AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, I do this basically every day.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. It must be one hell of a sandwich. That was the only thing that made sense. Why did I see her going out with her fiancée? It seemed like she was missing all the good parts, like late lunches and sex before the end of day. I knew that if I was engaged to Augustine, she wouldn’t get a lunch alone at a park with a sandwich.
We sat down at a picnic table, and I told her how good the sandwich was. I didn’t want to know how it was perfect, just that I was there, sharing it with her.
“Let’s talk about that ring on your finger, Augustine.”
Augustine waved me off. “I wish we wouldn’t.”
“That doesn’t sound like something you would say when you were engaged. I thought that women loved to talk about that sort of thing.”
“Remember when you told me that I should let you know when you are being chauvinistic, I am supposed to let you know?”
I crinkled up my nose. “Yeah, why?”
She pressed her lips together and gave me a smile that told me that I was there. I reheard what I said, wasn’t too sure where I went wrong, and just shook it off. “I just meant to say that most newly engaged people are excited to talk about it. They look happy about it. Why don’t you?”
It was an honest observation that was a bit hard to understand. I didn’t know who she was engaged to, and I wanted to know. Why wasn’t she gushing to me about how happy she was? Whether it was an assumption or not, she should have wanted to at least tell me. Shouldn’t she be bursting with happiness? Augustine was not.
“It just seems to not be very professional.”
I waved her off and told her that it was fine. I was asking, interested. We’d worked together for months now, and I wanted to know about her life. I also wanted to know who had won her heart. What I was going to do with that information I had no idea. I did know that it wasn’t going to be easy.
“I don’t think you have met him.”
I waited for more, but Augustine was unusually tight-lipped. When I asked her how long she had been engaged and when the big day was, she looked away for a moment. “The wedding is going to be in a couple of months, and it all happened last weekend.”
“What happened?”
Another pause and Augustine’s face got red. “You know, the engagement.”
I commented how fast that was, and it wasn’t because I was expecting her to answer. I was more or less talking to myself. I am not sure how it happened. One minute everything was fine and the next, not so much. Now Augustine was getting married, and I never got to tell her how I really felt. That was going to get to me. I was always going to wonder what could have happened between us.
“My family is old school, and I don’t know, it was just one of those things. Everything happened so fast and the next thing I know, I am engaged.”
It was the way she said it, like she was as surprised as I was. Alarm bells were going off in my head. Something was off. I could feel it, but I had no idea what it was. I tried to ask her but realized that I couldn’t put it into words just yet.
“Congratulations.”
Augustine winced and said that it was nice of me to say so. I was right in the beginning when I said she wasn’t acting in a way that made sense. She should be happy, right? She was getting married, but why did I get the feeling that Augustine had less say in it than she should have?
I decided that for whatever reason, I was nosey, and I was going to figure out what was going on with Augustine and her fiancée, whoever that was. There had to be a way to flush out the new couple. I would think on it, as I always did. I’d been eying Augustine too long to let it go that easily. I had to get to the bottom of it, then I could make my next move.
4
Augustine
Lunch was weird with Derrick, and I was grateful when it was time to get back to work. He had several meetings that I now didn’t have to call and cancel. I thought I would have to earlier when he took off. I hadn’t known if or when he was going to be back.
Derrick was quiet on the way back to the office. That was fine with me, because all he had been asking about was an engagement that I didn’t want to talk about. He had me thinking about it again. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted him to not ask questions, because I didn’t want to think about it. The engagement was still hard to wrap my head around. It was one of those scenarios that wasn’t even real. It didn’t seem to be. It felt like I was living in la-la land. What else could it be?
A promise was made when I was younger. I come from a family that expected me to be married before I was twenty-five. After that, I was too old in many eyes, so I had that long to find my true love. I was about to be twenty-five in a couple of weeks and since I hadn’t found my one true love, my family had some guy waiting in the wings for me. When I went to visit my mother last, she had Dalian there, and he proposed.
I’d sat there in shock, not sure what to do. It was from my mother’s steady encouragement that I said yes. I really didn’t have a chance to say anything else about it. One minute I was living my life, checking on my mom, and the next minute I was getting married to a man that I didn’t even really know. He was about the same age as me and was ready to settle down and have kids. I would be too, eventually.
It wasn’t just that I was getting railroaded into marriage either. It was what was going to happen afterward that worried me the most. My new husband would expect me to quit my job. He didn’t see a job as an assistant as very important. My job would be to stay at home and make his life better wherever I could. It wasn’t easy to do this. I had never imagined my life in such a way, but what other choice did I have? There was duty involved, wrapped up in family and it felt like I couldn’t refuse, without letting a whole lot of people down in the process.
I was happy for the freedom of my office, the feeling of not having Derrick right next to me, practically touching me in the car was better. I could breathe again. I knew that I didn’t have much longer to work with him, and I was going to miss him. It wasn’t just the freedom and the professional side of me that I was going to miss. I was going to miss Derrick in particular. When I first started working there at Leyland’s International, I had fantasies about my boss sweeping me off of my feet. I waited for him to make a move, say or do something inappropriate, but he never did. Sadly, I wanted him to.
