn't deserve you. You're a special girl and you'll find someone special. He doesn't know what he's missing.

Instead, she shook her head and said, "Darling, you're giving up far too easily."

The sobs subsided again and Usagi slowly took the pillow away from her face. She looked at her mom speculatively to see if she had heard correctly, and to see if the woman was joking, before slowly sitting up again.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, if you're so in love with him, then you have to fight for him. Of course, if he isn't worth fighting for, then there isn't much of a problem, is there?"

"Oh, but he is worth fighting for!" she exclaimed, eager to shout his praises to the world.

"Then why aren't you fighting?"

Her momentary surge of power faded and Usagi slumped forward with a sigh. "Because he hates me!"

"How can anyone possibly hate you, Usagi? You're the most lovable girl in the world. I should know. I raised you that way."

Her daughter snickered. "You don't get it, Mom. You weren't there. You didn't see what I—Oh! How could I have been so stupid?"

"What exactly did you do?"

She twiddled her thumbs and cleared her throat nervously. "Well… I… er…"

"Usagi?"

"I… kind of… sort of… dumped my milkshake on his head."

If Usagi hadn't looked so desperately miserable at that moment, Ikuko was sure she would have been on the floor rolling with laughter. She had raised a little spitfire, that was for sure. "I see," she said, biting the inside of her mouth to keep from chuckling. "And… why?"

Usagi's forehead creased in a frown. "I don't remember. He was teasing me. I think."

"You think?"

"Yeah, well… That's what usually happens, anyway. But this afternoon it all happened so fast. And I was feeling kind of woozy and tired and it's all blurry in my mind. I can't remember exactly what happened. Except one minute Motoki was giving me this shake and the next I was waking up in the storage room and Mamoru had milkshake in his hair. Oh, but he did look cute rubbing his head with that dishtowel." She giggled as her mind wandered and didn't notice the strange look her mother had leveled on her.

"I'm sorry, back up, I think I missed something," Ikuko interrupted, holding up a hand. "You woke up in a storage room?"

"Well, it's kind of a storage-room-slash-employee's-break-room, you know?"

"Honey, you fainted?"

"Yeah…"

"Did anyone take you to a doctor? Are you feeling better now?" She touched her palm to Usagi's forehead. "I can bring you a glass of water."

"No, Mom, I'm fine." She swatted the hand away and leaned, glowering, against the headboard. "I think I was just hot or dehydrated or something. I don't know what came over me, really. But I'm doing fine now. Well… in the physical sense, at least." She sighed dejectedly.

Her momentary worry fading, Ikuko shook her head again and tsked her little girl. "Okay, so you dumped your milkshake on the poor boy. It's not the end of the world, Usagi."

"It is too! He'll never speak to me again! He'll avoid me like the plague! As if he didn't despise me enough before, now I really don't stand a chance."

"Of course you do! You're the prettiest girl in Tokyo. All you need to do is apologize for the little mishap and everything will just fall into place. I promise."

Usagi sulkily folded her arms over her chest. "Nothing's ever that easy, Mom."

Ikuko giggled. "Well what else can you do, darling? Develop some elaborate, complicated, psychological scheme to win his heart? Men are simple creatures, Usagi, and I'm sure the solution to your problem is a simple one. So the next time you see him…"

"Mom, that's it!" Usagi shot straight up and slammed a fist into her other palm. "That's what I need! A scheme!" She blinked, and shook her head. "No, no, that sounds way too evil-masterminded. A plan. I'll come up with some elaborate, complicated, psychological plan to win Mamoru's heart. It has to be brilliant! And romantic! And show him all of my wonderful traits and prove to him once and for all that we are meant to be together!"

"Uh, Usagi, I'm not sure you…" She paused, noting the delighted twinkle in Usagi's eyes, and sighed. The look was so much lovelier than the tears of a moment ago and she simply couldn't bring herself to destroy it. "Yes, darling, a brilliant plan. Why don't I bring you some brain food while you get started on that? How do chocolate chip cookies sound?"

Usagi gasped. "Cookies! Oh, Mom, you're a genius! Yes, cookies, my plan will start with cookies! Come on, we'll need to make two, no, three batches at least!" She hopped off the bed and grabbed her mother's wrist, pulling her down the hallway.

"But honey, I meant that the cookies would be for you."

"Oh, Mom, don't be silly. I need to be slender and beautiful to win his heart and you know those cookies go straight to my thighs. But if we make them for him, well, you know what they say: the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach! Now let's get this baking show on the road!"