Read To See You for Free Online Page B

crafted from the rainbow of happiness. The one that follows getting engaged.
    Janie and I met in college in upstate New York. I was a junior credits-wise but a freshman age-wise. I couldn’t go to bars or anything, so I’d been sitting in some coffee shop listening to indie rock one evening and Janie had strolled in with her posse, giggling and carefree. She gravitated toward me, probably wanting to fix me and make me happy. That’s Janie. She loves a good fixer-upper project.
    We’d been friends ever since, even after I graduated and moved to Manhattan. I was so happy when she moved back after graduating. Now I was a regular fixture in her social life; pretending to love it had become my specialty.
    The rest of the night passed in a blur of cocktails, sushi, birthday cake, and dancing. Bianca left with the rich dude, Janie found herself a lawyer—Jewish to boot—and I shared a cab with Shani and Haley back to the Meatpacking District.
    Once again, I found myself snuggled up in bed with Lucy on my lap, the heat from her fan the only thing warming my legs.
    It had been a week since I’d fired Maggie, but I had my daily e-mail from her begging for her position back. There was an e-mail from one of our junior writers with a fairly interesting pitch on juicing and dating, and how the two mix or don’t. And one more message, which no longer filtered into my spam folder.
     
    FROM: [email protected]
    TO: [email protected]
     
    Hi, Charli –
    Thanks for getting back to me. Sorry it took me so long to reply, but we went into the last week of production on Seven Sins of Serial Dating , and I barely came up for air. It’s a pretty decent movie for a chick flick and all that fun stuff.
    There’s no way to say this without it being weird, so I’m just going to ask.
    I was wondering if you wanted to go to the premiere? It may be presumptuous to ask, but I could leave some tickets for you. You may even think I’m nuts for asking.
    Seriously, it’s funny, all good laughs, and I thought it would be great for you to get away to see it.
    Let me know.
    No obligation.
    —Lay
     
    What the hell was that? Come to the premiere? Did he mean with him? By myself?
    And what was with the “Lay?”

Two Weeks Later
     
    “G o to Drybar, get your hair done, and make sure you throw a pair of clean panties in your purse,” Janie said over the phone.
    “I’m not going to sleep with him. I don’t even know if I’ll see him or talk to him. Plus—”
    “I didn’t mean him. Who knows who you’ll meet at this thing, Char? O.M.G.” She spelled out the letters . . . for real. “You may see Ryan Reynolds. Make sure your bra and panties match.”
    I rolled my eyes and shifted my feet, avoiding a ticklish spot.
    “You pick color yet?” the nail tech asked, interrupting my conversation.
    “J—what should I wear? The red dress by Chanel or the black Givenchy? I think the black is safe.”
    “The red, definitely.”
    “Hold on,” I said into the phone and directed my next words to the nail tech sitting at my feet. “Let’s just do a French on my toes.”
    “Don’t do a French,” Janie yelled in my ear. “It looks like fingers on your feet. And you don’t want that if you end up in bed with some guy.”
    “Janie, may I remind you I’m going for work? If Sherri hadn’t come down with the stomach flu, I wouldn’t be going at all.”
    “Not true. Your pen pal invited you.”
    I’d made the mistake of coming clean to Janie at brunch on Sunday after spinning . . . I must have been dehydrated or something. I told her all about my plane ride home, about Layton, and about how we occasionally corresponded over e-mail.
    Our virtual chats had only become a regular thing over the last two weeks when he started working on a new project. He began sending me little clips and jokes under the guise of wanting to make me laugh after hurting my feelings. I had declined his offer to attend the premiere, saying