“Well, we can have lemonade instead. Come on, we’ll sit out back. Reminisce about the good old times we had.” He stared at me, his eyes refusing to move from my face. And I supposed it was either that or stand out in the hot drive for the next hour waiting for Jordan to come back while he stared.
I relented and followed him into his house and through it, out onto the back veranda, and down the steps to his large sparkling pool.
“The water is the perfect temperature, and I’ve barely gotten to use it all summer,” he said. “We should go in!”
“I don’t have my swimsuit,” I said quickly. Though we were outside, surrounded by the woods on one side, the sound on the other, and a great big blue expanse of summer sky above us, I suddenly felt trapped. What had happened to the lemonade? The reminiscing?
Jay stared at me now, his eyes roaming my body, a little glassy like he was remembering the way every inch of my skin looked naked. I felt my face turning hot. Everything about Jay felt suffocating, all-consuming. He would push and push and wouldn’t stop until he claimed me, would he?
But then he looked away, bent down, removed his shoes and socks, rolled up the bottoms of his pink trousers, and walked toward the water. “Come on, Daisy. We’ll just put our feet in.”
Sitting at the edge of the pool with his trousers rolled, he looked innocent, like a little boy. I slipped my own shoes off and dipped a toe in carefully—he was right, it was the perfect temperature. I let my feet sink in next to his, and I sat down next to him, swirling the water gently with my toes.
He moved his foot closer and tapped his toe gently against mine. “Do you remember when I climbed up into your bedroom in Louisville? The way we felt when we were together.” Jay covered my foot with his foot, moved closer and trailed his fingers across my knee.
“Oh, Jay.” I slithered away from him, splashing a little water. “I’m no longer the girl you knew in Louisville. And you’re not that man, either. You have so much to offer now. I bet there are a thousand women in New York who’d want to be with you.”
He moved closer to me, undeterred. He put his fingers on my thigh and gripped hard so now I couldn’t slither farther. “But Daisy,” he said, squeezing my thigh through my dress, “I only want you. All I’ve ever wanted was you. And you want me too. I know you still do.”
It would be so easy to surrender to him, to kiss him, and let him pull off my dress and to dive headfirst into his pool. How easy it would be to betray Tom the way he had betrayed me, over and over and over again. How easy it would be to ruin him with the knowledge that I’d been with another man. When Jay leaned in all at once, kissed me hard, on the mouth, I was still thinking about Tom’s red-hot jealousy. And I let him kiss me for a minute without pulling back.
“I’m going to make you remember how to feel good, Daisy,” he breathed heavily. “Erase the last three years.” He slid his hand under my dress, ran his fingers roughly up my bare calf.
“Jay,” I protested.
He ignored me, moved his hand up higher, my knee, my thigh.
“Jay, stop,” I protested again, trying to move his hand, but he wouldn’t budge.
He pushed his hand all the way up my thigh. His lips were on my ear, his voice a whisper, but also a command. “You love me. Say you love me.”
In that moment I realized that I was going to betray Tom, here, now, whether I wanted to or not. And maybe it would be easier to just give up, to give in. To pretend to love it. To pretend to love him again. If I pretended hard enough, could I feel something again, for real?
“Tell me you love me, Daisy.”
“I… I…” I felt hot tears running down my cheeks.
“Jay Gatsby!” A woman’s voice screamed Jay’s name from the veranda, and he froze. I pushed him off me and jumped out of the water shaking with relief. I wiped at my cheeks and fumbled with my shoes.
A gorgeous wisp of a girl flew down the veranda steps. She wore a bright red sleeveless dress that matched her beautiful strawberry bob. She looked at me, opened her mouth a little, shook her head.
“Jay Gatsby,” she said his name again. Now her hands were on her hips as she moved toward the pool. “Why, I can’t leave you alone for a second, can I?”
“Catherine,” Jay finally spoke. “Daisy’s here.”
She glared at me, then frowned. “Daisy Buchanan.” She said my name like it was something distasteful, dirty. I didn’t relish the idea that she thought she knew me when I’d never seen the girl before in my life.