"Oh, Jay," she says, and I realize she never says my name. She never says anyone's name, really. I look at her, wondering if there is anything in this world she desires that I wouldn't do.
There's nothing.
"Yes, Daisy?" I ask, feeling almost servile—and it's rather fitting. She is so like an angel. So like nature. So delicate. So beautiful.
She twists the hem of her dress nervously in one pale hand. "I—did you really mean what you said, back there? At the Plaza?"
I've no idea what in particular she's talking about that I said. Personally, all I can process aside from her beside me is what I said to that braggart—"You don't understand. You're not going to take care of her anymore."
The look in his eyes.
I look at her. She stares at her fingers like she's just killed a man.
"Daisy?"
Those pale orbs flash up to me. I open my palm and she gets the idea, placing her hand inside mine. I hold up a slim wrist and kiss her hand, pale and lunar.
"I'm going to take care of you from now on." I reaffirm the words aloud almost more for my benefit than her own. I can say that now. Oh, it's always been true, but here is the palatable. Here—in the flesh beside me—I have made good on my vow.
I twine my fingers into hers and lean forward to kiss her, her tiny mouth smaller than mine, twisting under mine so that I cannot tell whether she is smiling or frowning.
In that kiss something crashes through my head with such an ache that I can imagine how all my guests felt after all these nights of parties at my house the following mornings. Oh, it's a life of pomp and circumstance for sure, and perhaps what brought Daisy to me wasn't moral or white or virtuous at all. But objectively, whether hitching a ride on someone else's shoulders or roughing the journey on your own, so long as you reach your destiny, isn't that what's important? Isn't that what matters?
I feel like Nick would be the man to talk about this. I can see it now—
"You know, old sport, I never really considered that a destination is a destination no matter how you get there. Your goal is never different; it's only what you've been through to get there that differs."
"I suppose."
Yes, perhaps I'd best leave profound thoughts inside my head.
"Daisy—" I murmur into her hair.
She blinks up at me from under the weight of my arms around her. "Yes, Jay?"
I feel the weight of the world, the life of everything—the sun going down over the bay, the wind swishing through the grass in rebuke, the heat through her dress, the emotion thickening my throat—squeeze out from my insides like some drab corset, "I love you."
"Oh, Jay," she says softly, and some dominant part of me yearns for her to say something else besides that again. "I love you as well," she adds, searching my eyes for a moment, and I melt, sinking into her lips and lacing my fingers into hers.
"Jay, where are we going?" she adds as I lead her down the hallways. There are so many rooms, by God, and they're all empty.
"Maybe that's the funniest part of all, old sport. All these dusty rooms with all this space and I'm the only person here."
Sometimes I feel as though I am only just a ghost in my bed. I wake up cold and wonder if I'm really nothing after all. But not tonight. Not tonight. I don't know what I was before, frigid apparition or not, but tonight my bed will be warm. I cannot help thinking this giddily and ecstatically as we come upon the door to my room.
We step inside and I'm so glad it's a simpler room than the others.
She looks up at me looking at her.
I watch her lips part a fraction of an inch—I can even see her working out what she's going to say in her eyes—and then the closes her mouth and changes her mind.
"Daisy," I begin, and it stops at that. I grab her hands and pull her to me, kiss her until we're in some sort of waltz and I'm dipping her back nearly to the floor in my arms, tasting her for all those nights I refused high balls and martinis and drinks.
And when I've kissed her nearly to the floor I murmur in her ear; I can't say for sure what, probably just incoherent nonsense. But it does the trick. She stands up in my arms like an elevator shooting up and I pull her onto the bed, dropping my coat.
She kisses a line up my jaw to my ear and sucks languidly on my neck, her small fingers methodically undoing the buttons on my shirt. I groan, and reach behind her back to unzip her dress.
My hands slide around her back and my palm is sudden filled with the pale, foreign skin of her breast, if something that soft can even be called skin. I move my fingers over her nipples and bite down softly on her neck.
She arches closer to me, sighing.
I move my mouth to the skin of her ear, press her hand against my erection, and sigh gustily into her ear. Immediately I revel in the quiet little moan that comes of that.
She wraps her legs around my torso and I can hardly keep from growling, I feel that empowered by her. By this. I could laugh to see Tom Buchanan now. I could just die.
"Oh, Daisy—" I get out, and she kisses me, forcefully. I grab her hands and she grabs mine and squeezes. She rocks against me so that I cannot think of anything else. But now is the time. She inches out of her dress and I drop those pants that English designer fellow picks out for me over the edge of the bed.
Like some startled fawn or some timid nymph, she blinks at me, wide-eyed, the glow of her naked skin visible even in the dim darkness. I crawl towards her and descend, ravenous, ashamed at my audacity and encouraged by her open arms.
"Still, five years is a long time, old sport. She had to know we'd be together when we were together. I'm sure she expects it."
"Who wouldn't?" (Even Nick would agree on this one.)
I lay on top of her and kiss her, noticing the way her hair fans perfectly out across my pillow like a mandala.
"Tell me if—well, if anything—" I begin for propriety's sake before she shushes me and I submit. The second it takes to enter her is surely the moment that defines a lifetime; the moment that is key to dreams in moment of their fulfillment.
I take her and she's mine now. Just like that. I can say it, but I see it plainly in the teeth biting into tiny pink lips, the way her eyes just rolled back into her head as I rock forward into her against the pillows, the way she moans as I grip her hips and hands and kiss her as it happens. Daisy Gatsby.
Or need we live a lie? Oh, I suppose Daisy Gatz is fine as well; but hell, why don't we just call ourselves all Gatsby and be done with it? Might as well continue on with the illusion of things.
I make love to her for hours.
In those hours I see every facet of Daisy turned inside out in her eyes, anguished and wet and hopeful. I hear everything I've ever needed to hear in every plaintive moan and every aching plea.
And marring the sacred union—though in her case these words are but a joke—of matrimony aside, falling asleep beside her I feel the old, warm world slip away from me as the single dream rolls into my arms and closes her eyes.