Daisy Jones & The Six(79)

Daisy: I started singing and I looked at him. And he looked at me. And, you know what? For three minutes, I think I forgot we were performing for twenty thousand people. I forgot his family was standing there. I forgot we were singers in a band. I just existed. For three minutes. Singing to the man I loved.

Billy: The right song, at the right time, with the right person …

Daisy: And then right before the end of the song, I looked over to the side of the stage to see Camila standing there.

Billy: And I just … [pauses] God, I was so frayed at the edges.

Daisy: And I knew he wasn’t mine.

He was hers.

And then I … I just did it. I sang the song as Billy originally wrote it. No questions.

“The life we want will wait for us/we will live to see the lights coming off the bay/and you will hold me, you will hold me, you will hold me/until that day.” It was the hardest line I’ve ever had to get through.

Billy: When I heard her, singing the lines as I originally wrote them, singing about this future that Camila and I would have … There had been so much doubt in my heart. So much doubt in myself that I could keep going down the good road I was on. And I … [breathes deeply] Those lyrics. That small gesture. For one moment, Daisy didn’t remind me that I might fail. She sang the song like she knew I’d succeed. Daisy did that. Daisy. I didn’t know how much I needed it until she gave it to me. And it should have just made me feel better but it hurt, too.

Because if I was the man I wanted to be—if I could give Camila the life I’d promised her—well, I mean … there was loss in that, too.

Daisy: I fell in love with the wrong guy who was exactly the right guy. And I had made decisions time and time again that made it worse and never made it better. And I’d finally pushed myself right over the edge.

Billy: When we got off the stage, I turned to Daisy and I didn’t have any words. She smiled at me but it was one of those smiles that isn’t a smile at all. And then she walked away. And my heart sank.

It just became so perfectly clear to me that I had been holding on tightly to the possibility. The possibility of Daisy.

And suddenly, I was having a very hard time with the idea of letting that go. Of saying, “Never.”

Daisy: I saw Billy Dunne as he was coming off the stage and I didn’t trust myself to say a single word to him. I couldn’t be around him. So I waved goodbye and I left.

Karen: After we got offstage, I accidentally bumped into Graham and I said, “Sorry,” and he said, “You’ve got about a million things to be sorry for.”

Graham: I was angry.

Karen: He seemed to think that his pain was the only pain that mattered.

Graham: I started screaming at her. I know that I called her names.

Karen: He didn’t have to go through what I’d gone through. And I knew he was hurting. But what right did he have? To yell at me?

Warren: I got backstage and Karen and Graham were screaming at each other.

Eddie: I grabbed Karen’s hand before she could hit Graham.

Rod: I brought Karen back into one of the rooms backstage. Somebody grabbed Graham. Kept them apart.

Graham: I tried to find Billy. To talk to him. I needed somebody to talk to. When I found him in the lobby at the hotel after the show, I said, “Man, I need your help.” And he cut me off. He said he didn’t have time.

Billy: Camila and Julia had gone upstairs and I’d hung back. I was standing in the hotel lobby. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. There was so much going on in my head. And then, before I knew it I was … [sighs] I was on my way to the hotel bar. I was walking, one foot in front of the other, to the bar to get a tequila. That’s what I was doing. That’s what I was doing. I was walking to the bar to get a drink when Graham came in to find me.

Graham: He blew me off. I said, “It’s important. For once, please. I gotta talk to you.”

Billy: I couldn’t do anything but focus on what I was doing. My voice was calling to me and telling me to go get a tequila. And that’s what I was going to do. I couldn’t help anyone else. I couldn’t do anything for anybody.

Graham: I’m standing there in the lobby and I know I look like I’m struggling. I’m on the verge of tears. I don’t cry. I don’t think I’ve cried more than twice in my life. Once when my mom died in ‘ninety-four and the other … The point is I needed my brother. I needed my brother.

Billy: He grabbed my shirt and he said, “With all the shit I’ve done for you our entire lives, you don’t have five fucking minutes to talk to me?” I took his hand and I pulled it off of me and I told him to go away. And he did.

Graham: You shouldn’t spend that much time with your brother. You just shouldn’t. You shouldn’t sleep with your bandmates and you shouldn’t work with your brother and there was a lot of shit that if I had it to do over, I would do differently.

Karen: I went back to the hotel and I slammed my door shut and I sat on the bed and I cried.

Warren: Eddie, Pete, Rod, and I smoked a spliff after the show. Everybody else was nowhere to be found.

Karen: Then I went to Graham’s room and I knocked on the door.

Graham: I understood why we couldn’t have a baby. I did. But I felt so alone. In what I’d lost. I was the only one who felt like we’d lost something. I was the only one grieving. And I was mad at her about that.