"And I just recorded this-" Stevie shouted over the deafening buzz of the industrial fan as her cassette finally began to play.
"Meet me down by the railway station...I've been waiting and I'm through waiting for you..."
Days before leaving for the White Winged Dove tour, she'd torn through her closets, searching for old demos to send to the band. She'd hardly had time to breathe in the weeks before her first solo tour, much less respond to Lindsey's increasingly less polite requests for her material for the new Mac album.
Mindlessly pushing in the cassette, she'd lost her breath for a moment at the suddenly familiar tune. Barely waiting for the track to finish, she'd removed the tape and slid it in an envelope, pen moving rapidly against the paper as she labelled it to be sent off in the morning.
As she finally slipped into bed that night, she couldn't help but imagine the way Lindsey's eyes might widen as he recognized the song, or the small smile he would try to hide, listening to the strumming of his own fingers as they picked out the chords. He'd be suddenly brought back, she knew, to the old coffee plant where they'd sat together for hours and recorded songs like that one. On those nights, it seemed like the world would somehow contract, limited to that empty building where they made music until sunrise.
"Sometimes I think that I must have....I must have been crazy....crazy to wait on you, baby..."
Slowly beginning to sway, she laughed incredulously to herself before shouting to the various cameramen, assistants, and photographers, "I wrote this in 1971!"
A decade had come and gone since she and Lindsey had packed up his car and left San Francisco for LA. She'd left behind everything practically—or at least it had seemed that way at time—for him, for them.
"Please, I've been takin' my time...you know, it's been on my mind..."
What struck her most now was the strangeness—of listening to this song, of thinking of that time, while she was posing for the next cover of Rolling Stone and not even for the first time.
It was a little easier, she'd discovered, doing these sessions alone. But maybe that was just when the alternative was photoshoots with Fleetwood Mac. No need for the excessive amounts of indulgence required to even stand in such close quarters, much less look like they were having a good time doing it. What she took now was just to get through the day.
"Stevie!" Annie called, shooing one of her assistants to hand her another prop. "You gotta try-"
Taking the sheer scarf from the man's outstretched hands, she began to twirl, unable to stop herself from singing along.
In many ways, she'd always comforted herself with the idea that her life was destined somehow. That she and Lindsey—that their love was meant to make beautiful music, rather than a life together. That all their struggles with Buckingham Nicks were meant to lead them to Fleetwood Mac. And, maybe most of all, that she'd been destined to notice that shy boy with dark curls playing the guitar.
"I hope you find a love...your own designs of love...that's alright..."
But she simply couldn't accept that Robin, the best person she'd ever known, wasn't meant to live a long and happy life.
"I believe...I believe that I know you...but we've been a long time..."
Because she did have a choice, and Robin had chosen something that Stevie would never have chosen for herself.
"I never did believe in time," she sang to herself, "changing anybody's mind."
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