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

Track A Ghost Through The Fog

Santa Monica, California
Friday, April 20, 2018
(11:00 pm)
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"Oh, Jesus, Stevie, you're really testing my memory now!"

Lindsey was curled up on the sofa, Lily the dog having moved from Stevie's lap to his at some point. The pot was gone, they were half a pot of coffee in, and Stevie had asked him to list the nicknames Kristen had developed for her over twenty years.

"Come on, baby, don't hold back on me now." Stevie was leaning into him, her hands on his arm, demanding to know. He knew Stevie had a tendency to be very handsy when she was stoned; he'd been smoking pot with her for fifty years. She could also be demanding, giggly, even more talkative and then go directly to sleep, all of which he'd found endearing since the first time they'd ever smoked together, outside his parents' garage after a band practice with Fritz when she'd been with them for about two weeks. He still remembered her giggles, Javier's eye rolls, and thinking she was even more adorable, if possible, stoned.

"Oh man..." Lindsey touched his hand to his forehead. "It's late, I'm stoned, I'm old...I don't remember every name she ever called you over twenty years, Stevie, for God sake!"

"Just a few, then. Like, what were the most popular ones?" Stevie really seemed to want to know.

"Well...I mean...the old witch, the gypsy that unfortunately remains...those were two biggies..." Lindsey shook his head as if he thought more information would fall out that way. Stevie began to giggle, and she was not stopping.

"That's actually a good one..." She tossed her head forward to his shoulder and he wrapped his arm around her to kiss her head as it fell. "Who knew that stick-in-the-mud had humor in there...The gypsy that unfortunately remains...Sharon's going to die..." She kept on giggling. Eventually she stopped, suddenly, and rolled away from him, looking maudlin.

"Hey...angel...what is it?" He scrambled in his seat, and the dog left his lap and climbed down from the sofa at the sudden change. "Stevie?"

"You know that 'Gypsy' is Robin's song," she said. "I remain but she doesn't...I don't know...most of the time I forget...then I remember...it's hard."

"Oh, baby..." He dropped his hand to her thigh.

"She'd be seventy this year...a grandma...I wonder what she'd look like now." She looked down into her lap. Lindsey rubbed affectionately at the silk of her pajamas.

"How do you think she'd react to seeing us together again after all these years?" Lindsey wondered aloud. "She'd probably kick my ass." He smiled, remembering Robin's fierce protective streak where Stevie was concerned.

"Sweetheart, if Robin were alive, we'd have been together all this time," Stevie said with a tone as if he were ridiculous for not seeing it.

"How do you figure?"

"If Robin hadn't gotten sick...or if she got sick but recovered...I wouldn't have gone completely apeshit and hoovered up half of Bolivia, and I wouldn't have married Kim, and you and I would have reunited by the fireplace at the Honkey Chateau while we were making Mirage." She smiled at him and said, "Simple."

"Ah, I see." Lindsey nodded.

"Haven't you ever done that, Linds? Haven't you ever sat around and thought of all the missed opportunities we've had to get it right and think of the scenarios?" She looked at him curiously.

"Well, I mean..." Lindsey shrugged and then said, looking at her seriously, "Only every day of my life!" He smiled as Stevie's giggles returned. "Seriously...like on the Tusk tour after 'Angel' with you in your little beret...or when you got out of Betty Ford and we were alone mixing 'Seven Wonders' in my bedroom that night...or every day of Say You Will when you'd be camped out on that big red velvet couch surrounded by yorkies and yarn and you'd flip your hair and I'd forget how to breathe for awhile."

Stevie smiled at his obviously well thought out memories and touched his cheek. "I love you, you know. You've always somehow gotten it into your head that you have to keep me in the dark about things or I'll flip out...I love you and we are partners and we figure shit out together." She took his hand in hers. "We will figure out this Stella thing too, okay? She wants to delay the divorce, fine. Bring it on. So the divorce takes longer and we put off the wedding of the century...I have you, sweetheart. I can wear a pretty dress and dance whenever I want...I'm Stevie Nicks! It's sort of my brand." She smiled, squeezing his hand in hers.

"I love you," he said. "I just really want to stand up there in front of everyone we've ever met and say that, declare that the war is over and you're mine and I'm yours and we are finally home, just where we should be."

"Sweetheart..." She kissed his hand. "So we go out with The Mac like Mick's been screaming at me on the phone about and we let this bullshit run its course...she's not getting that money, anyway, and you'll have Stella - and Will and LeeLee - just as you deserve to have them. We're Buckingham Nicks; we solve things together! It's what we do! Fuck, if we could figure out how to feed ourselves and a poodle on thirty-five dollars a week..." He laughed at the memory, and she smiled. "We've got this, Linds. To quote the late great John Lennon, 'War is over if you want it.' She looked up at him then and asked, "Was that a stoned statement?"

Lindsey laughed again. "You're asking me?" She began laughing, and they fell into each other, laughing and hugging and knowing the situation was as settled as it was going to be for awhile. Stevie stood up eventually with a sigh.

"I'm going to brush my teeth and put on layers of wrinkle cream," she announced. "Clean up out here, sweetheart, so we can go cuddle in bed and I can pretend not to be asleep while we watch a movie."

Lindsey stood up. "Is that Buckingham Nicks taking care of things together?" She nodded. "Then there you go."

She blew him a kiss on her way to the bathroom which he pretended to catch in his hand. Lindsey began to clear the coffee table, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

After nearly forty-five years, they had finally figured it out.

"War is over if you want it," he thought. He knew he had to figure out a way to end the war with Kristen.

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