Beautiful Child

I Had To Stay

October 1976

Don Henley took his eyes off the football game to cut two lines from the small mound of cocaine on his glass coffee table. He hunched over and snorted them rapidly before dragging his pinky over the residue and running it over his gums.

As he dropped back into the chair, he caught a glance at the clock on the fireplace.

"Damnit...Stevie!"

"Yes, I'm here now!" He heard the sound of her boots thudding down the stairs behind him as he turned his focus back to the game.

He craned round her to see the TV as she stopped in front of him and twirled.

"Yeah, very nice," he said, without looking. She rolled her eyes, scooped some cocaine off the pile with her fingernail and sniffed it. "We were supposed to be at this fucking party an hour ago, and it's halfway across town."

"Can you be cool for like, one minute, man?" She sucked the residue off her finger. "These Warners parties are how often? Like every other week, or whatever? We're missing nothing. Or are you worried all the young girls will have left because it's past bedtime?"

"Stevie -" he got to his feet and followed her to the door. "Are you planning on letting that go or what? Nothing happened."

"You were eye fucking a high school senior!"

"Did I know she was a high school senior? These chicks dress like they're 25!"

She turned to him as they reached the door.

"That's not the point..."

"Hey." He held her face. "There's only one person I wanna do any kind of fucking with, alright?"

"Alright."

He leaned in to kiss her before pausing, inches from her lips.

"You wearing lipstick?"

"Um, yeah -"

"Huh. Never mind." He let go of her face, opting instead to smack her ass as she sighed and turned to the door. "Buckingham gonna be there?"

"Yes, Don. Lindsey is going to be there."

"Cool beans. Gonna see if I can get him to try and throw a punch again."

~

Her 4 month old relationship with Don had got off to a rocky start, and hadn't gotten much smoother since. Fleetwood Mac had taken a break from recording their new album, Rumours, to open a few shows for Eagles. On the back of their previous record, Fleetwood Mac's star was ascending, so it made sense to pair them with the band currently comfortably dominating the charts.

Their bandmates saw the spark before either of them did, and John and Mick, wanting to finally see an end to her bitter, drawn out break-up with Lindsey, had flowers sent to her dressing room, pretending Don had sent them.

Stevie had flown into a rage when she saw the blatant come-on of a note attached to the flowers, and after Christine's gentle explanation that it was a joke, she was surprised to find her relief tinged with more than a hint of disappointment that they hadn't been from Don after all, and that was that - she approached him after the show and wound up in his hotel room, and they'd spent most nights together since.

Her closest friends had voiced concerns that he was too much like Lindsey for it to work; hot headed and dominant, and worryingly, Don also had a notorious reputation for womanizing. Stevie, stubborn as ever, didn't want to hear a word of it. She had snared the most eligible bachelor in the American music industry, and she intended to keep him.