Her words felt like a slap. “I thought you were my best friend,” I huffed angrily. “I thought you’d want me to be happy.”
“Daise,” she said somberly. “I do. That’s why I’m being honest with you.”
* * *
LATER THAT NIGHT, Jay tapped on my window again. I turned Jordan’s words over in my head, that Jay was not the kind of man I’d marry. Why would you give yourself away, just like that, to a soldier? I swallowed back a bitter taste rising in my throat. Now instead of anger, I felt doubt curling up inside of me, wondering if she was right.
Be good, Rosie had told me this morning. But wasn’t it good, to love a man for who he was, not what he was worth?
Jay tapped again, and I remembered how cold it was outside and ran to open the window.
“I missed you today,” Jay said, his voice husky. He climbed into my bedroom. A cold blast of air entered my room with him, and I shivered. He quickly shut the window, and then he clung to me, kissed my hair. I turned warm again. The heat of his lips radiated across my head, and my face turned hot. Jordan’s words faded away.
“I can’t stand being apart from you,” I said, standing up on my toes to kiss his mouth. He hesitated, then pulled back from me a little. “Jay…？ What is it?” My heart thrummed with what I suddenly knew he was about to say.
He pulled me toward him again, kissed my forehead gently. “Daisy, Daisy,” he said my name softly, stringing out the letters like he was singing me a song. “I’m leaving in the morning.”
I’d known it was coming. Known since I’d met him. But still, hearing him say it out loud now felt like a punch, and I could barely breathe. He could not leave me. And so soon. How could he leave me so soon?
“Come to New York,” he said, his words tumbling out in a rush. “We can see the city together and get married there before I ship out at the end of January. You know I can’t offer you much now. But after the war, I’ll work hard, make a good life for us.”
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself there, walking the streets with Jay. I’d been to Chicago before but never to New York. Even Chicago was so big, it made me feel small, anonymous. In Louisville everyone knew Daisy Fay, but in a big city, I could be anyone. I could be no one at all.
“I don’t know,” I said softly. What would Daddy say if I just left, like this? Worse, what would Daddy do? Jay didn’t have money, or a family name. As he said once, he only had himself to offer me. I loved him, I did. But Jordan’s words echoed in my head again: he’s not the kind of man you’ll marry. “I want to. I really do, but…”
“I’m not good enough for you,” Jay said softly.
“No!” I put my hand to his cheek and stroked his face gently. “Don’t say that, Jay. You must never say that.” But I felt an ache in my chest, an unfamiliar feeling of worry about my future. “It’s not that at all. It’s that… Rose is gone. I can’t just leave without saying good-bye.” That much was true. If I were going to follow Jay, marry Jay, I would not just abandon my sister without even an explanation. I’d promised her we would decorate the Christmas tree and I’d water her lettuce while she was away. “I’ll come to New York,” I promised him. “I’ll marry you. But after Christmas. I need to stay here to have Christmas with Rose.”
In response Jay held my cheeks in his hands, pulled my face in closer to his, and kissed me. It was a hard kiss, a hungry kiss. A kiss that seemed to make a promise I wasn’t sure that Jay could keep—that he alone would take care of me. That he loved me enough that anything was possible.
* * *
I HAD NEVER known what it was like to need someone, to feel a physical sensation of emptiness without someone. But once Jay was gone, I felt this hollow, this relentless pain in my stomach. It was hard to breathe and it was hard to eat, and I picked at my food during enough meals that Mother threatened to call Dr. Simms.
A week after Jay left, Jordan came over. Mother must’ve summoned her because she’d spent the whole evening before worrying I truly was ill when I refused to attend the Hillets’ winter ball, which I always loved. The following day, Mother announced she was going to have lunch across the river in Jeffersonville with her old aunt. And then, Jordan was here. She lay across my bed with me, stroking back my hair as I cried. She truly was the best friend I’d ever had, and I felt guilty now that I’d ever been cross with her.