Auld Lang Syne: A Millennium Love Story

Time Makes You Bolder

Mandalay Bay,
Las Vegas, Nevada
New Years Eve
Friday, December 31, 1999
(3:00 pm)
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Stevie was rifling through one of her bags for a CD she'd brought along with her from Phoenix to play in her room. She wanted to sing along to Shania Twain's "Man I Feel Like A Woman" while she got settled and began her pre-show ritual. She picked up a CD from the bag she'd forgotten she had with her, and smiled down at the cover. Milsap Magic.

Ronnie Milsap had been all the rage in Arizona when the Tusk tour had finally made it there in the summer of 1980, and Barbara had played the album on a cassette in the car their entire trip out to the mall on her one day off, which she'd spent shopping and avoiding food with her mother, sneaking off to the bathroom to do bumps of cocaine, and yelling and crying about Lindsey throwing a Les Paul guitar at her on stage in Australia after kicking her and mocking her dancing. She smiled suddenly as the CD in her hand brought back one of her favorite memories of her mother - the moment she'd looked away from the road at her in the car and said, right as Ronnie Milsap sang "Why Don't You Spend The Night" along the Arizona road, "Well I sure hope your friend Christine kicked him right in the balls for you...or at LEAST threw a drink in his face!" Stevie had cracked up laughing in the middle of crying and told her the second one of those things was true. Barbara said, "She's a good egg, Teedee. Don't mess up THAT relationship! You're running out of people in the band to turn to!"

By the time Stevie had crawled mercifully into her bed at dawn on September 2 after their final show at The Hollywood Bowl on September 1, 1980, she knew her mother was right.

Stevie decided it was time to dive into Milsap Magic. She took the CD out of its case and brought it to the mini stereo by the TV in the living room of her suite and the room became filled with the song she'd heard in her mother's car that afternoon in 1980.

"Why don't you spend the night...Somehow it seems so right...Why does it have to end so soon; please stay till the morning light...It's such a long way home...and you'd only be alone...Oh, come on, girl, why don't you spend the night..."

The dogs were getting settled in their big pink bed, the bowls and toys were out on the floor, and so she stripped off her leggings and sweater and the rest of her clothes and clipped her long, straight blonde hair up before climbing into the enormous tub that was a jacuzzi made for two. She tried hard to forget the time in Alabama in 1975 when she and Lindsey had stepped into the hot tub one night on their last engagement as Buckingham Nicks, floating towards each other in the hot water in the cold January air and kissing like their lives depended on it.

Back then, it had.

"Maybe I spoke too soon," Ronnie Milsap sang. "Maybe they timing's wrong...Maybe it's something I shouldn't've said at all...But when I look in your eyes, I feel like we're almost one...Ah, something tells me the night's only just begun..."

The last time Stevie had seen Lindsey in person, they were being inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. She remembered standing behind him as he played the guitar solo in the middle of "Landslide", looking at the back of his neck in his black blazer and thinking of all the times she'd stared at the same sight in the dark as he slept beside her. He'd joked around a bit by backing himself into her, and she'd smiled, knowing it was his way of offering comfort with no hands...like the time she'd broken down during "Sisters Of The Moon" on stage right after Robin died and placed his head against her back during the guitar break and whispered that it was almost over, that she was going to be okay, that she wasn't alone.

Except you actually are alone, she reminded herself as she sat it the tub. He's gone. He's somebody's father now, and there's another one on the way. Clearly telling him to go to Kristen has been working out for him.