Aki- Next chapter. More of The Great Gatsby, which is gonna stick around for a while cuz I love this book and it has som really great quotes that apply really easily to Rory and Jess. Kudos to my new beta, kaypgirl, for fixing stuff in this chapter.
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Rory,
I know you're not perfect. I couldn't fall in love with someone who was perfect. But when you love someone, sometimes you are all too willing to overlook their faults, or at least forgive them, because of all their attributes that you like. I mean, you forgave Logan for cheating on you, that's pretty big. You said you loved him despite all the bad he's done. This is the same thing.
Now what was with you throwing a Great Gatsby quote out there without referencing properly? You only told me Fitzgerald. But I've been recently getting up to date with Fitzy, so I as able to place it. The funny part is, that line is talking about a car accident. It takes two to make a car accident, so that way Jordan does feel bad about being a horrible driver. She says the other drivers will get out of her way. But Fitz probably wanted it to have a double meaning. It's funny though. When I crashed your car, it was only my fault, and a furry creature of some sort.
But I'll admit that here was a time that I idolized you. Somewhere between "run away with me" and "this is the book I wrote". And then I saw you again and you weren't the person I was expecting. But it wasn't your fault. Sure, you had messed up, but that is bound to happen sometimes. Everyone needs to fall down once in a while, it makes them stronger when they are able to get back up. It was just a mind-blowing experience to see you not in school. You love school, like, actually love school, not just a single subject or a hunky teacher, but love school. You weren't up to my expectations when I came back. But I don't think that even if you were still in school and everything was working out that you would have been up to my expectations. I had built you up too much in my mind.
I think I, too, need to quote Fitzgerald, "There must have been moment even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion…"
You see, Jay Gatsby spent years of his life trying to become a person Daisy could love. Not that he himself wasn't a person she could not love. She had loved him at one time, but they could have never worked out. She was high society and he was a poor World War I veteran. Yeah, he was a war hero, but that wasn't good enough. By the time he got back from war she had moved away and was engaged to someone in her social circle. He knew he had to be better. He gained wealth, he gained status, he moved across the bay from Daisy and threw parties every week in hopes she would walk in. But it still wouldn't have worked out if she came because she was old money and he was new money. She was married and had a child. Yet they ended up in an affair because Gatsby was desperate and in love and Daisy was bitter from her husband's infidelity and in love.
See, he worked to be a person that was worthy of her love. He threw himself into a creative passion. He did it all for her, to be good enough, for both her expectations and the world's expectations. He worked so hard and had built up the girl in his mind so much that she had to be a disappointment when he met her again, years later. She had become less of a person and more of a god. He couldn't help himself. But that didn't mean he stopped loving her, he just had to readjust his expectations. But it wasn't her fault that she was not as grand and magnificent and beautiful as he remembered her.
As for what we are, what it is…well, don't you get it, that's exactly what we are. We have too much history and too much potential. We're too alike and too different. And every time I see you or talk to you or even just write these letters to you, it's elation and it's torture. I don't know how to explain it. There's this elusive chance that we could have made it, if things had been different. The circumstances…us…I don't know. I really don't know.
This letter sounds so moronic, sorry about that. I don't know if I'm going to send this but if you get it, then I guess I did.
Love,
Jess