I met him at a bar on my twenty-first birthday. Some of my friends from school took me out for drinks at this local bar we frequented a lot because they would serve you without an ID, which made the celebration a little bittersweet, but still well worth it. We were all having a good time getting sufficiently drunk and since I didn’t have to pay for anything since it was my birthday, I was well on my way to belligerent before the clock even struck midnight.

            He was there with some friends; trying in vain to drink away the after effects of a terrible show played somewhere down the street. The way he tells it, he’d noticed me all along, but it took some alcohol courage to send a drink my way, a la the bartender. He says he figured I would have a boyfriend, but after a handful of beers he didn’t care anymore. The way I see it, he had his beer goggles on and didn’t notice my drunkenly disheveled state. Or he did and wanted to take advantage of it.

            The bartender gave the drink to my friend Rebecca, who had a boyfriend, so we sent it right back down the bar, giggling like school girls. We forgot about it almost instantly and went back to playing our favorite game- Who Would You Rather, in which we would give each other two equally disgusting choices in men and we would have to pick one to sleep with.

            It was getting pretty intense (I had to choose between one of my English professors and Becca’s dad) when we were interrupted by a slightly drunken stranger. We both looked up at him, waiting for him to do something. He looked at me for a long moment, and then asked me why I had returned his drink.

            We realized the misunderstanding almost immediately, and Becca scooted over a stool so he could sit next to me. A few drinks later, I was most certainly intrigued. Adam was from California and was traveling the country in this little fifteen passenger van with his very best friends playing in a band. And, let’s face it, what girl isn’t a sucker for a boy in a band?  

I don’t really know what attracted him to me; the college student that went to Brown and was writing a novel in her spare time. The girl who could barely walk in heels and preferred a messy bun over blow drying. The girl who didn’t expect or want fame or notoriety out of her career, who just wanted to be happy doing something she enjoyed. The girl who was content where she was, and didn’t need anything more. The girl who was most certainly not cut out to be a rock star’s girlfriend.

            It was weird how quickly we became attached. Phone numbers were exchanged, although I didn’t think anything would come of it, but he called the next day. And the day after that, and the day after that. We talked as long as time would allow, learning everything and everything about each other. We were friends first, because it was impossible to found a romantic relationship without being able to be physical, but the thought was always lingering.

            It was that way for about five months, when I was going to a conference at UCLA with one of my English professors. I was there for a little less than a week, and it happened to be the same week that Adam was home in-between touring (which was apparently going a lot better than it had been the night we met). We spent every possible second together, and the actual relationship was founded.

            For the first, let’s say, year or so, I was always on a plane. It was my senior year of college, so I still had my winter and spring breaks, plus the summer, to jet around the globe, following my increasingly famous boyfriend. My bank account certainly depleted, but I thought it was worth it. Every reunion was unique and special, mind-blowing in its own way. That’s the year we fell in love and realized there was no one else.

            When I graduated from college, I did mostly the same thing. As the band became more popular, it became easier for me to travel with them when my schedule allowed, which it usually did because I wasn’t published yet. I would take off for weeks at a time, spending all of my time with the one I loved and not giving it a second thought.

            The third year I had to settle down a bit and really get cracking on my book, so our visits were cut short and our phone conversations lengthened, but we were both more than willing to drop anything when we heard the phone ring. I barely slept that year I spent so much time on the phone; time zones didn’t matter, even when they were over six hours. I went to meetings looking like death warmed over, but it was okay because I was in love.

            Around year four, which is now, things got weird. After my first book came out and I got a contract with a publishing company, I started to have a real schedule. I had deadlines and meetings, and really had to stay where I was. There were no breaks for me to go visit Adam, and authors never really got specific vacation time. Erin wanted me to churn out my second book fairly quickly, and I wrote my best in my apartment, so that was where I stationed myself. I started to realize that my life and career were important, too, and I couldn’t just drop everything for my boyfriend, even if I wanted to.

            In the past when I wrote, I would hope with all my heart that the phone would ring and it would be Adam, and just hearing his voice would inspire me to write about love and passion and all that junk. Now when my phone rings when I’m in my office, I’m tempted not to answer, but I usually do.

            “Hello?” I balanced the phone between my shoulder and ear so I could continue to type as I spoke.

            “Hey, Sam.” No inspiration of passion here. “What’s up?”        

            “Not much. Just writing. You?” I frowned, trying to decide between the words paralyzing shyness and paralyzing insecurity.

            “Just hanging out. We just did sound check.” He was doing something else as well, I could tell by the distance in his voice.

            “How was your day?” Shyness was better, I decided, but I highlighted the word on my screen so I could go back and check it later.

            “Fine, yours?” It was like a volley.

            “Good.” I squinted at the screen. “Where are you, anyway?”

            “Texas, you?” Caught not paying attention, point for me.

            “Home.” I rolled my eyes briefly, although he couldn’t see me. “Obviously.”

            “Right.” A slight chuckle. “I should probably go. I just wanted to check in.”

            “Ok, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I agreed.

            “Love you.”

            “Love you, too.” I stifled a yawn and hung the phone up gently. That was one of our better conversations; we usually never cut it short enough and had to sit in awkward silence for a while before hanging up.

            See what I mean about that phone call being more of a requirement and a nuisance than anything else? We obviously didn’t have anything of importance to talk about, except for the obligatory ‘I love you’ which punctuated every conversation.

            Today I was more affected by our worthless conversation than most others, so I got up from my laptop and walked aimlessly around my apartment, slowly taking everything in. As a writer, I tend to notice detail, and I couldn’t help but notice that my apartment reeked of ‘us’.

            Of course there were pictures of us on display and he had a drawer in my dresser, but that wasn’t what I noticed. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the opened box of Frosted Flakes in the cupboard that he bought the last time he was in town. I hated that stuff, but it somehow kept making its way back into my cabinets. ESPN Classic was programmed as one of my favorite channels on my TV, and I can assure you I have never watched it.

            In my six-CD changer, Dashboard Confessional owned two of the slots, and if I had my say, those CDs would have been burned (as in with fire, not copied) a long time ago. My queen sized bed had not one but two slight grooves in it, and two nightstands.

            The only room that didn’t have a trace of Adam in it was my office, which I kept mostly bare so nothing would distract me while I was working. There was only a desk, a chair, and my laptop so I could focus. I brought the portable phone in there with me sometimes so I wouldn’t have to get up when I got a phone call, but that was it.

            It was weird to have an apartment full of someone that didn’t actually live with you, or even spend that much time there. Adam was on tour for about nine or ten months of the year, and spent at least another month or so with his family, which gave him about a month to stay with me and take over every inch of my apartment. Not to say I hadn’t done the same in his, but he wasn’t constantly reminded of our relationship when he was living on a bus.