Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid Page 0,92

back, while everyone else was up front. I think we were stopped somewhere around Kansas because when I looked out the window all I saw were plains. No hills, not much civilization, even. I woke up and Nicky was there with a toot, right there. I just had this fleeting thought, What if I didn’t? So I said, “No, thanks.”

And Nicky laughed and said, “No, c’mon.” And he put it right in my face and I snorted it.

And as I turned my head, to look down the aisle, I saw that Billy had stepped onto the bus for some reason, was talking to Warren or something. But … he saw the whole thing. And I caught his eye for a moment and I just got so sad.

Billy: I made it a point to stay off the white bus. Nothing good for me happened on the white bus.

Graham: We all went home for Christmas and New Year’s.

Billy: I was so happy to go home to my girls.

Camila: There was so much more to my life, so much more to my marriage, than the fact that my husband was in a band. I’m not saying that The Six wasn’t a major factor, of course it was. But we were a family. Billy was expected to leave his work at the door when he came home. And he did that.

When I think back to the late seventies, I do think a lot about the band and the songs and … everything that we were going through with that. But I mostly think about Julia learning to swim. And Susana’s first word sounding like “Mimia,” and how we couldn’t tell if she meant “Mama” or “Julia” or “Maria.” Or Maria always trying to pull Billy’s hair. And how he used to play a game with the girls called Who Gets the Last Pancake? As he was making pancakes, and the girls were eating them, he’d suddenly yell, “Who gets the last pancake?” And whichever girl put her hand up first got to eat it. But somehow, no matter what happened, he’d make them split the pancake.

That’s the kind of thing I remember more than anything.

Billy: Camila and I had just closed on our new house in Malibu, in the hills. Bigger than any house I ever thought I’d live in. With this long driveway and trees shading every part except the deck. The deck was totally unobstructed. You could see all the way out to the ocean. Camila used to call it “the house ‘Honeycomb’ built.”

The two weeks that I was home for the holidays, we spent most of it moving in and getting settled. The first night we brought the girls, I said to Julia, “Which room do you want?” She was the oldest, so she got first pick. Her eyes went wide and she went off running down the hall, looking at each one. And then, she sat down on the floor in the middle of the hallway and she deliberated. And then she said, “I want the one in the middle.”

I said, “Are you sure?”

She said, “I’m sure.” She was just like her mom. Once she knew what she wanted, she knew.

Rod: That Christmas was the first time in a long time—a long, long time—that I didn’t have to do any work. That I could just enjoy myself. That I didn’t have to save some rock star from some crisis or make sure their rider was fulfilled or whatever I was doing.

I rented a cabin with this guy Chris. He and I moved in the same circles and I’d been seeing him whenever I was in town. We spent the holidays together in Big Bear. We made dinners together and went in the hot tub and played cards. For Christmas, I gave him a sweater and he gave me a day planner. And I thought, I want to be normal.

Daisy: Nicky and I flew to Rome for Christmas.

Eddie: Over the holiday, Pete asked Jenny to marry him and she said yes. I was real happy for him, you know? I gave him a big hug. He said, “I have to figure out when I’m going to tell everybody. I don’t know how they are gonna take it.”

I said, “What are you talking about? Nobody cares if you’re married.”

He said, “No, I’m leaving.”

I said, “Leaving?”

He said, “At the end of the tour, I’m quitting the band.”

We were at our parents’ house in the den. I said, “What are you talking about? Quitting