Adam lay awake, watching the early morning sunlight filter in between the slats of Jane’s bedroom window blinds. He felt her stir beside him, stretching and then rolling over to face him. He put his arms around her as she smiled at him sleepily.

“Thank you for last night,” Jane whispered.

“Which part?” he asked, as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“The good part."

He looked at her, evaluating for a moment before he spoke. “You mean the song? Or the part after that?”

She shrugged, unable to control the corners of her mouth. “How do you know I meant either of those?” she said, giving in to the smile that refused to be suppressed.

He smirked back at her, lightly bumping her forehead with his own. “Because there are only two things in this world I’m any good at – music and… the other thing.”

“Hmmm,” she considered. “Well, maybe one out of two.”

“Hey!” He started laughing. “Wait! Which one?”

She laughed back at him as he tightened his arms around her, kissing her playfully, but she broke away before it could turn into more. “So what time is your flight?” she asked.

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m staying for the week. I can stay in a hotel if you don’t want me here.”

“But don’t you have another live show tonight?”

“I’m doing it by satellite. My agent got me booked on the NYC circuit for the week – Good Morning America, The View, Letterman on Thursday.”

“Thursday night?” She raised her eyebrows at him. “That’s the prime spot.”

“I guess I’m kind of a big deal now."

She gave him a funny smile.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What? Tell me.”

Her smile faded and she looked at him seriously. “I’m so proud of you,” she whispered.

Adam wanted to reply, but he couldn’t quite make his mouth work. There was so much he still wanted to ask her. “So you were listening all this time? You were following everything?”

“Of course.”

“Did you like Songs About Jane?”

She nodded, and a wave of pleasure rippled through him. “What was your favorite song?” he asked.

“Well…” she started thinking out loud.  “She Will Be Loved of course. And Sunday Morning is just beautiful… But I guess The Sun, if I had to pick just one.”

He smiled and started singing: “But I cannot forget, refuse to regret, so glad I met you.”

She sang the next line back to him: “Take my breath away, make everyday worth all of the pain that I have gone through.” She tilted her head at him. “It gave me hope that maybe you didn’t hate me for all eternity.”

His smile faded, the giddy joy suddenly replaced by a stab of sadness. “I wanted to hear from you so badly, Janie.”

 “I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking down.

“All of this time, I figured you were off somewhere being happy with some other guy, some other life, and I was just writing songs to nobody. I kept trying to stop—”

“Oh Adam, don’t—”

“—And you were listening? To the other albums too?”

She nodded. “I didn’t know they were about me, though. I thought I was ancient history to you by then.”

“Goodnight Goodnight?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I did not mean to hurt my little girl?”

“I figured you just called all your girlfriends that.”

He shook his head again, clearing his throat and closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he shot her a mischievous look. “I should have gone with the original version.”

Jane raised her eyebrows questioningly as he started singing in a sweet falsetto: “I’m sorry, I did not mean to hurt my ex-girlfriend Jane—“

She broke into a smile, cutting in, “Yeah, but apparently there have been quite a few Janes—”

He put his hand over her mouth to silence her, grinning as he continued on to the next line: “Her birthday is June 19th; there’s a mole on her shoulder blade.”

She was giggling, but she forced her mouth back down into an exaggerated scowl. “That’s a common place for moles.”

He growled at her in mock-irritation, “Well, I could’ve gone with your social security number, but it would have fucked up the rhyme.”

They smiled at each other for a moment, before Adam spoke again. “And when I sent the tweet? The playlist? You still didn’t get it?”

“No, I got it. I just thought you were telling me to go fuck myself.”

He started laughing. “Thirty-two songs, Jane. Thirty-two!” He put both his hands on top of her head and squeezed gently with his fingertips. “And you find the one line—“

“One more fucking love song, I’ll be sick!” she exclaimed. She covered her eyes with the heels of her hands, but she was smiling.

“You know this is you in a nutshell, right?”

She took her hands away from her face and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Every silver lining has a cloud.”

She blinked at him. “I guess I do that.”

“You guess?”

“I guess I feel like nothing bad can happen to me as long as I see it coming first.”

He was looking at her intently now.  “You misjudged one rapey guy once when you were 18 years old, and now you’re gonna spend the rest of your life trying to make up for it. You have to stop doing that, OK? It’s time to let yourself trust someone now.”

She took a deep breath and nodded, wiping at the corners of her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry, Adam,” she whispered.

He ran his hand down the side of her face. “Nah,“ he said, looking up at the ceiling. “It never would have lasted anyway once the touring started. You were right about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were living out of a van. You have no idea,” he sighed. “Two years of touring in a shitty van before we even got upgraded to a bus.”

“So?”

“So you wouldn’t have fit.”

“Are you calling me high-maintenance?”

“No, I’m saying you physically would not have fit in the van. It was that small.”

“I’m a little girl!”

“Not that little.”

Jane smiled silently for a moment, fiddling with the edge of the bedsheet, before she continued. “And yet, why do I have the feeling you had no shortage of female companionship?”

This was sensitive territory. Adam felt the urge to retreat back to the safe rhythm of their banter, but he fought against his instincts. He had to stop holding back, hiding behind that mask. He had to let her see him, flaws and all.

Jane saw him hesitate. “Tell me the truth,” she said.

 “What are you asking me?”

“Are you a sex addict?”

“No!”

She raised her eyebrows at him.

He smirked. “It’s my drug of choice, but I’d say I’m more of a recreational user.”

“How many girls, Adam?”

“A lot of girls. OK? I wasn’t exactly keeping count.” He gave a sheepish shrug.  “Hit on a girl, follow her home. Use her shower afterward. It was the only shower I was going to get, most days.”

“So a girlfriend in the van would have meant no running water.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, grinning at her crookedly. “The body odor alone would have killed it.”

“Good thing now you have a celebrity fragrance.”

He laughed, putting his arms around her again.  “Did you buy a bottle?”

“God, no.”

“Hey!”

“Please,” she said. “Like you had anything to do with the celebrity fragrance.”

He deadpanned his well-rehearsed line. “I was deeply involved in the creative process.”

“You were deeply involved in cashing the paycheck,” she replied without missing a beat.

He wrinkled his nose at her.

“Your father’s son,” she said.

Adam glanced away from her for a moment and took a deep breath. “Now all I need to hear is he’s proud of me and life will be complete.”

Jane reached up and touched his face, turning his head back towards her. “He still hasn’t told you he’s proud of you?”

“It’s not really that kind of relationship.”

 “He’s proud of you, Adam. There’s no way he’s not.”

Adam shrugged. “Well you’re proud of me. That’s enough for one day.”

“I’m proud of you, and I’m sorry.”

“And you’re sorry!” he crowed. “Next you’re going to tell me you’re secretly in love with me.”

“Not so secretly.”

He grinned at her, and she looked away shyly. “Let’s go back to sorry,” she said.

“OK, could you elaborate on that a little, please?”

Jane slid down in the bed, hiding her head under the sheet, but Adam reached down and uncovered her face. “Sorry, for what exactly?” he prompted.

Jane sighed. She felt the urge to back away from this line of questioning, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of hearing her admit that she might have been wrong – not wanting to give him another weapon that he could use to hurt her again. She knew she had to fight against it. If this relationship was going to have any chance of working, she had to allow him to see her naked, without her layers of protective armor.

“I’m sorry for breaking up with you,” she began. “I’m sorry for doing it that night. Let’s see… I’m sorry for not letting you have any say in the matter. I’m sorry I didn’t at least try to make it work.”

He nodded, satisfied. “I’m sorry too,” he said.

“For?”

“I don’t know. For whatever it was that got me in trouble?” He grinned at her, and she rolled her eyes at him. “OK, OK. I’m sorry for taking you for granted. I’m sorry for assuming you would always follow me around wherever I went.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “I’m sorry for not realizing the value of what I had until I lost it.”

“That’s it?” she asked.

“What did I miss?”

“Sorry for stalking me?”

“I did not stalk you!”

“How many phone calls, Adam?”

“Phone calls?” He looked at her innocently. “I know nothing about any phone calls.”

She glared at him, and he broke into another grin. “I liked listening to your voicemail message.” He raised the pitch of his voice in a poor impression. “Hi, this is Jane! I’m not answering the phone right now because my controlling jerk of an ex-boyfriend might be calling, but please leave me a message and I’ll call you back!”

Jane laughed in spite of herself, but Adam’s face was growing serious again. “I’m sorry," he said. "I just needed to hear the sound of your voice.”

She nodded. The truth was, she couldn’t imagine going through life knowing she would never hear his voice again. She’d never had to face it. All she had to do was pop in one of his albums, any time she started to miss him. She reached out and took his hand. “I’m sorry, too, Adam. Really.”

“It’s all good,” he shrugged. “Maybe it just wasn’t the right timing.”

His words brought back a memory to Jane. She sat upright in the bed and looked at him. “It’s like hitting triple jackpot on a slot machine?“ she asked.

He looked up at her quizzically.

“Wait,“ she said, sliding out from under the covers. She went into the living room and came back a moment later, digging through a half-full garbage bag as she scooted onto the bed. At last, she came up with what she was looking for – an old copy of Details Magazine – and she flipped to the page of his interview. He looked over her shoulder as she pointed to a spot on the page.

“…you not only have to meet that person, but it also has to happen at a moment in your life when you’re ready for them. And if that’s not hard enough already, it also has to just happen to be at a moment in that other person’s life when they’re ready for you. It’s like hitting triple jackpot on a slot machine...”

He looked at her in surprise. “You actually read this crap?”

She shrugged.

“You know 90% of it is bullshit, right?”

“I know,” she replied. “That’s why I read it.”

He squinted at her in confusion.

“Because I could always tell when you were caught off guard with a question you hadn’t heard before. And then I would get to hear what was really going on in your head.” She pointed to the spot in the article again. “This one was real.”

He nodded and stared at her for a long moment. Then he took her hand, looking intensely into her eyes. “We have to make this work. I don’t care what it takes. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to make this work.”

“We’re different people now,” she whispered.

“Not so different,” he replied, shaking his head. “A little older and wiser maybe.”

She lifted his hand and kissed it. “There’s a lot we still need to work out.”

“So we’ll work it out.” He reached up and put his hands on either side of her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. He gave her a half-smile as he spoke the next lines: “The battle’s almost won, and we’re only several miles from the sun.”

“Ninety-three million miles,” she responded. “That’s how many miles we are from the sun.”

“So, we’ll get there,” he said. “That’s the point of the song.”

“That’s the point of the song? I thought the point was that we would never get there.”

He chuckled. “I guess we’ve still got a little ways to go.”

“Let’s just get to know each other again first,” she said.

Adam sighed, still holding her gaze as he studied her face. “Fine,” he said at last. “But no more text messages. OK? Promise me.”

She nodded solemnly. “And no more twitter,” she added, poking him in the chest.

“Trust me, I’ve learned my lesson.” He broke into another infectious grin. “If I’ve got something to say, I’m spelling it out in Morse code.”

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