Page 83 of Daisy Jones & The Six

WARREN:When Billy said “Honeycomb,” the whole place sounded like thunder.

EDDIE:We’re all just here to perform the way Billy wants us to, right? We don’t need to be told we might play a song we haven’t played in a year.

DAISY:What do you say to a roaring crowd? Do you say no? Of course not.

BILLY:Daisy said, “All right, let’s do it.” I got up to her mike and the moment I did it, I regretted it. I could tell she didn’t want me that close. But I couldn’t leave. I had to make it look like everything was okay.

DAISY:He smelled like pine and musk. His hair was about half an inch too long, you could see it hanging behind his ears. His eyes were clear, and green as ever.

People say it’s hard to be away from the people you love but it was so hard to be right next to him.

BILLY:It’s sometimes difficult to say what I knew and when I knew it. It’s…it’s all a mess in my memory. It’s hard to parse out, I guess. What happened when or why I did what I did. Hindsight bias. But I do remember distinctly that Daisy was wearing a white dress. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had big hoop earrings on. Her bracelets. And I looked at her, just before we started singing, and I think—I really do think this—I think I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life. In that way that you appreciate things more acutely…I mean…you appreciate people more acutely when they are fleeting, right? And I think I knew she was fleeting. I think I knew she was leaving. I don’t know how I knew. But I feel like I knew. I probably didn’t know. It just feels like it.

So I guess what I’m saying is, when we started singing “Honeycomb,” I either knew I was losing her or I didn’t. And I either knew I’d loved her or I didn’t. And I either appreciated her, for all she was in that moment…or maybe I didn’t.

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 thepossibility. 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.

---