I opened the door lightly and was greeted by her floral scent. And then I just stood in the middle of the room, not truly knowing why I came.
“Well?” Jay said. I turned around and found him standing behind me. “If we are going to do it, you’ll have to find something to wear to the party then.”
I smiled and went to Daisy’s closet and pulled down a flapper dress. I took off my pants and shirt, careful to catch Jay’s eyes trailing my body and his small smirk, which instantly made our bickering disappear.
I slipped into her dress and checked myself out in her mirrors. “What do you think of this?” I asked Jay as I spun around.
Jay fell on her bed and rested up on the pillows. Arm leaning over his stomach, he gave me this hungry smile. “Ravishing. Simply ravishing! Wear it to the party and Father won’t even be able to tell the difference between you and Daisy!”
“I’ll need eyeliner! Bracelets and anklets!”
I tried on another dress, and then another. I was on dress number three when Daisy came out of the bathroom in a towel, hair dripping and slicked back.
“I thought I heard voices!” she said. “Why are there boys in my r—?” She stopped when she saw me and tilted her head like she’d spied a curious animal in the woods. She was now in on my private universe as a glamorous woman! “The bust is far too big for you,” she continued, calmly. “I know you’re girly on the inside, Nick, but you can’t quite fill that out. Mama can alter you a dress if you really want one, and in a color that matches your skin tone, because that’s not it!”
I laughed and fell over. Somehow, Daisy calling me girly took all offense out of the term. I attempted to take off the dress, and Daisy helped me to pull it off my ankles.
I looked up at the light of her closet, all the fancy clothes. “Girls have it so easy. All you need is this one piece and some shoes, and you’re set to attend any swanky event.”
“You try being a girl one day—in public—and see what you say then.” Daisy hung her garment and pushed Jay and me out her door so she could dress.
But she was free from her dread or had found a way to carry it. She didn’t find the crust of all her fears in the corner of her eyes in the morning. She was still bubbly, despite the plan! What I’d give to be like Daisy.
Our ease with each other found once more, Jay and I spent the rest of the day together at the park, in the courts, on the empty lots, just talking. I stayed totally connected to him until the night, but when I expected him to go back home, he asked to spend another night.
We snuck inside and I locked the door of my bedroom, so Ididn’t have to worry about anyone barging in on us. Then I got under the covers of my bed with him.
I held him this time, and we pressed our faces into two pillows. I whispered, “Will you tell anyone about how close we’ve gotten?”
“I won’t,” he promised.
Daisy could easily talk about her engagement to a man without a second thought. She could announce her love to her parents without fear. I couldn’t even entertain the thought of telling Auntie and Uncle I shared something romantic with Jay.
Would anyone be left in our lives who cared, in the end? We’d be leaving soon—forever.
“I’m glad he saw us in bed,” Jay confessed in a whisper. “I don’t want you to think I regret choosing you. I just worry, because being with you has made me realize what life can be, when I truly connect to myself. I never knew anything before.”
I rested my arm on top of his. “No one knows anything. Everyone’s messed up and trying their best.”
“You get it,” he said, with a quiet laugh. “Of course you do. There are not enough words to express how much you mean to me, Nick.”
Such beautiful words only scared me. I knew I was worthy of them, but I also didn’t. There was a giant crack in the window to my heart. I was fixing it, slowly but surely.
I said nothing and just silently worried about losing him. I needed him now, more than anything, and I’d need him forever.
I almost believed Jay had fallen asleep after his confession, butthen he shuffled in my arms and went down to fetch something from out of his pants, which he’d left lying at the edge of the bed. It was a folded letter.
“Read it,” he said, handing it to me.
I turned around and sat up.
Dear Tom Buchanan,
If you are reading this, know that your crimes have caught up to you. We have the evidence that you plan to destroy Colored communities of Harlem and replace them with a new white gentry. Your wealth depends on it, but your reputation depends on keeping the peace with the integrationists whose missions work against yours. Therefore, you are a fraud.
Your time in this city is ending. We will come for your positive press and reveal what you did to the West Egg Academy—a school you helped set up and then helped to destroy. We will expose this information to every news outlet with cited sources unless you appear at the party of Mr. Jay Gatsby’s on April 14, 1922, and meet us face-to-face.
Sincerely,
