Buzzfeed, Boys, Black Magic

a warthog wallowing in the mud

Abby woke me around 2:30AM. She was giggling like hyena. My head pounded. I couldn't quite understand what she was saying. There was an empty family-sized carton of pizza-flavored Goldfish crackers beside me. I was covered in Reese Peanut Butter Cup wrappers and orange crumbs. I wasn't wearing pants. I felt like a warthog in a mud bath. A hung over warthog.

"Did you hear what I just said?" Abby shoved me.

I cringed at her and rubbed my arms.

"Your stupid love potion," she said. "It's magic."

"What?" I asked.

"Mike asked me to move in with him!" She squealed. "I'm going to live in a pool house!"

"Okay?" I said, and glanced around. I was still in the living room. I swallowed. Something stringy and dry was in mouth. I tried to cough it out.

"He told me he's in love with me, and that he wants to get serious," Abby hugged her chest, "and the weirdest thing is I'm not even freaked out by it. Like I want to move in with him."

Whatever was in my mouth could not be coughed out.

"A guy can be seriously into me, and I can still find him attractive," Abby beamed.

I reached into my mouth and pulled out a string I must have inhaled from the shag carpet. I gagged.

"You know what this means? I'm not completely broken!" Abby grabbed my arms and shook me. "I might be cut out for adult relationships after all!"

I felt another carpet string in my throat. My eyes began to water.

"Oh no," I gasped.

"Oh yes!" Abby pulled me into a hug. I pushed her away from me.

I managed to make it to the downstairs bathroom before I threw up. Abby- or the strange, love-struck, bubbly person she had become- danced in the hallway outside the bathroom door. I could hear her singing Leona Lewis's "Bleeding Love" as I spat out semi-sweet, Christmas-flavored stomach bile into her mother's toilet.

***

I emerged from the bathroom to find that Abby had situated herself in her bed. She'd pulled out my designated sleeping bag and opened it on her bedroom floor. It took me until I was zipping myself in when I fully realized what Abby had been so excited about.

"So, wait, you're actually going to move in with Mike?"

I would have been bitter that the potion didn't work so well for me, but I had never expected it to. And the sweet half-smile present on Abby's sleepy face made up for any ping of jealously I might have felt.

"I told him I would," Abby said. "It came out so fast, I surprised myself."

"So like, you're not worried about his ex anymore?" I asked.

"We talked about that actually," Abby said. "We talked about a lot of things tonight. I told him I was a little insecure, because I am so different from all the girls he's dated before. He told me that he was the one who broke up with his fiancé. They had different interests. She wants to go into politics. She likes galas and press events and white wine. At the end of the day, he just wants a quiet life next to his family."

"So he's not still in love with her?" I asked.

"He cares about her the way a normal person would care about somebody they almost married," she said.

"I guess they always do say not to date somebody who is bitter about an ex."

"Plus, he told me that because I'm different, he feels differently about me," Abby said. "He was always trying to keep up with his ex. He feels like he can just be himself around me. And everything has been so lowkey and easy."

"So do you, like, love him?" I asked.

"We're very happy together," Abby said.

"But do you love him?" It all seemed very sudden to me. They'd been together for only a few weeks. A month tops. I wasn't sure how you could seriously love a person within a month of the awkward first date. Fall in love- sure, but love-love? Move-in-together love? Abby, for all her devil-may-care-flying-solo attitude, was the last person I'd expect to fall into a whirlwind romance, black-magicked or not.

"I mean," Abby gazed up at the ceiling, "he's different than other guys. I feel things."

"Things?" I asked.

"You know like when you're having a shitty day, and you feel like you have nothing to look forward to?"

"Except being swallowed back up into primordial clay," I nodded.

"And then you remember that you have a new carton of ice cream in the freezer back home?" Abby continued. "So like, you can ignore all the stupid shit flung at you, because you know when you get home you'll have ice cream. You know that feeling?"

"Yeah," I said.

"That's how I feel. I don't know if that's love or not, but it's how I feel. The kicker is that I'll meet a random hot guy, who I know probably has both of his testicles and is taller than Mike and probably stronger than him. I still don't want to date Mike any less. Like, I know I have ice cream at home."

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah," Abby smiled. "Like, he drives me crazy sometimes with his philosophy, but, like, he's still my favorite ice cream."

I supposed that did sound like love.

"How do you feel about Rafi?" Abby asked.

"Like he's perfect and I don't know what he's even doing with me." 

"He doesn't make you feel like you have ice cream in the freezer?"

"I mean," I squinted, "it's more like, somebody gave me a two-scoop cone of some weird foreign-flavor ice cream that I can't afford but is very good and while I'm enjoying it, I'm afraid it's going to melt onto the floor and I won't be able to just go to the Wegmans and buy more of it because it was a fluke that I got it in the first place."

Abby blinked.

"Just the sound of that is giving me anxiety," she said. "Only you could give me anxiety over ice cream."

"We're not all Mikes, you know." I said. "I'm sorry I don't make you feel like you're in a sugar coma."

"He's the sweetest sugar coma," she sighed.

"So like, if things went so well tonight," I asked, "why did you come home? Why not just stay the night?"

"I have work tomorrow, so I was going to have to come home and get my scrubs and shower and stuff. Speaking of which," Abby checked her phone, "I got to sleep."

"Right," I said, as Abby reached for the beside lamp. The idea of Abby getting ready for work reminded me of my own job, and then, the date.

"Wait," I said. Abby froze.

"What time is it?"

"3:22, AM."

"Oh shit." I pulled my phone out of my pocket. "It's the day of the fucking eclipse."

"So?"

"I need to be at work in 18 minutes," I moaned. "I have to bartend for the stupid eclipse viewing party."

"You're kidding?" Abby snorted.

"I wish," I said as I bolted upward. Still zipped into my sleeping bag, I tripped over my feet and fell face first back onto the floor.

***