“It’s true, isn’t it?” He examines a record without looking at me.
His response unspools a chain of memories: golden summer days spent side by side, shooting down sun-hot slides at the playground or riding shabby skateboards through empty parking lots; chilly winter afternoons huddled on my living room couch, doing our homework while our toes touched under a blanket; meals shared with my family because his dad was in jail and his mother was passed out in their apartment. A thousand cords of friendship woven together, long before the day his fingertips grazed my bare shoulder, when he looked at me with a new softness and I felt the tingle of something awakening inside me.
After that kaleidoscopic shift, even our tiniest touches were bathed in rosy color. Jay’s hand in mine was the most exciting thing I’d ever felt. His lips on my cheek set my heart pounding. We spent three blissful, innocent months that way, until my dad came home with the news of his new job and our impending move.
The baby romance between Jay and me was private and precious. Not something for Tom to sneer at.
“I didn’t want everyone to know about it,” I whisper. “And they will. Tom and Myrtle will tell everyone, and they’ll make fun—”
“Let them.”
“You shouldn’t have said anything.”
Jay has the record poised over the platter, but at that, he glances up. “You’re ashamed of me.”
“I’m not.”
“Good.” He settles the record into place. “I’ve worked hard to make sure you wouldn’t have to be. I’ve made myself important. Powerful. No gossip of theirs can shake what I’ve built.”
“That’s not what I—I wouldn’t ever be ashamed of you, even without all this. You’re my oldest friend, Jay.”
His gaze cuts me open. “So if I’d wandered up this mountain and climbed the fence into your beautiful wealthy community and come to you in my ragged clothes, without a dollar to my name, you’d have been just as glad to see me?”
“Yes! Seriously, Jay? You really think I’m that mercenary?”
“I think you live a different life now. And I’ve done what I needed to do to carve my own place in it.” He poises the spindle on the record, and music unfurls, a sweeping melody. “Would you like to dance?”
With the wine-colored shirt and gold jacket, he looks like a beautiful prince, brown-eyed and earnest, blending perfectly into the vintage ambiance of this elegant room. I’m still upset—maybe at him, or Tom, or both—but the music is luring me, softening me. I drift toward him, and he clasps my fingers and slips his other hand under my arm, his palm resting on my shoulder blade.
We’ve danced before, he and I. Silly, wild dances at my house, where we imitated the moves in music videos until we collapsed on the carpet, our stomachs aching with laughter. But we’ve never danced like this. Just the two of us, with romantic music swirling our insides, under the heavy awareness of what it means that he’s here, on Glassy Mountain, in this house.
He’s here for me. That’s pretty fucking clear. And as much as I care about him, as flattered as I am, there’s a magnificence to the gesture that overwhelms me.
“Do you know the fox-trot?” Jay asks. “Cody taught me. I’m pretty good.”
“Mom made us all take ballroom dancing lessons as soon as we moved up here,” I tell him. “I think she expected us to be attending a lot of very fancy parties. She had possibly been watching too many old episodes of Dancing with the Stars at the time.”
He laughs, sweeping me into the long, swift strides of the dance. “I’ve always loved your mom. I’d like to see her, and your dad too.”
“You will. I told them you’re here. They were…surprised.”
“And full of questions, I imagine.”
“Uh-huh,” I say vaguely. A scent twirls past my nose as we move—the sharp, sweet edge of alcohol. “Do you drink now?” I don’t mean it to sound judgmental, but it does.
“No.” He tilts his head with a light frown of confusion; then his brow clears. “Ah, the champagne. One of the girls I was hanging out with—Sloane—rubbed champagne into my hair when I told her I didn’t drink. She said something about getting me drunk via osmosis.”
“I do not think that word means what she thinks it means,” I say in my best imitation of Inigo Montoya, and he laughs. I forgot how delicious his laugh is—bright and boyish, with a slight hoarseness that’s just plain sexy.
“Princess Bride quotes, nice.” He twirls me expertly, and I manage to follow the move semi-gracefully.
“Though maybe she did know what it means. Osmosis isn’t just movement of a solvent through a semipermeable membrane,” I murmur. “It can also be a slow assimilation of attitudes or ideas, sometimes without the awareness that you’re changing.”
Jay ducks a little closer as we continue to step—slow, slow, quick-quick. “I love your brain.”
He used to tell me that often, even when my grades weren’t great, when my parents’ faces expressed their concern about my abilities and my future. I couldn’t explain to Mom and Dad how my brain picks and chooses what it remembers. They don’t understand how I can recall certain concepts in vivid detail and let others slip away completely, even if I’ve studied them. It’s a quirk that yields some unfortunate test grades and a less-than-stellar college transcript.
But Jay always loved my funky, unpredictable brain, and his familiar words nestle in my heart. At least his opinion of me hasn’t changed. But he’s different, intangibly and irrevocably so, and it makes me sad.
The music is falling over me in layers of silk, cool and sweet. The light glints on Jay’s gold jacket and pools in his eyes, and I’m desperately trying to keep step with him. He’s so graceful, and grown-up, and glamorous, and I’m still just me, even in this shiny gown. I can feel myself cracking inside, my sinuses swelling, tears clustering in my eyes.
I’m going to start ugly crying, right now. Right in the middle of the dance. And I can’t stop it.
With a burst of desperation, I break away from him and crumple to the floor, bowing my head so my curls hide my face.
“Daisy.” He kneels beside me. “Daisy, what is it?”
“It’s…it’s this room,” I struggle, my breath hitching. The tears are slipping out, one after another, wetting my cheeks. “I’ve never been in such a gorgeous room before. I can’t dance here. I’m not this person, Jay. I’m pizza and UNC hoodies and caramel cold brews. I’m not glamorous like this—”
“Hey.” He tips my chin up, swiping at a tear with his thumb. “You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be. You are enough for me, always. Just you.”
“How can you know that?” I push his hand away. “You’re different now. You’re so—perfect. Like you’ve turned yourself into some kind of hero out of a novel. Someone every woman would want.”
“That was kind of the idea.”
“But I just want you.” The words burst out of me in a plaintive squeak, with another rush of tears. I have to stop crying; I can’t break down like this in front of him, not here. Ugh, this is so embarrassing…
Someone opens the door at that moment. “Mr. Gatsby, there’s a problem.”
