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“Now, Daisy,” Julia draws out the words slowly. “There’s one last thing I’d like to ask you before I go if you don’t mind.”
That piques Daisy’s curiosity: “Oh?”
“Off the record. Can I…?” Julia motions towards the empty seat on the couch next to Daisy.
“Of course,” Daisy replies with a cautious smile. Then, she observes Julia retrieve something from her purse. A folded piece of paper, clearly wrinkled from being opened and closed many times. She wonders for a brief moment what it contains. Maybe lyrics to an Aurora song she wrote many moons ago, with her father. Or a picture of the band on tour. But nothing could’ve prepared her for what the contents of that page were.
“Will you read this?” Julia hands her her mother’s letter.
And she waits one, two, three beats. And then three more.
At the very least, the two of them owe me a song.
“I…” Daisy starts, tears welling up in her eyes. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to even begin to say.”
Julia places a gentle hand on Daisy’s shoulder, squeezing once, twice until she feels Daisy’s heartbeat drop and her breathing slow. “You don’t have to say a thing. But –”
Daisy furrows her brow then, turning towards Julia. Her eyes struggle to meet Julia’s for a moment, but she manages to swallow the lump in her throat long enough to coax her into saying whatever Julia felt she needed to say.
“But, would you mind if I brought someone in here? Right now?”
And at face value, that is a simple question. A yes-or-no question. Straightforward. Easy. But… but Daisy knows, deep down, what Julia is asking her. Would you like to see my father again?
And Daisy does. Oh, how she does. How she misses Billy – his annoying retorts, his infuriating lies, his charming smile, and his dorky, dumb denim shirts. And his arms around her.
Of course, she wouldn’t mind. It’s all she could think about after all these endless hours of interviews rehashing their tumultuous, complicated, scintillating past.
Tentatively, Daisy nods. And Julia’s lips part, just the hint of a grin: “I thought so, but I wasn’t sure.”
Daisy closes her eyes right then, just for a second, and lets herself ponder what this could mean. What seeing Billy Dunne again could mean. And so, she smiles – peacefully and without reservation. It’s not a moment before she hears the studio door open and she knows – deep down, she could never forget – that Billy is right there. Walking towards her. And she opens her eyes.
“Hi, Dais.”
Dais.
Baby.
Baby, baby, baby.
“What do ya say? You think we still got it?” And his eyes are so bright, so full of life, so incredibly warm that if she were standing, her knees would give out. He smiles that special smile he always reserved just for her, the smile that was born the moment he told her You make everything better all those years ago, one magical night at the beach. Oh, how she missed him.
He tilts his head, waiting for her to answer, and that’s when she realizes that not only is Billy Dunne standing in front of her, but he is standing in front of her holding a guitar. His guitar. Where virtually every single song in Aurora was written. And her heart can’t help but inflate to three times its size. Because it’s her and Billy, inside a recording studio, again, after 20 years. She never thought she’d see him again. She never thought… they’d be Daisy and Billy again.
In one breath, she looks over at Julia – as if asking for permission, as if to make sure that this is okay – and she just laughs: “Could you play me something? Could you play Aurora for me?”
Could you play Aurora for her?
Of course, she could.
And so they did.