Page 52 of Surprise! I'm Engaged To My Boss
“Yes, you were singingEndless Love.”
“What?” we both asked in unison.
"Endless Love. You know... Lionel Richie and Diana Ross? ‘My love... There's only you in my life...’" she sang softly. And she wasn’t even that off-key, but it still made my head hurt.
Michael Turner had gotten engaged to a woman while Endless Love played in the background. How rock bottom was that for a former heartthrob like me?
“Okay, I get it, we knowEndless Love,” I cut her off. “And after that?”
“You said you wanted to buy rings that matched your image to formalize your commitment to the most seductive woman you had ever seen in your life.” She let out a sigh and I thought again about all the tackiness of those attitudes. “So, I showed you the rings and you chose the ones you liked the most.”
“How much did they cost?” Camila’s question had no relevance to our investigation, but I understood her objective.
Well, she said she would have sex with me if we made some kind of commitment. I think that after a condition like that, knowing the price of the agreement must be important to her.
“Oh, they were the cheapest. They cost eight dollars each.”
"Eight dollars," Camila repeated slowly, shooting me a less-than-friendly look right after. "Very fitting for someone like me..."
What was she even complaining about? She hadn’t held up her end of the deal. I spent eight bucks for nothing—she fell asleep as soon as we got to the room.
And later, I gave her a ring with a massive diamond, worth more than everything on that entire hippie stand combined.
The girl continued, “You were in doubt between that one and another model. It was your best man who helped you choose.”
Camila and I looked at each other, both of us on alert at those words.
“We had a best man?” I asked.
The girl laughed.
“Wow! You really don’t remember that? You were really drunk. You invited Julian to be your best man.”
“Julian?” What the hell, I didn't know anyone with that name.
But, to my pleasant surprise, he was not a stranger to the woman.
“He usually worked in the hotel kitchen, but that night he was assigned to be a waiter.”
“Does he work here?” Camila asked.
“He used to. He resigned, or was fired, I don't know, a few days ago. What a shame, he was a very nice guy.”
I paused, trying to organize the information in my mind. Camila and I had actually talked about the possibility of some hotel employee acting as an accomplice in all of this, and now it was as clear as day.
I had no idea what to ask from there, but Camila was smarter than me:
“Don’t pay attention to my fiancé, he’s really absent-minded. Of course we know who Julian is, he was so nice to us that night, we couldn’t help but invite him to be our best man. We really wanted to get him a wedding invitation too, it’s a shame we don’t know where he lives.”
“He lived nearby, it would be easy to find out where, but now it will be more difficult because he moved. I think he even left Los Angeles.”
“Where did he go?” I asked, hoping she had the answer.
To my dismay, she didn't. “I have no idea. Julian was friendly, but he never really opened up to any of his coworkers.”
We tried to ask a few more questions, but the saleswoman didn't have anything else that could help us. So, we thanked her for everything, she hugged us, waved an incense stick around us saying that it would bring us happiness in love and much fertility so that we could have many children – which left Camila completely red again – and we said goodbye.
Chapter twenty-three
