Sweet Melody | Warren Rojas

[ track 14 ] oye como va

"What do you know about Daisy Jones?"

"Daisy..." Rory repeats as if on autopilot, then squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head to clear it. "How did you get in here?"

"I had a meeting with Teddy," he replies. "Daisy Jones. What do you know about her?"

"Billy, you can't just—" Rory motions to Anita, who's still watching him in confusion. "I'm with a client. I am working."

"Daisy Jones?" Mark, one of the sound engineers, asks from his place near the control panel, where he's been fiddling with the levels of the songs Anita has recorded so far. "She had a debut album with Runner Records. My buddy Andrew over at the Record Plant helped produce it." He scratches his head thoughtfully. "Think it was called First, or somethin' like that? Gave 'em one hell of a time trying to record it. She hardly ever showed up to her sessions."

Billy's face is stormy, his jaw clenched as he grinds out, "Great."

"Why?" Rory asks.

"Teddy wants another voice on the track," he replies. The words are reluctant to leave his mouth, almost like he has to reach down and claw them out while they fight his every attempt to speak them.

She can sense all of his unspoken, resentful sentiments about this, ones he might have voiced if others weren't in the room. He'd felt ready to bounce back. He'd written a good song, probably poured himself into it, too, and this kind of pushback has blindsided him. Billy doesn't like to share things with other artists. Especially truant ones like Daisy Jones, who he's never even heard of. He's used to being brilliant on his own.

So Rory grins, refusing to give him the type of response he wants. "Well, it's good that he picked someone with equal footing for the job."

Billy frowns and opens his mouth to argue that The Six and Daisy are not on equal footing, only for him to push his lips into a thin line when he realizes he can't. They both have debut albums. Just because Billy has the mind of a rockstar doesn't mean he actually is one.

And the song he'd written is just that— good. Though she hasn't been professionally songwriting for as long as some people in the industry, she's learned a thing or two about what makes a hit single. New artists and bands are popping up everywhere with one-hit wonders gracing the radio. You don't want to release something that will grow dull with time and eventually fade into obscurity. You want to put out something powerful. Something that will work its way into the ears of listeners for generations to come and stick.

In another life where The Six had been able to finish their tour on a high note and hadn't been dropped by their label, it could have worked its way into a sophomore album. But now it's going to take more than a simply "good" track to fix a betrayal like this. It's going to take something outstanding.

"Honeycomb" isn't that.

"Now please get out of here," Rory continues, turning back to Anita and putting her back to Billy. "I'm not getting paid to listen to your problems."

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RORY: Billy, I'm sorry that I never told you this and you're going to hear it this way, but I did not like the original version of "Look At Us Now" ... back before it was called that and it was just "Honeycomb." Daisy's changes added contradiction to the lyrics and made it memorable, dynamic, a powerhouse. A song about making it out of difficult times... well, that can be amazing when it's done well. But every single one of Billy's songs after SevenEightNine were like that. The same thing over and over. Copy and pasted. The songs were his reparation, his atonement for his sins. But they were consuming him.