Elated and relieved that Malik would be all right, Jenna was in a celebratory mood. Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell anyone why. Probably, it was her mood of willfully suppressed happiness that caused her to say, “Why not?” when Travis called that very night and invited her to accompany him on part of his summer tour. She could easily manage a couple of weeks’ vacation in August, especially since Karim had already made plans to spend most of the month at the Chandler home in Newport.

Yet, no sooner had she said yes than Jenna began to have second thoughts. She had never spent more than a weekend in Travis’s company. What would they do for days on end? And how would she adapt to his gypsy lifestyle?

Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. We’ll have a great time. It will do me good to break out of my routine.

But her concerns turned out to be well founded. The tour wasn’t the fun interlude she had expected. It was more like nonstop madness. Worse, Travis’s drinking, gambling, and partying weren’t as charming to her on a daily basis as they’d been for a night or two snatched here and there. And Jenna’s interest in intellectual topics didn’t fascinate Travis over the long run as much as it had in short installments.

As August ended, it was clear to both of them that their peripatetic love affair was over.

Their parting was neither bitter nor angry.

“Still friends?” Travis asked with his trademark grin.

“Always,” Jenna promised, feeling both sad and relieved. She had been raised to believe that relationships were a serious matter. And she had never been really comfortable with the idea that sex—or a man—could be simply for recreation. Yet … what it amounted to was that, before Travis, she had never really known how lonely she was. And now she knew.

Ironically, their breakup made Travis’s career. He wrote a bittersweet song about their parting titled “That’s You and Me All Over.” It hit the top of the country charts, the first of his songs to do so. After nine or ten comebacks, he was, at last, a star.

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