Chapter 3

There was music from my neighbor’s house every summer night. In his huge, blue gardens, people came and went, like moths buzzing around champagne and the stars.

When the tide was high in the afternoon, I’d watch his guests dive off the tower of his raft, or soak up the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two speedboats cut through the water, creating wakes of foam.

On weekends, his Rolls-Royce became a party bus, dropping people off and picking them up in the city, from nine in the morning until way past midnight, while his station wagon zipped around like a fast yellow bug to meet every train.

And on Mondays, eight people, including an extra gardener, would work all day with mops, scrubbing brushes, hammers, and shears, fixing everything from the night before.

Every Friday, five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruit store in New York - every Monday, those same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pile of peeled halves.

There was a machine in the kitchen that could juice two hundred oranges in just half an hour if a butler’s thumb pressed a little button two hundred times.

At least twice a month, a whole team of caterers would show up with tons of canvas and enough coloured lights to make Gatsby’s enormous garden look like a Christmas tree.

On the buffet tables, shiny appetizers were piled high next to fancy salads, pastries shaped like pigs, and turkeys glazed a deep gold.

In the main hall, a bar with a real brass rail was set up, stocked with gin, liquor, and old-fashioned cordials that most of his younger female guests were too young to even recognize.

By seven o’clock, the band had arrived - not some small five-piece group, but a whole pit full of oboes, trombones, saxophones, violins, cornets, and piccolos, plus drums, big and small.

The last people were coming in from the beach and heading upstairs to change; cars from New York were parked five rows deep in the driveway, and already the halls, living rooms, and patios were bursting with bright colours, crazy new hairstyles, and shawls more extravagant than anything you’d ever dream of.

The bar was packed, and trays of cocktails floated through the garden, filling the air with chatter, laughter, and casual jokes, and introductions forgotten instantly, and exciting connections between women who’s names they didn’t know.

The lights got brighter as the night went on, and now the orchestra was playing upbeat cocktail music, and the sound of voices rose higher and higher. Laughter came easier every minute, spilling out freely with a cheerful word.

Groups shifted faster, swelling with new people, dissolving and reforming in the same breath.

Already, there were wanderers - confident girls who floated around, becoming the center of attention for a moment, then, excited by their success, they’re gliding through a sea of faces and voices and colours under the constantly changing lights.

Suddenly, one of these girls, dressed in shimmering fabric, grabbed a cocktail out of the air, took a big gulp for courage, and, moving her hands like a dancer from San Francisco, danced out alone onto the canvas platform.

A brief silence; the orchestra leader changed the music to fit her, and there was a burst of chatter as people mistakenly believed she was Gilda Gray’s understudy from the Follies. The party had begun.

I figured on the first night I went to Gatsby’s place, I was one of the few people who’s actually been invited. Most people just showed up. They piled into cars and somehow ended up at Gatsby’s door.

Once there, someone who knew him introduced them, and then they just acted like it was an amusement park. Sometimes they’d even come and go without meeting Gatsby at all, showing up for the party like it was no big deal - their own ticket to get in.

I’d been officially invited. A chauffeur in a bright blue uniform drove up my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his boss: it would be a real honor, the note said, if I’d come to his "little party" that night.

He’s seen me around a few times, and had been meaning to drop by way before, but things just hadn’t worked out - signed Jay Gatsby, in a really fancy handwriting.

I dressed up in white pants and headed over to his lawn a little after seven, feeling pretty awkward wandering around among all these people I didn’t know - though I recognized a few faces from the train.

I noticed a ton of young British guys hanging around, all dressed sharp, all looking a little hungry, and all talking quietly and seriously to wealthy Americans. I was convinced they were selling something: bonds, insurance, cars - something like that.

They were definitely aware of all the easy money around and thought it was practically theirs if they just said the right thing.

As soon as I got there, I tried to find my host, but the few people I asked just stared at me like I was crazy and insisted they had no idea where he was. So, I ducked over to the cocktail table - the only place in the yard where a single guy could hang out without feeling totally lost and alone.

I was about to get totally wasted out of sheer embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the top of the marble steps, leaning back a bit and looking down at the garden with a bored, interested expression.

Whether she was glad to see me or not, I needed to latch onto someone before I started chatting up random people.

"Hey!" I yelled, heading towards her.

My voice sounded way louder than it should have across the yard.

"I thought you might be here," she said, sounding distracted. "I remembered you lived next door to - "

She held my hand briefly, like a promise that she’d take care of me in a sec, and listened to two girls in matching yellow dresses who stopped at the bottom of the steps.

"Hi!" they chimed together.

"Sorry you didn’t win."

That was for the golf tournament. She’s lost in the finals the week before.

"You don’t know who we are," said one of the girls in yellow, "but we met you here about a month ago."

"You’ve dyed your hair since then," remarked Jordan, and I jumped, but the girls had already moved on, and her comment was directed at the early moon, probably brought out like the dinner, no doubt from a caterer’s basket.

With Jordan’s long, golden arm resting in mine, we strolled around the garden. A tray of cocktails floated over to us in the twilight, and we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow and three guys, each one introduced as Mr. Mumble.

"Do you come to these parties often?" Jordan asked the girl beside her.

"The last one was the one I met you at," answered the girl, in a sharp, confident voice.

She turned to her companion: "Wasn’t it for you, Lucille?"

It was for Lucille, too.

"I love coming here," Lucille said. "I don’t really care what I do, so I always have a blast. Last time I was here, I ripped my dress on a chair, and he asked for my name and number - within a week, I got a package from Croirier’s with a brand new evening gown in it."

"Did you keep it?" asked Jordan.

"Totally. I was gonna wear it tonight, but it was too big in the bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars."

"There’s something weird about a guy who’s gonna do something like that," said the other girl excitedly. "He’s not looking for drama with anyone."

"Who isn’t?" I asked.

"Gatsby. Someone told me - "

The two girls and Jordan leaned in, whispering.

"Someone told me they thought he killed a man once."

A shiver went through all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles leaned forward, listening intently.

"I don’t think it’s that bad," said Lucille skeptically. "It’s more like he was a German spy during the war."

One of the men nodded in agreement.

"I heard that from a guy who knew him well, grew up with him in Germany," he assured us.

"Oh, no," said the first girl. "It couldn’t be that, because he was in the American army during the war."

As our doubts faded, she leaned forward with enthusiasm.

"You catch him sometimes when he thinks nobody’s watching. I bet he killed a man."

She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was crazy how much he inspired gossip - people who barely knew him were whispering about him.

The first dinner - there’s another one later - was being served, and Jordan invited me to join her group, who were spread out around a table on the other side of the garden.

There were three married couples and Jordan’s date, a college kid who was always making suggestive jokes and obviously thought Jordan was eventually going to give in to him.

Instead of being all over the place, this group had a super classy vibe, acting like they were the best of the countryside - East Egg showing off to West Egg and carefully avoiding any wildness.

"Let’s go," whispered Jordan, after a strangely boring half-hour. "This is way too proper for me."

We got up, and she said we were going to find the host. I hadn’t met him yet, and it was making me nervous. The college kid nodded in a cynical, sad way.

The bar, where we looked first, was packed, but Gatsby wasn’t there. She couldn’t spot him from the top of the steps, and he wasn’t on the porch.

On a whim, we tried a door that looked important, and walked into a huge Gothic library, with walls made of carved English oak, and probably shipped straight from some old ruin overseas.

A stout, middle-aged guy, with huge owl-eyed glasses, was sitting a little drunk on the edge of a big table, staring with intense focus at the bookshelves. As we walked in, he spun around and checked out Jordan from head to toe.

"What do you think?" he demanded excitedly.

"About what?"

He waved his hand toward the bookshelves.

"About that. Actually, you don’t even need to figure it out. I already did. They’re real."

"The books?"

He nodded.

"Totally real - they have pages and everything. I thought they’d be cheap cardboard. Seriously, they’re real. Pages and - Here! Let me show you."

Assuming we didn’t believe him, he rushed to the bookcases and came back with Volume One of the Stoddard Lectures.

"See!" he shouted, super excited. "It’s a real deal, printed stuff. It totally fooled me! This guy’s like a genius, a total Belasco. It’s a win! So thorough! So realistic! Knew when to stop too - didn’t rip out any pages. But what do you want? What were you expecting?"

He grabbed the book from me and shoved it back on the shelf, muttering that if you took out just one brick, the whole library could fall apart.

"Who brought you?" he demanded.

"Or did you just show up? I got brought. Most people were brought."

Jordan looked at him, alert and cheerful, without saying anything.

"I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt," he continued.

"Mrs. Claud Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I’ve been hammered for like a week now, and I thought maybe sitting in a library would sober me up."

"Is it working?"

"A little, I think. I can’t really tell yet. I’m only here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They’re real. They’re - "

"You told us."

We shook his hand seriously and headed back outside.

Now there was dancing on the grass in the garden. Older guys were pushing young girls backward in these awkward, never-ending circles, couples showing off holding each other in a trendy way, and a bunch of single girls dancing by themselves or giving the band a break from the banjo and drums.

By midnight, things were getting wild. A famous singer belted out Italian songs, and a super popular jazz singer performed, and between songs people were pulling stunts all over the garden, with tons of happy, empty laughter floating up to the summer sky.

A pair of identical twins, who turned out to be the girls in yellow, did a baby act in costumes, and champagne was served in glasses bigger than your hand.

The moon was higher now, and out on the Sound was a shimmering triangle of silver, trembling slightly to the tinny sound of the banjos on the lawn.

I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a guy about my age and a loud little girl who burst into uncontrollable laughter at the slightest thing. I was having a good time.

I’d had a couple of finger-bowls of champagne, and the whole scene had transformed into something significant, raw, and deep.

During a break in the entertainment, the guy looked at me and smiled.

"You look familiar," he said politely. "Weren’t you in the First Division during the war?"

"Yeah. I was in the Twenty-eighth Infantry."

"I was in the Sixteenth until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I’d seen you somewhere before."

We chatted for a bit about some wet, grey little towns in France. He clearly lived around here, because he told me he’s just bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning.

"Wanna come with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound."

"What time?"

"Anytime that works for you."

I almost asked his name when Jordan glanced around and smiled.

"Having a good time?" she asked.

"Much better."

I turned back to my new friend.

"This is a pretty unusual party for me. I haven’t even seen the host. I live over there - " I gestured toward the invisible hedge in the distance, "and this man, Gatsby, sent over his chauffeur with an invitation."

For a moment, he looked at me like he didn’t get it.

"I’m Gatsby," he said suddenly.

"What!" I exclaimed. "Oh, I’m so sorry."

"I thought you knew, old sport. I guess I’m not a very good host."

He smiled - a really knowing smile, way beyond just understanding. It was one of those rare smiles that just radiates reassurance, the kind you might see, like, four or five times in your whole life.

It felt like it was facing the whole world for a second, then focused completely on you, like it already liked you. It understood you exactly as much as you wanted to be understood, believed in you like you hoped to believe in yourself, and made you feel like it totally got you, at your best.

Then, just like that, it was gone - and I was looking at an elegant young dude, maybe a couple years over thirty, who was trying a little too hard to sound formal. I’d gotten the vibe earlier that he was really picking his words carefully.

Just as Mr. Gatsby introduced himself, a butler rushed over saying Chicago was calling. He excused himself with a small bow, including all of us.

"If you need anything, just ask, old sport," he said. "Gotta run, I’ll catch up with you later."

When he was gone, I immediately turned to Jordan - I had to tell her how surprised I was. I totally pictured Mr. Gatsby as this middle-aged guy, a little heavy and flushed.

"Who is he?" I asked. "Do you know?"

"He’s just a guy named Gatsby."

"Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?"

"Now you’re getting into it," she said with a kind of tired smile. "He told me once he went to Oxford."

A hazy backstory started to form, but it disappeared when she said the next thing.

"But I don’t buy it."

"Why not?"

"I don’t know," she insisted.

"I just don’t think he went there."

Something in her tone reminded me of the other girl’s "I think he killed a man," and it just made me curious. I would’ve accepted it without question if he’d come from the Louisiana swamps or the Lower East Side of New York. That would’ve made sense.

But young guys - at least, that's what I believed, being as inexperienced as I was - didn't just pop up out of nowhere and buy a mansion on Long Island Sound.

"Anyway, he throws huge parties," Jordan said, changing the subject with a city-slicker’s dislike of anything concrete. "And I love huge parties. They’ll feel intimate. Small parties? No privacy at all."

There was a boom of a bass drum, and the orchestra leader’s voice suddenly cut through the garden noise.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he shouted. "At Mr. Gatsby’s request, we’re going to play Mr. Vladimir Tostoff’s latest piece, which caused a huge buzz at Carnegie Hall last May If you read the papers, you know it was a big deal."

He smiled condescendingly, and added, "A big deal!" and everyone laughed.

"The piece is known," he concluded loudly, "as ‘Vladimir Tostoff’s Jazz History of the World!’"

I couldn’t wrap my head around what Mr. Tostoff’s composition was, because just as it started, my eyes landed on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps, looking over the crowd with approval. His tanned skin was stretched tight on his face, and his short hair looked freshly trimmed every day.

I couldn’t find anything shady about him. I wondered if the fact that he wasn’t drinking helped him stand out from his guests, because it seemed like he got more polished as the party got wilder.

When the "Jazz History of the World" ended, girls were leaning on guys’ shoulders in a playful, friendly way, girls were playfully swooning backward into guys’ arms, even into groups, knowing someone would catch them - but no one swooned backward onto Gatsby, and no French bobs touched Gatsby’s shoulder, and no singing quartets formed with Gatsby’s head as one link.

"Excuse me."

Gatsby’s butler suddenly appeared beside us.

"Miss Baker?" he asked. "I’m so sorry, but Mr. Gatsby wants to talk to you alone."

"Seriously?" she exclaimed, surprised.

"Yes, ma’am."

She got up slowly, raising her eyebrows at me in disbelief, and followed the butler toward the house. I noticed she wore all her dresses like workout clothes - there was a bouncy, energetic vibe to her movements, like she’d first learned to walk on golf courses on crisp, sunny mornings.

I was alone, and it was almost two. For a while, confused and intriguing sounds had been coming from a huge room with tons of windows that overlooked the terrace. Dodging Jordan’s college buddy, who was now deep in conversation with two dancers and practically begging me to join them, I went inside.

The big room was packed with people. One of the girls in yellow was playing the piano, and next to her stood a tall, red-haired woman from a famous chorus, singing.

She’d had a lot of champagne, and during her song, she suddenly decided - kind of awkwardly - that everything was incredibly sad - she wasn’t just singing, she was crying too.

Every time there was a pause in the song, she’s fill it with gasping, broken sobs, and then pick up the lyrics again in a shaky, high-pitched voice.

Tears streamed down her cheeks - but not freely, because when they hit her heavily beaded eyelashes, they turned dark and trickled down her face in slow, black streaks.

Someone joked that she should sing the notes on her face, and she threw up her hands, sank into a chair, and passed out in a deep, wine-induced sleep.

"She had a fight with a guy who claims to be her husband," a girl next to me explained.

I looked around. Most of the other women were also fighting with guys who said they were their husbands. Even Jordan’s crew from East Egg were falling apart.

One of the guys was talking intensely to a young actress, and his wife, after trying to laugh it off with a dignified air, completely lost it and started launching surprise attacks - at random intervals, she’d pop up beside him like an angry diamond and hiss, "You promised!" in his ear.

The reluctance to leave wasn’t just about the guys. The hallway was currently occupied by two totally sober guys and their seriously annoyed wives. The wives were commiserating with each other in hushed voices.

"Whenever I’m having a good time, he wants to go home."

"I’m hearing the most selfish thing ever in my life."

"We’re always the first ones to leave."

"So are we."

"Well, we’re almost the last tonight," one of the guys mumbled sheepishly.

"The band left half an hour ago."

Despite the wives’ insistence that the guys were unbelievable, the argument ended in a short scuffle, and both wives were kicked out into the night. As I waited for my hat in the hallway, the library door opened, and Jordan Baker and Gatsby came out together.

He was saying something last to her, but the eagerness in his manner suddenly became formal as several people approached him to say goodbye. Jordan’s friends were calling impatiently for her from the porch, but she paused for a moment to shake hands.

"I just heard the craziest thing," she whispered. "How long were we in there?"

"Oh, about an hour."

"It was... totally wild," she repeated distractedly.

"But I swore I wouldn’t tell it, and here I am, teasing you."

She yawned gracefully in my face.

"Please come see me... Look up Mrs. Sigourney Howard in the phone book... That’s my aunt..."

She was hurrying off as she talked - her brown hand waved a casual goodbye as she disappeared into her party at the door.

I was a little embarrassed that I’d stayed so late on my first visit, so I joined the last of Gatsby’s guests, who were hanging out near him. I wanted to tell him I'd been looking for him earlier that night and to apologize for not seeing him in the garden.

"Don’t sweat it," he said, sounding really eager. "Seriously, don’t even think about it, old sport."

The phrase felt totally unfamiliar, just like the reassuring pat he gave my shoulder.

"And don’t forget, we’re taking the seaplane out tomorrow morning, at nine o’clock."

Then the butler, popping his head out from behind his shoulder:

"Philadelphia’s on the phone for you, sir."

"Yeah, tell them I’m coming. ... Good night."

"Good night."

"Good night."

He smiled - and suddenly, it felt like there was something good about being one of the last to leave, like he’d been planning it all along.

"Good night, old sport... Good night."

But as I walked down the steps, I realized the night wasn’t totally over yet. About fifty feet from the door, a dozen headlights lit up a crazy and chaotic scene. A brand-new coupe was stuck in the ditch beside the road, sitting upright but missing a wheel.

It had left Gatsby’s driveway not even two minutes earlier. A sharp corner had caused the wheel to come off, and now a bunch of curious chauffeurs were checking it out.

But with their cars blocking the road, there had been a loud, jarring noise coming from the cars behind for a while, adding to the already messed-up situation.

A guy in a long duster had climbed out of the wreck and was now standing in the middle of the road, looking from the car to the tire, and from the tire to the people watching in a confused, puzzled way.

"See!" he said. "It just went into the ditch."

He was totally shocked by what happened, and I recognized first the unusual look of wonder, and then the guy - he was Gatsby’s old library buddy.

"How did this even happen?"

He shrugged.

"I don’t know anything about cars," he said firmly.

"But how did it happen? Did you hit the wall?"

"Don’t ask me," said Owl Eyes, washing his hands of the whole thing. "I’m not much of a driver - hardly at all. It just happened, and that’s all I know."

"Well, if you’re a bad driver, you shouldn’t be driving at night."

"But I wasn’t even trying!" he explained, sounding annoyed.

"I wasn’t even trying."

A hush fell over everyone watching.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"You’re lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver and not even trying!"

"You don’t get it," said the guy. "I wasn’t driving. There’s another guy in the car."

The shock that followed this announcement came out as a long, drawn-out "Ah-h-h!" as the coupe door swung open slowly. The crowd - it was now a real crowd - stepped back without thinking, and when the door was wide open, there was a weird pause.

Then, very slowly, piece by piece, a pale, dangling figure stepped out of the wreck, testing the ground with a huge, uncertain dancing shoe.

Blinded by the headlights and confused by the constant honking, the figure stood swaying for a moment before he saw the man in the duster.

"Wha’s matter?" he asked calmly. "Did we run outta gas?"

"Look!"

A bunch of fingers pointed at the missing wheel - he stared at it for a moment, and then looked up as if he thought it had fallen from the sky.

"It just came off," someone explained.

He nodded.

"At first, I didn’t even notice we’d stopped."

A pause. Then, taking a deep breath and straightening his shoulders, he said in a determined voice:

"Wonder’ff tell me where there’s a gas station?"

At least a dozen guys, some of them doing a little better than he was, explained to him that the wheel and the car weren’t connected anymore.

"Back up," he suggested after a moment.

"Put her in reverse."

"But the wheel’s off!"

He hesitated.

"No harm in trying," he said.

The horns were blasting, reaching a crazy high point, and I turned away, cutting across the lawn towards home. I glanced back once. A sliver of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making the night beautiful like before, and it was still glowing from his party.

A sudden emptiness seemed to flow from the windows and the big doors, totally isolating the host. He stood on the porch, his hand raised in a formal goodbye wave.

Looking back over what I’d written so far, I realize I gave the impression that the events from three nights, spaced out a few weeks, were all that mattered to me. Not really.

They were just random things during a packed summer, and until much later, they didn’t grab my attention nearly as much as my own stuff.

Most of the time, I was working. Early mornings, the sun stretched my shadow westward as I rushed down the long, white streets of lower New York to Probity Trust.

I knew the other clerks and young guys selling bonds by their first names, and we’d grab lunch together in crowded, dimly lit restaurants, eating cheap sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee.

I even had a short thing going with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in accounting, but her brother started giving me the stink eye, so when she went on vacation in July, I just let it fade away.

I usually ate dinner at the Yale Club - for some reason, it felt like the worst part of my day - and then I’d head upstairs to the library and study investments for a solid hour.

There were usually a few rowdy people hanging around, but they never came into the library, so it was a good spot to focus. After that, if the night was nice, I’d stroll down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel, and over to thirty-third Street to Pennsylvania Station.

I started to like New York, the exciting, adventurous vibe at night, and the buzz that all the people and machines gave to my restless mind.

I liked walking up Fifth Avenue, picking out interesting women from the crowd and imagining that in a few minutes, I’d be stepping into their lives, and nobody would ever know or judge.

Sometimes, in my head, I’d follow them to their apartments on quiet corners, and they’d turn and smile back at me before disappearing through a door into a warm, dark place.

In that magical city twilight, I sometimes felt a deep loneliness, and saw it in others - young clerks hanging around in front of shop windows, waiting for it to be time for a solitary dinner - young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most precious moments of the night and their lives.

Again at eight o’clock, when the dark streets of the Forties were packed with five lanes of honking taxis heading to the theater district, I felt a pang in my chest.

People leaned close together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from jokes I couldn't hear, and lit cigarettes made swirling circles in the air. Pretending that I, too, was rushing towards fun and sharing their private excitement, I wished them well.

I kind of lost track of Jordan Baker for a while, then found her again during the summer. At first, I was stoked to hang out with her - she was a golf star, and everyone knew her name. But then it became something else. I wasn't really in love, but I felt this weird, gentle curiosity.

That bored, stuck-up face she showed the world hid something - most fake personas hide something eventually, even if they don’t at first - and one day I figured out what it was.

When we were at a party in Warwick, she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then totally lied about it - and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had slipped my mind that night at Daisy’s.

At her first big tournament, there was a huge drama that almost made the papers - it was suggested she’d moved her ball to get a better shot in the semi-finals. It almost became a scandal - then just fizzled out.

A caddy retracted his statement, and the only other person who saw it admitted he might have been wrong. The whole thing and her name just stuck with me.

Jordan Baker always avoided smart, sneaky guys, and now I realized it was because she felt safer when everyone assumed she was playing by the rules. She was a straight-up liar.

She couldn't stand being at a disadvantage, and because of that, I guess she started bending the truth when she was really young, just to keep that cool, sassy smile in place and satisfy her energetic personality.

It didn’t really bother me. Dishonesty in a girl is something you don’t take too seriously - I felt bad for a sec, then forgot about it. It was at that same party that we had this crazy conversation about driving.

It started because she almost clipped some construction workers, and our fender knocked a button off one guy’s coat.

"You’d be a terrible driver," I complained.

"You either need to be way more careful, or you shouldn’t drive at all."

"I am careful."

"No, you’re not."

"Well, other people are," she said, sounding totally casual.

"What does that even have to do with it?"

"They’ll just stay out of my way," she insisted.

"It takes two to make an accident."

"But what if you met someone just as reckless as you?"

"I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That’s why I like you."

Her grey eyes, faded by the sun, stared straight ahead, but she had totally shifted our dynamic, and for a moment I thought I loved her.

But I’m slow to process things and I have all these internal rules that act like brakes on my desires, and I knew I had to get myself out of that messy situation back home first.

I’d been writing letters once a week and signing them: "Love, Nick," and all I could think of was how, when that certain girl played tennis, a tiny line of sweat would appear on her upper lip. Still, there was this unspoken understanding that I had to gently end before I could move on.

Everyone thinks they’re good at at least one virtue, and this is mine: I’m one of the few honest people I’ve ever met.