Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 7: Say You Will

And How She Takes My Breath Away

Aspen, Colorado
Saturday, May 24, 2002
(7:00 pm)
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It was weird being in Aspen during the spring when the sun had not yet set by seven.

Stevie and Lindsey's first time in Aspen had been in the fall of 1974, when Phil Everly's team had hired Lindsey to replace his brother Don on guitar on an Everly Brothers nostalgia tour. Phil Everly, who lived in Aspen, had summoned Lindsey there for rehearsals, and he and Stevie and Ginny the poodle - along with Stevie's good friend Teri from high school for company - had piled into the Toyota with no reverse and somehow made it to Aspen from Los Angeles. After a terrible few months that ended in little money and a lot of anger, Lindsey had reunited with Stevie where she'd been staying, arriving in a foul mood and accusing her of being unfaithful. He'd paid to have the frozen Toyota fixed enough to get back home, taken the dog and left Stevie stranded in Aspen in the snow with just forty dollars to her name and a burgeoning case of strep throat that kept her sick till New Years. With her free pass to and Greyhound bus thanks to her father's position as president of Greyhound, she'd attempted to go home that way, but she'd arrived at the depot - having wasting precious dollars on a taxi - and discovered the bus drivers were on strike. She'd burst into tears and called Barbara and Jess, who'd begrudgingly sent a plane ticket. She cried through the entire flight home until the old lady seated next to her had offered her a tissue and a cough drop.

But the trip had resulted in "Landslide" and "Rhiannon"...as well as the child that had been conceived on one of their few nights together and happy there. They had long-since agreed never to speak of the child they had lost that had been conceived in Aspen, opting instead for memories of their second time there - their Christmas 1977 honeymoon and Nicks family ski trip.

Walking into the million-dollar house in the mountains they were renting for the fourth time as a couple, the first thing Stevie noticed was that an enormous flat-screen TV now hung above the fireplace, the same fireplace near which she and Lindsey had set up pillows and blankets three times before to watch the fire, to sleep, to talk, to make love. It was the fireplace beside which they had consummated their marriage, baby Julia growing in her belly, the same fireplace where they had rekindled their relationship after a stressful two years of albums and tours and back-to-back babies.

It was the same fireplace beside which she had fallen asleep in Lindsey's arms a few days before Christmas 1997 and woken up in labor with Amber, their fourth and final child. She could still hear the sound of the Everly Brothers - an ironic twist about which they both had laughed - singing "All I Have To Do Is Dream" in the car in the cold, dark early morning on their way to the hospital. It was a sign, she'd told him later on, that they had come full circle after the ill-fated 1974 trip, and after bringing Amber home, "All I Have To Do Is Dream" was the song they had sung to their infant daughter to put her to sleep.

"You know, it changes, but it, like...doesn't change," Lindsey said as he looked up at the elaborate chandelier that had been hanging from the ceiling of two-story foyer since the first time they'd stayed there. He was so engrossed in looking around that he didn't see Stevie come up from behind him and wrap her arms around his shoulders. She leaned in from behind and kissed his neck.

"Like us," she said, and she heard a chuckle escape him as he turned around to hold her.

"When you're right you're right, angel," Lindsey said, and he leaned in slowly to kiss her forehead, then her nose, then her lips. It was something he had done a million times, and she never got tired of his lips as they tickled her face just slightly as he kissed her. For a moment, she remembered the Lindsey with long curly hair and a mustache and beard that tickled her even more when he kissed her - the man who had made love to her beside the fireplace on their wedding night almost twenty-five years before. She let out a contented moan as they pulled their lips apart, and let her head drop to his chest as he continued to hold her. She closed her eyes for a moment and took it all in, but her moment was interrupted when she heard him say, "Your head feels a little bit warm, baby. Are you sure you're not coming down with something? I felt it yesterday too."