Decades

'Twas

"Uh, Karen!" Stevie had said after sending her message, "I think I made a mistake. I said, "'Twas," how do I erase this?"

"'Twas?'" Karen inquired, wrinkling her nose before taking the phone from Stevie. You have to fix it before hitting the send button, Stevie," her assistant told her. This didn't suit Stevie one bit, "Well, I already hit send. How do I fix it now?" she asked.

"You don't. 'Twas a mistake you can't correct, I fear," Karen said, laughing at her own joke.

In just a blink, Stevie felt the phone's slight vibration in her hand, signaling that a text message had been delivered. She pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and held the phone away from her face so she could better see the tiny letters. When she read it, she laughed.

"Twas good to see you too," Lindsey typed, hoping she'd get a laugh out of his reply and not think he was making fun of her too much. He wanted to say more. So much more. But he'd wait. She reached out to him so he'd let her do the talking. He wouldn't scare her off this time.

Now what? Stevie hadn't thought this far ahead. She wanted to tell him it had been good to see him, but she didn't know what else to say. She'd read a lot of what he'd written to her, and now she had a lot to say back to him but no idea how to begin—or even if she should. He was still a married man and things had been pretty terrible between them.

—-------

Lindsey had a date with Kristen tonight. Since she moved out, he had been determined to fix things. He'd refused her terms for the divorce and had pushed her into counseling. Things had been rocky with the two of them since the very beginning. The year that everything happened had been a tough one. Since then, things between them hadn't gotten worse but hadn't improved either.

Things with the band, the fallout with Stevie, and his heart had added a lot of pressure to their marriage. While their marriage hadn't been entirely happy, it had been okay, at least in Lindsey's mind, until things progressed quickly toward its inevitable ending, only to be hurled over the edge because of too much togetherness forced upon them during the pandemic.

For years, Kristen had wanted more of Lindsey's attention, and once he gave it to her, she decided it wasn't what she wanted after all. It didn't feel authentically about her. Lindsey was devastated and struggled to hang on to their marriage. For once, she wasn't the one trying to hold it together. It was him.

In therapy, Lindsey resisted the implications that his attempts to hold his marriage together had been less about Kristen and more about proving that he could have a successful relationship. He began to hold on with far too much desperation. He'd lost so much. He'd never had a truly thriving relationship since the early days with Stevie. He'd blamed the "Spectre of Stevie" so often for staying in doomed relationships far longer than necessary.

The "Spectre of Stevie" had been alive and well during his marriage as well. However, when they sat down to discuss it with their marriage counselor, Lindsey was unwilling to acknowledge that he was attempting to drag on a doomed relationship yet again.

Instead, he'd put his shoulder to the grindstone and was persistently striving to hold his tattered relationship together. He claimed he was fighting doggedly for his marriage, for his wife, for his family. But, deep down, he didn't want to admit defeat and be alone, especially if Stevie had moved on without him.

"Hey there! You look beautiful tonight," Lindsey told his wife.

"Thank you," she said as he pulled out her chair, and she slid into the seat at the romantic table for two. She did look beautiful, though she hadn't put a ton of effort into her look. She wasn't looking to impress Lindsey. She was frustrated that he was unwilling to finalize the divorce and was pushing for a reconciliation. The counselor they spoke with weekly advised them to have dinner together once a week and she was going along with it, though she didn't expect anything to come of it. She was simply pacifying him so he'd stop contesting what she was asking for in the divorce. Hopefully, he would if he believed she'd done her part to work on their failed marriage.