CHAPTER EIGHT : superstar

( someone saved my life tonight, part ii )

BILLY'S BEEN UPSTAIRS for a while. Since returning from rehab, he's been taking time for himself more, relishing in the quiet of the room he and Graham are now sharing while the rest of the band creates a ruckus in the living room, but he normally doesn't stay longer than an hour. He doesn't sleep until it's dark out, and the late afternoon sun is still shining through the murky yellow window panes.

It's once a whole hour and a half pass that the youngest Dunne siblings decide to check on him. Graham leads the charge up the stairs, making an effort to keep his footsteps quiet so as not to be a nuisance, while Marilyn — naturally light-footed — follows him business as usual.

The eldest of the three siblings is laying across his mattress, feet on the ground and back leaning against the wood-panelled wall of the room. He's staring blankly at his hands, watching his fingers twisting his wedding band as if they're being controlled by a foreign entity. Graham turns the corner into the room and plops down onto his bed, while Marilyn leans against the door frame, nibbling at a borderline stale bread roll. "Mould is a healthy, natural organism," Warren had told her as he picked off the blue spots on his own roll. Marilyn's, for the record, is clear of the stuff.

"You feeling okay up here?" Graham asks.

Billy grunts in response, barely looking up from his hands. "Yeah, man, it's great."

Graham reaches over and picks up his guitar, which he'd lazily left on top of his covers before leaving the house earlier in the afternoon. He starts playing the melody to some song, something Marilyn had heard him playing a few times in the past week, though she can't quite put a finger on what it is. He glances up at his brother after a few bars. "You want to play a little?" he offers.

"Maybe later," Billy replies with a shake of his head.

Nodding in acknowledgement, Graham moves the guitar off his lap and back to the duvet. "Yeah, man. Hey, I get it, you know. I mean, maybe tomorrow? Whenever you're ready. I mean, look, everybody's really excited—"

"—I can't do it."

Billy's interruption takes Marilyn out of her bread-eating supportive silence. "What?" she asks, a balled-up piece of dough dropping from between her index finger and thumb to the floor.

"I-I mean I'm out. I-I'm done."

She tries to butt in again, but Graham beats her to it. "Look, why don't you just get some rest, all right?" he suggests, bracing his hands on the edge of his mattress to push himself up to his feet. He allows himself to sit back down once Billy opens his mouth again.

"Listen, um... I can't be like Dad," he argues, though his voice is weak, devoid of any emotion. He glances up further and Marilyn swears that his eyes are ringed with red, like he's been crying.

She blurts it out without thinking. "You really think you're gonna turn into that asshole?" She neglects that for Billy, for those eight years, Hank was just a dad. Not some asshole. Just Dad. Who cares? Billy can't be that. He won't.

Billy wavers. "I just, I-I have to look after my family."

"Yeah, Billy, we're your family. All right? We're your family," Graham exclaims, gesturing wildly between himself and Marilyn. He doesn't just mean the two of them, though. Warren, Eddie, Karen. They've become family too. You don't record an entire album together without bonding like siblings.

The eldest Dunne shakes his head, his curls falling in front of his face. "Will you just tell 'em I'm out?"

Graham points out the door, towards the staircase. "Everybody down there, Billy, they've been waiting for you."

He won't hear it. It's like talking to a brick wall. "Just, will you just tell 'em for me, please?!"

Marilyn can't help but snarl, even though, deep down, she understands. "If you're out, you're telling them yourself." The words taste bitter as she spits them out.

Or, maybe it's the old bread.

She turns and goes to descend the stairs again, but as Graham shoulders past her and leaves her alone on the landing, she pauses. With a huff, she returns to the bedroom. Billy hasn't made any effort to move yet, having only graduated from fiddling with his ring to twiddling his thumbs.

"Where the hell are we meant to go from here, man?"

Billy's brows furrow as he glances up. "What do you mean?"

"You're the singer. You're the writer. What are we meant to do if you're out?" she asks. The corner of her lower lip trembles a little, emotions getting the better of her, but she swallows it down.

The boy huffs and slumps even further back against the wall, if that's even possible. He stretches his arms out into a shrug and shakes his head. "I've heard your record. I've read your songs. Fucking go for it, I don't care."

     BILLY: I did care. And, I thought they'd be in safe hands.

     MARILYN: The band would have tanked with me as the front woman, and everyone knew it. Billy was the star. Come on, I go on stage trying to sing any of our songs by myself and half the audience will leave. Listen to any of my stuff from American Teenager, then try to imagine me doing Look Me In The Eye. It doesn't work. I knew Billy was looking for an easy out, even if he didn't know it himself. And, that was me.

"Fuck this, Billy."

She leaves, turns and goes down the stairs, where she's met with Karen holding their phone out towards her. "For you," she says. Marilyn takes the phone and holds it to her ear, following the cord back through the wall it's attached to, because right now, it's stretched through half a room and bent around a doorframe.

"Hello?" she asks.

"You wanna go to a party?"

MARILYN: Usually, Daisy's timing skills are... less than optimal but, that was some ungodly level of perfectly timed. And, I really did want to get out of the house.

The party is already in full swing by the time Marilyn rocks up, so she has to shove her way through the hordes of people crowding the back patio of the house. She's jingling the keys to Warren's van in one hand, having neglected to bring along a bag to store them in, as she tries to scan the writhing bodies around her for Daisy's red hair or Simone's dark skin. It's once she gets to the edge of the in-ground pool and has a clear view to the other side of the outdoor area, that she sees the pair already deep in conversation — which isn't surprising considering they live together.

Once she joins them, she's already a little sweaty just from the effort of pushing past everyone, and a little watery-eyed because Daisy just blew a cloud of smoke into the air without realising anyone was right next to her. "Hey!" Mari says with a grin, only slightly out of breath from all of the pushing, "What's the achievement?"

Simone breaks out into a wide smile. "Lee Parlin. He said I had a one-of-a-kind sound," she announces.

"Well, he's right," says Daisy. Marilyn echoes the statement with eyes blown wide with shock

"And, that we should do big, big, big things together. That's-that's what he said."

Daisy nods along. "Of course he did. Because you're a star! Teddy said this was gonna happen, he said it's only a matter of time..."

Simone's not paying attention. She'd stopped halfway through the redhead's sentiment to start gazing over her shoulder instead. It doesn't take long for both Daisy and Marilyn to realise and follow the older girl's line of sight. Standing just a few metres away is a woman with dark skin and cropped hair, and she's staring right back at Simone.

"Sorry, what were you saying?" Simone asks, finally having shaken herself out of her daze.

One by one, the other girls look back. Daisy's smirking, Marilyn's waggling her brows, and Simone knows neither of them will let this go.

Daisy drops her cigarette to the ground and grinds it into the stone with the heel of her boot. "Go talk to her," she instructs her friend before she reaches out with her newly free hand to grab Marilyn's wrist and pull her away from the action. She takes a long sip from her glass as she drags the blonde back around the side of the pool to leave Simone by her lonesome. They're fully immersed in the crowd of sweaty bodies before Daisy stops walking and releases Marilyn from her grasp. She begins to groove to the music, but Mari can't help but spy on the girls from across the pool. The other woman had clearly approached Simone the second she'd been left alone, because they're past introductions and now, Simone's reaching out to accept a card—

"Did she just get her number?" Daisy asks, peering over Marilyn's shoulder. Her breath reeks of whiskey and smoke.

"She totally did," Marilyn says, dramatically resting her hand over her heart and mustering up a couple of fake tears. "They grow up so fast."

Marilyn turns away from the pair, ready to begin her mission to track down a drink of her own ( nobody ID's at big Hollywood parties, who cares if she's only twenty ) when she sees Daisy's form stiffen out of the corner of her eye. She looks in the direction that the redhead is staring.

It's just some dude, vaguely familiar-looking, standing by the long edge of the pool and talking to some girl.

Curiosity wins. "Who's he?" she asks.

Daisy's jaw tenses and relaxes. "Bitch who stole my song," she says, but she's already started on the warpath towards him before she even finishes her answer. Marilyn has no choice but to follow.

     MARILYN: Yeah, I knew shit was about to go down.

She hasn't even come to a complete stop when the guy looks up and shoots her a cocky grin. "Damn, girl. Look at you. How long has it been?" he asks, though it's in that tone of voice where you can tell that he doesn't actually give a shit.

Daisy ignores him at first and turns to the girl at his side to introduce herself. Marilyn calls out her own name, too, but it falls on three sets of deaf ears.

"You know, back when I met you, your name was— your name was Margaret," the guy says.

"And you'd never had a number one record," Daisy retorts.

MARILYN: I figured out why I thought I recognised him after that — I'd seen him in some magazine being hailed for his song, Stumbled On Sublime. I had to hold back my aha! moment, though. It didn't seem like an appropriate time.

The guy — Wyatt Stone — snickers and looks down at the ground. "Yeah."

Daisy takes a long stride forward so she's all up in his face. He nearly takes a step back, but he has too much pride to show a woman any signs of intimidation. "You know, you could at least say "Thank you,"" Daisy says.

Wyatt nearly laughs. "Thank you? Thank you for what?"

Then, Daisy does the unthinkable. She backs down. She turns around. Marilyn blocks her path before she can take a step, staring at her with both eyebrows raised sky-high. "That's not the Daisy I know."

She stops, drags her tongue over her bottom lip, then nods. "You're right." Without missing a beat, Daisy places her glass in Marilyn's hand, spins on her heel, and shoves Wyatt backwards as hard as she can. She sends him flying into the pool, drenching not just him but everyone standing in the splash zone behind him.

The backyard goes silent.

All eyes fall on Daisy. She takes another step forward, until the toes of her boots are nearly touching the water, and bends down to stare Wyatt right in the eyes.

She sings.

"She's all around your head / and she's dancing in the corners of your mind. / Stumbled on sublime till you can't speak."

     DAISY: I mean, sure, a normal person probably would have let that go. [she shrugs and holds back a laugh]

     MARILYN: It was the best thing I've ever seen in my life.

a/n:
nobody talk about the quality of the gif, i'm STRUGGLING to find good gifs for this story okay.

also what is it with me and my pattern of posting chapters at like 3am? why do i not sleep???

published : july 26, 2023
word count : 2.1k