“Now?” I laughed. “But it’s going to storm.”
He pulled me toward the front door anyway, and I let him lead me outside. It was loud and stifling hot inside the party and my best friend, Jordan, had gotten a headache and had already gone home early. I was happy to get out of there, with Jay. The night air was damp, thick with the impending storm, and I shivered, imagining being caught in the rain, holding on to him for warmth. That thought was tempered only briefly by the thought of the look on Daddy’s face if I were to come home a soaking wet mess. But right now, it was still dry and cool, and Jay took my arm, and we walked.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Jay said, breaking our silence after a little while. I nodded. “I actually was following you.” I leaned in closer to him, held tighter to his arm, waiting for him to explain. “I asked around at camp about you, asked if anyone knew where you might be tonight.”
“My social schedule is that transparent, I suppose,” I said. “All of Camp Taylor knows my comings and goings, hmm?”
“This was the best party in town tonight, I heard,” he said. “And where else would Daisy Fay be?” He spoke matter-of-factly, not teasing.
“Where else indeed?” I murmured. “The best party in town, and yet we’ve left it, you and I.”
“I like it out here alone with you better.” He squeezed my hand lightly. A warmth coursed my entire arm, and I squeezed his hand back.
We crossed the street, holding hands as we walked, heading in the opposite direction of my house, toward the river. Thunder rumbled closer; it shook the ground, but neither of us made a move to turn back.
There had been other soldiers this summer, ones I’d danced with, flirted with, two I’d even kissed whose full names escaped me now. But there was something about Jay Gatsby that felt different. It might have been the way he’d looked at me at the crowded party, the way he had looked at me the other day in his car. As if he could see past my blue silk dress and perfectly coiffed hair, see beyond all that. See me.
Deep down, the truth was I wanted to be more than a pretty girl. I wanted to be someone who mattered, but I hadn’t quite figured out how yet. I wanted to be someone who didn’t have to go to the best party in town, because maybe there were other, more interesting things I wanted to do. But how could Jay see this in me, when no one else ever had?
“Tell me about yourself, Jay Gatsby. I want to know you,” I said now.
“There’s not much to tell,” he said, shrugging.
“I doubt that,” I said.
We were almost at the river, and we stopped walking and turned to face each other at that spot right by the banks where Rose and I used to chase fireflies at dusk when we were little girls. A flash of lightning illuminated the sky now, and for a second, I could see Jay’s face brightly, clearly. There was an intensity in his eyes, his expression, that told a different story: he’d seen and experienced things I couldn’t even begin to fathom. It wasn’t only that he was older than me, but also that he had already lived a whole entire lifetime outside of Louisville.
“Come on,” I said. “Tell me something. One thing.”
“I love the water,” he finally said. “I had a friend who used to take me sailing on Lake Superior. Being out there, it makes you realize how great the whole wide world is. And I’d feel like I could do anything when I was out there. Be anyone. I’m always searching for that feeling on land… But I can never quite get back there.”
I thought about Jay, lying out on a boat in a great big expanse of blue, in a place where the water meets the sky, and I smiled at him. The first slow drop of rain hit my cheek, and Jay rested his hand on my face. I leaned closer to him. The rain came harder, but I didn’t move.
“The thing is,” he said, softly. “The way I feel out on the water? I’m feeling that right now. Here with you.”
“Oh, Jay.” My voice broke a little on his name. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“I don’t have anything to offer you, Daisy,” he said, his lips inches from my own, the rain falling harder, pounding in my ears.
So he didn’t have money, or a family name we recognized. But I wasn’t Daddy. That didn’t mean anything to me. I was eighteen, and I wanted for nothing. “I don’t care about that,” I said.
“You should turn and walk away from me,” he murmured. “Don’t look back.”
I stood so close to him that when I spoke again, my words tumbled into his mouth: “Stop talking, Jay Gatsby, and kiss me.”
Jordan 1917
LOUISVILLE
IT WAS A BONA FIDE fact that Daisy fay had the shiniest hair on this side of the Ohio River. I asked her once how she managed it. How, even on the hottest day of summer her acorn hair shone so bright I swear to god it shimmered like starlight. “Oh, Jordie.” She’d laughed and waved me away with a faux modest flick of her wrist. Then she’d leaned in, conspiratorially, and whispered, “Egg yolks.”
“Egg yolks?”
“Once a week,” she’d whispered. “I soak my hair in six egg yolks, for a full hour.”
And that was why at the tender age of thirteen, I’d snuck into Mr. Barnaby’s chicken coop next door one morning, when Daddy was in court. I was in desperate want of extra egg yolks to make my hair as shiny as Daisy’s. And I knew Daddy, who couldn’t stand to waste food, would never approve.
But Mr. Barnaby was blind as a bat and dumber than a wild turkey, and he mistakenly thought I was an intruder. He shot first, and figured out it was me, later. He killed six of his chickens, but luckily, I was unscathed. That is, until Daddy found out. Once he got the whole story out of me about why I wanted the eggs in the first place, he cut my hair off with a pair of pruning shears. “Vanity is for the weak, Jordan,” he told me.
I lay in my bed and cried for my hair that whole night. Not only would it never be shiny, but now it would be ugly, too. I would be ugly.
But then the next morning, I got up, and I saw my reflection for the first time. I ran my fingers through the short streaks of chestnut hair around my ears. I was a different Jordan with short hair, a better Jordan. A tougher Jordan. And maybe, tough was pretty.
Daddy’s punishment wasn’t really a punishment at all, I decided. But a blessing. I’d worn my hair short ever since.
* * *