Billy: After we both ordered, I decided to try a little game. I said, “How about I ask you a question, you ask me a question? No one can dodge the answers.”
Daisy: I told him I was an open book.
Billy: I said, “How many pills do you take a day?”
She looked around and fiddled with her straw. And then she turned to me and said, “No one can dodge the answer?”
And I said, “We have to be able to tell the truth to each other, to really be honest about ourselves. Otherwise, how can we ever write anything?”
Daisy: He was open to writing with me. That’s what I took from that.
Billy: I asked the question again. “How many pills do you take a day?”
She looked down and then back up at me and she said, “I don’t know.”
I was skeptical but she put her hands up and said, “No, really. That’s the truth. I don’t know. I don’t keep track.”
I said, “Don’t you think that’s a problem?”
She said, “It’s my turn, isn’t it?”
Daisy: I said, “What makes Camila so great that you can’t write anything that isn’t about her?”
He was quiet for a really long time.
I said, “C’mon, now, you made me answer. You can’t weasel out of it.”
He said, “Would you wait a minute? I’m not trying to weasel out of anything. I’m trying to think about my answer.”
After another minute or two, he said, “I don’t think I am the person Camila believes I am. But I want to be that person so bad. And if I just stick with her, if I work every day to be the guy she sees, I’ve got the best chance at coming close to it.”
Billy: Daisy looked at me and said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
And I said, “What did I do to make you mad this time?”
And she said, “There’s just as much to hate about you as there is to like about you. And that’s annoying.”
Daisy: Then he said, “It’s my turn.”
I said, “Out with it then.”
Billy: “When are you going to quit the pills?”
Daisy: I said, “Why are you so obsessed with the goddamn pills?”
Billy: I told her the truth. I said, “My father was a drunk who was never there for Graham and me. I never wanted to be that way. And then the first thing I do, my first act as a father, was to get all messed up in all the shit you’re messed up in—even heroin, too, I’m afraid—and I let my daughter down. Even missed her birth. I turned out to be exactly what I’ve always hated. If it wasn’t for Camila, I think I’d still be that way. I think I would have made all my own nightmares come true. That’s the kind of guy I am.”
Daisy: I said, “It’s like some of us are chasing after our nightmares the way other people chase dreams.”
He said, “That’s a song, right there.”
Billy: It wasn’t behind me. My addiction. I kept hoping it would feel like it was. Like I didn’t need to keep looking over my shoulder all the time. But that doesn’t really exist. At least not for me. It’s a fight you keep fighting, some times are easier than others. Daisy made it harder. She just did.
Daisy: I was paying the price for the parts of himself that he didn’t like.
Billy: She said, “If I was a teetotaler you’d like me more, huh?”
And I said, “I’d like to be around you more. Yeah, probably.”
And Daisy said, “Well, you can just forget that. I don’t change for anybody.”
Daisy: I finished my burger and threw down some money and I got up to go. Billy said, “What are you doing?”
And I said, “We’re going back to Teddy’s. We’re gonna write that song about chasing our nightmares.”
Billy: I grabbed my keys and walked out after her.
Daisy: On the way back to Teddy’s, Billy was singing me this melody he’d had in his head. We were at a red light and he was tapping the steering wheel and humming along.
Billy: I had a Bo Diddley beat I was thinking of. Something I wanted to try.
Daisy: He said, “Can you work with that?”
I said I could work with anything. So when we got back to the pool house, I started sketching some ideas out. And he did, too. After about a half hour, I had stuff to show him but he said he needed more time. I kept hanging around, waiting for him to be done.
Billy: She was pacing around me. She wanted to show me what she was writing. I finally had to say, “Will you get the fuck out of here?”
And I … on account of how rude I’d been to her in the past I realized I needed to be clear that I just meant it the same I’d say it to Graham or Karen, you know? I said, “Please, will you get the fuck out of here? Go get a donut or something.”
She said, “I ate a burger already.” That’s when I realized Daisy only ate one meal a day.
Daisy: I picked the lock to Teddy’s house, borrowed his girlfriend Yasmine’s bathing suit and a towel, and went for a swim. I was in there long enough to prune. And then I went back in, put the bathing suit in the wash, took a shower, and went back into the pool house and Billy was still sitting there, writing.
Billy: She told me what she did and I said, “That’s weird, Daisy. That you borrowed Yasmine’s bathing suit.” And Daisy just shrugged.
She said, “Would you have rather I skinny-dipped?”
Daisy: I took his pages from him and I gave him mine.
Billy: She had a lot of imagery of darkness, running into darkness, chasing darkness.
Daisy: When it came to the structure of the verses, his were better than mine. But he didn’t have a really fun chorus yet and I thought that I did. I showed him the part I’d written I liked the most and I sang it to him with his melody he’d given me. I could tell on his face, he knew it sounded good.
Billy: We went back and forth a lot on that song. Just hours of talking it out, playing with the melodies on the guitar.
Daisy: I don’t think any of our original lines made it into the final version.
Billy: But when we sang it—when we worked out the lyrics and who should sing what, and refined the melody of the vocal and that interplay between those two things—we started singing it together and fine-tuning it. You know what? I’ll tell you, it was a great little song.
Daisy: Teddy came in the door and he said, “What the hell are you two still doing here? It’s almost midnight.”
Billy: I did not realize how late it was.
Daisy: Teddy said, “Also, did you break into my house and use Yasmine’s bathing suit?”
I said, “Yeah.”
He said, “I’d love it if you didn’t do that again.”
Billy: I was going to leave then but I thought, You know what, let’s show Teddy what we’ve come up with. So Teddy sat down on the couch and we sat across from him.
I was saying, “This isn’t the final” and “We just came up with this.” And all that.
Daisy: I said, “Stop, Billy. It’s a good song. No disclaimers.”
Billy: We played it for Teddy and when we were done, he said, “This is what you two come up with when you’re on the same team?”
And we looked at each other and I said, “Uh, yeah?”