DAISY: Billy’s one of those people who has a sharp tongue. He can build you up and he can take you down, too.

BILLY: She said, “I don’t need this shit.” And she left.

DAISY: I started heading out to my car—getting more rip-roaring angry with every step I took. I had a cherry red Benz back then. I loved that car. Until I crashed it by accident by leaving it in neutral on a hill.

Anyway, that day with Billy, I was headed out to that Benz and I had my keys in my hand and I’m ready to get as far away from him as I can and I realize that if I leave, Billy would just write the album himself. And I turned right back around and I said, “Oh, no you don’t, asshole.”

BILLY: I was really surprised that she came back.

DAISY: I walked right into the pool house and I sat down on the couch and I said, “I’m not giving up my chance to write a great album just because of you. So here’s how it’s gonna go. You hate my stuff, I hate your stuff. So we’ll scrap it all, start from nothing.”

Billy said, “I’m not letting go of ‘Aurora.’ It’s going on the album.”

I said, “Fine.” And then I picked up one of his songs lying around where I’d thrown them and I shook it at him and I said, “But this shit isn’t.”

BILLY: I think that was the first time I realized that there’s…There is no one more passionate about the work than Daisy. Daisy cared more than anybody. She was ready to put her whole soul into it. Regardless of how difficult I tried to make it.

And I kept thinking about Teddy telling me she was how we were going to sell out stadiums. So I put out my hand and I said, “Fine.” And we shook on it.

DAISY: Simone used to say that drugs make a person look old, but when I was shaking Billy’s hand—his eyes were already wrinkling at the corners, his skin was freckled, he looked weathered, and he couldn’t have been more than twenty-nine or thirty. I thought, It’s not drugs that make you look old, it’s sobering up.

BILLY: It wasn’t very easy, thinking about writing together when we’d said what we’d said to each other.

DAISY: I told Billy I wanted to get lunch before we did much of anything. I wasn’t going to deal with the headache of trying to write with him before I had a burger. I told him I’d drive us to the Apple Pan.

BILLY: I grabbed her keys just as she was about to get in her car and I told her I wasn’t letting her drive anywhere. She was half in the bag already.

DAISY: I grabbed my keys back and told him if he wanted to drive, we could take his car.

BILLY: We got into my Firebird and I said, “Let’s go to El Carmen. It’s closer.”

And she said, “I’m going to the Apple Pan. You can go to El Carmen by yourself.”

I just could not believe she was being so goddamn difficult.

DAISY: I used to care when men called me difficult. I really did. Then I stopped. This way is better.

BILLY: On the way there, I turned on the radio. Immediately, Daisy changed the station. I changed it back. She changed it again. I said, “It’s my car, for crying out loud.”

She said, “Well, they’re my ears.”

I finally put in an 8-track of the Breeze. I put on their song “Tiny Love.” Daisy started laughing.

I said, “What’s so funny?”

She said, “You like this song?”

Why would I put on a song I didn’t like?

DAISY: I said, “You don’t know anything about this song!”

He said, “What are you talking about?” He knew it was Wyatt Stone that wrote it, obviously. But he didn’t know the rest of it.

I said, “I dated Wyatt Stone. This is my song.”

BILLY: I said, “You’re Tiny Love?” And Daisy started telling me this story about her and Wyatt and how she came up with those lines about “Big eyes, big soul/big heart, no control/but all she got to give is tiny love.” I loved the chorus of that song. I had always loved it.

DAISY: Billy listened to me. The whole way to the restaurant, as he drove, he was listening. For what felt like the first time since I met him.

BILLY: If I had a great line like that, and someone else pretended it was theirs, I’d be pretty angry.

She made more sense to me after that. And, to be honest, it was harder to tell myself she had no talent. Because she clearly did. It was a real reality check. That voice that whispers in the back of your head, You have been acting like an asshole.

DAISY: It made me laugh. That to Billy I needed a reason to want an equal say in the art I created. I said, “Cool, man. Now that you dig it, maybe you can stop being such a dickhead.”

BILLY: Daisy could really give you the grief you deserved. And if you took it in the spirit it was intended…she wasn’t so bad.

DAISY: We sat down at the counter and I ordered for both of us and then put the menus away. I just wanted to put Billy in his place a little bit. I wanted him to have to deal with me being in charge.

But of course, he couldn’t let it go, he said, “I was going to order the hickory burger, anyway.” I think I’ve rolled my eyes about five thousand more times in my life just on account of Billy Dunne.

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.