Jane stared in silent disbelief at the man standing in her doorway. The playlist wasn’t enough for him? He needed to tell her off in person?

She had a pretty good idea why he was here, of course. She knew him well enough for that. She should have known he’d never let her get away with that text message. He led, she followed, right? He never could stand letting someone else be in charge. If anything, hearing “no” just made him run after something that much harder. Just look at his music career. How many doors had he knocked on – how many rejections had he heard and disregarded – before getting that first big break? Most people would have given up after banging their heads against the wall for as long as he had, but not Adam. He never could take “no” for an answer. 

She thought maybe he’d grown out of this particular personality trait, but some things never changed. It was no different from when they first broke up. She’d known how he would be, back then. She’d known he would never let her walk away unless it was his idea first. That’s why she’d insisted on no contact whatsoever. And even then, Marcy had to threaten to call the cops before he finally started to get the message. The voicemails had stopped then, but he still called her phone. Called and hung up. Night after night – just daring her to try to do something to stop him. She hadn’t wanted to give him the satisfaction. She’d waited months for him to cut it out, before finally breaking down and asking the phone company to change her number.

And even that hadn’t ended things, had it? He couldn’t reach her by phone, so he’d just picked right up with the next best thing. A microphone. An album with her name on it. The song lyrics he’d practically spat at her: “I called to let you know I'm through with you.”  He didn’t need voicemail to leave her a message.

Of course, he hadn’t been through with her. Not by a long shot. She’d always thought Songs About Jane was the end of it, but he’d gone right on doing it for years. His singles on the radio, following her wherever she went. His voice sneaking up on her whenever she thought she had shaken free of him at last. All this time, she’d been blaming herself for being unable to get past this obsession, but she saw now that he’d done it to her on purpose. All those songs over the years – he’d been standing right behind her, tapping her on the shoulder again and again and again – forbidding her to move on with her life. She thought she was her own person, but he’d just gone right on controlling her the whole time they were apart.

No, as tempting as it was to slam the door in his face right now, she knew it would only incite him further. If she truly wanted to be free of him, she needed to stand up to him. She needed to make him understand once and for all that “no” meant “no.”

“What are you doing here?” she shot at him through clenched teeth.

“Hello to you too,” Adam replied.

Wait a minute, Jane thought. Monday night at 7:45? “Aren’t you supposed to be live on The Voice in 15 minutes?”

“The show will go on without me.”

She felt her anger at him boil over. “You’re skipping it? What, am I supposed to be flattered? The network could fire you over this!”

“Don’t worry,” he shrugged. “I know a lawyer.”

She shook her head in disgust and walked away from the apartment door, leaving it open for him to come in behind her.

“So this is where you live now.” He looked around him. No white picket fence in sight. It was a charmless, boxy high-rise apartment, furnished expensively but generically, like one of those model homes they show you when you go to look at an unfinished development. “Did they throw in the furniture when you bought it?”

She didn’t dignify it with an answer. So what if they had?

“Is there a point to this little visit?” she asked him.

“Did you see my tweet?”

“Yes, Adam,” she said. “I saw it.”

He waited. Publishing that playlist over twitter – every song he’d ever written about her – it was the most naked, the most vulnerable he had ever allowed himself to be. It was a public confession. Adam Levine, the infamous ladies’ man, the notorious modelizer, had been secretly mooning over the same woman his entire adult life.

Now was the moment of truth. He stood frozen in place, waiting for her response.

“One more fucking love song, I’ll be sick,” she said at last.

She may as well have kicked him in the groin. It was his life’s work, laid at her feet, dedicated to her. And that’s what she had to say? Time to take the gloves off.

“Why did you break up with me?” he asked her harshly.

“Excuse me? Were we together?”

“No, not the text. Nice, by the way. Even I don’t give people the kiss-off by text.”

“So, what, Adam? You came here to teach me fuck-buddy etiquette?”

“I came here to ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Why did you break up with me?" he asked again. "The first time.”

“We’ve been through this—”

“Because I remember what you said back then. Believe me, I’ve had a long enough time to think about it. You said you wanted to go find someone else to marry and have a couple kids and go live in the suburbs.” His voice had started menacingly low, but it was rising louder and louder as he spoke.  “Right? And here we are 11 years later, and you’re living in a little box in the middle of Manhattan, married to your job!” He was shouting now. “So pardon me if I feel I have to ask you, what the fuck?”

“You think I didn’t try?” she shouted back. “You think I wanted my life to turn out this way?”

“Well, why did it then?”

“I was engaged. I was all set, and I broke it off. May 2007, I broke it off. Does that date have any significance to you?”

He shook his head, but of course it did. It was the month they’d released the second album, It Won’t Be Soon Before Long.

“I wasn’t going to listen to it," she continued. "I told myself I had moved on. But I broke down and bought your stupid album, and I listened, and I couldn’t go through with it. I heard your stupid voice, singing about your stupid little girl—”

“Jane—”

“—So, yeah, Adam. I’m married to my job. And I’ll be damned if you’re going to stand here and throw it back in my face. You – you of all people! You don’t get to do that!”

 He shook his head. He didn’t know what to say.

“I’m never going to have kids, Adam. Do you understand that? It’s never going to happen! That was my dream, and it’s never going to happen!”

“It’s not too late.”

She gave an ugly laugh. “You had your dreams and I had mine. Not everyone gets to have all their wildest dreams come true.”

“Yeah,” he responded. “And some people’s dreams come true and they’re still fucking miserable. So what then?”

It was her turn to shake her head at him. “Careful what you wish for, I guess they say.”

They stared at each other in silence, at an impasse.

“No,” he said. “I won’t let you do this again. We’ve been here before. We tried it your way. We went our separate ways. That’s what you wanted, so that’s what we did. And where exactly did that get us? Now we’re both living these meaningless lives, where we only live for work, because it keeps us from thinking too hard about what’s missing. That was Jane’s plan. And you know what? Jane’s plan sucks. We are done with Jane’s plan. It’s time for Adam’s plan now.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes!”

“You’re just going to walk in here and tell me what to do? Is that it? Because I know that’s what you like. You always did. It’s no accident you keep getting older and all your girlfriends are still 22.”

“Yeah, well your boyfriends these days are all pushing 50, so don’t tell me you don’t still get off on being somebody’s little girl.”

“I am not a little girl!”

 “Well then act like it! Stop running away every time a relationship isn’t storybook fairytale perfect!”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Sure it is. It’s what you always do. And not just to me apparently. You did the same thing with the other guy too, didn’t you?”

“That was different—“

“Stop running for one second and figure out how to fit someone else into your life!”

“So that means I’m just supposed to drop everything and follow you around? Are we back to that plan now? Because that was always Adam’s plan, as I seem to recall.”

“I’m not saying that. I’m not saying I wasn’t wrong too. I know – I forgot for a little while that you were a separate person. That was my bad. I was young too, back then.”

She stood still and looked at him, just shaking her head. He looked down at his watch.

“Turn on the TV.”

“What? Now?”

He grabbed the remote control impatiently and turned the channel to NBC.

Carson Daly had already begun his opening lines as a close-up of his face filled the screen: “Unfortunately, Adam Levine couldn’t be with us tonight due to a family emergency—“

“What?” Blake Shelton cut in. “A family emergency? I thought we were his family.”

“But,” Carson continued, “He and his band Maroon 5 prepared a special surprise to make it up to us. Christina Milian?”

“That’s right, Carson. Adam told me he personally wrote and arranged a brand new Maroon 5 song, and the band recorded a special performance, all in the last week!”

“Amazing. Here it is, America!”

Adam turned away from the TV and stood staring out the window. He hated watching playback of himself performing, and the idea of watching her reaction to the song was even worse. He had laid it all out there in that song – everything he was feeling, all the things he’d been meaning to say. He’d known he would screw it up if he just tried to have a conversation with her, and it had gone even worse than he’d feared.

His only hope now was the song. He always said it so much better in a song.

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