Chapter 65
Shiloh
Age 13
I jumped onto my bed and pulled the notebook from beneath my pillow. Giddy with excitement, I turned to the clock, reached for the phone, and waited. Any minute now, he'd be...
The phone rang, and I quickly picked up before my Nona could hear it going off.
"Daisy?" His voice came through when I clicked on.
"Gatsby," I sighed. His voice was a drug to me, a sense of comfort. My body and soul relaxed the instant he said my name.
"How was your day?"
"It was okay. It was the anniversary of my mom's passing. Nona made me go to her grave to place flowers. I cleaned up her tombstone. I visited Dad as well."
"I'm sorry. You told me that was today; I totally forgot," he said.
"It's okay. I'll be doing this again in a week, and then after their anniversaries are done, I don't think about it until the next year," I tried to joke through my pain. While I had no memory of my mother, knowing my father killed himself to be with her, was still hard every single year. "Let's talk about good things. What did you do today?"
"If we're only talking about good things, then I can't really tell you about my day." Gatsby snickered. I waited, and after a moment, he sighed and continued. "My mom keeps me working. I got invited to play video games with my friend Luke, but my mom told me I had to go... fix his mom's bathroom sink. So while all my friends were in the living room playing and laughing, I was stuck in his mom's room, working."
"Oh, that sounds awful." His mother made him work him so much. He was always fixing people's plumbing. Since all the husbands were away in the military, the wives relied on Gatsby a lot to help them with maintenance. That stuff should never be put on a child.
"It was. I got filthy and tore my shirt. It was embarrassing."
"If I lived on base, I'd never make you fix anything," I said.
"No, you wouldn't, would you?”
Silence settled for a brief moment before I remembered the notebook in front of me.
"Oh! Are you ready for our book discussion?"
"Of course, I have my notes right here. Now, where did we leave off?"
I leaned forward, grabbing my notebook. "We were discussing the idea that Gatsby didn't love Daisy at all but the idea of her. "
"Right. I hate this one," he complained.
Over the time in our friendship, we'd gone through lots of books, but we always came back to revisit The Great Gatsby . We'd read and analyzed the book over and over, chapter by chapter, line by line. We'd gone online to look up people's theories and interpretations and were discussing those.
"Agree or disagree?" I asked, my heart squeezing.
"Disagree, obviously."
I relaxed.
"I think people want Gatsby to be delusional, to make his death less sad. That he 'got what he deserved' for not seeing the real Daisy. That Daisy was this cruel, uncaring woman who only used Gatsby, but I don't believe that's the case."
"Then why didn't she go to the funeral?" I asked.
"Nick didn't see her at the funeral. Maybe she didn't attend the service but that doesn't mean she didn't pay her respects before or after. That's the most interesting part of the story, that it's not told by Daisy or Gatsby, leaving the truth to never be truly known. I think pessimists want Daisy to be the bad guy, and Gatsby to be a sap, but the optimists choose for them to have just been victims of circumstance."
"So you're an optimist?" I lay my head onto my pillows, twirling a lock of hair around my finger.
"When it comes to Gatsby's love for Daisy, of course."
I bit my lower lip, holding back a loud squeal. He always knew exactly what to say to get my little teenage heart beating wild.
Throughout the night, we discussed our favorite book until exhaustion. I started to yawn, and looked over, seeing it was midnight.
"Should we call it a night?" His voice dripped in sadness.
"I mean, is there anything left to say?" I asked, sitting up to flip through my notes. I had twenty hand-written pages of notes front and back, and we'd gone through them all.
"Actually... yes."
I blinked. Something about the shift in his tone got my attention.
"I, uh, well, I planned this better in my head, but I've been thinking about it for a while. Especially while with Mrs. Debicki today. Daisy, I know we haven't seen each other in person yet, but?—"
"I'm in love with you, Gatsby." My heart hammered in my ears. Was I being delusional? Was he going to say something else, and I just made a fool of myself? Had I mistaken his friendship for something more?
Was I just some teenage girl with a stupid crush?
With each second that passed, my anxiety grew. Why wasn't he speaking?
"Hello?" I called into the phone, now mortified that I'd just said something so utterly insane to him. "Hello?" My voice cracked as I called again. I pulled the phone from my face, and that was when I realized the phone had died.
What a cliffhanger.
I got up, putting the phone on the charger, and went to bed. I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned all night, wondering what Gatsby had been trying to say, and if he'd heard what I said before my phone had died. I had to sit through the entire day, school, dance practice, meals, all of it, anxious and worried that I'd lost my only friend in the whole world, just because I too, like the original Gatsby, had built someone up in my head that wasn't real.
And as I lay in bed that evening, holding the phone to my chest, hoping he'd call, I realized he was right. Just last night, I'd agreed with Gatsby on his theory on the real Daisy versus a false one. I was an optimist then, thinking the boy on the other line liked me. But as nine pm passed, and there was no phone call, I was falling into a pessimistic state.
Was I Gatsby, having fallen for a Daisy that didn't exist?
I was ready to accept the loss of my friendship when at 9:03, the sharp ring caused me to bolt straight up and scramble to answer the phone.
"Hello?" I yelled into it.
"Hey, Daisy? You okay? The phone cut off last night and I couldn't get through to call back."
"Yeah, it died. You're late." I laughed lightly, trying not to sound obsessive.
"I know, sorry about that. Mrs. Debicki needed me again, so I got home late and I like to shower before talking to you."
"No worries," I lied, trying to play aloof. "Now, where were we? We were discussing Jordan and Nick being interested in each other, versus the theory that both characters were gay."
"Yes, but can we circle back to what we were talking about right before you got cut off?"
I pressed my lips together tightly. Had he heard?
"I mean, sure. Do you remember?" I tried to pretend as if I couldn't, but I was a terrible actress.
"Yeah. You had said, ‘I’m in love with you, Gatsby.'"
A nervous giggle slipped from my lips. "Oh, right. I was just kidding."
"Were you?" His voice shifted.
"I mean, yeah." I blew air out of my mouth. "That's wild, since we've never even met, am I right?"
"I don't think so."
The air in the room thickened.
"I think you know me better than anyone, and that I live for our nightly calls. I think that sometimes it's the only thing keeping me going. You're on my mind always, and I just need to say it before we talk about anything else tonight. I don't love Daisy."
My heart stopped. My mind went blank.
What? He'd just said a million nice, beautiful things about me, and then... he doesn't love me?
"I love Shiloh."
My heart restarted, slowly, but it was there.
"What?" I whispered.
"I love our nicknames for each other, and while in my head, you'll always be Daisy and I hope I'll always be your Gatsby, I just need you to know that I'm not living in some fantasy world. That I don't love Daisy, this girl I've built up in my head. I love Shiloh, the one I talk to every single night. The only one who hears me when I speak, the one that if you stop breathing, I stop breathing. And the one that I'm going to marry some day."
I didn't know what to say.
He did love me. What does one say to someone who just bared it all to you?
"I love you too, Emile."