Sweet Girl (Love Is..., Part 2)

I Didn't Wish It

Santa Monica, California
Valentine's Day ❤️
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
(12:00 pm)
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"Admit it. You're trying mold me to fit your totally fucked up sleep-wake cycle."

They were sitting at the kitchen table, empty plates with random bits of blueberry and maple syrup stuck to the edges. They were drinking coffee and listening to Lily the dog attacking a stuffed red heart with a squeaky center that Lindsey had brought home for her last night.

"Hey, I wasn't the one who insisted we stay in bed all that time," Stevie said as she raised her coffee mug to her lips.

"Technically that was not for sleeping, so I maintain my point." He tipped his mug to her before drinking from it. "So...Valentine's Day. Are you ready for all the cool stuff I have planned for you today?"

"You mean it gets better than this? Starting the day with unbelievable sex and sitting here drinking coffee after blueberry pancakes and knowing I have you all to myself for the first time in, like, twenty years? You're yanking my chain, Buckingham!"

"No, that was you who did that...about half an hour ago." He winked at her and she burst into laughter slapped him on the arm.

"Lindsey!" She lowered her eyes, giggling into her coffee cup.

"You are too adorable...you know that?" He rested his elbow on the table, dropped his chin into his hand. He said, "Seriously, angel...I can't believe we're actually sitting here, you and me...together for real again."

"I know." She smiled, staring into his blue eyes and wondering how she had managed to live so long without them. "I love you. I know I've been saying it a lot but my God...Linds...we did it. I mean...this is it. This is us...and we're going to get it right this time."

"We will, angel, I promise you." He reach across the table to hold her hand. "I hate to spoil this Valentine morning love fest here, but...I have to go see her today. She wanted me to come by and pick up some of my things and then agree on an appointment with the lawyers."

"Got to love her picking today of all days," Stevie said, rolling her eyes at Kristen Buckingham's insistence on having Lindsey come over on Valentine's Day.

"She said better today than tomorrow...you know." He sighed. He didn't need to tell Stevie that tomorrow, February 15, was his anniversary.

"True...I don't think even Kristen is that ironic," Stevie said. "Well don't take too long over there in Brentwood, sweetheart...I just got you back and I still have to pinch myself once in awhile." She leaned across the table to kiss him. "You might just be tempted back to your country club and your equestrian meets and all of that fancy stuff." She was teasing, of course, but he looked at her seriously then.

"Her country club, Stevie, and her equestrian meets...well, and the girls." Both LeeLee and Stella had followed in Kristen's footsteps with their love of riding. "As far as I'm concerned, tomorrow is the anniversary of the day I got sentenced to a life I never asked for, a life that kept me away from you for eighteen years...and that's why I'm actually happy to go over there today...it's step one towards being free to be with you forever, angel. I say it can't be too soon."

"Baby..." Stevie leaned in to kiss him again. "Go. Run, don't walk! The quicker you're out, the quicker we can have the rest of our lives together, free and clear."

Lindsey had come home from their trip to New York for the MusiCares event and moved directly into Stevie's condo. Kristen was not home the night he'd landed - she was in San Francisco, at a decorator's convention of some kind. He had sent her a text asking to have a talk with her when she got home and she'd replied two hours later, and they'd been up half the night talking when she got home, Lindsey confessing to his night with Stevie and asking for a divorce. He'd done his best to avoid blowing up at her digs at Stevie, which he had been hearing for years, thinking of Stevie waiting for him at home, scared to death that it would all be for nothing, that in the end, he wouldn't come back and that their night together at the Plaza - like their time in Arizona after her mother died - was just a flash in the pan, a stolen moment.

But he had come back, a little bit after midnight, and found Stevie sitting up in bed with Lily at her feet, looking down through her glasses at her journal. He had appeared in the doorway with a huge duffel bag, which he'd dropped to wrap his arms around her when she flung her journal off of her lap and thrown herself at him and kissed him with everything she had.

He'd been at the condo ever since.

Lindsey disappeared into the bathroom to shower, and Stevie put the breakfast dishes in the sink. She had to admit, she was nervous about Lindsey going to Brentwood this afternoon to see Kristen - What if she had some other trick up her sleeve? It couldn't be her usual pregnancy scare, she knew. Kristen was going to be forty-eight years old in two weeks and, according to Lindsey, had been complaining a blue streak about hot flashes since he'd gotten home from the Classic East last year. Still, she knew Kristen, and she was still reeling from the story Lindsey had shared with her three weeks ago in New York, the reason why he had not come back to her as promised six years ago, after they'd reunited in Arizona when Barbara died. 

You're going to drive yourself crazy, Stevie told herself as she waited for Lily to come in from the terrace after doing her business. He loves you. This is your first Valentine's Day together since...my God, since 1976! She had reminded herself - and Lindsey - a few nights ago that even in 1997 when they'd been together again, they had still been apart on February 14. Lindsey had been dropping hints about a Valentine's Day surprise that she would never forget, and the romantic in her had been fantasizing for awhile now about what he had planned. She felt like a teenager with a crush, hoping to find a rose taped to her locker at school. It frightened her sometimes just how much she loved him, how she depended on him in ways she was even just now realizing at almost seventy years old.

But she knew that Kristen had depended on him too, and she had been for twenty years, ever since she'd broken the news to him on Thanksgiving 1997 that she was pregnant with their first child. She just hoped Lindsey was strong enough to withstand the pressure.

"It's lonely here in this big shower stall all by myself, sweet girl," she heard Lindsey call out from the open bathroom door as she took Lily in from the terrace. "You know what they say...'Save water, shower together!'"

Stevie smiled and shouted back over the hiss of the water, "They don't say it, Linds...only you do because you're an animal!"

"Doesn't make it any less true," he called back to her. She was already standing at the bathroom door. Lindsey poked his head out from the glass shower door, which he'd slid open a crack. He had a goofy grin on his face that was already making her change her mind. "There is a drought in Southern California, Stevie...are you sure you want to be part of the problem?"

Stevie rolled her eyes at his corny attempts to get her into the shower with him, but she was giggling, and bending down to untie the sash of her old black silk robe, which she'd thrown on after they'd gotten out of bed earlier to have pancakes. 

"I guess I shouldn't be so cruel to the environment on Valentine's Day," she said with a sigh of mock resignation, her bathrobe dropping to the floor on her way to join him in the shower. She was instantly in his arms under the hot water covering them both from the large silver shower head hanging over both of them, and his wet, soapy hands began to roam her body for the second time since they'd been awake.

He was half an hour late leaving the house to drive out to Brentwood, and Stevie was already rethinking her anxiety over him seeing Kristen. 

She knew he was hers for real this time.

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