Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid Page 0,53

every day to be the guy she sees, I’ve got the best chance at coming close to it.”

Billy: Daisy looked at me and said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

And I said, “What did I do to make you mad this time?”

And she said, “There’s just as much to hate about you as there is to like about you. And that’s annoying.”

Daisy: Then he said, “It’s my turn.”

I said, “Out with it then.”

Billy: “When are you going to quit the pills?”

Daisy: I said, “Why are you so obsessed with the goddamn pills?”

Billy: I told her the truth. I said, “My father was a drunk who was never there for Graham and me. I never wanted to be that way. And then the first thing I do, my first act as a father, was to get all messed up in all the shit you’re messed up in—even heroin, too, I’m afraid—and I let my daughter down. Even missed her birth. I turned out to be exactly what I’ve always hated. If it wasn’t for Camila, I think I’d still be that way. I think I would have made all my own nightmares come true. That’s the kind of guy I am.”

Daisy: I said, “It’s like some of us are chasing after our nightmares the way other people chase dreams.”

He said, “That’s a song, right there.”

Billy: It wasn’t behind me. My addiction. I kept hoping it would feel like it was. Like I didn’t need to keep looking over my shoulder all the time. But that doesn’t really exist. At least not for me. It’s a fight you keep fighting, some times are easier than others. Daisy made it harder. She just did.

Daisy: I was paying the price for the parts of himself that he didn’t like.

Billy: She said, “If I was a teetotaler you’d like me more, huh?”

And I said, “I’d like to be around you more. Yeah, probably.”

And Daisy said, “Well, you can just forget that. I don’t change for anybody.”

Daisy: I finished my burger and threw down some money and I got up to go. Billy said, “What are you doing?”

And I said, “We’re going back to Teddy’s. We’re gonna write that song about chasing our nightmares.”

Billy: I grabbed my keys and walked out after her.

Daisy: On the way back to Teddy’s, Billy was singing me this melody he’d had in his head. We were at a red light and he was tapping the steering wheel and humming along.

Billy: I had a Bo Diddley beat I was thinking of. Something I wanted to try.

Daisy: He said, “Can you work with that?”

I said I could work with anything. So when we got back to the pool house, I started sketching some ideas out. And he did, too. After about a half hour, I had stuff to show him but he said he needed more time. I kept hanging around, waiting for him to be done.

Billy: She was pacing around me. She wanted to show me what she was writing. I finally had to say, “Will you get the fuck out of here?”

And I … on account of how rude I’d been to her in the past I realized I needed to be clear that I just meant it the same I’d say it to Graham or Karen, you know? I said, “Please, will you get the fuck out of here? Go get a donut or something.”

She said, “I ate a burger already.” That’s when I realized Daisy only ate one meal a day.

Daisy: I picked the lock to Teddy’s house, borrowed his girlfriend Yasmine’s bathing suit and a towel, and went for a swim. I was in there long enough to prune. And then I went back in, put the bathing suit in the wash, took a shower, and went back into the pool house and Billy was still sitting there, writing.

Billy: She told me what she did and I said, “That’s weird, Daisy. That you borrowed Yasmine’s bathing suit.” And Daisy just shrugged.

She said, “Would you have rather I skinny-dipped?”

Daisy: I took his pages from him and I gave him mine.

Billy: She had a lot of imagery of darkness, running into darkness, chasing darkness.

Daisy: When it came to the structure of the verses, his were better than mine. But he didn’t have a really fun chorus yet and I thought that I did. I showed him the part I’d written I liked the most and I sang it to him with his melody he’d given me. I could tell on his