Chapter Text
March 1996
She knew he was at the door before he even finished walking up the front steps.
She had been peering out the living room window, concealing herself from view by hiding behind the curtains the way she did as a little girl waiting for her dad to come home from work. But even if she hadn't been lying in wait, she had a few other sets of eyes and ears keeping watch for her.
"Yes, yes, I hear you, my babies," she called out to the dogs who were jumping up and down and barking at the closed door, impatient to see this unknown intruder. "Please be good. I really need you to be good for me today."
Unaffected by her pleas, their excitement only escalated once she opened the door. Maybe they were feeding off her own nerves. Maybe they were doing her a favor, making sure she wouldn't end up just staring in silence until her brain kicked in enough to allow her to stammer out some sort of greeting.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she says as she reaches down and scoops up the two small pups in order to let Lindsey inside. "They'll calm down in a minute, they just get a little wigged out by strangers." The irony of calling him a stranger is not lost on her, and yet she supposes it's an accurate term. He's never been to this house, never met her dogs, never seen her in this particular skirt and sweater (purchased new for this occasion). She hasn't even gotten a chance to really look at him and see whether he's changed. The only thing she knows for sure is that he smells the same, the sense memory hitting her so strongly that she can barely stand up straight again after catching a whiff as she leans toward him to collect the dogs. Remembering sitting next to him on the couch in her college apartment, watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Him sneaking into her hotel room after they won the Grammy because he couldn't imagine spending that night with anyone else. The two of them watching the sun rise on a deserted beach in Hawaii and feeling like the only people on earth as the waves lapped at their toes. All those moments and a million more, plus another million she longs to forget. She spends the bulk of her recent days dwelling on the latter, waiting for that moment that's been promised to her when she'll no longer want to shut the door on the past. "Come on, let's go in the kitchen and Mommy will get you a cookie, how about that?"
She points Lindsey in the direction of the living room and he takes a seat on the couch, listening to her coo at her four-legged companions. One of the dogs runs past him with a green biscuit in its tiny mouth a moment later, settling down in the far corner of the room to enjoy its treat while still keeping an eye on him. "Lindsey? You want anything?"
"Uh, as appetizing as that looks, whatever it is you gave them- I'll pass." Don't try to be funny, it makes you sound like an idiot, he scolds himself.
"Those are the only cookies I have in this house, believe me," she says, laughing as she wanders into the room, "and every now and then they start to look awfully tempting."
He didn't completely understand the details of this new diet that she was on, just that she had turned down his offer to have this little reunion in a restaurant because 'I only eat at home now'. And as much as he wanted to meet in public, he wanted even more to be accommodating to her, so here he sat. "Oh. I mean, you look good."
He cursed himself yet again the minute the words left his mouth, unsure if she'd take them as a backhanded compliment. It wasn't a lie, because she did look good and she had obviously lost weight recently, although it wasn't the first or even second thing he'd noticed. The first was her eyes. There was still something a little faraway about them, but he could tell that there was life inside in the same way that tiny green shoots in early spring signal the blooms to come.
The second thing came when she leaned over to pick up the dogs and he inadvertently got an eyeful of her cleavage. He wasn't trying to look, but it was just there right in front of him and once he caught a glimpse it was almost impossible to turn away. God, he hopes she didn't notice him staring.
She sits back in an overstuffed chair across from him and tries to covertly size him up. He looks good. Her memories of the last time she saw him are hazy, mental photos filtered through a distorted lens, but she remembers that his face was tired even when he smiled. Back then everyone had that same tired look when she was around. He looks awake now, and she's glad. She's waking up too.
"Stevie?"
She startles a little, realizing that he must have been talking to her. "Sorry, I...what were you saying?"
"It's fine. I just said that it's a nice place you've got here."
"Thanks. I'm still getting things situated, though...I've only been here since the new year. It was time for a change, you know? I was ready to get back out here. Being that close to Mom and Dad was starting to be a little- it was time for the baby bird to flee the nest," she says with a laugh. It felt like her parents were more nervous about this move to LA than they were the first time she settled here as a broke 20-something living in sin. Only in the last few weeks had her mother finally stopped calling multiple times a day. "But how are you? You said you're getting ready to record?"
She listens to him explain his plans for the new album, grateful that she had asked. It temporarily took the pressure off of her, keeping her from rambling, and she could tell it made him happy that she was interested.
"And how's your girlfriend?" she asks out of politeness.
"Uh, she's, um. Not my girlfriend anymore."
Stevie mentally kicks herself. That's what you get for pretending to care. "Oh. I'm really sorry, I-"
"You didn't know," he says, waving off her apology. "And it's fine, honestly. It was for the best." Despite not taking offense to her question, a part of him was glad she felt guilty because it meant she wouldn't complain about him asking something equally intrusive. "So. You seeing anyone?"
"Me? No. Not for quite a while. A few months after...the last time we saw each other, one day my mom sat me down and said 'Sweetheart, if you're going to stay out of trouble for good, you need to take some time to figure out who you are and what you want, without someone else around to distract you'. And you know, she was right."
Lindsey nods, not saying anything. It was sound advice, but he had heard similar things coming out of her mouth many times before, always followed by a new man and an 'I guess you can't help who you fall for' within a week or two.
"So now I've been single for...God, I'm gonna say it's been almost a year and a half. And it's been really good for me! Now I'm at the point where I've got a few people dying to set me up with someone- but I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm ready for that yet. We'll see."
Frankly, Lindsey was impressed. There was that tiny spark of jealousy that still lived inside him and was appeased by this news, of course, but more than that he was grateful that she seemed to be genuinely trying to do right by herself. "That's gr-" don't say 'great', you'll sound like an ass, "you seem like you're in a good place."
"I'm getting there." She was certainly miles away from where she was when they last met, literally and figuratively. It was three days after she had gotten out of rehab and he had come to visit her at her house in Phoenix. They had gone for a long walk around her property- holding hands, talking, crying, making out behind a tree to escape the watchful eyes of her family. Then he left, and that was that. Until now.
"I was surprised when you called. I mean, good surprised. Never thought you'd actually want my help on any of your solo stuff," he says, digging his nails into his palm in frustration when that came out with a tinge of bitterness that he hadn't intended.
"Well, you know," she says, deciding there was no need to mention how he wasn't exactly knocking down her door to ask her for help, "think of it as my way of extending an olive tree."
"Olive branch."
"What?"
"That's how the phrase goes, extending an olive branch. You said olive tree." What the hell are you doing? You should've let it go, she's obviously anxious.
"Oh yeah, right." Damnit. Mixing up words was always the first sign when she started to get overly worried or excited, and he knew it well. "Anyway- I did, do, want you on this song. But it's important to me because...I mean, it started with my sponsor. I-"
"Your sponsor?" he asks in surprise. "You working the program?"
"Reluctantly, yes." She had gone to an NA meeting after she left rehab just so everyone would get off her case about it and went directly to the 13th step- getting laid. After three short-lived flings, it was suggested to her that maybe women-only meetings would be a better choice, and that's when she gave up going altogether. "Only because she won't let me quit. Somehow I found the one woman in the world who's more stubborn than me."
"Now that's something I'd like to see."
"Yeah, yeah. So I'm making my way through the steps...slowly." It would be more accurate to say she bullshitted her way through a few of them. That whole admitting you're an addict, accepting you have a disease you can't control thing had never sat right with her. She didn't think she was sick, just a person who got into bad situations, but she told everyone what they wanted to hear so she could move on. "And now I'm at the point where- fuck. This is harder than I thought it'd be."
"Steph, you don't have to tell me any of this, not if you don't want to." He could see her chin quivering ever so slightly and his instinct to protect her, to save her from herself, kicked in before he could control it.
"No, I do," she says, sitting up a little straighter. "It's something I need to do." For all the things she had heard in rehab and then promptly discarded, this was the part that spoke to her, about how guilt and regret would eat you up until you stopped holding it inside. "Because I know you're not going to believe this, but over the years- I've fucked up."
"You don't say," he replies dryly, but the smile he gives her is soft and encouraging.
"Just a time or two!" That gets a laugh out of her, gets her to let go of her death grip on the arm of the chair. "But anyway...now I'm at the point where you're supposed to think about the people you've hurt and how you're going to make amends to them. And my sponsor always says, that doesn't mean you just tell someone you're sorry. Because it's only words, and it's not going to fix the past. You can't go back and change things that happened, so you make amends by showing people that you've changed." One of the dogs walks over and stands at her feet, whimpering softly until she picks it up and sets it in her lap. "And that's why I wanted you here. I'm not asking for anything, I don't expect anything from you, I just wanted you to see that I'm different now."
He nods, temporarily unsure of what to say. He's proud of how far she's obviously come, but he's intimidated all the same because they don't really do this. If they're honest with each other, it's under the influence, and if they're apologizing then it's probably under duress. At least, that's how it's been since sometime in the mid-70s. He'd have to go further back than that in his memory to find a time when they were naive enough for that level of truthfulness.
She says she doesn't want anything from him, but he still feels the pressure to reply in kind and he just can't. He knows he owes her at least as many apologies as she owes him- after all, that's the beauty of their relationship. But for now he's a coward, at least as compared to her, so she'll have to settle for a quiet thank you.
"Lindsey?"
"Hmm?"
"Do you think- will we ever be able to talk about her?"
"About Samantha," he says, not needing to ask who the 'her' in question was. The syllables feel strange in his mouth, like he has to contort his tongue to force them out. "Wow. I. I haven't said that name in...it's probably been at least ten years."
"You never told anyone?"
"Of course not. We had a promise. Why, did you?" he asks, an angry flush starting to spread from the base of his neck upwards.
"Jesus, no!" It would be easy to get offended, but she tries to fight the urge and remember what she's been told. You don't get to choose how others react. "I wouldn't," she says, her voice calmer this time. It was all they had left, a name, and to share it with anyone else would be like diluting that one tiny piece of her that they had to hold on to. "I've told the story to two, maybe three people over the years but...never her name. And I won't."
"Stevie. If this is about what I said that day, when we had that fight, you have to know that-"
"It's not. I mean, you'd clearly been holding it in for a long time and I'm not gonna ask you to apologize for how you feel. What's done is done and you know, there was some truth to it."
"No." He scrubs his hand over his face, aware that despite her words and the careful neutrality of her tone, she wasn't offering him forgiveness. Not that he was expecting it. He had set out to burn bridges that day and he had succeeded, choosing his words to virtually insure that there would never be a chance at a relationship for them again. "I swear to God, if I could take it back-"
"But you can't. And that's not what I'm after. What I'm trying to say is, we've never really sat down and talked about her while we were both in our right minds. Now isn't the time, I know that. I'm just asking if you think we'll ever be to that point."
"Yeah, I just...I dunno what there is to say. It's so far in the past that I don't see what it would accomplish."
She nods, having expected as much from him. It was the golden rule of making amends, a therapist had told her, that there are some old wounds you can't touch because it's just going to hurt the person involved even more. This was obviously one of those things and she wouldn't try to force him into a conversation he wasn't ready to have. "I understand."
"It's not that I-"
"I know, Linds. It's okay." She knows that it's not that he doesn't care- or worse yet, that he's forgotten. The way he's staring into the distance at nothing, as if he could will himself into another time and place, says it all.
"Sometimes at night I still dream that she's..."
"I know. I do too."
They both studiously avoid looking at one another, the room silent except for the dog's soft snore and the sounds of two people trying to conceal their tears from view. He wishes he knew what to say. He wishes he knew how to say something, anything, but he's paralyzed by the fear that whatever he would say would only hurt her more and he can't have that. Especially when, by all appearances, she seems to be doing so well. He already feels like he was given far beyond what he deserved when she agreed to let him come visit her fresh out of rehab. They weren't exactly friendly before she went in, and he assumed it'd only be worse once she was clear headed, but she seemed so willing to put their past behind them and honestly, it scared the shit out of him. He didn't entirely trust her, but he mistrusted himself even more and he just couldn't bear the thought of fucking things up after she'd already come so far. It was hard to let go, especially after she kissed him exactly the way he'd been missing for the better part of a decade. But he knew that if he walked away then, he'd be saving them from their inevitable joint destruction, and she knew it too. And when he looks at her now, he can tell he made the right choice. For her, at least. She's thriving, she's facing the past- and he feels as inadequate as ever.
Her voice pulls him out of his self-loathing. "So. What did you think when you heard the demo?"
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He's about to leave for the day when he looks out the window at his car and makes a face. "Shit. Uh, I'll be right back."
The dogs start to whine as they watch him walk away, having apparently grown fond of him over the last few hours. But then instead of driving away, he grabs something from the passenger seat and turns back around, and they start wagging their tails in excitement again.
"Sorry, not for you," he apologizes to them, handing Stevie a large and slightly wilted bouquet of brightly colored tulips. "I, ah. It's a housewarming gift. But I forgot 'em in the car so..."
"Don't worry about it, I'll put them in water and they'll perk right up." She holds out one arm tentatively and he accepts the offer, pulling her into a hug. "Thank you, Linds. For everything."
They hold onto each other just a little tighter than necessary, just a little too long for people who'll see each other again in less than 24 hours. Feeling suddenly emboldened, he turns his head and presses his lips against her temple. "Steph?"
"Uh-huh?"
"I'm proud of you."