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I loved you in secret
First sight, yeah we love without reason.
Oh, twenty-five years old
Oh, how were you to know?
Could've spent forever with your hands in my pockets
Picture of your face in an invisible locket.
You said there was nothing in the world that could stop it,
I had a bad feeling.
August - December, 1979
Teddy throws him in rehab for the second time. To dry out, sober up. It seems worse this time, somehow. Maybe because he’s battered and bruised, maybe because he has so much more on the line this time. It’s here, away from everyone, that he grieves Daisy. Grieves what was, what they had, what they could’ve had if everything and nothing was different. There is a war inside himself, one he doesn’t know how to settle.
It’s two against three. He gets it now, a little more. Realizes he had been blind to his reality. Realizes he was living in false hope, in false promises. He had been trying so hard not to become anything like his father, that he thinks he might have turned out even worse.
This time, he doesn’t shy away from the hard work. He follows the program to a T, faithfully goes to therapy, digs deep into himself to pry the scab off the wound and heal it all over again. Right this time. It’s months before Camila lets him back into the house. Back into her (their) bed. Back into her heart.
This time, they both go to therapy. Alone, and together. They start from the beginning and they don’t hold back. It’s new for Billy, not holding back. It takes nearly everything in him to find his truth. In fact, it terrifies him, to think about sharing with Camila his deepest regrets, his fears, his insecurities. All the thoughts in his mind that threaten their very foundation. How he has to fight against himself, everyday. But because she’s Camila, she gives him grace and meets him where he’s at. She lets him stumble, but her hand is outstretched to catch him before he falls.
It takes Billy months before he is even willing to look at the corner of his heart where Daisy inhabited. At first, he denies, denies, denies. Because that’s what he’s good at. But Camila, his therapist, his AA sponsor - they don’t let denial take root in his mind. Denial is what got them here in the first place. But Billy is convinced if he can totally and completely deny what happened between him and Daisy, how much he loved (loves?) her, it will be easier to move on that way. It’s never that easy.
They’re at couples therapy. The tension is so high in the room, Billy feels like he’s suffocating. Camila has just spoken the words he so desperately doesn’t want to hear, and the therapist, Connie, is waiting for him to speak. “I-I don’t know what you want me to say.” Is all he manages to get out, an air of panic bubbling at the surface.
“Can you speak about your relationship with Daisy? How did it start, and how did it develop…” Connie pauses. “Into something more?”
Billy flushes with shame, turning to barely look at Camila. He doesn’t want the therapist to know how badly he hurt his wife. How badly he continues to hurt her, by denying her this truth. “I loved the music.” He starts, as if that’s the catalyst for everything. In a way, he supposes it is. “Daisy…” He says her name like it almost pains him to do so. Saying her name conjures up the image of her, all blazing hair and full of fire and energy and warmth.
“It was like Daisy saw right through me. And that scared me, but it also drew me in. To be seen like that, understood like that. It was like we were intertwined in the music. Like we became one. And I know that’s not right, and it’s not fair, but I…” He trails off, shaking his head. Billy shudders out a breath, before he continues, hoping he can find the right words to explain it all, to make Camila understand. Knowing no one else will understand, not really.
“I don’t know how to explain it. I did love her. Because we were the same. Because she understood me, in a way… in a way that Camila can’t.” Billy feels Camila shift beside him, and he takes a breath, a little nervous and a little on edge. “And it’s not her fault, and it’s not a good reason. But Daisy just knew me, she was like looking at myself, and that ignited something in me. But fire with fire, it just burns everything down. We would’ve lit the world on fire.” And not in a good way , he wants to add, though some part of him still wants to send everything up in flames. He doesn’t say that, knows they’ll get to that, eventually.
The therapist is watching him, pondering his words. She doesn’t say anything for several moments, letting Billy’s words hang in the air. Camila takes a shaky breath, but she doesn’t say anything either.
“Camila sees the me that I want to be. That I couldn’t be, before. And I didn’t want to show her how much I was failing, at being that version she saw. Because I couldn’t see that in myself. So instead, I turned my back to it. I turned my back to her.” The therapist is waiting for him to continue, but he feels like he can’t go any further. Has already pushed the limit into uncharted territory, isn’t sure what lies ahead. But there’s no going back now. Only forward. So he goes.
“I know a part of me loved Daisy. But I think that was the broken part of me - the part I never let anybody see. But Camila, she brings out the goodness in me, the light. She is the light. She’s the one I want to work for. To be better for.”
The conversation veers into Billy’s relapse. What led him to that point, the fear, the confusion, the shame, the guilt. The desire to be known, to be seen, with Daisy at the center. With Camila mixed up in their web. The therapist is trying to say that with Daisy, Billy had seemingly traded one addiction for the other. That instead of the booze and the coke and the self destruction, Billy had found self destruction in another person. Billy’s not sure how to explain that Daisy wasn’t his addiction. Wasn’t his self destruction. She was his homecoming. She was his mirror, his soul in physical form.
“Do you know what twin flames are?”
It’s like seeing every good and every bad thing about yourself, reflected back to you. It’s like looking in a mirror, and for the first time seeing that no, your eyes weren’t just green, they were lilypad green with a hint of gray and some tiny little flecks of brown around the irises. It was like seeing yourself for the first time, and not just seeing, but seeing and understanding and knowing.
“If you could, would you want Daisy back in your life?” The therapist dares to ask. He flinches, thinks suddenly couples therapy was a terrible idea, wishes he could take back ever agreeing to come here.
“I-” Billy doesn’t have the words to say that the answer will always be yes, but it’s also desperately a resounding no.
“I don’t want to burn anymore.” It hurts, to burn , he thinks. Even when the fire and the flames were at its height, casting everything in a fiery glow, so warm and mesmerizing you just couldn’t pull your eyes away; fire would always burn out. It’s not anyone’s fault, where they found each other. In the midst of addiction, and trauma, and hurt. He can’t blame Daisy. He can’t blame himself. A part of him wishes they could’ve found each other now. On the other side.
There’s a piece of him that wonders, in the back of his mind, in a corner he doesn’t try to go to often, what they could have been. The music, the songs, the connection, the love. What it all could have looked like, in another life.
But he can’t play with what if’s.
There is no moving on, no healing, without patching up the hole Daisy left. Billy’s not sure if that wound will ever be completely healed. Sure, it can be stitched and cared for and the scar will fade. But it will always kind of look like the intern did the stitches, like it was his very first time and he didn’t quite get it right. And it’s rough, and lopsided, and it’s still kind of always sore when you touch it. But over time it sort of settles into the background, just becomes a piece of him, and he doesn’t think about it as much. But it’s always there, and no matter what you put on it or what you do to it, it never really goes away.
He learns to live with it. They both do. It’s rocky at first. He’s limping around like a dog whose been hit by a car, wandering in circles because he can’t figure out how to walk in a straight line anymore. But he adapts, and before long, he’s walking in a straight line again. Camila might be leading him, but at least he’s following this time. One day he’ll take the lead and she will follow (yeah, right) but for now it works and it’s theirs and it gets them to where they need to be.
But fire glows, even in the darkness of night.
When he’s in bed at night, when he begs for sleep that never comes, he thinks of her. Worries for her. Wonders what her life looks like. He hopes it’s getting better, doubts she’ll move that fast, if he knows her at all. Which, of course he does. Billy knows Daisy like the back of his hand, and just because they won’t get to see each other, won’t get to talk to each other, doesn’t mean he still doesn’t conjure up the image of her. Knows that if what he feels inside is hell on earth, it is only a fraction of the pain she must be feeling.
Vaguely he wonders what rehab facility she went to. If she’s back in California, back in the sunshine. Wonders if she feels the sunshine on her skin and feels whole again, or if it just reminds her of all the things she doesn’t have. Billy knows if he is grieving her, she is keeping vigil for him. She never denied her heart, wore it on her sleeve for everybody to see. Allowed the goodness and the radiance to seep right out of her, spilling into everyone else. It’s this knowledge, this understanding, that comforts Billy. He knows that even at her worst, Daisy was still the sun. Even on the darkest days, the sun was still there, just masked behind storm clouds. It could rain for a week, a month, but eventually the sun would shine again. He hoped she was shining. He knew she would, again. He was sorry he wouldn’t be there to see it.