Cheaper Than Free: An Anniversary Story (The Dance A/U Sequel)

Warmer Than Sun-Drenched Land

Paradise Valley, Arizona
Monday, January 9, 1995
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The view from up on Lindsey's lap was a little bit different, but the feeling was exactly the same.

Lindsey was sitting back in a big, overstuffed green velvet armchair in her living room, and she had no idea how it had happened, but she sat straddling his lap, her arms around his neck, running her fingers through the back of his hair as she leaned down to kiss him again. They had been kissing for quite awhile now - at least as long as it had taken for Melrose Place on the TV in the distance to turn into Party Of Five - and it felt so natural, so sweet, so warm, that she had no idea how they were going to stop.

But she knew that they should. The people at rehab had cautioned everyone against making major decisions in their first year of sobriety - starting or ending a marriage, selling a house, moving to a new city, changing careers. Of course, she had broken the rule twice by going on the Street Angel tour across America...by bus, no less...and enjoying a short, sweet fling on tour with Dallas Taylor, the man who used to drum for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and had taken his own experience with addiction and recovery and turned it into a life of service for other people suffering the same disorder...as she had for eight years on klonopin. Dallas was sweet, cute, insightful, an amazing listener...all the things that Lindsey used to be once upon a time.

As she sat on Lindsey's lap that night and they stared into each other's eyes between rounds of long, deep kisses mingled with soft, tender brushes of lips together in between, she pondered what Dallas had told her when their love affair had come to an end, just as the tour had.

"Stevie, you know it's not that I don't find you attractive and amazing and everything good," he'd said, sitting on the couch in the back of the tour bus where they'd shared many a sweet, tender moment since he'd joined her on the road. "But it's not what you want...and you know that. I mean, even if I left my girlfriend...packed up my stuff and loaded up my car and drove down to your house with good intentions...it wouldn't be the right thing to do. You don't want that...and I think you know deep down that I'm right, honey. That's not what this is."

Stevie had done her best to dry her tears and get ready for the trip home, and asked Sharon if she wouldn't mind sleeping in bed with her that night as the tour bus had sped through the clear, dark night towards Los Angeles, California so everyone could disperse and return to their lives. She'd cried to Sharon and then alone in the skinny, uncomfortable bed, her arms wrapped around little Sara Belladonna the dog, and by the next morning she'd come to realize what she'd been crying for. Sure, part of her mourned the end of a sweet little love affair, but it was really because she hadn't felt those feelings in almost a decade, since the klonopin had robbed her of feelings in general. And more than that, she knew now that she could feel those feelings again, and the one man she wanted to give all those feelings too was in a bedroom somewhere in Bel Air, locked away playing with recording equipment, and writing songs on the guitar about the struggling actress he was playing house with because he was in his forties now and needed to settle down.

And yet here he was, in her living room in Arizona, sitting beneath her and looking up into her eyes, running delicate fingers along the side of her face and tucking hair behind her ear. He'd showed up unannounced this afternoon, ringing Chris and Lori's doorbell first to ask if she was home, if they thought she'd let him in. The last time he'd seen her she was huddled on a bathroom floor in tears, violently shaking and wondering if she'd ever feel normal again, if the muscle spasms would stop, if her skin would be skin again...and if she needed to change the way her blonde highlights were done now that her hair had become gray. At one hundred and seventy pounds, she wondered how he could possibly stand to be holding her that way, but he had, through the pain and the shaking and the nausea and the molting skin. He'd even helped her stand in the shower.