Buckingham Nicks A/U Series: That's What Love Is All About

Prologue 2: Two Hearts That Find A Way Somehow

Birmingham, England
Saturday, December 14, 2024
(4:30 pm)
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Julia decided to hang around in the upstairs hallway and wait for Uncle John to leave the room after his father-daughter time with Olivia. She was the Matron of Honor, Olivia's best friend in the world besides Aaron, and when the wedding coordinator - Stevie's gift to her son and future daughter-in-law almost as soon as they'd announced their engagement - came upstairs to fetch them to walk down the aisle, Olivia would need her buddy.

Olivia had taken her out to lunch with her sisters over a year ago to ask them to be in her wedding. She'd spent a ton of money on Etsy having velvet gift bags made in each of the winter-themed colors she'd wanted them to wear - emerald green, navy blue and plumb - complete with t-shirts and compact mirrors and various other accessories that were themed around the wedding or reading Olivia & Aaron and little cards asking them to be Matron of Honor and bridesmaids. Julia had asked her why she was not asking her half-sister Molly, John's daughter with his ex-wife, Julie, and Olivia's answer had been priceless. Like her father, Olivia wasn't a big talker, but when she spoke, she could be quite funny and profound.

"Molly is great and I love her, but let's face it, Jules...WE are the team here," she'd said. "When's the last time I even SAW my sister?"

It was a shame, Julia thought, that Molly preferred to stay out of most family affairs as well as most Fleetwood Mac business. Like Uncle Mick's older daughters, Amy and Lucy, she was happier far away from it all and was content to just be a guest at the wedding, milling about downstairs right now with everyone else.

Julia was standing in the hallway when John emerged from the bedroom, closing the door behind him. "All yours, Jules," he announced, winking at his goddaughter and saluting with his hands on his way downstairs. She was just about to go back into the room when the sound of a door opening nearby distracted her. Jodie was emerging from the bathroom, dressed in his Best Man tuxedo with a white rose in his lapel like all of the other men in the wedding party. Julia's heart leapt in her chest, not expecting him just then.

"Jodie! Jesus! You scared me!" she said, her hand falling to her chest.

"Sorry, Jules," he said. "I figured I'd sneak up here and pee before they called action down there." He looked down at the floor and then back up at her. "You look great."

"Thanks." She smiled, self-consciously fluffing the skirt of her dress. "You too."

They stood there and stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable minute. My God, she thought, we have been best friends since birth! When the hell did we become strangers?

"Steph's really in her element down there," Jodie reported. "She's been taking pictures like crazy and what she's shown me is excellent. Honestly, I think they should just send the professional photographers home at this point!" He chuckled. Their daughter Stephanie, named for her grandmother, had been taking pictures since she was a little girl, and now, at twenty years old, she had decided to make it her career.

"I don't doubt it," said Julia. "Is John okay? He's not too bored down there, is he?" She thought of their seventeen-year-old son downstairs, probably uncomfortable in his suit, most likely feeling the age gap in a room filled with people who were almost all over forty.

"Oh, he's fine," Jodie assured her. "One of my dad and Uncle Mick's friends just asked him how old he was and made the obligatory 'Edge Of Seventeen' joke, and he took it like a champ."  He laughed, which made Julia laugh, and she realized it was probably the first time they'd laughed together in months. Jodie moved towards her and began, "Listen...Jules..."

But as if on cue, a very frazzled woman with curly red hair and a headset attached to a box at her hip came up into the hallway just then, frantically looking back and forth between the Best Man and Matron of Honor.

"Front and center, you two!" she said, pointing at the staircase. "Julia, go get the bride out of there and let's get this show on the road!"

"No problem, Bernadette," she said. I wonder how many times in my life I've used that phrase when something was, indeed, a problem.

Bernadette was descending the stairs in a flash, and Julia looked back at Jodie, who had his hands stuffed into his pockets. "Well," he said, "see you down there." And he turned to go back downstairs to take his place beside Aaron at the altar, leaving Julia alone in the hallway.

"And then suddenly, there was no one left standing in the hall," she thought, her mother's lifetime of poignant lyrics once again hitting her in the face like the giant gust of wind that was Stevie Nicks. With a sigh, she returned to the bedroom to fetch Olivia to bring her down to the wedding so she could finally become another McVie who was absorbed into becoming a Buckingham.

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"Are you ready for another one of these?"

Stevie was seated next to her husband in the front row of the groom's side, her silver cane chair creaking a bit as she leaned over and whispered into his ear. There had been a lot of weddings in their family, starting with their own in 1977, and then had come Julia and Jodie, Sara and Jason, Amber and Matt - to say nothing of the grand affair that had been Christine and John's second wedding in 1998, just around the time Amber had been born and Fleetwood Mac had been inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. 

Lindsey placed an affectionate hand in his wife's knee and whispered back, "We've got this, Mrs. Buckingham." He kissed the side of her head. "Buckingham Nicks."

"Buckingham Nicks." She smiled. Their last names together, which was their professional name before joining Fleetwood Mac, had been like a mantra to them for over fifty years. Hard times, of which there had been plenty, as well as good times, would inevitably involve one or both of them saying it, reassuring each other that they were in this together, and that everything would be okay as long as they remembered that they were a team, that this big, crazy, beautiful family they'd built was a dream, they had shared decades ago when they were just two kids with a little dog, a few demos and a mattress on the floor, and together, it had all come true.

The lights in the room grew dimmer and the sound of music began. Everyone on both sides of the room stood up, looking towards Aaron and Jodie standing at the altar with the minister before turning their attention to the aisle where Michael and Andrea, Olivia's children, began to walk, Andrea tossing white rose petals and little paper snowflakes to the floor, Michael proudly carrying the rings on a white silk pillow. Everyone reacted with varying sounds of "awww" to them before Amber and Matt followed them down the aisle, the Sara and Jason, and then Julia.

The song they were walking to was not "The Wedding March", but almost everyone in the room could identify it, even if they weren't sure of its significance. The song had been one that Olivia had insisted on when they'd begun planning the wedding, explaining, "When I was growing up I always used to say that I wished I had someone who looked at me the way Uncle Lindsey looks at Aunt Stevie, and Aaron is the one. There's really only one acceptable song to walk down the aisle to, in my opinion."

As the song continued, Olivia, on the arm of her father, began to walk along the path of white rose petals and paper snowflakes her daughter had left in her wake, looking a bit nervously around at everyone's smiles. Then her eyes found Aaron's way at the end of her path, and the way he smiled at her made her sure that she had been right to choose the song, a beautiful guitar instrumental she'd loved all her life.

The song was by Uncle Lindsey, and it was called "Stephanie".

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