Goddamit!

Here he was AGAIN.

Back at my doorstep, this time completely drenched.

"Did you run over in the thunderstorm?" I asked with raised eyebrows, eyes glaring in utter shock, and mouth agape.

Breathless, shirtless, and proclaiming his undying love, was my.....boss? More accurately, my former boss.

I should be flattered. I would be flattered, if I didn’t know it was all fake, all due to some stupid mistake I made at work. As a retail pharmacist, I needed all my wits about me to deal with customers for twelve grueling hours. My intention was to make an “atomic bomb”, my go to hang over cure. The recipe was straightforward: into an 8oz cup of coffee, crack one raw egg, add four crushed 81mg aspirin tablets, one pack of any electrolyte mix, and finish it off with a tablet of Alka Seltzer. It sounded gross, but it was pure magic. No matter how terribly hung over I was, within ten minutes of drinking my concoction, my brain became clear, sharp and headache free.

Instead, I created a powerful love portion. I was so hungover I had mistaken a bottle of some bohemian stuff on the over the counter shelf for Alka Seltzer. When my coffee cup exploded in the break room with just me and my boss present, I knew something catastrophic had happened.

The entire store got shut down, not just the pharmacy department. Emergency responders were alerted. The day became a chaotic, messy, head pounding nightmare. My boss and I got quarantined together for hours. Gradually, I noticed a change come upon him. It started with him invading my personal space while we chatted, and progressed to him touching my knee, my hair, and eventually attempting to kiss me.

He was entranced by me.

There was just one problem, he was already married to the district manager of the franchise that owned our store.

After a year, here he was, still completely smitten by me.

As I stared at him, water dripping from his body and forming a small puddle on the floor in the hallway of my apartment building, a sly thought formed in my mind which I instantly dismissed.

“Maybe, I could make him my baby daddy."

"He’s not gone away, despite all my efforts to discourage his outpour of love.” I reasoned within myself.

"Wait here," I instructed him and walked back into my apartment. I went to the bathroom and got a towel, which I placed on the floor, inside my apartment, next to the door. I opened the door and invited him in. In the warm glow of my apartment, I got a closer look of his shirtless form, and was impressed by his body. He was quite fit for a 45 years old man. A little extra weight around his waist, sure, but he had some muscular definition around his arms, shoulders, and chest.

I walked to my closet to find my largest T-shirt and sweatpants. While I rummaged through my closet, I had more time to think.

"Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Maybe I can use this to my advantage somehow," I thought.

I had spent the last year researching how to reverse a love spell. I had tried different antidotes, yet none of them proved effective at ridding him of his infatuation with me. I even quit my job and moved, just to avoid his love proclamations. He found me, again.

On the other hand, I’ve always wanted kids. Except I was too busy. I never had the time or energy to cultivate romantic relationships that led to a stable partner to procreate with, and I wasn't getting any younger.

"Maybe I can get him to donate his sperm," I reasoned internally. He was the most brilliant person I had ever known. Our genes combined would make some intellectually gifted children.

Twelve years later, and he still dotted on me.

Breakfast in bed, date nights on the river, taking care of the kids in the morning while I slept in. Our love story was unconventional, but I had fallen in love, slowly. Day after day, his unequivocal devotion to me was like an undying flame which eventually thawed my frozen heart. What started as a farce, a phony, a fake, gradually, materialized into true love? Infatuation? Dedication? Commitment? I wasn’t sure exactly. But whatever it was, I was in it for good.

There was no escaping this atomic love.