Jane pressed her shoulder blades against the wall behind her and sucked in her stomach, flattening herself as much as possible, as she stood stock-still behind the open door. She held her breath as she heard Adam pass by the other side of the door, and she waited until all was silent again before daring to peek out from her hiding place.
She wasn’t exactly sure what instinct had led her to hide just now. She spent nearly every evening in his company. She shared his bed most nights. Surely, they’d established enough intimacy between them at this point that she could have simply walked into the room and asked him what he was doing. She’d been on the verge of doing just that when something had stopped her.
It was just that he’d wanted to be alone tonight, she told herself. He’d made it clear enough earlier. She’d been with him in the library after dinner, sipping her tea as he drank his wine, listening together to his collection of classic Motown. He’d been in a good mood. Relaxed and talkative. He’d had an idea earlier in the day for a sound that might be a good fit for her voice. “The old girl groups,” he’d told her enthusiastically. “There’s no one doing that stuff right now.” She’d listened to some songs by The Supremes and Gladys Knight, but nothing had really connected for her until he played a song by one of the lesser known acts – a group called The Shirelles.
Tonight your mine completely.
You give your love so sweetly.
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes.
But will you love me tomorrow?
She’d leaned forward and closed her eyes, feeling him watching her face as she listened to the lyrics. This was a song she understood all too well. These were words that she was essentially living right now – a song about the unbearable insecurity of realizing you were in love with someone and not knowing if he loved you in return.
I’d like to know if your love
Is love I can be sure of,
So tell me now and I won’t ask again,
Will you still love me tomorrow?
He’d been looking at her expectantly as the song came to an end. “Well?” he’d asked.
“Well?” she’d wanted to ask him right back. “Well, will you, Adam? Will you still love me tomorrow?” She was so confused by him. She had caught him watching her with Adele the other day and he’d smiled at her so sweetly when she’d looked up and met his eyes – was that what love looked like? Do you love me, Adam? That’s what she wanted desperately to ask him, but of course she hadn’t said that. She might be inexperienced with men, but she wasn’t an idiot.
No, what she’d been going back and forth about in her mind was whether to press him for more information about his life before she met him. About his late wife, in particular. He’d never spoken of her. The closest he had come was that night a few weeks ago when he’d had the bad dream and she had come to his bed to comfort him. “Was it about her?” she’d whispered to him as he’d clung to her with his face buried in her hair. He’d only nodded in reply.
It was a wall that he’d erected between them – an unspoken barrier that she hadn’t dared to cross. But she knew she could never hope to have any kind of meaningful relationship with him until he felt comfortable enough to open up about his past.
“Well? What did you think?” he’d prompted her again. He wanted to know her reaction to the music, of course. That’s what she should given him – that she liked it but the tempo should be slowed way down, and maybe change the melody a little at the bridge. But she hadn’t said any of that. Instead, she’d screwed up her courage and blurted out the question she’d been debating all day if she should ask him.
“Am I the first woman you’ve been with since your wife died?”
It had been a mistake. She saw it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. He’d flinched ever so slightly – the only outward sign of a reaction – and then his face had shut down completely. “Yes,” he had replied, not meeting her eyes. Then he’d turned abruptly and left the room, muttering something under his breath about wanting to be alone. He hadn’t even bothered to take the half-full bottle of wine he’d been drinking.
She’d taken it away to the kitchen to pour the remnants out into the sink, but she’d stopped for just a moment to sniff at the bottle’s opening. The thought occurred to her that maybe she should finish it herself. Maybe she could use something stronger than tea to silence the doubts that were becoming increasingly difficult for her to ignore. She’d pressed the bottle to her mouth and lifted it, letting the velvety liquid pool against her closed lips for a moment, before hastily jerking it away and pouring the contents of the bottle down the sink.
Afterward, she’d gone back to her own room and crawled into bed, but she hadn’t been able to forget the image of his face as he’d reacted to her question – shutting down, shutting her out. She’d lain awake and wondered if he was sleeping. Maybe he was awake too. Maybe he was thinking about her. Maybe he spent every waking moment daydreaming about her, the way she did about him lately. Picturing his face. Remembering little things he had said. Counting the hours until they’d be alone together. Storing up funny lines she could use later to try to make him smile.
It must have been well past midnight when she’d heard his quiet footfalls outside in the hallway. She’d held her breath, hoping he would stop outside her door, but he’d continued on down the stairs. Maybe he was going for a late night snack, she’d thought. Maybe he would welcome some company. When he hadn’t returned after twenty minutes, she’d gotten out of bed and crept quietly downstairs after him. The light was on in the library – not the kitchen. She should have gone back at that point, but curiosity had gotten the better of her. What was he doing in there in the middle of the night? Like a guilty child spying at a keyhole, she’d slipped herself into the small space behind the open door and watched him through the crack by the door hinge.
Adam had been sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a cabinet that was usually kept locked, thumbing through what looked like a photo album. She’d watched him flick through it silently, stopping for a moment here and there to look at a page. After what felt like an eternity, he’d sighed and closed the book softly, returning it to the cabinet and turning a key in the lock. She’d watched him hide the key on a nearby shelf, before turning off the light and making his way past her out of the room.
She let out a deep breath now, relieved that he hadn’t caught her spying, but strangely disappointed at the same time. “Go back to bed,” she commanded herself as she peeked out of her hiding place. Spying was bad enough. To actually break into a cabinet he kept locked – there was no way she could justify doing something like that. But the temptation was so strong. She knew, of course, exactly what he must keep locked away in there. It was her – his first wife – or his memories of her, at any rate. It had to be. Jane knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t resist. Just for a moment, she silently resolved. She would just peek inside for a moment.
She shut the library door behind her after she entered and quickly located the key he had just hidden, swinging the cabinet door open. Inside, she saw a row of carefully organized albums, all labeled and dated in neat handwriting. She pulled one down and flipped it open. It wasn’t an album, she saw now, but a scrapbook, full of articles and press clippings. It was all about Adam – his music, his TV show, his band… Maybe she’d been wrong. This was just where he kept records of his celebrity past. Not that she wasn’t curious about that as well. He’d told her little bits and pieces of information, but she’d found it difficult to picture him performing up on a stage. A row of jewel cases inside the cabinet caught her eye now, and she pulled a handful of them out. They were all labeled in the same careful handwriting, and she flipped through them one by one.
The Voice, Season 3, Blind Auditions
Grammy’s 2/23/2013
Live with Kelly & Michael 11/15/2013
Tonight Show 10/28/2013
On a whim, Jane picked this last one. The Tonight Show. The name sounded vaguely familiar – and if something sounded familiar to her, she knew it must be a big deal. Eagerly, she walked it over to the DVD player and pushed play, standing back with the remote control in her hand as the clip started.
***
“Let’s give a warm welcome to Adam Levine!”
Jane couldn’t suppress the smile that sprung onto her face as she watched Adam walk out on stage and wave to the talk show audience, all dressed up in a suit and tie. It was a far cry from the jeans and t-shirts she’d always seen him wearing. His hair was different, too – all neatly combed and slicked down. But that wasn’t what made him look so different, so much younger. This show had only been taped four years ago, after all. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.
He was shaking hands now with the white-haired host of the show, and he waved at the audience one last time before taking a seat.
“So you’ve been having quite a year!” the host began.
“Yeah,” Adam nodded noncommittally. “I guess you could say that.”
“Let’s see. You’ve got The Voice. You’ve got a movie coming out—“
“I do, I do.” Adam nodded some more in agreement.
“But that’s not your big news,” the host continued. “There’s something pretty major that happened since you were last here.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Adam was rolling his eyes, but he stopped and flashed a full-dimpled grin at the audience when they started to applaud.
“Adam Levine is a married man, everyone!”
“What?” He pretended to do a double-take, looking at the host in surprise. “Oh that?”
“What?” the host bantered back. “What did you think we were talking about?”
Adam shrugged. “I mean, c’mon Jay. Sexiest Man Alive?” The crowd began to whistle, and he waved an arm to encourage them.
“Right, absolutely!” Jay laughed. “I think we have a copy of that somewhere.” He held up a magazine cover, and Jane saw a picture of Adam in a white t-shirt, lounging on his back with one arm thrown up over his head. People Magazine. Even she had heard of People Magazine. Anyone who’d ever set foot in a grocery store had heard of that one. Jane shook her head in disbelief. She’d known he was famous, of course, but it came as a shock to realize just how much of a household name he must have been.
Adam was covering his eyes now with one hand, feigning embarrassment as the crowd cheered raucously.
Jay continued once the cheering finally died down. “So is that sort of how you’re ranking things in your life? It’s being named sexiest man alive first, and then marriage—“
Adam took his hand his way from his eyes and looked at Jay in confusion. “What? Oh no. No. C’mon Jay, that would be—that would be ridiculous.” He began ticking a list off with his fingers as he continued. “It’s more like the sexiest man alive thing, and then there’s the fashion line I just launched—“
“Right. Sure. Of course. For Kmart—“
“—Right. And then, you know, I started parting my hair off to the side.” Adam pointed to his head and flashed a grin into the camera. “Which there was a lot of talk about on the twitter—“
“Sure, sure,” Jay nodded seriously.
“—And I got a new car…” Adam paused for a moment to think.
“So just to be clear,” Jay cut in, “The new wife ranks below the new car?”
Adam broke into a slow smile. “Shit. I am in so much trouble right now.”
“I mean,” Jay gave an exaggerated wince. “Far be it from me to give marital advice.”
Adam was laughing now. “I’m kidding!” He looked directly into the camera and held up his hands in front of his face as if to protect himself from some invisible object being hurled at his head. “I’m joking,” he said. “Jane, it’s a joke.”
Jane. Was that his wife’s name too? Jane felt like she’d just been punched in the stomach, hearing his voice utter that name. Her name. No wonder he’d had so much trouble calling her by it when she’d first arrived here. Even now, she got the feeling sometimes that he avoided addressing her by name at all. It made so much sense now. Jane shook her head in shock, but she forced her attention back to the TV screen. She needed to hear the rest of this.
“Should we start again?” the host was asking Adam sympathetically.
“Yes!” Adam chuckled. “Please, Jay! Save me from myself.”
He had Jay and the whole audience laughing along with him at this point. “So,” Jay made a motion as if he were rewinding a tape with his hands. “Let’s try this again. Adam Levine is a married man, everyone!”
Adam looked down at his left hand and raised it up to show the audience, pointing at the gold wedding band he was wearing on his ring finger.
The audience burst into applause again, and Adam bowed his head modestly with a huge smile on his face.
“So this all happened kind of suddenly, no?” Jay continued once the cheering had died down.
Adam shrugged. “I mean, yes and no.”
“No one even knew you were seeing this girl, and then all of a sudden—boom!”
“Yeah,” Adam replied. “I mean, there was some history there.”
Jay turned now to address the camera. “So in case anyone in America doesn’t know this story by now, Adam, you married a woman named Jane who was a former girlfriend?”
Adam nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed in a nonchalant voice. “Kind of went old school with the whole wife thing—“
“Right,” Jay interrupted. “So just another little tip, Adam. “ Adam looked at him questioningly. “You should never use the words ‘old’ and ‘wife’ in the same sentence,” Jay continued.
“Shit!” Adam broke into another sheepish grin and waved his arms as if to expunge what he’d just said from the record. “No no no! Not what I meant!” He buried his face in his hands in mock despair as Jay and the audience laughed at him. “We can edit that out right?”
“Uhhh,” Jay hesitated for a moment, looking back over his shoulder off-stage. “Actually, there’s something I should probably mention,” he said vaguely.
Adam followed the host’s gaze with a look of genuine confusion on his face as Jay continued. “Now your wife couldn’t be here for this taping today because she had to work, right?”
“Right,” Adam agreed slowly, eyeing Jay suspiciously. “What? What did you do?”
“Well, actually…” Jay broke into a malevolent smile, rubbing his hands together gleefully.
“No!” Adam exclaimed, his eyes going wide. “You’re kidding me!”
He twisted in his chair to look as the camera panned to show a woman emerging from the side of the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special guest with us tonight!” Jay announced. “Mrs. Adam Levine!”
The crowd burst into wild cheers as the woman walked across the stage, looking flawlessly poised and pulled together in a low-cut silk blouse and tailored skirt. She was quite petite, Jane noticed. The host towered over her when she went over to hug him, despite the pair of high stiletto heels she was wearing. She had shoulder-length brown hair that framed a heart-shaped face, with large, liquid brown eyes. Jane knew those eyes, of course. Adele’s eyes. The resemblance between mother and daughter was striking.
Adam had risen to his feet and was applauding her as she finished hugging Jay and turned toward him. The camera panned to the audience, who were all on their feet now, giving her a standing ovation as well. She flashed them a shy smile, and Jane couldn’t help noticing her full lips and perfectly straight teeth. Jane ran her tongue across the top row of her own teeth, feeling the slight gap between the front two that had always made her self-conscious. She felt a little sick to her stomach, and she looked down at the remote control, contemplating whether she should shut the DVD off now. But she knew she couldn’t. She needed to see the rest.
The woman was moving to take the chair beside Adam, but he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her in for a kiss, eliciting screams and hoots from the crowd, before sitting back down and pulling her over to sit on his lap. They both look a little flushed, grinning at each other.
“Hi,” Adam said to her when the crowd finally let him get a word in edgewise.
She was perched gracefully on one of his knees, and she was small enough that their faces were just about even as she sat there with both arms draped around his neck. “Hi,” she smiled back at him.
The crowd broke into another burst of applause, and she turned and waved at them shyly.
Jay looked at Adam and quipped, “I think she’s more popular than you are.”
“Oh definitely,” Adam nodded. “You wouldn’t believe. I swear she gets more interview requests than I do.”
“I had to get my own publicist,” she laughed in agreement.
“Yeah,” Adam added. “Our publicists do lunch. It’s so weird.” The two of them laughed together. A strand of her hair had fallen over her face, and he reached up and tucked it behind her ear as she smiled at him.
“So tell us, Jane,” the host asked in a confidential tone, “What is it exactly that you see in this guy?”
She turned and looked at Jay thoughtfully for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said at last with a shrug. “I guess I just felt sorry for him.”
Adam threw his head back and laughed.
“So it was a pity thing?” Jay clarified.
“Pretty much,” she nodded. She turned to look at Adam again then, placing a hand on the back of his neck and running her fingers through his hair as she looked at him pityingly.
Adam stuck out his lower lip and made puppy dog eyes at her before turning to smile at Jay. “See, you only think she’s joking right now.”
“Interesting,” Jay replied, scratching his chin and looking at them skeptically. “Now, you two were actually—what was it? High school sweethearts?”
“Uh, more like college sweethearts,” Adam corrected. “I mean—“
“I was in college,” she explained. “He was in a band.”
“So basically, Adam, you were every parent’s worst nightmare when they send their daughter off to college.”
“Basically,” Adam agreed with a smirk.
“And is that what broke you two up, initially? Her parents disapproved?”
“No, no,” Adam shook his head. “No, she did that all on her own.” He grinned at Jay as he spoke. “It was pretty brutal.”
She was stroking his hair soothingly again. “Well, at least some good music came out of it, right?”
“Sure,” he nodded in agreement. “Nothing like ripping a man’s still-beating heart out of his chest and stomping all over it to inspire good music.” He was grinning at her teasingly as he said it, and she smiled back playfully at him before turning her head to address Jay. “It was pretty brutal,” she confirmed.
“Which might explain why you never really got over her, Adam? Is that right? You always knew she was the one?”
The two of them were looking into each other’s eyes now and there was a pause before Adam responded. “I always knew she was the one,” he said softly. Both of their faces had grown serious as he spoke. He ran one thumb across her cheek, and she reached up to take hold of his fingers, lightly pressing her lips against the back of his hand, before Adam turned his head to look again at Jay. “I always knew she was the one,” he repeated. “I just thought she was the one that got away.”
Jane hit Stop on the remote control, bringing the show to an abrupt halt. Her heart was racing in her chest, and she felt a wave of nausea wash over her. It wasn’t the woman who had made her feel this way. The other woman. The other Jane. It wasn’t jealousy. What point was there, being jealous of a dead woman?
No, it was him, Jane realized. That Adam, up on that screen – he was a stranger to her. She’d never seen him look that way. She’d never seen his eyes light up the way they just had when he looked at his wife. She’d never seen his whole face flush like that with some mixture of joy and desire. And love.
That’s what it was, she knew. That was the answer to the question she’d been longing to ask him, but didn’t dare to speak aloud. She’d never seen him look at her like that. She’d never seen his face in love.