CHAPTER 6: You feel like pinching yourself when your thumb lingers above the redial button on your phone at 20 minutes past one in the night.
The redial button for Adam Levine's number.
That called you twice.
And sent you 15 text messages.
All within the past half hour.
He wanted to talk to you. He wrote to you like he found it very urgent. If he didn't, he wouldn't have called you either, would he? You can't fathom it as you lie there in your bed, sleepy yet wide awake from the excitement, nervousness, adrenalin that for some reason flows through you. Why the hell did Adam Levine choose to call YOU of all people in the middle of the night?
You stare hesitantly at the redial button, and you desperately try to figure out what to do. Your thumb stays above it, because you can't decide, and as you fight to come up with an answer, suddenly the phone rings again. You get so startled, sitting there in your own thoughts, that your hand slips, and it takes a long second before you realize you pressed the 'answer' button. Confused you bring the phone to your ear.
"Hello...?" you ask hesitantly, and then your heart almost stops beating in your chest.
"What's your name? Can you meet up with me?" Adam Levine says urgently in your ear.
"What?" is all you manage to blabber out, totally confused but at the same time totally out of yourself from disbelief and excitement, and you can hear him groan.
"Can you meet up with me?" he pleads again, and you can't believe your ears.
"Wha- mee- meet up with you?"
You can hear the disbelief in your own voice.
"Yeah, please," Adam confirms. "Why?" you ask, incabable of asking anything else.
"I wanna talk."
"Why?" you insist.
"I just- Look, I just wanna meet up with you, okay? I'm not a fuckin' axe murderer. Please, just meet me." "Where?" "I don't know, just somewhere."
"I know a great coffee shop," you offer hesitantly.
"Sure, okay, yeah, whatever," Adam agrees, and you blink and try to wake up and think straight. "When can you be there?"
You consider it for a second. "20 minutes," you say.
"What's the address? I'll meet you there in 15," Adam states plainly, and you're overwhelmed with surprise, and take a moment to remember. You tell him, and then you hear something, like he's moving around. You wait.
"What's your name?" His voice is so urged, as if he can't wait to leave. "Emily," you answer, and there's a brief second of complete silence.
"You better not stand me up, Emily," he then says, and then he hangs up.
You just lie there. You've just arranged meeting up with Adam Levine at a coffee shop, and it's one thirty in the night. What's the odds? They're not there. They don't exist. And yet, here you are, getting out of bed to get dressed. If this is all a dream, God have mercy on whoever is around you in the morning when you wake up. You turn on the lamp on your nightstand, stand up on your bedroom floor, and walk to your closet, and after finding a pair of worn out, loose jeans and an old hoodie, you head to the bathroom. You splash water in your face, do your business, and get your clothes on, and after brushing your hair and your teeth, you grab your phone and your wallet and walk out the door. You walk fast, trying not to overthink things, and then you see it after a couple of minutes - the open twenty-four hours a day coffee shop. You look through the windows and see the room, lit up by warm light from the cozy lamps in the ceiling, and, to the far left by the windows, a man in torn jeans and a hoodie, almost like you. You can't see his arms, but his face is unmistakeable: it's him. It's Adam.
Breathe, you think to yourself.
Then you walk in.
