Page 50 of Daisy Jones & The Six

There was that voice again, inside my head, that was telling me I was never going to be able to stay sober for the rest of my life.What is the point of getting sober at all if I know I’ll never kick it forever? I’ll fail one day anyway. Shouldn’t I pack it all in? Quit on myself? Quit on everybody? Spare Camila and my girls the heartbreak later and admit who I really am.

I looked over at Daisy, she was coming up off the diving board. She had a glass in her hand and she dropped it right there on the side of the pool. I watched her step onto the broken glass, not realizing it was under her feet.

ROD:Daisy’s feet started bleeding.

SIMONE:There was blood mixing with the pool water on the concrete. And Daisy didn’t even notice. She just kept walking, talking to somebody else.

DAISY:I couldn’t feel the cuts on my feet. I couldn’t feel much of anything, I don’t think.

SIMONE:In that moment, I thought,She’s going to be the girl bleeding in a beautiful dress until it kills her.

I felt…lost, sad, depressed, sick. I felt really hopeless but also like I didn’t have the luxury of giving up. Like I was going to have to fight for her—fight for her against her—until I lost. Because there was no winning. I didn’t see how I could win the war.

BILLY:I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t stay because when I looked at Daisy, wet and bleeding and out of it and half-near falling down, I did not think,Thank God I stopped using.

I thought,She knows how to have fun.

ROD:I was getting Daisy a towel to dry off when I saw Billy turn and leave. I’d driven us there so I wasn’t quite sure where he was going. I tried to catch his eye but he didn’t see me until the last moment, when he went around the corner. He just gave me a nod. And I understood. I was thankful he’d come up with me in the first place.

He knew how to take care of himself and that’s what he was doing.

BILLY:I told Rod I was leaving and made sure he was all right to take a cab home because I’d driven us over. He was really supportive. He understood why I needed to leave.

When I got home, I got in bed right next to Camila, so thankful to be there. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept wondering what I’d be doing that very moment if I’d taken the whiskey out of that man’s hand. If I’d poured it down my throat.

Would I be laughing and playing a song for everybody? Would I be skinny-dipping with a whole bunch of strangers? Would I be puking my guts out watching somebody strap up and shoot heroin?

Instead, I was laying in the darkest quiet, listening to my wife snore.

The thing is, I’m a person who survives despite his instincts. My instincts said to run toward the chaos. And my better brain sent me home to my woman.

DAISY:I don’t remember seeing Billy there. I don’t remember seeing Rod. I don’t know how I made it to my bed.

BILLY:I knew I wasn’t going to fall asleep that night. So I got up out of bed and I wrote a song.

ROD:Billy comes into the studio the next day. Everybody else is there, ready to get to recording. I’ve even got Daisy there, relatively sober, drinking a coffee.

DAISY:I felt bad. I did not mean to blow off the recording session, obviously.

Why did I hurt myself like that? I can’t explain it. I wish I could. I hated it about myself. I hated it about myself and I kept doing it and then I hated myself more. There are no good answers about this.

ROD:Billy comes in and he shows us all a song he wrote. “Impossible Woman.”

I said, “You wrote this last night?”

He said, “Yeah.”

BILLY:Daisy reads it and goes, “Cool.”

GRAHAM:It was clear, from the feeling in the room, that none of us, not even Daisy and Billy, were going to acknowledge it was about Daisy.

BILLY:It’s not about Daisy. It’s about when you’re sober, there are things you can’t touch, things you can’t have.

KAREN:After Graham and I heard Billy play it for the first time, I said to Graham, “That song is…”

And Graham just goes, “Yup.”

DAISY:It was a great damn song.

---