Everybody Loves You

It's All About Desire (Mick's Story)

Maui, Hawaii
Valentine's Day ❤️
Tuesday, February 14, 2023
(8:00 pm)
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I had to admit, I was genuinely happy for them.

It was about eight o'clock at night when one of the people from the kitchen at Fleetwood's beckoned me over and asked if we were ready to do the wedding cake thing. I told him to go ahead and set it up, that the new Mr. and Mrs. Buckingham had tire out eventually and leave the dance floor. Stevie and Lindsey were practically limping their way through the twirling and dipping and all the showboating moves they did to Sinatra that even they couldn't keep a straight face about. Stevie's shoes had come off about an hour ago, but if I knew Stevie Nicks - well, Stevie Nicks Buckingham - I knew painful feet never got in her way of a good time...and this was a good time. It was probably the happiest I'd ever seen her.

"...and then you wonder how it all came about...It's too late now; there's no getting out...You fell in love and looooooooooove is the tender trap..." Frank Sinatra was playing as a nod to Jess Nicks, a man who hadn't lived to see his daughter marry the love of her life, but he was there that day for sure. So was Christine.

I'm not going to lie; it was not easy that morning a few weeks before when I'd woken up to a phone call from Stevie telling me Lindsey had proposed to her on a rainy night at home over In & Out Burger because it was an inside joke, that they wanted to get married in a small ceremony fit for two people who were not getting any younger and wanted to hurry up and let "spending the rest of their lives together" start immediately. She was calling to ask if I'd come to the wedding, and by the end of the conversation, I had agreed to host the wedding at my restaurant.

I guess that's what they mean when they say if you love someone, set them free.

The middle tier of the wedding cake was carrot, and I clapped along for the happy couple as Lindsey fed his bride carrot cake and kissed away buttercream icing an every iPhone in the room captured it in pictures and videos.  It was the small wedding Stevie had spoken of on the phone to me a few weeks earlier, just about forty people, including Lindsey's three adult children smiling from ear to ear now that they had Aunt Stevie back and, in some ways, their dad. Lindsey was actually smiling all night, which was not typical for him, and I watched him looking at Stevie the entire time in her white flowing dress as if he couldn't believe his luck.

I completely understood that.

"Hey, Mick! Dance with me!"

I turned around from the bar where I had stationed myself...because some things never change. Stevie was waving frantically at me from the dance floor, and I suddenly understood why. The song that was playing was "Best Of My Love" by The Emotions, which was a song that was popular back in 1977, we were in Hawaii together during the brief affair that, for me, had lasted forty-five years. I smiled and set my drink down, and as I walked over to join her on the dance floor, I looked at the seventy-four-year-old woman who'd married the love of her life that evening at sunset and saw a girl of twenty-nine, dressed in a floral sundress with a flower in her hair, dancing around my living room to "Best Of My Love" with Robin and Christine, a fruity drink in her hand, looking at me with her secret love in her eyes and twirling over to me as she called out, "Hey, Mick! Dance with me!" Then, as quickly as that vision came to me, it left, and all I saw was a happy bride, one of my best friends on earth.

For the first time in forty-five years, it didn't hurt.

And for the second time in forty-five years, I took Stevie's had in mine and we began to dance to "Best Of My Love".

The way I looked at it, Stevie had given me the best of her love back then when the song was new, and I had chosen another path.

Now, it was time to watch my best friends give the best of their love to each other.

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