Daisy Jones & The Six(54)

I turned to Julia and I said, “If you could do anything right now, what would you do?”

And she didn’t hesitate. She screamed, “Disneyland!” So we packed up the car and drove the kids to Disneyland.

Daisy: My car was parked along the PCH and I heard this line in my head. Regret me.

All I had in my car to use as paper was the back of my registration and a gas station napkin. And I searched high and low for something to write with. There was nothing in the door compartment. Nothing in the glove box. I got out of the car and I searched under the seats and under the passenger’s seat was a stick of eyeliner.

I started writing. Lightning fast, maybe ten minutes. Beginning to end I had a song.

Billy: I was watching Julia in the teacups with Camila and I’m watching them go around and around. And the twins are asleep in the stroller. And I’m trying to put the morning out of my head. But I’m losing my mind because … well, it was complicated, obviously.

And then, you know what I realized? It wasn’t very important. How I felt about Daisy. History is what you did, not what you almost did, not what you thought about doing. And I was proud of what I did.

Daisy: Did Billy’s actions really warrant the song? Probably not. I mean, no. They didn’t. But that’s the thing. Art doesn’t owe anything to anyone.

Songs are about how it felt, not the facts. Self-expression is about what it feels to live, not whether you had the right to claim any emotion at any time. Did I have a right to be mad at him? Did he do anything wrong? Who cares! Who cares? I hurt. So I wrote about it.

Billy: We left Disneyland really late. I mean, they were shutting down the park.

Julia fell asleep on the way home. The twins had been asleep for a while. As we were driving back up the 405, I put KRLA on low volume and Camila put her feet up on the dashboard and her head on my shoulder. It felt so good, her head on my shoulder. I held my back straight and didn’t move an inch, just so she’d keep it there.

There was this unspoken thing between Camila and I back then.

I mean, she knew Daisy was … She knew that things were … [pauses] I guess what I’m saying is that in some marriages you don’t need to say everything that you feel.

I think saying everything that you think and feel … well, some people are like that. Camila and I weren’t. With Camila and I, it was much more … we both trusted each other to handle the details.

I’m trying to think of how to explain it. Because when I say it now, it seems crazy, that Camila and I never discussed the fact that I … It seems crazy that Camila and I didn’t have this open conversation about Daisy. Because clearly, she was a big factor in our lives.

I know it might seem like maybe it was a lack of trust. That either I didn’t trust her to know just what was going on with Daisy or that she didn’t trust me enough to have been able to handle that. But it’s really the opposite.

Right around this same time—give or take a few years, I can’t remember—Camila got a call from this guy from her high school. Some guy that was on the baseball team and took her to the prom and all that. I think his name was Greg Egan or Gary Egan? Something like that.

She said to me, “I’m gonna go get lunch with Gary Egan.” And I said, “Okay.” And she went and got lunch with him and she was gone for four hours. No one eats lunch for four hours.

When she got back, she gave me a kiss and she, you know, started doing the laundry or something and I said, “How was your lunch with Greg Egan?” And she said, “Fine.” And that’s all she said.

In that moment, I knew that what happened between her and Gary Egan—whether she still felt anything for him, how he felt about her, anything that might have taken place—all of that wasn’t my business. It wasn’t anything she wanted to share. That was a singular moment for her and it had nothing to with me.

I’m not saying that I didn’t care. I cared a lot. I’m saying that when you really love someone, sometimes the things they need may hurt you, and some people are worth hurting for.

I had hurt Camila. God knows I had. But loving somebody isn’t perfection and good times and laughing and making love. Love is forgiveness and patience and faith and every once in a while, it’s a gut punch. That’s why it’s a dangerous thing, when you go loving the wrong person. When you love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. You have to be with someone that deserves your faith and you have be deserving of someone else’s. It’s sacred.

I have no tolerance for people that waste other people’s faith in them. None at all.

Camila and I promised to put our marriage first. To put our family first. And we promised to trust each other in how best to do that. Do you know what you do with that level of trust? When someone says, “I trust you so much I can tolerate you having secrets?”

You cherish it. You remind yourself how lucky you are to have been given that trust every day. And when you have moments when you think, I want to do something that would break that trust, whatever that is—loving a woman you shouldn’t be loving, drinking a beer you shouldn’t be drinking—do you know what you do?

You get your ass up onto your two feet, and you take your kids to Disneyland with their mother.

Camila: If I’ve given the impression that trust is easy—with your spouse, with your kids, with anybody you care about—if I’ve made it seem like it’s easy to do … then I’ve misspoken. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.