looks like we made it;
❛ LONG STORY SHORT ❜
❝ temptation in that bus came in all shapes and forms ❞
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ELLIE: We were supposed to start the tour that winter.
GRAHAM: I mean, there was still no trace of her anywhere.
KAREN: She didn't show up to mixing, rehearsals.
WARREN: Well, some of us couldn't help but wonder if she was gone for good.
EDDIE: And I think one of us was probably hoping for that.
ELLIE: I really hoped that I was never going to see her again. But at the same time, I was furious because she left both me and the band hanging like that and because she just gave up. If she never left and if she tried fighting to save our relationship, things would have been a lot different.
And when she showed up, I remember being ready to pull her by her hair and drag her out of our recording studio solemnly because of that smug look on her face. She acted as if she hadn't abandoned us.
BILLY: I was just trying to hold this thing together.
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All of the laughter in the studio grew quiet the second that Ellie opened the door and laid her eyes on the redhead entertaining her bandmates with her stories and jokes.
Billy was sitting on the other side of the room with his guitar in his hand, completely ignoring Daisy's presence. He considered her to be unreliable and refused to indulge in her little performance. He cleared his throat and looked at his sister. "Are we ready to start?"
Ellie was too busy staring directly into Daisy's eyes to notice that his question was directed toward her. She crossed her arms across her chest and raised her eyebrows. "Look who finally decided to show up. I can't believe that you even have the fucking nerve."
"Aw," Daisy pouted. "Did you miss me? Did I hurt your feelings?"
Her words drew a scoff of disbelief from Ellie's lips and her glare became so intense that the others grew uncomfortable very quickly.
"Let's run Aurora with that intro we were kicking around." Billy chimed in with a serious look on his face. "You two can fight later. We lost too much time anyway."
"So, you want to start the set with Aurora?" Daisy asked him, looking down at the setlist with narrowed eyes. They put that together during the time that she was who knows where doing who knows what. Ellie was pretty happy with it and it took them way too much time to change it just because Daisy wanted to do it after showing up last minute.
Ellie set her bag down and rolled her eyes. "That's what we decided. Obviously."
Daisy rudely chewed her gum with her mouth open, causing Ellie to cringe in disgust. She hummed. "Interesting."
Ellie made her way to the microphone next to Billy and pushed her hair away from her face. Billy looked over her shoulder at Warren and nodded. "Warren, whenever you're ready."
"One..."
He was cut off by Daisy butting in once again. "And these are the songs that you want to sing?"
"Yeah." Ellie deadpanned, quickly growing annoyed.
"No Regret Me, Look at Us Now, Invisible String," She raised an eyebrow and looked Ellie dead in the eye. "No Maroon?"
That was the song that the two of them wrote after the first and only night that they spent together. It meant a lot to her back then but after everything that happened, Ellie could not care less.
"If you wanted to give us your opinion, maybe you should have showed up at the beginning of rehearsals." Ellie snapped. "Either you sing according to that setlist or you can get out. We have been doing just fine without you, in case you haven't noticed."
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BILLY: They brought out the worst in each other. I knew that Daisy would not only fuck up the band. She would fuck my sister up too.
If anyone could push her to get into drinking again, it would be Daisy. I wanted to keep that from happening.
ELLIE: He said that? It's ironic since I thought the same thing about him and Izzy.
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Karen stared between the two women in disbelief and asked, "Do you guys need a minute?"
"No." Ellie quickly answered.
"Yes, actually, we do." Daisy corrected her and offered her a sarcastic smile before she spit her gum into the paper with the setlist and crumbled it.
Fucking unbelievable. Ellie internally cursed and then proceeded to follow Daisy out of the studio.
"What the fuck is your problem?" She exclaimed when Daisy almost slammed the door into her face on the way out. "You can't just walk in here like nothing happened and then expect me not to put up a fight."
"You called me icing!" Daisy shouted and turned around, making Ellie stop in surprise. They were inches away as the redhead kept yelling at her. "You said that I was a head case and a privileged ungrateful princess to Rolling Stone Magazine!"
Ellie never flinched back at the accusations. She was ready to give them anything if that meant protecting her sexuality. "You told them that I was in love with my brother's wife! You told them that I liked women in general."
"So what?!" Daisy asked. Ellie shook her head in disbelief. The woman standing in front of her had no boundaries and she did not care if she hurt anyone as long as it made her feel better.
"I told you that because I trusted you not to use it against me, Daisy." She said, taking a step away from her. "I should have known that the only person who you really care about is yourself. That's exactly why you are so alone. You push people away after they start caring about you just so you can make them miserable too."
"Don't act like you didn't fucking do anything."
Ellie's eyebrows furrowed. "What does that mean?"
"Talent like Daisy's is wasted on somebody like Daisy. That's what you said." Daisy quoted. That article has been spinning through her head since she left and she could not forget those words even in her sleep. "You made me look weak. You made me look like I need you."
"At least neither one of us are liars."
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"It's gonna be a long tour so if you would prefer to sit this one out, please be my guest," Billy told Daisy when the two of them walked back inside and Ellie stood back in front of her microphone.
"There's no tour without me you dumb son of a bitch." Ellie's jaw clenched at Daisy's words. Her ego was going to be the death of them. "We are playing Regret Me, Invisible String and Maroon...and Look at Us Now."
"No, Daisy!" Billy snapped, making everyone freeze and hold their breath. The song that once held so much meaning to him was turned into something he hated. It once resembled a new beginning and an apology for what he put everybody through (especially his wife) but Daisy changed it and made him think of all the reasons why he hated himself. He called over his shoulder, "Warren count us in for the love of fucking God."
Before Warren had the chance to finally start off the rehearsal, a tall man walked into the studio. Billy's eye twitched and he let out a loud and overdramatic sigh. Ellie's eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the sight of the unfamiliar man crashing their rehearsal while the rest of the band looked at him in curiosity.
"What did I miss?" He asked, looking at everyone as if they were some sort of old friends.
Ellie looked at Daisy and felt slightly nauseous at the sight of her blissful simile. Eddie looked at everyone and then noticed the look on Daisy's face. He tilted his head and asked her, "Who the fuck is this guy?"
"Everybody, this is Nicky." Daisy proudly stated and looked Ellie dead in the eye when she added, "My husband."
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GRAHAM: I couldn't figure out if Ellie was about to cry or have a rage attack. Her face got red and her glare was so harsh that I couldn't even see any possible sadness in it.
ELLIE: I thought that she was officially off the rails. I was also hurt but I wasn't going to admit that back then. I thought that I meant nothing to her and I didn't want her to see how hurt I actually was.
I just wanted the tour to be over so I wouldn't have to see her ever again.
ROD: Managing The Six had somehow become the hottest gig in town. Billy never forgot what I'd done for him back in '71 so when he called me up...I jumped at the chance.
I adored them. Especially Ellie. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But they were fucking impossible. Daisy and Ellie wanted separate dressing rooms for their costumes and whatnot and Ellie and Billy wanted a green room. They had a list of demands and I was sure that the label was not going to sign off on any of it. (Laughs) They said yes to everything.
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Ellie smiled softly when Camila pulled her into a hug in front of their buses. The two women have not been apart since their first tour and Ellie just hoped that their second one was not going to have the same outcome. She sighed into her shoulder and pulled away.
"I'm going to miss you." Camila told her quietly.
"I'm going to miss you, too."
The two had not spoken of the night that they spent together. More important things happened after that and Camila realized that her best friend needed her too much so she pushed aside any awkwardness. She was her best friend above anything else. No amount of drunken one-night stands could change how much they needed the other in their lives.
Ellie rushed to lift Julia up in the air and spun her around with a growing grin on her face. Her niece let out a happy squeal and giggled when she pulled her closer to place a kiss on her chubby cheek. The little girl was another reason why Ellie refused to acknowledge what happened between her and Camila. She could not be the reason why her niece grew up in an unhappy family.
Ellie followed Camila and Julia toward Graham and Billy and allowed them to say goodbye. She got onto the bus and took a seat next to the window. She looked out of the window to see Billy and Camila sharing a long goodbye kiss.
She was surprised by the fact that she cared less every time she saw them so intimate.
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WARREN: Night one was in Albuquerque.
ROD: See you don't start off in New York or LA where the crowd is nothing but critics and suits. You want to start off small, off-market, where you can get your sea legs under you, work out the kinks.
KAREN: If I'm being honest, we were pretty sure Albuquerque would be a disaster. But it was fantastic.
ELLIE: It felt so good to be on stage and performing again. But it was different that time. I was no longer in the background. Sometimes I even sang alone and it was such a thrill. The other thing is that I was no longer under the influence during our performances.
Daisy and I couldn't argue on stage. That much was obvious. We were lead singers and us not even looking at each other was out of the question.
DAISY: We had to work together. We didn't have to like each other. And we didn't.
WARREN: (Laughs) Oh, they worked together alright. There were only two times when they couldn't hide their tensions; when they argued and when they sang.
ELLIE: When we were on stage, singing to each other and speaking our own hidden language, it almost felt like we were madly in love. It felt like we were the only people on Earth, as cliche as it sounds. Then, she would run into that asshole's arms at the end of the night and it made me remember what the real world looked like.
Daisy's bus was the fun bus. Billy and I would mostly sit in our bus and he would call Cami or sleep while I would just write. That was when I got the idea to prolong "All Too Well". I was not planning on releasing it, especially not with The Six. I just had a lot of lyrics that I wrote and just pushed to the side. After Daisy showed up with her fucking husband, I got some more ideas.
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"Where's Billy?" Eddie asked when he stepped onto the bus. Ellie was sitting by herself on the small couch, her pen and notebook in front of her and her left hand covered in black ink.
Ellie lifted her head out of the notebook and smiled at him. "Hey. He is, uh, talking to the misses."
"This late?" He asked and took a seat next to her.
She shrugged and closed her notebook before turning so she could face him. "He does this a lot. I think that he calls her when he feels himself slipping. She keeps him calm."
"Yeah, Camila's like that," Eddie chuckled under his breath and gave her a curious look. "What keeps you calm?"
Ellie bit her lip in thought and then simply said, "Writing. Staying in touch with all of my messy feelings keeps me grounded."
He kept her grounded too. He was the only person who truly saw her and would always tell her the blunt truth. Eddie was the quiet one in a group of people but when the two of them were together, he could always be the one leading the conversation. She refused to tell him just how much she relied on him.
"How come everybody is there and you are here?" She asked him, confused by his sudden presence in the non-fun bus.
"I wanted to see if you were bored," Eddie said truthfully. "You know that you don't have to be drunk or high to hang out with us, right? You are plenty of fun sober."
"Yeah?" She asked him with a small smile on her face. In truth, being sober and hanging out with a bunch of drunk and high people in a small bus filled with addiction was only one of the reasons she refused to go there. The second was Daisy and her husband. The third was that she was afraid that she was not fun and wild enough when she was not under the influence.
"As long as you think that you won't start fighting with Daisy as soon as you get there," He teased. "Don't get me wrong, it can be entertaining but it's a buzzkill sometimes."
Ellie laughed and admitted, "I don't want to be the only sober one...besides, I don't want to leave Billy alone."
"Billy will be fine one night." Eddie rolled his eyes. "Plus, I only drank two glasses. I'm perfectly sober." He wiggled his eyebrows and smirked. "I'll keep you entertained."
The Dunne woman let out another laugh at his comment and thought about it for a moment. Then, she let out a defeated sigh. "Fine."
He perked up. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He pulled her up and practically dragged her toward the bus while she laughed. The sound was like music to his ears.
When they entered the other bus, their drunk bandmates cheered at the sight of one of their lead singers.
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ELLIE: It feels dumb, but I felt like I could only really have fun if I'm not sober for the longest time. That time made me change my mind. And, sure, temptation in that bus came in all shapes and forms but I could keep myself under control during that time.
EDDIE: Things were better when she was there.