Marina Del Rey, California
Valentine's Day,
Monday, February 14, 1983
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Stevie had spent the last few years running to a vial of cocaine whenever she needed to numb her pain or gather the confidence she needed in a tense situation.
The baby that was growing inside of her told her she couldn't do that tonight.
She went upstairs to the nursery to check on Matthew, and when she saw he was sleeping soundly, she smiled at the precious sight of Robin's baby boy and closed the door over, heading directly to the bathroom to check herself out in the mirror. She was a nervous wreck. Lindsey was on his way.
She had no idea what this mysterious thing was that he wanted to talk about, but if it was anything like what he had been saying already, anything involving how her marriage was a mistake and she needed to leave, this would be the time she'd agree. She thought of her own news - the little Buckingham Nicks collaboration she was carrying inside of her, and she wondered how everything had become so complicated. You are married to your best friend's widower and carrying the baby you've made with your ex-boyfriend on a night off from caring for your best friend's baby. It was more twisted than any episode of General Hospital she and Robin had ever called each other about during the commercial break to discuss the drama.
She looked tired. She looked put-upon. She looked thin. "And you never thought it could..." she thought of her thin face when she'd sung about it in "Bella Donna" not too long ago, thinking she was tired then! She turned to the side then and pulled out the fabric of her red sweater, worn for the holiday, and considered her pregnant self. She'd only allowed herself to go there once before, in the bathroom mirror on Orange Grove Avenue almost a decade ago...and then she'd woken up in the middle of the night to pee in the dark and wound up screaming for Lindsey when she'd turned on the light and realized she had gone to sleep carrying their child that night for the last time. She'd never done this with the others, the old sweater stretch trick in profile, because that was not what was going to happen. The timing wasn't right, and...neither were the men she'd have to have broken the news to. They weren't Lindsey.
She snapped back to attention when the doorbell rang, the middle of her sweater falling back into place. She descended the stairs slowly, suddenly more conscious of being healthy and safe since this morning than she'd been in years. She opened the door to Lindsey, who held a bouquet of red roses in one hand and a small paper bag in the other. She didn't even need to open the bag to know what was in it before she started crying.
"Baby..." He reach out to hold her and she fell into his arms in tears. So much for being afraid she'd resist me, he thought. "Baby, it's okay. You don't have to cry now."
"I'm sorry..." She had not intended to cry in front of him tonight... at least not the first second she saw him...but it was Valentine's Day and he was standing there with red roses in his hands...and she knew he had Animal Crackers in that bag...and she had found out today that she was pregnant with his child...and it was all too much. This has got to be the hormone thing Robin told me about, she thought. Or...it's just that Lindsey is here and he loves me and I can finally just stop running.
"Sssh...let's go inside, baby. You don't have to be sorry." He led her into the living room where he sat her down on the couch and began presenting her gifts. She scrambled to wipe her tears and stop crying as he said, "First off, your Valentine flowers." He placed the bouquet in her lap and she hugged it tight against her. "Next..." He pulled the box of Animal Crackers from the paper bag and she laughed through her tears and clutched the box too.
"Now, why I'm here." He sat down beside her.
"I think I know why you're here, Linds, and I..." She struggled with the right words before she said, "I give. I surrender. You're right."
"What do you mean, Stevie?" He looked at her, his heart pounding practically out of his chest.
"I mean...I'm done. This is the end. You win. I don't belong here. I don't belong in Robin's house with Robin's baby and Robin's husband..." It killed her not to complete that sentence with news of their own baby, but she held back. "I belong with you."
It was Lindsey's turn to feel tears in his eyes. He pulled from his jacket pocket a bundle of folded documents, and handed them to her. Stevie unfolded the paperwork and looked at them with a confused expression and said, "I'm not wearing my contacts...what am I looking at?"
"You're looking at your house on the hill, angel." She looked up at him, puzzled. "Do you remember in the château that night when I told you I'd sell my property in Brentwood, do anything it took to show you that I want you, that I choose you?" She nodded. "You're holding in your hand the paperwork for a large piece of property in Maui, close to Mick's, actually...that's a bill overlooking the ocean...and when the Brentwood property sells I'm building the house...our house...just like I promised."
The tears returned to her eyes. "Lindsey...you..." Of the million things she wanted to say she couldn't think of any except, "You mean the house on the hill and the kingdom and the t-shirt and everything?" She felt the tears roll down her cheeks as she remembered her birthday in 1972, wearing the Rolling Stones t-shirt and watching him make her blueberry pancakes...
"Maybe I'll just never take it off," she said.
"I'Il just wear it till I die, and I'll be a rich and famous old lady in my big mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean , the big house on the hill in Hawaii you promised you'd build me...and the article in the
paper will read "Superstar rock vocalist Stevie Nicks died in her home in Hawaii this morning at the age of ninety-nine surrounded by Grammys and little dogs and wearing a t-shirt given to her on her
twenty-fourth birthday by the love of her life, famous guitarist Lindsey Buckingham."
"Hey, I said I'd build you a house on a hill but I never said you were sole owner of the t-shirt," he teased, and they both laughed through their tears. "But seriously, Stevie, I want you to know...I did it for us. I did it because I love you and I can't take another day watching you this way, and I want you to come home." He took her hand in his. "Please, baby...please come home with me...I don't mean tonight, obviously...the baby's upstairs and you have...other obligations, but..."
"Yes." She smiled at him, covering their clasped hands with her other one.
"Yes?" He was stunned at how easily this was all happening...as if they were on same page...at last.
"Listen, I'm going to have to come home now...you haven't heard my news yet..."
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YOU ARE READING
Stand Back (Mirage Era: Part 3)
Fanfiction***The final installment of the Mirage Era Trilogy*** Stevie shocks everyone in her life when she marries her best friend Robin's widower, Kim Anderson, in January of 1983, in an effort to get over the loss and raise the newborn baby boy Robin left...
