Fall From Grace: The Dance Thriller, Part 2

One Night In A World Of Pain And You Finally Understand

Tacoma, Washington
Saturday, October 11, 1997
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They were both in tears by the time he was finished.

Sara Belladonna, sensing the mood of the scene, was curled up in a ball against the pillows, disengaged. Stevie's uneaten second Twinkie was staring back at her from the armchair across from the bed where she had dropped it. Lindsey had not let go of her hand the entire time he'd spoken, but Stevie changed that. The first words out of her mouth were, "May I have my hand back for a minute?"

Lindsey did as he was told and let go.

"Stevie?" He was beginning to worry; she had not yet responded to any of his words, not interrupting him even once as he'd told her everything.

"When is her baby due?" One tear slid silently down her cheek.

"January," he said. "Two weeks before..." He trailed off, knowing he didn't need to finish the sentence. Stevie nodded.

"It's a boy?"

"Yeah."

"Is that what you'd prefer? I mean, a younger woman and a son, not old, fat, rambling Stevie and a baby girl named after her dead best friend?"

"I'm not going to say it again, Stevie. I love you. It's you that I want."

"Were you..." She cleared her throat, wiped away the tear that had slid down along her nose. "Were you ever with her and me at the same time?"

"No. I meant what I said that first night, Stevie. I broke up with her right after we were together and never looked back. This is her doing...I swear to God...on you, on the baby, on my brother's soul in heaven, I swear I broke up with her when I told you I did."

Stevie nodded again. "Okay. And does everyone else know this? Have I been the butt of the joke this whole time? 'Poor Stevie can't handle bad news so let's keep her in the dark so she's out there singing 'Landslide' night after night without a care in the world'?"

"You are not the butt of any joke, okay? We've been in a constant huddle trying to keep you safe from this woman!"

"Is this why Marty is canceling Vancouver?" Lindsey nodded. Stevie sighed and said, "Well it's for the best...I don't know that I can sing 'Sweet Girl' with you tomorrow night...I don't know if I can sing at all, quite frankly."

"I understand that." Lindsey wiped away his own tears, sniffling. "Is there anything else you want to ask, angel? Anything at all?"

"There is one thing," she said. With new tears in her eyes, she looked up at him and asked, "Would you mind bunking with Mick or John tonight...or calling downstairs for a room?" She was hugging her knees close to her baby bump now. Lindsey knew that when Stevie was truly upset, backed into a corner, she always subconsciously tried to make herself physically smaller. "I'm pretty sure I need to sleep by myself tonight," she explained.

"If you need me to go, I will," he said. "I get it."

Stevie reached for a tissue from the box nearby and blew her nose. She watched Lindsey rise from his seat on the end of the bed and asked, "Whatever happened to the Lindsey Buckingham I used to fight with, the one who got all possessive and hysterical and demanded that neither of us get any space during times like these?"

Lindsey looked down at her with the saddest smile she had ever seen and said, "He lost the love of his life and it made him grow up and learn to handle things like this with compassion and dignity."

Stevie offered her own sad smile in return. "I think I like this Lindsey."

Lindsey swallowed the lump in his throat. "He's here when you're ready, Stephanie."

He began tossing his clothes into a suitcase near the bathroom door.

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(Later)

Stevie had decided she hated Washington State.

The rain was pouring relentlessly at the windows of the hotel room as she huddled under the covers with her dog and sobbed her heart out with abandon. The rain made everything cold, damp, dark, and she couldn't get warm enough to save her life. She'd gone to her suitcase to throw on another layer some time ago, realizing only after she'd pulled on a hooded sweatshirt that it was Lindsey's from U.S.C., but it smelled like cologne and marijuana and home and she was not going to take it off. She had stopped crying somewhere around midnight, and Lindsey had finished packing his things and had called the front desk and obtained a room two floors below them, where Karen was staying.

The TV was on, and although she was not paying attention to it, she could hear the old movie playing on the screen and it was Top Hat, the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film that had been playing on the television in her motel room in 1970, the night she and Lindsey had confessed their love for each other and he had not gone back to his own room.

"I'm packed," Lindsey announced with no fanfare in his voice at all. He stood at the windows, rain loudly pelting the glass behind him and lightning illuminating the sky around him. Stevie looked over at him and exhaled audibly. Her eyes were swollen from crying, and for the first time ever, he thought, she looked forty-nine. Her hair was tangled around the hood of his sweatshirt, and she looked puffy and lost and tiny in the king-sized bed alone under the down comforter. "I'll go."

"Linds..." She propped up a little bit on her side against the pillows.

"Yeah?" He cleared his throat. His heart was pounding.

"If you stay here and hold me because I'm afraid of thunderstorms..." Tears came to her eyes again and her voice was shaky. "I'll let you have my other Twinkie."

Lindsey's eyes filled with tears again too as he tossed himself onto the bed and immediately pulled her into his arms. Together they curled up into a tight little ball, Stevie burrowing her face into his chest and Lindsey's hands digging through the tangled mess of her hair, and they clung together for dear life and sobbed into each other, grateful that no matter what they were going through and how it would end up, they were not the Stevie and Lindsey in Mick's home movies from 1977.

This Stevie and Lindsey were going to get through it together.

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