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?”
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Obsessed {Book #1 of The Obsessed Series}
Fanfiction{Book #1 of The Obsessed Series} When Adam Levine named his debut album Songs About Jane, he never anticipated the questions that would haunt him for years to come. Who is Jane? Where is Jane? Are you still in love with Jane? Now more than a de...
