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heartbreaking goodbye
october 3rd, 2017
“Stevie? Stevie, wake up”
Feeling someone shake her leg, Stevie pulled her blanket over her head as the sun shining through the window was blinding, the blonde groaning before peeking her head out from the blanket to see the time on the clock. 10:17am. Blinking a few times to adjust her eyes to the sudden light, the fact the blonde had just gone to bed a few hours earlier, last time she remembered looking at the clock was a little before seven as she finally closed her journal for the evening. She had been writing poems and whatever was coming to her mind in hopes she could push some writings together for songs for perhaps a new album. So, the fact that someone thought it was okay to wake her up after what was pretty much a nap was irritating to the woman. “Stevie, come on, it’s important” she knew her voice anywhere, Christine’s accent was very unique and she could tell her voice from a mile away. But, she could also tell she was crying and had been for a little bit, and suddenly Stevie had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach that was soul-crushing -- and not knowing what it was alarmed her more than she cared to admit. Pulling the blanket down to show her face, a yawn escaped her lips before she focused on Christine’s face, her bloodshot eyes made her stomach turn. “Who died?” Stevie just knew, she could tell by Christine’s reaction it wasn’t something simple, and with her reaction, Stevie wanted to believe it was John. As bad as it sounded he had been having health issues for a while, Fleetwood Mac even having to cancel a few shows because of it, but every bone in her body was saying it wasn’t him. “Christine, who died?” she asked again, removing the blanket fully off her body as she slid up into a sitting position on the bed, the fellow blonde’s silence had Stevie feeling like she could puke. “Stephanie..” she never calls her that, Stevie can count on her fingers how many times Christine has called her Stephanie or Steph in their entire friendship, and whenever she did it was usually bad. “I just got off the phone with Mike” Christine didn’t need to say anything else, Stevie knew, she f***ing knew. “I just - we just talked about getting together for dinner because it’s been a little bit, he's going to get his hip and knee fixed then we're going to do dinner. He - Mike must be joking, Tom can’t be dead, he…” Stevie started shaking her head, looking around her bed for her glasses before realizing they were on the table beside her. “Someone give me a phone or the remote or something” Stevie grabbed her glasses off the nightstand and placed them on her face while her assistant, Karen, handed her the remote to the television in her bedroom. Turning it on, she flipped through channels until she reached CNN, only pausing when she saw a picture of her and Tom on the television.
“Musician Tom Petty died of an accidental drug overdose of several medications, a statement from his family, posted on tompetty.com, and a news release from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner said this morning.”
“This - this is bullsh*t” Stevie bluntly said, shaking her head as she slid her glasses off her face before looking at Karen and Christine. “We just talked about having plans, he, he was going to get his hip fixed because he finished his f***ing tour like an idiot instead of postponing some of it. He’s not dead, they’re lying, I’m sure Dana would’ve called me by now if he wa --” before she could even finish her sentence her phone started ringing, Tom’s wife Dana’s name popping up on the screen. Stevie’s eyes shifted to her phone, shaking her head no as tears quickly started filling her eyes. Stevie needed to grab the phone, she needed to answer it and it was Tom on the other end saying there was a misunderstanding and his phone was dead, she didn’t need to answer it and hear he was dead. Stevie slid her hand over to grab it off the table and slowly swiped the bar to the right before slowly bringing it up to her right ear, Stevie not saying a word as Dana’s sobs into the phone confirmed everything that she didn’t want to believe. “Stevie…”
“No” her voice was soft, barely audible as she felt Christine sit down in the bed beside her. Stevie felt tears rolling down her cheeks but she couldn’t stop them, nor could she feel like she could even move. Dana’s words were hitting her brain but it was like she wasn’t processing them, they just talked about doing lunch and she said she’d come to him so he can get his hip fixed. They had just talked about doing a whole duet album of things they had written and recorded over the years - they just talked about re-releasing Insider. Feeling Christine’s arm around her shoulders caused Stevie to pull away, hanging up on Dana mid-sentence as she shook her head. “Get out” she whispered, looking at Christine before her eyes shifted over to where Karen was standing. “Did I f***in’ stutter? GET THE F*** OUT!”
Letting her eyes follow them as they walked out of her bedroom, Karen shutting the door behind them, Stevie just sat there in silence as her brown orbs fixated in on the television as they kept talking about Tom in a sense of saying was instead of is, were instead of currently, talking about how he just finished a tour - a tour she showed up on a few times to do a few different songs. Grabbing her phone, Stevie would unlock it before going right to her text messages and scrolling down until he found his name, clicking on it as she saw the last text was from literally the day before, him saying he couldn’t wait to see her again because they had something to talk about and he hoped it didn’t change their friendship. She just shrugged it off when she read it yesterday, figuring it was nothing and not anywhere close to confessing feelings for her like she had been wanting to do for years when it came to him. There was absolutely no way he felt the same way - was there?
“I never get to tell you I love you. Never get to hear your voice say my name one more time in that southern drawl you have. I’ll never get to hold your hand on stage while we’re singing again - how could you do this to your kids, Tom? To me?” Stevie knew, as soon as she started crying she wasn’t going to be able to stop, but she couldn’t hold her emotions back as they slowly started to come to the forefront. Feeling the tears rolling down her cheeks, Stevie took the picture and threw it at the wall across the room like a frisbee, the corner of it slamming against the wall as the glass shattered out of it and fell to the floor around the now broken frame. “You f***ing promised me that you wouldn’t become one of them, you wouldn’t sit here and go back to painkillers to end up dying from it. You promised me things were going to be different after this tour and you wanted to sit and talk - about what? How do I go on the rest of my life knowing if you were just in love with me as I was with you? F***, Tom, how could you do this to me…” Stevie laid back on the bed as loud sobs escaped her lips, her entire body shaking from the emotions as she curled herself into a ball the best she could. She wanted to close her eyes and this was a nightmare. She would wake up to a text or call from him saying he was better and wanted to do dinner to discuss whatever he wanted to discuss. But she knew, she knew the only time she’d ever see him again was when her eyes were closed and he was in her dreams. The man she loved was dead, died in a way he promised he wouldn’t, and Stevie didn’t know how to cope with it, how to move on from it. She never thought about living in a world without Tom Petty - and now it’s her reality.
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