Everybody Loves You

Like The Words Of A Song (Lindsey's Story)

Santa Monica, California
Monday, January 9, 2023
(8:00 pm)
********************

"She didn't let you eat fast food?"

Stevie was trying to swallow a large mouthful of double cheeseburger when she asked me that. We were knee-deep in burgers and fries and sodas and milkshakes and greedy little dogs on her living room floor, the giant screen of her TV displaying a psychedelic video set to the full album Days Of Future Passed by the Moody Blues. The long-form version of "Nights In White Satin" was playing as crazy spirals of color swirled around on the screen, and I had forgotten the awesome surround sound system she had in her living room.

Needless to say, we'd smoked a joint beforehand.

"She was all about clean eating after Stella was born," I replied. I'd told her as I shoveled in my "animal style" fries about how In & Out Burger was like the devil's work to my ex-wife, and how the absence of Kristen's disapproving glare as I ate my dinner that night made it taste even better. "The pregnancy weight melted off after Will and LeeLee but after Stella it was harder because she didn't breastfeed...which, according to Kristen, my mother-in-law and every other mom I know, burns a ton of calories." I picked up what remained of my chocolate milkshake and sucked it up through the straw. It made that one noise a straw makes at the end of a milkshake, and I thought it was part of the sound effects of the Moody Blues. I was stoned.

"Stella wasn't breastfed?" Stevie took a sip of her own milkshake. I shook my head and cleared my ice cream throat to reply.

"Nope. Apparently she was too busy with three kids by then and my being on tour that first year..." My youngest child, Stella, was born on April 20, 2004, right between legs of the Say You Will tour, our first tour without Christine.

"Makes sense," Stevie said. She had the milkshake cup in her hand and her lips poised against the straw as she turned to the giant TV screen behind her and began paying attention to the video.

"Nights in white satin..." Justin Hayward was singing along to the psychedelic graphics. "...never reaching the end...Letters I've written...never meaning to send...Beauty I'd always missed...with these eyes before...Just what the truth is...I can't say anymore...cause I love you...yes I love you...oh, how I love you..."

Stevie had her back to me, watching the video, and I found myself looking closely at her hair. It was longer than I remembered - just about to her waist now - and she wore it in these curls that looked kind of like my daughters used to achieve by sleeping in wet braids the night before one of their big nights out as teenagers, like Homecoming or the Sweet Sixteen party of a friend from school. I was sitting close enough to have noticed even above the aroma of our In & Out stoner feast that her hair smelled like coconut, and it was doing something to me I couldn't explain...all I knew was I felt more at home smelling the coconut of her hair and listening to the Moody Blues on the floor than I'd felt in twenty-four years with Kristen.

"Gazing at people," Stevie began to sing along, "some hand in hand...Just what I'm going through...they can't understand..." I found myself just watching her, mesmerized. Not even twelve hours earlier, Stevie had been a part of my past. Now we were stoned and listening to a song we used to make love to when we were young and in love...and, if I'm being honest, when we were old and in love one night in Boston on tour and I'd come to her room to report it was snowing outside and we'd wound up talking about old times and I'd played the song on my phone and things got out of hand very quickly. I had no idea what to say, but I had to try to say something...like maybe if I said it out loud I'd understand what I was feeling.

"Stevie..." She turned around at the sound of her name, and there was a little dribble of chocolate milkshake on her lower lip. "I just...I want you to know that..." She was looking at me expectantly, and her eyes picked up the glow from the television and I have no idea what came over me then, but I wasn't thinking.