Guys don’t lay out a spread like this when they’re taking their bros out on the boat.
I walk straight to Nick and grip the collar of his T-shirt. “Excuse me,” I say to Cody with a dazzling smile. “I’m going to borrow Nick for a moment.”
“Excuse you is right,” Nick complains as I hustle him into a corner.
“Did Gatsby’s note ask you to invite me?” I whisper fiercely. “Me, specifically?”
Nick winces. “Maybe.”
“You traitor. You didn’t tell me!”
“He said he was an old friend of yours. I figured you’d want to see him, that it would be a nice surprise. Ow, Daisy!”
“A kick in the shins is less punishment than you deserve.” I let go of his shirt. “I’ll be back soon. Or never.”
And I walk straight out of the pavilion into the rain. Well, I walk for a few steps, and then I break into a run, matching my frantic steps to the scattered beat of my heart.
I knew it was going to be awkward if the mysterious Gatsby turned out to be Jay himself, but I didn’t expect this—the dramatic decorations, the fancy five-star lunch. He’s telling me something he has no right to, not now, not after he dropped out of my life for eight years.
My sandals are drenched and sloshy, my clothes are thin wet rags, and my carefully styled hair is a wilderness of rivulets and tangles. I blink water out of my eyes and crash palms-first into a big tree, a magnolia whose waxy leaves shed rain as well as any umbrella.
Pressing my forehead to the corrugated trunk, I breathe. Rain whispers around me, and in the dreamlike quiet I could almost imagine the past few minutes were an illusion, equal parts delightful and distressing.
“I’m sorry, Daisy.” Gatsby’s voice comes from behind me. “I did this all wrong.”
I speak without turning around. It’s easier to talk when I’m not looking into those beautiful brown eyes. “What, exactly, did you do wrong?”
“I didn’t stay in touch.”
“You ghosted me, Jay. We were best friends. We were—” I can’t say what we were, because there’s no word for it in this language—maybe not in any language.
“I know. I’m sorry. My mom was arrested not long after you left, and I ran away rather than go into foster care. Things were really uncertain for a while.” He says it so matter-of-factly, but my heart lurches with pain at the idea of him alone, with nothing and no one. I can’t bear the thought that he went through that, and I didn’t know, couldn’t help him.
“You couldn’t have emailed me from a library or something? Borrowed someone’s phone for a quick call?” My voice is harsher than I intended, and I grind my lip between my teeth.
“I could have,” he says quietly. “I chose not to.”
“Because you were angry with me.”
“Because I didn’t want you to think of me as the impoverished runaway, the homeless boy with nothing. You would have pitied me, and I couldn’t stand that.”
“So it was a pride thing.”
His voice comes nearer. “No. Maybe? Please try to understand. I didn’t want to meet you again until I had something to offer you, until I’d made something of myself.”
I whirl around. “You’re barely a month over twenty-four, Jay. No one expects you to make anything of yourself yet.”
He smiles, and my heart does the jitterbug for a second. His smile is devastating, dangerous.
“You remember my birthday,” he says.
“Of course I do,” I hiss at him.
And he repeats softly, “Of course you do.”
Something inside me is breaking up, melting like ice under the gentle insistence of a warm rain.
“Can you forgive me, Daisy?” A flood of honest regret pours from his eyes into mine, trickling into my heart.
I suck in a shaking breath. “You’ll have to work for it.”
Jay’s smile reappears, infused with hope. “Glad to.”
The awkwardness of a thousand missed days hangs between us. We used to talk about everything—school assignments, music, politics, video games, books, random ridiculousness—and now I can’t think of anything to say. The air around him smells and tastes different. He’s not a short, skinny middle-grade boy anymore, with Juicy Fruit gum on his breath and the sharp artificial ocean smell of Walmart deodorant hovering under his ratty T-shirts. Now he’s a shockingly tall stranger of twenty-four, and his dress shirt is slicked to his chest, and the faint scent of cloves and basil wafts from his skin—some decadent, unfamiliar cologne.
When did he get so close to me?
And why do I suddenly want him even closer?
The craving that digs its claws into my chest shocks me, as does the delicate flutter that spreads low through my body, my clit. For a second, I panic at my body’s instant, instinctual response. We never got this far before, Jay and I—we were too young—and this feels strange and heady and uncontrolled, like being a virgin all over again. It’s scary, and it’s fucking amazing.
Eyes dropping to my mouth, tension mounting steadily between us, he steps even closer.
Experimentally I inhale his scent again, and feel the answering throb between my legs. It’s hauntingly familiar and wildly different at the same time, like he’s summoning a part of me he’s never called to before. Great…just when I need a clear head, my freaking libido has to get involved.
I can’t yield to this urge, not when Jay and I just encountered each other again. I can’t go from “how have you been” to “pin me against this damn tree and fuck me until I scream your name” in the space of an hour, even if I desperately want to.
I shrink back a little, my fingertips brushing the bark of the magnolia.
