Page 31 of Surprise! I'm Engaged To My Boss
“I’m engaged,” I declared in one breath, after endlessly trying to bring up the subject after dinner, while we were still sitting at the kitchen table.
I gave our previously rehearsed version of events, which mixed lies with some real situations. I told her that, during the company party, he proposed to me in a completely spontaneous and unplanned way, so we ended up improvising with beaded rings bought at a stand there.
However, I told her that he intended to formalize everything with our families by giving me a real ring during the dinner he would host at his mansion the following Saturday.
I looked down for a moment, noticing that, sitting on the floor, even Waffle was looking at me curiously, as if he had understood my sentence to the point of knowing that it didn't make any sense. My lastrelationship had been at the end of college, and that had been almost three years ago.
I was pretty sure my grandmother was convinced I had plans to become a nun.
That, of course, was because she had no idea what I’d done at the company party.
I looked back at her and noticed that she was blinking insistently, as if trying to find logic in those words.
“But why didn't you tell me anything, dear? Why did you hide your relationship from me?”
That question would be the worst to answer.
“It's just... I didn't want to tell you anything while... you know... while...”
“You still weren't sure about your feelings?” she added, looking at me with those kind, dreamy eyes of hers.
I honestly wasn’t sure about my feelings for Michael Turner. It was something like ‘I want him to disappear off the face of the earth’—what was I supposed to call that?
Well, it didn’t really matter.
“Yes, Grandma. Exactly. We met a short time ago, you know? And things happened a little too quickly...”Quicklyin the sense of losing your virginity to someone you talked to for a few hours, both of you completely drunk, and getting engaged on the same night.
But then again, it wasn't something worth mentioning. It was something, in fact, that I intended to erase from my mind.
“Oh, dear... come on, tell me, who's the lucky guy? If he was at the party, he works in the same office as you, doesn't he?”
“So, grandma... He's kind of my boss...”
She made a horrified expression.
“Are you talking about the guy who stole your project?”
“Ew, no! Not at all! When I sayboss,I mean a bigger boss...”
“Someone superior to him in the company?”
“Let's say...Thesuperior ofeveryonein the company.”
“My child... you are not talking about...”
“Yes, grandma, that's right. I'm dating Michael Turner.”
“I knew it, Cami! I knew there was something very strange about your dismissal. Now everything makes sense.”
The statement made me a little tense.
“What do you mean everything, grandma?”
“Well, you didn't know how to deal with your feelings, you were afraid that he would think you were a gold digger, and that's why you quit. You thought it was a forbidden love, didn't you, my love?” She held my hands across the table.
Like any good bookstore owner, my grandmother loved books. All types of books. From classics to modern ones, from horror to fantasy, including suspense, self-help, biographies and even the now out-of-fashion coloring books. But her favorites would always be romance novels. The more clichéd they were, the more she loved them. And what she told me was simply the most perfect plot of a clichéd boss and employee trope.
But my life was not a romance novel.
