Love Is... (Part 1)

It Has Nothing To Do With You Or With Love

The Plaza Hotel
New York, New York
Saturday, January 27, 2018
(1:30 am)
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"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Stevie sat up on the bed, her mind barely processing what Lindsey had just revealed about the morning he'd left Arizona.

"Believe me, Stephanie, I wish I was."

"But..." Her head was in her hands. "You do not have four children, Linds. What happened?"

"She lost it. Ten weeks. The doctor called it 'not viable due to advanced maternal age.'"

"I'm sorry...you know that's what..."

"I know," he said, cutting her off. That was exactly how their unborn baby had been lost in 1997, when Stevie was forty-nine. "She planned this; it was obvious. A fourth baby? How stupid did she think I was? Will was conceived when you and I got together, LeeLee was conceived after you came to my mother's funeral and everyone in my family was so happy to see you, and Stella was conceived while we were on the Say You Will tour and she saw us dancing to 'Tusk'. I'm not an idiot, you know. It's her secret weapon; every time I get close to you, a blue stick appears!"

"So you're telling me..." Stevie looked at him seriously. "You got home and your wife informed you she was pregnant...I stayed in Arizona and came home with pneumonia and got sick for months...waiting for you to break it to your wife you wanted a divorce...and then she lost the baby and..."

"You were underground by then, locked away in your house with Karen and Dave, editing your movie...and I wanted to tell you everything...and there I was stuck, not wanting to be the asshole who steps out on his wife after a miscarriage...and she won. She won because I let her win, angel. And I'm sorry."

Stevie thought back to the gray February morning - Lindsey and Kristen's anniversary - when he had called her crying and she'd been so sick with pneumonia she could barely speak without coughing, and she'd told him to hang up and enjoy his anniversary, that she understood everything perfectly now. She mentioned that morning to him then.

"I was dying inside...I knew you were sitting there thinking I'd chosen her over you and left you grieving your mother with a case of pneumonia...and by then you were so angry...and The Mac wanted to go out and you said you needed 2012 to promote your movie with Dave...and I knew you needed time to get over it...so I waited, and suddenly we were on tour and you were telling the 'Without You' story as if we were some lovely memory and nothing more...crying your way through 'Say Goodbye' in Vegas...I assumed it was too late."

"And I assumed you had thought better of our time in Arizona and chosen your younger, perfect wife and three children over old, tearful, ridiculous Stevie...so I gave up waiting."

"Hey...maybe you're tearful a lot of the time but you are neither old nor ridiculous," he said, which made her laugh despite the seriousness of the moment. He smiled, taking her hands in his. "I never stopped loving you, or wanting you...if all I had to cling to were those little moments on stage, like nuzzling with you at the end of 'Sara', touching your hand during 'Landslide'...I took it. I needed my sweet girl...however she came to me."

Stevie could hardly take stock of the events of the night. She'd begun the evening accepting an award and performing with the band, then seethed with anger over Lindsey's antics onstage, and now she was in her room at the Plaza, rehashing one of the worse experiences of her life and listening to Lindsey tell her he'd wanted her all along. She said, "You know, if my head ever stops spinning from all of this...I would love it if you kissed me again."

Lindsey wrapped her in his arms and smiled. "Well, since your head is already spinning..." He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. From the moment they began to kiss, they both knew that any of the anger, threats of quitting the band, and any other conflicts with which they'd begun this conversation, were in the past. Six years of missed opportunity melted away and they were left with only each other, and the love they had left behind in Stevie's driveway in Arizona six years before.

They had finally found their way home.

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