It Stays As It Was Left

2015.1994

April 2015

Stevie ended her call with Frances just as Becca and the girls met her at the deck, holding the camera out to her face.

"Hey," Becca said. "Who was that?" The way she asked suggested that Becca was under the assumption that it was Dave that Stevie had been talking to.

"Frances," Stevie said, smiling at Becca's pout. Ever since the woman found out that the two had gotten divorced around the same time, Becca was convinced that it was 'fate' or whatever spiritual thing she was focused on.

"How is she?" Jeong-Hui asked and Camila scoffed.

"Probably as well as you can be when you have a witch as a mother."

"Delete that," Stevie immediately told the camera, knowing that if she didn't, that would be the only thing that anyone talked about once the movie was released. She had felt Courtney's wrath a few times in the twenty-five year that they had been on and off friends, and she had no interest in igniting it again. She was far too old and busy to deal with it.

"Anyway," Stevie said, sending Camila a glare. "Frances is doing well. Enjoying photography."

"That's great," Camila said earnestly.

Frances had confessed to the girls a couple of times how difficult it could be to live in the shadow of her parents, and Stevie had always done her best to reassure the woman that it didn't matter what she wanted to do in life. Whether she wanted to be a barista for the rest of her life or the fucking president, it didn't matter, it was her choice.

"Anyway," Jeong-Hui said. "You have some songs for us to look at?"

"Yep," Stevie said, leaving the deck to lead the girls to her living room, which was covered in notebooks, papers, and old photos. "Sorry about the mess."

"It's fine," Becca laughed. "Reminds me of writing Selfish Machines."

"Is this what the apartment looked like?" Camila asked. "I was never there. It was a shithole."

"Yeah," Stevie nodded. "Drove Becca crazy."

"It did," Becca agreed, pushing a stack of papers over to take a seat on the couch. "Eventually, I just forced her to move all the shit to her room."

Stevie smiled as she remembered Dave walking into her room one day as she taped notebook paper, burger wrappers, and napkins all over her walls, moving them around in different orders as if she were in some crazed state, trying to solve a massive conspiracy. He had immediately sat her down on the floor and went on a tangent about how gross it was to tape pieces of paper covered in ketchup and lettuce onto her walls. He then helped her re-write everything she had placed on said wrappers and taped those papers up. She could never quite kick the habit of writing on anything she could find, but she had at least ensured that they were relatively clean after that night.

"Be careful!" Stevie yelped as Camila pushed away some paper on the floor. "I have it organized!"

"In what way?" Becca scoffed. "Just looks like a mess."

Stevie chewed on her lip, feeling heat rise to her cheeks.

"Some of it is stuff I just wrote," She muttered. "A few months ago."

"You've been writing?" Jeong-Hui asked in shock. "It's been almost six years since I saw you write."

Stevie shrugged, twirling a loc around her finger. "I have a lot more alone time to write."

"That's great, hun," Becca rasped out. "You gonna make another solo album?"

Stevie snorted and leaned forward to carefully stack some papers.