I Sing For The Things: A Birthday Love Story

Prologue: You Say I Have Everything

Orlando, Florida
Thursday, May 25, 2023
(11:30 pm)
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"I wanted to beat the rush and be the first person to wish you a happy birthday."

Stevie Nicks was exhausted after the show at the Amway Theater she'd ended not quite an hour ago, but she was not too tired to smile when she heard Matthew Anderson's voice on the phone at her bedside in her hotel room. In the twenty-five years since they'd been reunited after his father had taken him home to Minnesota to raise with his family's help after Robin's passing, Matthew had never skipped a year calling Stevie on her birthday no matter where she was in the world when May 26 rolled around.

"Aww, thank you, honey," Stevie said into the phone. With her non-phone hand, she was stroking the white furry ears of her dog Lily, who was dozing beside her sister Luna on their mom's shins. She tried to stifle a yawn as she said, "I almost don't have the heart to tell you, but...actually you're the second person to wish me a happy birthday. Mick got to me first about an hour ago when he left the show." Mick Fleetwood, wanting to remain closer to his best friends after the death of Christine McVie in November, had turned up at Stevie's concert with Billy Joel in Inglewood in April, and he'd surprised her with a phone call a few nights ago announcing he'd be in Florida with his twin daughters for her concert the night before her birthday.

"Maybe we could all go out after the show and have a proper birthday dinner," Mick had suggested on the phone. "I'll give John a ring and see if he's up to the trip out to Orlando."

"I love you for suggesting it, Mick, but John McVie is not flying to Orlando any more than I'm going out to whatever restaurant we find open late that close to Disney," Stevie said, laughing a bit through her polite decline. "I'm getting on a seven a.m. flight home anyway, so maybe we can do it this weekend."

"You're spending your seventy-fifth birthday at the airport?" Mick sounded as if she'd just told him she'd be spending her birthday in county jail.

"Just the morning part," she said. "Then I'm spending it in my bed surrounded by dogs and not having to wear a bra."

"Nothing I haven't seen before," Mick teased, and Stevie burst into laughter.

"Nice try, dirty old man," she said, still laughing. "This is my seventy-fifty birthday, not my thirtieth." She knew she didn't have to explain to Mick that she'd turned thirty in 1978. He remembered exactly how they'd celebrated the occasion.

"Dear Lord, why are we so old?" Mick lamented with a sigh.

"I think the real question is how did we GET to be so old? I mean, for God sake, you and I should BOTH be dead!" Stevie stopped herself then and there, her innocent joke about their old unhealthy habits suddenly making her remember that Christine was gone. Luckily, Mick's next sentence saved her from tears.

"Well we are going out whenever it works for you, my dear, and it's going to be epic," he promised. "I love you, kiddo."

"I love you too, Mick." Stevie had never been one to not express her emotions, tell the people in her life that she loved them, but in the past few months she'd found it almost a compulsion, as if she felt that if she missed her chance to express her feelings, she'd blink and the person she loved would be gone.

Matthew had just announced that Little Robin, who had been pleading with Stevie to drop the "little" for about a year now, was coming to the phone to wish her a happy birthday. Suddenly, the voice of an eight-year-old girl came over the phone and said, "Happy birthday, Grandma Stevie!"

"Thank you, Robin!" Stevie smiled at the sound of her best friend's granddaughter. "How's it going, honey? Are you excited school's almost over?"

"Yeah, and it's almost my birthday too!" Robin said, a little girl's giggle in her voice. "Daddy said I can pick three friends and we're going to Lego Land!"