To See You Read Free Page A

him in the ribs.
    I nodded and took him in, surveying him longer than I should have. He wasn’t so slobby. In fact, this guy looked quite organized to me. Simply put—he was overweight. Fat. Big.
    And kind and endearing.
    “I’m doing the music for the film. The sound track,” he offered without being asked, his green headphones now completely off his ears and hanging around his neck, tinny sounds screaming from them.
    I nodded again, unable to figure out why he kept talking to me. Couldn’t he see how obnoxious I was? I was sure he could see through my snobbery.
    “Like Jack Black in The Holiday ,” he explained. “Not just the jingles that go along with some of the scenes but all the music, song selection and sound effects, chats with music producers.” He stopped short and gave me a wry grin. “I don’t know why I’m talking like I’m at an interview. I do a lot, and I love what I do. It’s kind of my dream.”
    “Nice,” I finally answered. He wasn’t goofy-looking like Jack. Actually, his face was a bit more defined and handsome, and his eyes were the kindest I’d ever seen. I could get lost inside them for a lifetime . . . Well, if the rest of the whole package was right for me.
    “So, you’re going home? New York?” he asked, peppering me with questions once again. We’d been chatting so long, my laptop winked out, going to sleep.
    “Home for me. Now, anyway. Originally, I’m from here . . . or Chicago where we took off from.”
    “Got it. Family stuff?”
    “Funeral. My grandmother.” Why am I even answering this dude?
    “Sorry to hear. I actually live in LA, but I couldn’t get a direct flight to New York.”
    I was tempted to say, “I didn’t ask,” like I normally would to cut someone off. But for some reason, this guy was winning me over.
    “It’s spring break. I had a hard time getting a decent flight too,” I said instead.
    “I’m Layton, by the way.”
    Layton? Was this guy for real? Was he a soap opera star who got cut and ended up nearly eating himself to death?
    There I went again with the bitchiness.
    I looked up at his eyes and all my mean thoughts slipped away. I wanted to be rude, but there was something about this guy.
    “Charli,” I said. “It’s Charleston, really, but who names their daughter after a city in South Carolina?”
    Layton continued to focus his award-winning smile on me, the corners of his eyes crinkling with contained laughter. “Really?”
    I nodded and ran my hand over the top of my laptop, finally closing the screen. It was clear I wasn’t going to get any work done on the flight.
    “Yep. My dad was in a band and their last gig was in Charleston, where he met my mom. She was there for some spring break thing with her roommate—they were professional groupies, made a life out of traveling and spring breaking, chasing down indie bands. They’d gone to some bar and the rest is history. It was a last hurrah for my dad, anyway. He was heading out to Chicago to shackle himself to a job in the hospitality industry.”
    “Wow.” Layton turned a bit more in his seat, as much as his width would allow him to do. “Did he ever play music again?” He tilted his head and put all his focus on me.
    “He used to tinker around with it when I was little, but not really play-play after that night. He’d gone to Cornell Hotel School . . . it’s a pretty big deal. He wasa pretty big deal, I guess. Dad was a force of his own, and he was determined to skip working in the boonies at some motel. He went straight to the five-star places, the four-diamond establishments, and landed a job. I guess he straddled me with his need to be the best, and then he died. My mom stayed the course after he was gone, pushing me to do what he would have wanted.”
    Here I was again, spilling everything to the guy seated next to me on an airplane. A man named Layton who looked nothing like the alpha suits I met in the city, but was growing on me.
    “Want another?”