Buckingham Nicks A/U Series: I Can't Wait

Somehow She Still Believes Him

Paradise Valley, Arizona
Saturday, July 2, 1995
(3:00 pm)
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"You and me, we come from different worlds...You like to laugh at me when I look at other girls...Sometimes you're crazy, then you wonder why...I'm such a baby 'cause the Dolphins make me cry...but there's nothing I can do...I been looking for a girl like you..."

The young people had taken over the music.

Cracked Rear View, the debut album of Hootie and the Blowfish, was about a year old, but the song "Only Wanna Be With You" was a brand new single on the radio. Julia had come home with the CD earlier that year and played their other two singles, "Let Her Cry" and "Hold My Hand" a bunch of times in her bedroom, and she'd discovered "Only Wanna Be With You" on the CD months ago, before it had become a single. Stevie had fallen in love with the song as well, Lindsey had enjoyed "Let Her Cry" most of all the songs, but nevertheless, Hootie and the Blowfish fever had taken over the Buckingham household as spring had turned to summer.

They had brought their new band's music along to their annual trip to Arizona to celebrate Jess' birthday and the Fourth of July, and the song was currently playing out into the backyard of Chris and Lori's house as the kids enjoyed the pool and the continuous supply of meat sizzled on the grill.

Stevie was walking along the side of the pool, watching as Sara Belladonna walked ahead of her towards the grassy area to do her business. She was singing softly to herself along with the song, stopping to wave at Julia, who sat in the pool on an enormous inner tube that looked like a strawberry frosted donut. Julia smiled and waved back, then continued to lie back with her eyes closed in her navy and white bikini, trying to tan herself in the afternoon Arizona sun. The entire bottom half of her long caramel-highlighted hair hung backwards into the water and was floating on the surface, and Stevie took in the scene for a moment, amazed that the beautiful young woman who lay tanned to bronze in an inner tube in the pool was her baby girl. Julia's seventeenth birthday in April had come with a bunch of the obvious "Edge Of Seventeen" jokes, and in two months, she would be walking back through the doors of her high school as a senior. Gleaming in the sunlight was a diamond birthstone ring that had been a birthday gift to her from Jodie, with whom she now considered herself to be in a committed relationship after literally a lifetime of being best friends.

It had been just about a month now since Julia had invited Stevie into her bedroom "to talk privately for a minute" and informed her a bit timidly that she had lost her virginity to Jodie, and that while they had been taking precautions, she wanted to start taking birth control and wanted Stevie to take her to the gynecologist.

"We both know we don't have anything...you know...wrong," Julia said to her mother, sitting hunched up in the desk chair in her bedroom and hugging her knees to her chest in pink silk pajama shorts. "I was a virgin and he was with one girl before me but he was protected," she explained. "So, like, really all we need to prevent is pregnancy here...so I think the Pill is the best option for us."

Stevie, still stunned by the information in general, noted how clinical her daughter was being about the whole thing - even if she was explaining herself with the accent and vernacular of an L.A. girl. Even during the darkest days of Stevie's klonopin use, which had begun just as Julia was going through puberty, she had made a point of talking to her about her body and its changes and that she should never be embarrassed or afraid to come to her with any questions or if she was having any trouble in that department.

"Sure, honey," Stevie finally said in response to Julia's request for a gynecology appointment. "Do you want me to call Richard? I mean, he's the guy who brought you into this world...or would that be too weird and you want a stranger?" Stevie had been on a first-name basis with her own OB/GYN since she'd been fitted for an IUD when she began sleeping with Lindsey. She and Richard joked now that they were growing old together.