"Mom, Bradley, let's go! These dozens of tables of good food and wine — we'll eat them ourselves!"
They'd barely walked out when the hotel's lobby manager knocked and stepped in, looking uncomfortable.
"Mr. Henson, what exactly is going on out there?"
"A moment ago Miss Swanson was shouting that the groom had changed, telling the emcee to reannounce the wedding party."
"And your relatives are streaming out the doors in droves."
"The kitchen's asking me whether they should still serve the thirty tables of top-tier seafood banquet you ordered."
I wanted to say no, then a thought struck me.
"Serve it. Why wouldn't we?"
"It's their big happy day. Of course the good food and good liquor should go out, every last dish of it."
Eileen and her mother thought I'd already paid off all thirty tables of the banquet in full.
After all, every bit of the preparation for this wedding, from the banquet venue down to a single piece of wedding candy, I'd handled myself.
What they didn't know was that the owner of this hotel was my college senior.
Back when I'd booked the venue, Sabrina Wells hadn't taken a single cent of deposit from me.
We'd agreed to settle the whole thing together tomorrow, once the banquet was over.
In other words, those thirty tables outside were, as of now, still sitting at zero paid.
I looked at the manager and smiled.
"I'll trouble you to pass a message to your owner."
"From this moment on, that banquet out there has nothing to do with me, not one cent."
"Whoever's out there toasting, whoever ate this meal, that's who you go to for the money."
"And if they try to skip out on the bill, don't hold back. Lock the front doors and call the police."
The manager blinked, then caught on at once.
He'd been in this line of work for years. What kind of circus hadn't he seen?
"Don't worry, Mr. Henson. I know what to do."
Once everything was settled, I walked my parents out of the hotel.
In the car on the way home, I opened social media on a whim.
Sure enough, Eileen had already rushed to post.
In the photo she was nestled in Bradley's arms, Hailey beside them, holding both their hands and grinning ear to ear.
The caption read: 【*The right time, the right person. Double blessings at once. Thank you to Mom for her love, thank you to my husband for stepping up.*】
Below it, a few of the Swanson relatives had liked it and left comments: 【*Bradley really does suit our Eily better.*】
【*This spread is really something. The lobster looks so fresh. That Henson fool has no luck at all.*】
Reading those comments, I didn't just keep my temper. I nearly laughed out loud.
Eat up. Eat plenty.
I only worried that however much you swallowed now, you'd be coughing it right back up soon enough.
The banquet drew to a close, the guests full of food and drink, drifting out one after another with their party favors.
Eileen, on Bradley's arm, got ready to leave, surrounded by a crowd of relatives.
Right then, two rows of uniformed security guards appeared out of nowhere and blocked the way.
The manager stood in front of Eileen with the bill in hand and a professional smile.
"Miss Swanson, congratulations on your marriage."
"Today you ran up thirty tables of our top-tier seafood banquet, for a total of five hundred thousand dollars."
"Will you be paying by phone, or by card?"
