Adam slid back into the dimly lit booth, lacing his arm around Jane’s waist. She let her eyes close and her head rest on his shoulder with a small sigh. It was getting late.

She had hurried back to the hotel after finishing up her day at the office, and Adam had been waiting with a rolling rack full of clothes for her to try on. He had donned a classic black tuxedo, and she’d felt inexplicable drawn to a short strapless black cocktail dress, cut straight across at the bust line, unadorned except for a thin pale pink belt at her waist. She didn’t have the right jewelry to go with it, so she’d wrapped a wide pink ribbon as a choker around her neck and piled her hair on top of her head in a messy coil.

That will have to come down later, Adam had thought to himself, as he nodded at her outfit in approval. His fingers had been itching to pull the pins out all night.

Once dressed, a limo had been waiting for them at the curb outside the hotel, and Adam had taken her to dinner at a trendy restaurant in Tribeca, before settling in with her here at this upscale little jazz club. He’d been recognized when they came in, of course. The owner had come over to greet them, and then the jazz musicians had shown up at their table during a break, inviting him to come up and do a song.

“I’m not sure there are a lot of Maroon 5 fans in this crowd,” he’d modestly demurred, but he hadn’t put up much of a fight. He never had met a stage he didn’t like. “OK, OK,” he’d given in gracefully and gone off for a moment to consult with the band, leaving Jane by herself in the booth.

“What are you going to sing?” she asked him now, as her head lolled against his shoulder.

He gave her a mischievous look. “Guess.”

“Hmmm.” She looked him up and down, contemplating for a moment. “Let’s Get It On?” 

He broke out in a broad grin. What made her guess that? It was one of his go-to choices in these situations, a song that suited his voice and his image, and that he knew he could sing well.

“Am I really that predictable?”

She shrugged mysteriously. “Am I right?”

The truth was, Jane knew he liked to cover that song. She’d seen the clips – the shaky amateur cell phone videos that popped up on the internet the next day whenever he turned up unexpectedly at some club.

“Seriously,” he said. “How did you know that?”

“Please. It’s all over YouTube.”

“You watch that stuff?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

She shrugged again, this time a little sheepishly. “Maybe.”

“Well, nice guess, but I guarantee you the song I’m doing tonight isn’t on YouTube.”

No, he thought. The song he was planning tonight was an old favorite – one he used to cover often – a song he hadn’t sung in years. He silently ran through it, making sure he remembered all the words, as his mind drifted back to another time, another stage, another club.

 ***

October 1997

“This is Jane.”

Adam had arrived at the club with his new girlfriend on his arm, and he’d pulled out a chair for her at one end of the long table where the band members’ friends and acquaintances were sitting for that night’s show.

“Everyone better be nice,” he added, with a mock-threatening glare.

“Oh yeah, Levine?” the prettiest girl responded. “Or what?”

He leaned into the table, putting his face close to the girl’s. “Or you’ll have me to answer to,” he growled. “And I have a tendency of getting very physical.”

The girl laughed in his face and gave him playful shove, and Jane wondered what the history was between them. She was nice enough though, effortlessly involving Jane in the conversation after Adam went backstage to prepare.

Pretty, nice, outgoing, Jane thought to herself. Why wasn’t Adam with her? Maybe he was, or would be soon enough. It suddenly occurred to her that Adam hadn’t introduced her as his girlfriend. Just Jane – that’s all he’d said. She gulped her drink and tried not to think about what it meant. She knew what Marcy would say. It meant he was keeping his options open.

This depressing line of thought was interrupted by the raucous cheers from his friends as the band finally emerged on stage. Adam stood front and center at the mic stand, holding his guitar. There were no spotlights at this club, but there may as well have been, the way all eyes turned to him the moment he took up his position.

Jane had never seen him on stage before. He’d played his guitar and sung for her in the privacy of his bedroom – sometimes sweet, sometimes silly – clearly skilled. But it hadn’t prepared her for what she was seeing tonight. It was like there was an energy emanating from him, contagious, infecting the crowd of studiedly apathetic hipsters, commanding their attention in spite of themselves. She could barely breathe as she watched him, so at ease up there, so confident.

The guys were approaching the end of their set when he took off his guitar and laid it against the amp behind him, pulling the mic out of the stand.

“All right, all right, let’s change it up a little,” he said to the crowd, turning his back for a last minute consultation with Jesse, who was taking up his position at the keyboard.

“Where’s my girl at?” Adam said as he turned back toward the audience, peering out toward the table where his friends were sitting. “Where’s Jane?”

The other kids at the table all turned to look at her curiously when he said her name, and Jane felt herself blushing furiously at the attention.

“Aw, she’s being shy,” he told the crowd, breaking into a grin as he caught sight of her. “This one’s dedicated to my girlfriend, everybody.”

The whole room fell silent, recognizing the old standard as he started to sing. It was a Sinatra song, a total departure from the rest of the set they’d played all night, but somehow he made it work as he stood there holding the mike, his voice mellow, mesmerizing.

Some day, when I'm awfully low,

When the world is cold,

I will feel a glow just thinking of you

And the way you look tonight . . . .

***

. . . . Lovely, never, ever change.

Keep that breathless charm.

Won't you please arrange it?

'Cause I love you,

Just the way you look tonight.

Jane sat transfixed as he sang the last notes and the audience of dignified jazz-goers burst into a round of whistles and applause.

He’d kept mum before, despite all her wheedling, refusing to tell her what song he was going to perform.

“Aw, come back, little girl,” he’d laughed, pulling her toward him in the booth, as she’d playfully pouted and pretended to turn her back. “It’s a surprise, OK?”

The moment he was up on stage and the jazz band started playing, she had gasped with recognition. The Way You Look Tonight. He used to interrupt his shows to sing it to her, a song so wildly out of place with the band’s sound back then. Maybe that’s why it worked – because it was so out of place. Certainly, that’s what always made the moment so romantic.

She remembered the first night she had heard him sing it, the first performance of his she’d ever attended. He’d been so comfortable up on stage, and she remembered how insignificant she’d felt down below in the audience. She had been starting to trust him at that point, to believe it when he told her he wanted to be with her. It was easy to believe him when they were alone together. Seeing him up there, though, with a whole club full of people who all wanted him the same way she did – she had doubted. Who was she, to be with him? Just Jane. Plain Jane.

But he had singled her out in the crowd and sang those words, his eyes locked with hers alone, and suddenly she had known that he meant every word he said to her. That was the moment, that night in the club, when she’d known without a shadow of a doubt that she was in love with him.

Now, she felt a lump in her throat, watching him sing it again tonight. He was right – in all the hours she’d spent watching videos of him on YouTube, she’d never seen footage of him covering that song. Was it possible, after all this time, that he’d always reserved it just for her?

He was heading back toward her now, shaking hands and exchanging a few words here and there with people in the audience as he wove his way through the tables. He gave her a funny smile when he made it over to her at last – not a look she had seen on his face often – almost… unsure of himself?

“I can’t believe you just sang that,” she said, reaching up to take his hand.

Her eyes were sparkling, happy, he saw with some relief. Wistful, but happy.

“I can’t believe you didn’t guess!” he replied, sliding back into the booth beside her.

Adam remembered when he’d first started incorporating that song into his sets. Jane had been so shy back then, so painfully unaware of the effect she had on him. He’d known he wanted to sing her something special the first time she came to see him play, and he’d spent hours poring over his CD collection, looking for the right song. It had been an odd choice, playing Sinatra to that downtown hipster crowd, but it was the perfect song to express what he wanted to tell her. That she was beautiful without even trying, without even knowing how to try. That’s what made him want to spend every waking moment with her. That’s what made him love her.

After that first time, it was the song he always played, whenever he saw her insecurities bubbling up to the surface again. You are special, it said to her. You are worthy of my love. It was a message just to her – a reminder.

It was a song he’d never sung again from the day she left.

Singing it to her now after so much time had passed, he felt shaken. Not that he hadn’t serenaded plenty of women over the years. But that was different. Those were all songs about sex. This one was a love song, straight up.

He looked at her now and wondered if he’d said too much. “Lovely, never ever change,” he’d sung. She had changed of course – they both had – and yet, somehow, every word of that song was just as true today as it had been that first time. Did she understand how much it meant to him to sing it again?

He shook himself, mentally. He needed to slow it down. This was getting too intense, too fast. They were just having fun, right? That was the story he’d told her.

Adam brought his hand to his mouth and faked a yawn. Jane rewarded him with a yawn of her own in return.

“Tired?”

“Mmmm hmmm.” She lifted her legs and swiveled so that her slightly bent knees draped across his lap. She had taken off her shoes under the table. “My feet are tired,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

He sighed with relief, back in safe, familiar territory. He slipped one arm around her waist and reached down with the other hand to knead the arches of her feet. She purred in pleasure. “That’s nice.”

He pressed his face into her hair and closed his eyes, inhaling her scent. His hand was making its way past her ankle and up her calf now. She lifted her right hand and brought it to his chest, slowly sliding it back and forth beneath the lapel of his jacket, sending ripples of heat pulsing through him with each stroke. Without letting go of her leg, he tightened his other arm around her waist and dipped his head, catching her mouth in a long, demanding kiss. He needed to get her back to the hotel room. Now.

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered, inches from her mouth. He strode purposefully out of the club, his hand guiding her by the elbow so that she practically had to jog to keep up. The limo was ready and waiting when they got outside.

“Get in the car,” he told her gruffly.

She tossed him a sly little smile as she moved past him, singing back softly over her shoulder, “You can ride it, wherever you want.”

He gave a low chuckle as he followed her into the back seat. “God, I’m sick of that song.”

“Best Maroon 5 song ever!” she replied, in a perfect imitation of a teenaged fan girl.

He was laughing now. “Oh, you’re going to pay for that,” he said, fixing her with a glare as he reached for the button to close the privacy window between them and the driver. “Get over here!”

He grabbed her waist with both hands and brought his mouth down on hers, pressing her back into the corner of the seat. Her hands were on his chest, opening the buttons of his shirt as he shrugged off his tuxedo jacket, his pulse racing faster and faster as her fingers worked their way downward. She slipped off her shoes again and brought her legs up onto the car seat so that she was straddling him. He groaned into her mouth, sliding his hands up her thighs beneath the hem of her skirt. He lifted his head and saw her lipstick was starting to smear, making her lips look swollen, wounded. He lost his breath completely as he brought his mouth back down in desperation.

He sent up a silent prayer that there wouldn’t be any paparazzi waiting for them at the end of this ride. They weren’t going to be in any state to be photographed.

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