“Yep, Bryn and I are still together,” I tell Vanessa.

“And she’s not pregnant. She’s just into those peasant tops these days, so everyone always assumes it’s to hide a belly. It’s not.”

Truth be told, I sometimes wonder if Bryn wears those tops on purpose, to court the bump watch as a way to tempt fate. She seriously wants a kid. Even though publicly, Bryn is twenty-four, in reality, she’s twenty-eight and she claims her clock is ticking and all that. But I’m twenty-one, and Bryn and I have only been together a year. And I don’t care if Bryn says that I have an old soul and have been through a lifetime already. Even if I were forty-one, and Bryn and I had just celebrated twenty years together, I wouldn’t want a kid with her.

“Will she be joining you on the tour?”

At the mere mention of the tour, I feel my throat start to close up. The tour is sixty-seven nights long. Sixtyseven.

I mentally pat for my pill bottle, grow calmer knowing it’s there, but am smarter than to sneak one in front of Vanessa.

“Huh?” I ask.

“Is Bryn going to come meet you on the tour at all?”

I imagine Bryn on tour, with her stylists, her Pilates instructors, her latest raw-foods diet. “Maybe.”

“How do you like living in Los Angeles?” Vanessa asks. “You don’t seem like the SoCal type.”

“It’s a dry heat,” I reply.

“What?”

“Nothing. A joke.”

“Oh. Right.” Vanessa eyes me skeptically. I no longer read interviews about myself, but when I used to, words like inscrutable were often used. And arrogant. Is that really how people see me?

Thankfully, our allotted hour is up. She closes her notebook and calls for the check. I catch Aldous’s relievedlooking eyes to let him know we’re wrapping up.

“It was nice meeting you, Adam,” she says.

“Yeah, you too,” I lie.

“I gotta say, you’re a puzzle.” She smiles and her teeth gleam an unnatural white. “But I like puzzles.