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

The Ocean Is Your Blanket

Brentwood, California
Valentine's Day ❤️
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
(2:30 pm)
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"I didn't want to pack up anything in the studio because I know you're particular about your equipment."

Kristen Buckingham made it a point to stay out of her husband's at-home studio. He had put in the studio space in 2002 while the entire property was under construction, the expansion of the small A-frame house into the home it was today having been her idea after LeeLee was born in 2000. Lindsey had hemmed and hawed a great deal, she remembered, being needlessly picky about contractors, finally relenting about the letting her handle it all because Fleetwood Mac was going back into the studio to record. He and they guys had rented a house in the Hollywood Hills to play around in, and he'd spent so much time there that the renovations were her baby from then on, except for his plans for the studio space.

She still remembered him coming home one day in late January with a smile on his face because she had showed up to the recording house with that humorless assistant of hers, the two little dogs she treated like children, and four new songs for Lindsey to work on. He'd been beaming that night, talking a blue streak about a song called "Silver Girl" and saying that it was a shame Christine wouldn't be joining them on this album but he was so happy that most of the gang was back.

He'd started spending six days a week at the recording house in the Hollywood Hills the moment Stevie Nicks had appeared on the scene.

She remembered the screaming argument they'd had the night he'd come home and gone straight into his little studio room in the old house, before the big one had been built. He'd been in a terrible mood, all distant and quiet and mumbling something about a difficult day of recording, a special song that Stevie had to record with no one else around but him because it was difficult. According to Lindsey the song was called "Goodbye Baby", and Stevie had been putting off singing it until she thought she was ready. Kristen had seen the lyrics lying around Lindsey's notes one afternoon, and it only took "And I who went to sleep as two woke up as one" for her to realize what the song was about.

She wished she'd felt more guilty than she had about the small zing of victory she'd felt after reading those lyrics, knowing that she had been able to give Lindsey something that Stevie couldn't...twice. There was precious little left that Stevie hadn't already given him, she remembered thinking, so giving him a family, really, was all she could do to keep him around.

That was why she'd skipped her birth control the next year, when the band briefly back to Southern California on the Say You Will tour and Lindsey spent two nights at home for once.

That was why she'd made sure on the right night in November 2011 - Veteran's Day, to be exact - that she would put all of their differences aside and welcome him into bed for the first time in who knew how long. Stevie had cornered him while they were recording some ridiculous song about their relationship from out of her diary in like 1970 or something and they had sat around for hours talking everything out. Everything had gone according to plan, but then Stevie's mother had been dying in Arizona and Lindsey had run off to play nursemaid, and for a moment there, she thought her plan was foiled. The pregnancy hadn't been viable, but enough time had elapsed between that doctor's appointment and whatever the hell had happened in Arizona over New Years with that old squeaky witch that all communication had stopped. The next time she'd heard Stevie's name had been in connection with that stupid song they'd recorded and the fact that she was all ready to tell the story about it on the new tour, and Kristen had just rolled her eyes and wondered what the hell he saw in that woman. Her voice alone made Kristen's ears hurt, and those long, pointless stories with a thousand asides that nobody cared about were enough to drive her out of any room the two of them found themselves in.