“Hey, you were at the Today Show this morning, right?”

Jane stood to close the door to her office. This phone call was going to require some privacy.

“Hey Marcy,” she said into the phone.

“Well, were you? I was watching on TV!”

Jane was struck by a new wave of panic. It was almost noon, and she was finally starting to calm down after the tailspin she’d been in since the events of the morning. Seeing Adam up close, hearing his voice in her ear, brought back vividly how he could always make her heart race, although he had seemed strangely unfamiliar at the same time. He used to be so skinny. He was more muscular now, but it was more than that. Maybe it was all the tattoos. They made him seem harder, less real. Like an action figure of himself.

Now her heart started pounding again at Marcy’s words. Had she been on TV after all? He’d said they were in commercial. She was completely mortified by the thought of any of her colleagues recognizing her there among all the star struck teenagers. She had a reputation to uphold. It was hard enough, being the youngest partner at her firm, and female too. It was absolutely essential to maintain a professional demeanor. She always dressed impeccably – designer suits, designer shoes. Her makeup was always flawless, her nails professionally manicured, her hair pulled back in a conservative bun or French twist. She was a petite woman who had a tendency to be mistaken for a much younger girl if she didn’t take care to present herself in a certain way. She couldn’t afford to be seen as a screaming fan of a pop band.

“Jane, are you there?” Marcy, her best friend, was practically shouting into the phone.

“Yeah, I’m here. I was there. Why?”

“I was watching on TV. It seemed like there was a screw up or something.  There was this weird commercial in the middle, and then he changed the second song.”

“Yeah.”

“Did something go wrong? Could you tell what was going on?”

“You didn’t see me on TV, did you?”

“You?” Marcy screeched. “Jane, what happened? You tell me what happened this instant!”

Jane couldn’t help smiling into the phone. Marcy had always had a tendency to boss her around. It didn’t matter that she was a high-powered Manhattan attorney now and Marcy was a housewife in New Jersey. It had always been that way between them, ever since they were freshmen roommates in college.

“He saw me,” Jane replied.

“Shit, are you sure? Do you think he recognized you?”

“He recognized me.”

“Jane, I swear to God if you don’t spill it this second, I’m going to come over there and wring it out of you. Now spill!”

Jane sat back down at her desk and let out a groan. She knew she shouldn’t have gone to the show. What was she thinking? Now it was going to turn into a big thing. She briefly considered not telling Marcy. She could just let the whole thing blow over. But could she really pass up the chance to see him? Just having his attention on her for a few brief seconds this morning, she’d felt more alive than she had in how long? Had she ever felt that alive in the 11 years since she broke up with him?

“He jumped off the stage after the first song. He came over to talk to me. That’s why they went to commercial.”

“Oh. My. God,” Marcy squeaked. “What did he say?”

“He invited me to some party at his hotel tonight.” Jane pulled the phone away from her ear as Marcy gave an unintelligible shriek.

“That’s so amazing! Are you freaking out?”

“Something like that.”

“Wait a minute. Why aren’t you excited right now?” Marcy said. “You know you’ve been obsessed with him for, like, forever.”

“I have not been obsessed with him.”

“Oh, please,” Marcy laughed. “He’s your only hobby outside of work, ever since you broke up with Jeremy. How long ago was that, like 3 years?”

Five years ago, Jane thought with a wince. And it was true. Following Adam’s career had become her guilty pleasure, her one and only vice. Some people drank or smoked or slept around. She watched back episodes of The Voice and read his celebrity fluff pieces to get her through the nights.

“Well, I’m not going, so that’s the end of it.”

 “You’re going. You are so going.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Marcy, it’s going to be a room full of music people. I’ll just get there and feel ridiculously out of place. Do I really need to subject myself to that?”

Her words brought back an old memory of another party, many years ago. It had been her first week of freshman year at NYU, September 1997. She and Marcy were fast friends – both suburban girls, overwhelmed by the seemingly limitless excitement of being on their own in the big city. A herd of kids were gathering in the hall outside their dorm room, talking about a party. She and Marcy had tagged along. It had been a dilapidated fifth floor walk-up on a sketchy block of Avenue C. The stairwell looked like it hadn’t been painted in about 30 years, and a section of the railing was cracked and about to give way the moment a drunken party-goer accidentally put too much weight on it. To Jane, it had seemed like the most glamorous place she’d ever seen in her life.

Of course, she and Marcy felt aliens from another planet when they got inside. They were wearing the wrong clothes for one thing, both in their well-pressed J. Crew skirts, when the other girls in the crowd were in perfectly tattered jeans designed to look like they came from the nearest Army-Navy store. They’d found an empty stretch of wall and stood together, giggling nervously, wondering if any of the boys there would bother to talk to them. 

As Jane had scanned the room, her eyes kept coming back to one guy in particular. He was tall and lean, dressed in baggy clothes that only emphasized his skinny frame, with bushy dark brown hair and the most beautiful face she’d ever seen on a boy. She wasn’t the only one who’d taken notice. He was casually leaning back against the filthy kitchen counter, bracing his weight with his elbows, as a group of six or seven hopelessly sophisticated older girls vied for the pole position to talk to him.

“Who is that?” Jane asked nobody in particular.

“Oh, that’s Adam. He’s the front man.”

Jane didn’t have time to contemplate the meaning of this indecipherable statement. He had suddenly looked up and caught her staring at him. She’d blushed violently, but he just threw her a smile and wave, like she was an old friend he hadn’t seen in years.

“You look like you need a drink!” he had called to her across the room.

She smiled back and started moving toward him involuntarily, her muscles no longer under her own control.

“Hi, have we met?” he’d asked.

“I’m Jane.”

“Jane, have a beer.” He’d handed her a cup and flashed that grin at her one more time, before his circle of admirers closed around him once again, shutting her out.

She had left with Marcy an hour later without talking to him again, but she’d relived that brief conversation again and again for days afterward, thinking of all the flirtatious comments she should have made. Too late. Too slow. Too inexperienced. How her cheeks burned at the memory. He was way out of her league.

“Just go for 10 minutes,” Marcy was saying to her now. “If it sucks, you can leave.”

Jane sighed. That party was 15 years ago, and here she was facing the prospect yet again – the awkward little wallflower at Adam Levine’s fabulously sophisticated party.

“What would I even wear?”

“Wear your work clothes.”

“To a Soho music industry party?”

“Sure. It says you came straight from work. You’re not trying too hard,” Marcy said, her voice authoritative despite the fact that her main party-going experience these days involved PTA potlucks.

“This is going to suck.”

“Jane, I love you, but if you don’t go, I’m never speaking to you again.”

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