I don’t relish the idea of going out on a stranger’s boat. But I desperately want the chance to meet this Gatsby face-to-face to find out if he’s the Gatsby I knew, or is at least related to him. If they’re related, maybe this Gatsby can tell me what happened to mine. Although he won’t be able to explain why Jay ghosted me after I moved away.
After we left our little apartment in Easley, I tried emailing, calling, and texting. Jay never responded, never reached out. His phone was a thirdhand gift from someone, and I considered the possibility that it died. I handwrote him two snail-mail letters, just in case.
No response.
I was only fourteen. I didn’t know what love was back then. I’m honestly not sure I’ve got a handle on it now. All I knew was that one of my best friends had dropped out of my life with the suddenness of a snapped rubber band. It pissed me off, and underneath the anger was an aching hollow in the shape of him.
When I started out at Blue Ridge High, I went from tentatively optimistic to startlingly popular. It helped that Jordan immediately scooped me into her group, and that the sardonic and sexy Tom Buchanan started lounging by my locker every day, waiting for me. He gave me an Elsa Peretti open-heart necklace from Tiffany, and I felt like a princess opening that pale-blue box. I couldn’t believe it. I wore that necklace every day.
I also wore a cheap little charm bracelet from Claire’s, the one Jay gave me before we moved.
But eventually, I put the charm bracelet away. I don’t remember exactly when—sometime between my first date with Tom and the day he picked me up in the high school parking lot and carried me over a puddle of ice and slush so my shoes wouldn’t get soaked.
Tom could be so painfully, deceptively sweet.
Until he wasn’t.
And Jay? I’ve put him away, like the charm bracelet, in a closed drawer of my life.
6
We’re nearly to Lake Keowee, and I can hardly sit still. I peer at my reflection in the black glass of my phone screen. “Do I look okay? Do I have anything in my teeth? Any mascara flecks under my eyes?”
“For the fifth time, no,” Nick snaps. “God, Daisy. What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
“You want to impress this guy ’cause he’s rich? I thought you were better than that.”
“I am.” I stuff the phone back into the little crossbody bag I brought. I wore my silky blue halter top and white shorts today, but now I’m second-guessing my choice. Is the color scheme too nautical, too on the nose? Is the shirt too revealing? I mean, my shoulders and half my back are bare. Am I wearing too much makeup for a day on the lake? I desperately want to ask Nick all those questions, but the set of his jaw tells me we’re done talking about my appearance. After all, he’s nervous too, hoping to see the pretty boy he made out with at the party.
“Come on,” he growls, throwing the car into Park and cutting the engine.
As we jump out onto chunky gravel, a soft breeze from the lake grazes my arms. It’s overcast today, the sky swathed in dull gray. I can barely see the glimmer of water through the belt of trees separating the lake from the parking lot. The air smells of spicy pine and sweet honeysuckle, of lake water and mulch.
My stomach is doing its best imitation of a panicked fish.
As Nick and I walk the path down to the dock, two dots of rain hit my cheek. And then a few more drops splash on my arm and my shoulder.
Nick swears. “Figures it would rain.”
“Maybe it will just sprinkle, and then stop.” I glance around for potential places to take cover. There’s a picnic shelter not far away, but it looks as if it’s been reserved for a wedding or something; it’s decked out with lights and greenery, and there are a couple of people dressing the tables in heavy white cloths and huge vases of flowers.
We step out of the trees into the open space around the dock. The boat, a sleek ivory thing with a name I can’t make out, bobs at the end of it. Two guys are standing on the boards, side by side, motionless and waiting. But before I can get a good look at them, the sky releases a deluge over us all—sheets of shimmering rain soaking me to the skin in a handful of seconds.
I squeal, and Nick shouts. The two men on the dock race toward us through the downpour, their feet thumping on the boards, heads bent against the rain. One is Cody, the black-haired man who danced with Nick—and the other…
He looks up, the rain a flickering veil between us.
The other is Jay Gatsby.
He stops a few feet away from me and just stands there, his hands clenched and his shoulders rigid.
It’s him. I can see it now. Unmistakably, impossibly him.
His rain-slicked face has crisper lines, and his cheeks are taut instead of rounded. The raindrops bead on his arched upper lip and dribble down the full lower lip, before racing off the edge of his jaw.
Why am I staring at his mouth?
His eyes are the same—golden-brown and full of eager light. His hair curls in messy brown waves, rapidly darkening in the rain. He lifts a shaking hand to sweep the locks back from his forehead.
“You,” I breathe.
“Me.” He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t move. Nick and Cody have gone somewhere—or ceased to exist. Who cares?
I want to scream at him for so many things. I want to smack him, and shake him, and kiss him.
But I’m frozen, locked inside my body. There’s a cosmic disconnect between my emotions and my reactions; I’m on autopilot now. I hear myself saying primly, “We should get out of the rain.”
“There.” Gatsby points to the decorated pavilion. “I had it reserved for us. I thought we could have lunch there before going out on the lake.”
“A nice idea,” says autopilot Daisy.
As we run toward the shelter, my brain spits out random thoughts—like how glad I am that my mascara is waterproof. How my sandals squelch with every step. How the rain on the surface of the lake looks like peppered glass.
We stumble into the shelter. Nick and Cody are already laughing, cracking open a bottle of something bubbly. Nick side-eyes me, clearly curious about the weirdness between me and Gatsby. He knew about my friend Jay back in Easley, but I don’t think I ever told him Jay’s last name.
A heavy odor of gardenias and roses infuses the air in our pocket of dry space under the pavilion, between the falling curtains of rain. Under glass domes are trays of gourmet cupcakes, platters of neatly sliced fruit, shrimp on ice, and tiny white sandwiches with layers of pink or yellow inside them.
