say hello wave goodbye

61: allow me to exaggerate a memory or two (1998)

Hello! Apologies for this having taken so long, and I promise to try and do better next time. Since you've been waiting forever, let's just dive right in...

February 1998

"Hey honey," Stevie calls out as she leaves her purse by the front door, leaning over to greet the dogs. "See, babies, I told you I wouldn't be gone long. Linds?"

Lindsey hears his name through the headphones he's got on and pulls them off of one ear. "Hey, you're back. How'd it go?"

"Good. Did you let them out while I was gone?"

"Yeah." She's not sure if she believes him, because he hasn't moved from the position he was in three hours ago when she left, lying on the couch with his guitar in his lap and picking along to whatever he was listening to. She opens the door just to be safe and both dogs go flying outside, but they seem more interested in rolling around on the lawn than in doing their business.

It's hard to blame them when it feels more like April than mid-February, and Stevie herself is also enjoying the sunshine after almost a month of the gray European weather. Not that she had spent much of that time out in the elements. When they weren't rehearsing or performing, she and Lindsey were holed up underneath 24 karat gold threaded sheets in a series of hotel suites, watching movies that they never paid attention to and ordering room service that they never finished and, well. 'I see you went straight from the engagement to the honeymoon,' Lori had remarked with an arched eyebrow one late morning over Christmas when the two of them had finally emerged in the kitchen, looking rumpled and not at all well rested. Stevie didn't see the problem. He was her fiance, for fuck's sake, and even though they rarely spoke about it, there was the silent acknowledgement between them that life would not be like this forever. This would be their last chance to live as unencumbered newlyweds before things changed irrevocably and they had to become grownups whether they were ready for it or not.

Sometimes Stevie wondered if she had made a mistake- not in taking him back, but in giving him the ultimatum that he needed to be a real parent. It would be so much easier to go along with his idea of running off to Hawaii and forgetting that this child existed outside of mailing off a check once a month and dropping in to say a quick hello whenever they were in town. Maybe he would've eventually decided for himself that he wanted to be more involved and the kid could fly out to visit them during school vacations.

But no, she couldn't wait around on him to do the right thing. She knows he has it in him to be a good father and that someday he'll be grateful to her for not letting him take the easy way out. Besides, she'd never be able to forgive herself if she thought she had come between him and his child. She'd been so blessed to have two loving parents her whole life, to have a father who had supported her even at her worst, and this baby deserved nothing less.

In the meantime, they deserved this. 'We finally have everything we always wanted,' he said to her on the night of their Rock Hall induction, and if she mouthed almost to herself, he didn't notice. Close enough, right? They had each other and they had their music and they had been through far too much to take either of those things for granted.

She calls for the dogs to follow her inside, giving them a treat and wishing Lindsey was as easily pacified as they were. He wasn't going to like this. And he doesn't have to, both her mother and Tom had said; the two people she trusted to give her the right advice without letting their own feelings about Lindsey color their opinion.

"Hey. I need to talk to you for a second," she tells him, sitting down and letting him put his bare feet in her lap.

He already looks guilty. "Shit, if this is about Kristen, I've been forgetting to call her-"