Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee by Julia Kent

and Amanda’s. Nothing special about her handshake, other than she’s not one of those limp-wristed women who give you their hand like it’s a wet, crumpled napkin they just sneezed in.
    “Colleague?”
    “She’s foked,” Amanda adds helpfully.
    “I work for Fokused Shoprite,” Kari says through gritted teeth.
    “Nice to meet you. I’m—”
    She laughs, showing perfectly straight teeth, her smile making the skin beneath her eyes wrinkle in a friendly way. “I know who you are. Can’t work in Boston and not know who the McCormicks are. So nice to finally meet you.” A quick glance at both our left hands and she smirks. “You’re in much better shape today compared to last night.”
    I tighten my grip on Kari’s hand. Amanda sinks her fingers into my bicep, like a claw.
    “You saw us last night?”
    “Saw you? You crashed my wedding!” Kari exclaims, eyebrows up to her hairline, her laughter a weird mix.
    “Your wedding ?”
    “My work wedding.”
    “What’s a work wedding?”
    “It’s like a work date,” Amanda says with a sigh, as if I’m supposed to have this vocabulary.
    “You’re evaluating DoggieDate, too? You married a dog?” These mystery shopping companies are hard core.
    “Ewwww, no.” She gives Amanda an odd, smug look. “I am getting married fifteen times this week. You crashed wedding number eight. You insisted that the twenty-four-hour drive-up Elvis shop take your order before they finished my wedding. You appeared at the window and asked for a Venti mocha half-caf with cinnamon and peppermint, a twenty-pack of chicken nuggets with marmalade packets, and proceeded to shove marriage licenses through the window.”
    “Marriage licenses!” Our first factual clue. I look at Amanda. “We had marriage licenses made?”
    Plural. She’s saying this in plural. My gut tightens. If I’m going to be a bigamist, being married to two guys isn’t exactly how I’d envision this.
    Four people. Two to the power of four. Sixteen possible marriage combinations.
    Wait! Not exponential. Factorial.
    Screw it. I can’t math right now.
    Exactly how many of those combinations happened last night?
    Hold on. I latch onto hope for the null set. Zero. Best case scenario, zero marriages happened last night.
    Kari nods. “They made you come inside because you tried to have too many weddings done at the same time at the drive-thru. And they were out of chicken nuggets.”
    “Too many? There really was more than one?” Amanda gasps, looking at her ring, loosening her grip on me.
    “You two don’t remember any of this?” She looks at Josh. “You don’t remember hitting on me?”
    Josh goes from pale to the color of fresh snow.
    Amanda folds in half with laughter, then begins moaning with pain, holding her head. “Josh hit on you? Josh can’t look at a vagina without doing an Exorcist imitation! He would never hit on a woman!”
    “His exact words were, ‘Hey, baby, I’d love to see your vagina dentata. Show Daddy some teeth.’”
    Josh faints. Drops to the floor like a sack of bones and Velveeta, resting quietly next to Chuckles, who stands up, still on the leash, and begins head butting Josh with his cone.
    Which still says “WILL SLEEP WITH PUSSY FOR FOOD” on the side in Sharpie. My stomach chooses this moment to growl.
    At that exact moment, a goat walks by, sees Josh, and faints. Now we know Josh’s spirit animal.
    I grab my phone and text Jed, the head of security at Litraeon.
    I text: Goat located next door. Send goat retrieval crew.
    Geordi bends to help Josh, while Amanda tries to laugh and manage her headache.
    “Josh is part goat!” Amanda declares, snickering and groaning in alternating currents.
    Kari and I are the only two reasonably functional people in the room.
    Bzzzz.
    Jed texts back: Sir, we don’t have a goat retrieval crew. Suggestions?  
    I reply: Ask Brona.  
    There. Done. See? Being CEO is easy. You make everyone else do all the work you don’t want to do.