say hello wave goodbye

3: I pretend you're mine all the damn time (1979)

November 1979

"Oh. Fuck."

"That's so good," Lindsey grunts, forehead against the pillow as he inhales the sweet scent of her freshly shampooed hair. She starts to say something to him but he crashes his lips against hers, muffling the words with his mouth.

He's so close now, thrusts rough and uncoordinated, and he lifts her thigh up to hook her leg around his waist so he can slide in deeper. "Shit!" he yells, not caring who might hear him on the other side of the wall as he's coming. Let them- let her- hear everything. "Oh Jesus, babe, oh fuck...Steph."

The woman underneath him? Yeah. Definitely not Steph.

He freezes for a moment, and he swears he can hear his voice reverberating throughout the hotel suite. Leave it to the Marriott to have better acoustics than any venue they've played in so far on this tour. Quick, distract her. He tries to play it off like nothing happened, kissing her and whispering all sorts of shit he doesn't mean, never has, and never will. As soon as he thinks he's mitigated the damage he sits up, reaching for the mostly empty glass on the nightstand and awaiting her reaction. Good thing Carol's probably too coked up to remember what happened more than 30 seconds ago.

Or maybe not. "You called me Steph. Again."

"I did?" he asks, looking doubtful. "You sure?"

"Uh huh." She turns her head to look at him, twirling a piece of hair around her finger and damnit, he should've known this was going to happen when he got her that shampoo. "Do we really think we look that much alike?"

"Ah. I mean-"

He's bewildered when she cuts him off with a smile on her face. "Because she's so pretty, you know? Like, if I could be anyone's twin, I'd want to be hers."

"God, I love you," he sighs with relief, and he really means it this time.

-------------------------

Every day he tells himself he's going to be a better boyfriend. A better person, in general. He's going to stop calling Carol by the wrong name when he fucks her, because he's not going to get away with it forever, and he's going to cut back on the booze and the weed and go a full 24 hours without making someone cry. Carol's an idiot and he never should've started dating her in the first place, but she's better to him than he deserves most of the time and he knows that he takes advantage of her cluelessness and her forgiving nature more than he should. He justifies it to himself because he also knows she's taking full advantage of his fame and his bank account- but if he's fully aware and still does nothing about it, then he figures he must be a sucker who deserves whatever he gets.

"You need to either shape up or let her go," Richard had advised him, but Richard can go to hell as far as he's concerned. He has a new assistant for this tour, some young dark haired kid, and Lindsey's 99% sure Stevie's fucking him. He's been avoiding her as much as possible, but he had the misfortune to see her salivating over this guy before their second show and it's been bugging him ever since. When he asked Richard what he knew, all he got was that "he's got a fiance."

"And when has that ever stopped her?"

"Hey, Buck, you asked what I knew and I told you. He's got an old lady at home. Beyond that, I'm not gettin' involved."

Lindsey took that as a yes. Guess that Key West dick must not have been as good as she pretended it was.

Deciding to do a little investigating, he pulls on his jeans and a halfway clean t-shirt and slips out the door while Carol's still face down on the bed and snoring softly. Another trait she shares with Stevie- how the fuck is it that they even sleep the same?