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going on here that I don’t know about? Something more is happening with Jack than just junk about us.  I can feel my gaze grow sparkly. “I love what we have, Jack. I don’t want to change it.”
    He crosses the room then, taking me so quickly against his chest, nearly crushing me in the protective hold of his arms. His lips bury in my hair as he whispers, “You hold on to things too tightly, Linda. And you worry too much that everything is going to be taken from you. I’m not going anywhere. Not ever. Nothing is going to change how I feel about you. Nothing.”
    He steps back from me.
    I stare up at him. “I’ll see you when you get back?”
    I don’t like the way he’s looking at me. “There’s a thing after the show,” he says. “I’ll try to cut out early.”
    He looks away first. Jack has never done that before and I’m dropped into a shaky, emotional pit. All I ever want to do is please Jack. It’s what I do best, being what men need me to be, but I can’t seem to do it at all anymore. Everything I do comes out wrong. I don’t know why. I just want to love him.
    I watch him move around the hotel room. Jack doesn’t stop until he’s at the door. “I’ll leave your name on the list at the security entrance, Linda, in case you change your mind.” His brilliant blue stare locks on me. “I hope you change your mind, baby. I could really use you being there tonight.”
    He opens the door. I recognize the roadie waiting in the hallway. Garret says, “You ready to do it, man?”
    “Sure. Let’s roll,” Jack says. He doesn’t look back, but Garrett gives me a shy smile over his head.
    The door clicks closed between us. I stare at it, feeling miserable and alone and really shitty. I hate that I can’t be everything he wants me to be. I want to. But you can’t just magically be someone you’re not. There is too much garbage from my past in Jack’s world waiting to collide with me. There is still so much about me I’ve got to fix. Heck, I can’t even afford to get my car out of the Hyatt parking lot.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
    Without Jack, the room is just a room in a Hyatt. It’s lost its luster. Sterile walls, stock furnishings, and little touches of creature comforts and assembly line art arranged in hopes of making it homey. It’s not homey. It’s a lifeless space, empty and lonely, and tonight the emptiness mocks me.
    I slip off the arm of the couch onto the seat. It’s 9p.m. Jack should be on stage by ten. A ninety minute set. The backstage thing. An after party. I won’t see him for five, maybe six hours.
    I feel anxious and uncomfortable with only my own company. A lot went wrong tonight. It started out wonderfully, but boy did we end in an awkward place. I fight the replay of the prior hours in my head, but the flashing moments are unrelenting. I’ve strayed so far with Jack from the type of relationship I’ve always known with men that it’s little wonder I can’t figure out what’s going wrong with us and why.
    I reach for the phone. For some reason, calling my mother sounds like a really good thing to do right now. I can’t call Jeanette. My best friend doesn’t approve of my affair with Jack. She thinks I’m letting myself be used, setting myself up for another heartache, and that I’m delusional to think it could end any other way.
    I punch my mom’s number into the phone and wait. Ring. Ring. Ring.
    “Hello.”
    “Hi Mom. Sorry to call so late, but I wanted to check on you.”
    Doris laughs. “I just saw you for dinner last night, dear. It’s Friday night. I would have thought you had big plans or something.”
    “Nope. Just me all alone tonight.”
    Silence through the receiver for a moment. Then, “What’s wrong, Linda? Something has got to be wrong for you to be alone on a Friday night and calling me.”
    Oh crap, how does she always know? It’s unnerving that a woman who understands so little about human relationships—her affair with my father and her