The Layover Read online

  PRAISE FOR The Layover

  “The perfect escape—a hilarious, compulsive, swoony rom-com from an exciting new voice. Waldon’s witty banter and laugh out loud fresh take on enemies-to-lovers are sure to satisfy readers and keep them smiling to the very last page.”

  —Robin Reul, author of Where the Road Leads Us

  “A breath of fresh air! Lacie Waldon’s exceptional debut combines sharp, clever writing with crackling sexual tension for pure enemies-to-lovers gold. The Layover is the ultimate summer beach read and a new favorite.”

  —Devon Daniels, author of Meet You in the Middle

  “A highly recommended read for fans of enemies-to-lovers and anyone who feels the pull of wanderlust.”

  —Sarah Hogle, author of You Deserve Each Other and Twice Shy

  “The Layover is an ideal escape—from the intriguing insider’s view of air travel to the picturesque setting on the shores of Belize. . . . A fun and irresistible romance that soars.”

  —Libby Hubscher, author of Meet Me in Paradise

  “Once I started The Layover, I couldn’t put it down! This is a lovely escape full of sun, swoons, and sexual tension.”

  —Kerry Winfrey, author of Waiting for Tom Hanks

  “A jet fuel-powered rom-com that had me dreaming of sun-soaked beaches and a view from 35,000 feet.”

  —Angie Hockman, author of Shipped

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Lacie Waldon

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Waldon, Lacie, author.

  Title: The layover / Lacie Waldon.

  Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2021] | Summary: “An unexpected tropical layover with her nemesis turns a flight attendant’s life upside down in this witty, breezy debut romantic comedy about life—and love—30,000 feet above the ground” —Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021012463 (print) | LCCN 2021012464 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593328255 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593328262 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3623.A35688 L39 2021 (print) | LCC PS3623.A35688 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012463

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012464

  Book design by Ashley Tucker, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  For Carey Page, who taught me that everything is an adventure when you’re with the right person.

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for The Layover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I don’t know what city I’m in. The alarm on my phone is blaring the Rocky song, lighting up the room just enough for me to see the shadowed outlines of walls and corners. I blink, trying to orient myself. There’s no strip of hallway light coming from under the door. The sheets are silky, not worn-down cotton slept on by millions of bodies. They’re probably not even white. This can’t be a hotel.

  Someone groans beside me, and my stomach sinks with realization. I’m at home, where I promised not to use my Rocky alarm anymore. Alexander says it gets into his dreams. I grab for the phone, but it’s 3:30 in the morning—too early for coordination. It crashes to the floor, an electronic trumpet encouraging me to jab at the air with curled fists. Staying beneath the covers, I dip my head over the side of the bed and silence the noise before easing myself back up.

  I should go, but instead I peek across the king-sized bed toward Alexander. I just want to see his face, to make sure I haven’t managed to annoy him before I leave for three days. But the blackout curtains make it impossible. I can’t even spot his outline through the darkness.

  With a sigh, I slip my legs toward the edge of the bed. The chilled air outside the duvet hits one foot, and I steel myself for full-body contact with the icy conditions Alexander requires to sleep. An arm shoots around my waist, dragging me into a cocoon of hot skin and muscles. I exhale my relief and melt into him.

  “I’m sorry about Rocky,” I whisper.

  “It’s okay.” Alexander’s voice is husky with sleep. He presses a kiss against my bare shoulder. “In my dream, I ducked at exactly the right moment. Then I came back up with a right hook that sent the other guy flying. Knocked him clean out.”

  “Of course you did.” A smile tugs at my mouth. Even in his dreams, Alexander triumphs. Some people might call this arrogance, but I recognize it as the confidence it is. There’s a reason the other lawyers at his firm refer to him as the go-to guy. Alexander is reliable. He’s unflappable. These are the qualities I appreciate most about him. “I wouldn’t have expected anything less.”

  “His face was blurry,” he says, “but I’m hoping it was a predictive dream about McMurphy. I’m up against him in court today, and to say I despise that man would be an understatement.”

  “It was definitely him. I’d recognize that stupid face anywhere.”

  “You were in my dream?”

  “Oh, yes.” I wriggle deeper into his embrace. “Right there on the sidelines, cheering you on.”

  “You’re such an odd little duckling.” Alexander laughs softly against the back of my head. His voice turns serious. “But he really does have a stupid face, doesn’t he?”

  “The stupidest.”

  He sighs and presses another kiss against the back of my neck. “I’ll miss you while you’re gone.”

  “It’s only a few days.” The reminder of work makes my leg twitch. It’s probably been three minutes since my alarm went off. Maybe even four.

  “Still.”

  “I know.” I get it. I do. Nobody likes being left behind. It’s only a few days, but it’s the dinners we’ll eat separately. The nights we’ll go to bed without each other. Large bodies of water will separate us. “I’ll miss you, too.”

  “It’s the last time, though.” There’s no question in his words. It’
s a fact that’s been decided, was agreed to this weekend, the moment I accepted his proposal. “We should celebrate when you get back. An engagement dinner. You land late on Thursday, right? Let’s do it Friday. We can toast to the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.”

  “Yes.” It’s a lovely idea. Perfect, actually. What better thing to toast to than the ending of a nine-year career and the start of a marriage destined to last much longer? “Let’s do it.”

  “I’ll make a reservation,” Alexander says, loosening his hold. “And you’d better go. You’re way behind on the schedule.”

  I smile at his words. Of course Alexander would realize the value of the moments I’ve lost. He runs his entire life with the precision I reserve for work mornings. It’s one of the things that most attracted me to him in the beginning. That and the set of his shoulders, so firm and self-assured. I can’t believe he’s going to be my husband. I, Ava Greene, am getting married. It’s hands down the most permanent thing I’ve ever committed to.

  “I love you.” I press a kiss to his forearm and scramble out of the bed. “See you soon!”

  I grab my phone and check it as I ease the door shut behind me: 3:34. Sure enough, I’ve already used four of my twenty-five minutes allotted to getting out of the house. On tiptoe, I sprint down the moonlit hallway. Chicago’s December wind howls against the windowed walls of the tenth-story condo, making me feel like I’m at risk of being swept away. It’s the perfect start to a trip, like I’ve already taken off and am coasting through the clouds.

  Security lights outside provide the kitchen with enough light that I don’t have to flip the switch on the wall. I beeline it toward the kettle I brought with me when I moved in. It looks ridiculously out of place next to Alexander’s restaurant-grade espresso machine. No more so than me, though, racing past the black marble countertops in my bra and panties.

  Alexander would be appalled if he could see me flitting around like a half-naked pixie in the moonlight. He’s chastised me more than once about my tendency to go in search of coffee before putting on clothes. He has such concern about these nameless neighbors and their ability to spy on us. As if, out of all the people in our city, we are the show they want to see.

  There’s very little chance of being caught by him now, though. Even if he can’t get back to sleep, I know he’ll stay in bed and try. Alexander gets into bed at 10:30 and rises at 5:30, because Alexander believes in consistency. He’s never said it aloud, but I know my moving in has been much harder on him than he expected. It’s difficult to adapt to someone’s presence when every time you start to get used to them, they disappear.

  With a flick of my finger, I start the kettle. I filled it with water last night to save precious seconds this morning. My other hand reaches for my food bag. The movements happen without thought; this is a routine I’ve performed a thousand times.

  The fridge is perfectly organized except for the little piles of food I’ve left. I set them up yesterday, balancing the baggies of cherries and grapes on rolling string cheeses in a way that would inform even the most casual of observers I’m not destined to be an architect. There’s another pile of individually bagged meals in the freezer that I lay across the top of the bag. Since they’re frozen, they can function as ice packs until I eat enough food to make room for a bag of ice from the plane. I zip up my large black mesh adult lunch box, grab the coffee, pour too much of it into the French press, and race to the guest bathroom.

  It’s the one place in this condo I’ve taken over as my own. The official reason is I don’t want to wake Alexander up on mornings like today. Secretly, though, I like having a spot where I can leave things on the counter and don’t have to worry about the hand towels hanging at exactly the same length. It’s not that I don’t appreciate Alexander’s neatness. I do. In fact, I love how organized he is. His home—our home—is exactly the kind of perfectly ordered place I’ve spent my whole life dreaming of living in.

  Yet for some reason, since being here, I seem to have discovered some tiny, deviant side of me that relishes this small area of relief from all the perfection. It’s a disconcerting blip, contrary to who I want to be, and it embarrasses me enough that I’ve made every effort to hide it from Alexander. “Whatever you do,” I told him early on, “don’t open this door. I keep all my lady tools in there. You don’t want to see how the sausage is made, do you?” He cringed and has left a wide berth since.

  The bathroom fills with light, and my gaze is drawn to the sparkle of my new engagement ring. For a moment, I allow myself a break in routine to study this thing that is suddenly mine. It’s massive, likely several carats. When Alexander got down on one knee Saturday night and opened the small velvet box, I had a terrible temptation to laugh at the glittering disco ball inside; it’s such a departure from the small turquoise stone I asked for. Now that I’ve had a few days to get used to it, though, I can see that it’s right. It’s exactly what I need: a sharp, heavy rock to weigh me to the ground. After a lifetime of floating, I’m grateful to have found an anchor.

  Alexander has always been clear about the fact that he didn’t want his future partner to travel for a living, just like I’ve told him from the beginning I’m ready to move on from flying. Everyone knows you don’t confess to a man you’ve just met—an attractive man whose lips you can’t stop staring at, no less—that you want to get married, but I did. I broke all the rules, gazing up at him and earnestly confessing my desire to settle down. Life on the road was what I grew up with, my parents’ ideal. My dream has always been to stay still.

  In the corner of one of the drawers Alexander allotted me, I have a list I wrote when I was thirteen. Written across the top are the words Ava’s Adult Aspirations (the latter word triumphantly discovered through a thesaurus search of goals). It’s only two things, and I’ve long since memorized it, but I still pull it out sometimes to read it aloud, just to remind myself. It says:

  Stay in one place.

  Have real friends. Friends who don’t travel. (They won’t give up on you if you don’t give them a reason to. Just show up to the things that are important to them. Be dependable.)

  If I had to give myself a progress report on achieving those goals, it wouldn’t look good. I work a different three-day trip every week. The fact that those days change from month to month makes people feel like I’m constantly disappearing on them. I did have two good, perfectly sedentary friends until Meredith, the more sensitive of two, started referring to me as “Houdini” in a passive-aggressive way I’ve chosen to interpret as amusing. Now, due to too many magic acts on my part, I’m probably down to one.

  That will all be behind me soon, though. It’s time to trade the life I never aspired to for the one I’ve always wanted. Reluctantly, I slip the ring off my finger and place it reverentially in the corner of the counter. I’ve heard married women complain about chipping their diamonds in the cramped, metal galleys where we pour the passengers’ drinks. I don’t want to have to explain to Alexander that I’ve allowed that to happen to this horrifyingly expensive symbol of our future.

  The moment the drawer closes, I jerk back into action. It’s 3:47, only eight minutes before I need to hear the door click into place behind me. I wash my face and dab on mascara, noting the grayish hue to my hazel eyes. It’s strange. They tend to turn green when I’m particularly happy or excited, and clearly I’m both. In addition to my new engagement, I’ve scored a much-coveted layover in Belize tomorrow night. International trips usually get snagged by the really senior flight attendants.

  I braid my long dark hair down the side of my face like I do for every trip, but the strands slip out of place, costing me extra seconds I don’t have. It’s the water in Alexander’s shower. He’s put a filter on it that makes it and everything it touches feel like silk. It’s considered a luxury, I know, but I can’t seem to find it in myself to appreciate it. What, after all, is people’s ave
rsion to a bit of grit? Who doesn’t want to feel the world on their skin?

  I leave the braid loose, hoping the escaping wisps will look intentional, and secure it with a brown hair tie. It’s time for my favorite part of my routine. In the guest room, my uniform is perfectly laid out: Dress spread across the bed. Each thigh-high stocking above its matching shoe. Earrings and mandatory watch next to the sleeve.

  In less than a minute, I’m suited up. Every time I do this, I imagine I’m Superman in a phone booth. With the blink of an eye, I’m transformed from a civilian to a professional. Ava Greene, SuperStewardess!

  Almost as quickly as it arrives, the feeling sinks into a pit in my stomach.

  I can’t believe this is the last trip I’ll ever work.

  Chapter 2

  The sun is still buried in sleep, and Layla Day’s call-in radio show, In Love with Layla, is playing through the car speakers. It’s a rerun of her dedications from callers who want to send a song to their significant others, recycled for the listening pleasure of us misfits of the world who have gotten up too early or are coming home too late. I take a sip of coffee from my travel mug as I coast into the employee parking lot, my eyes narrowing at the two cars lurking near the front. Their engines are idling, headlights on in an aggressive show of intent.

  They’re determined to sit there until someone comes out and frees up a closer spot. If I were being uncharitable, I’d call them lazy. In fairness, though, a spot at the back will add an extra twenty-minute trudge through icy wind to the front of the lot before the even longer walk through the hourly parking garage to get inside the airport. It’s not the worst strategy to invest a few minutes crossing your fingers. Normally I’d leave them to fight it out between themselves, but today I, too, want a good spot right up front. Every time I’ve ever scored one, I’ve ended up having an amazing trip.

  I inch slowly forward, scanning for empty spaces the lurkers might’ve overlooked. On the radio, Layla Day cuts off a rambling ode to teen-dream Ashley from the self-proclaimed love of her life, a boy whose voice cracks at the end of his words as he claims to have held onto Ashley’s heart for all of three weeks. “My Heart Will Go On” swells from the radio in honor of their grand romance.