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Prudentia
Jordan meets Daisy during a party (how wonderfully cliché, she will think later). It’s one of her first social gatherings, the third one: the others blend with one another, a blurry mix of alcohol and fake smiles and barely concealed annoyance. But this one stands out in her mind, clear like green light in the fog.
She’s merely eighteen, but holds her alcohol remarkably well for one so young, or so one boy had told her as he filled her glass again. She hasn’t yet acquired her soon-to-be-typical aloofness yet, and with her recent growth spurt she towers over most of the boys. It makes her feel uneasy and she stumbles both on her words and her feet.
She’s fidgeting with the hem of her dress, glancing briefly around the room every now and then, trying to be casual about the nervousness that creeps under her skin and nodding politely at whatever question she’s asked.
She’s just opening her mouth to tell the boy who’s pestering her that, no, she doesn’t dance, when she sees Daisy: her mouth remains stupidly open.
The girl is a goddess. «Daisy Fae,» her suitor exhales, and he joins the buzzing swarm of men gathering around her.
The girl — «Daisy», Jordan repeats, tasting the letters and finally closing her mouth — laughs, silver cascading effortlessly from her pink lips. Her eyes flutter open and closed, allowing her audience to focus on her big, blue eyes and her long lashes. There’s a man at her arm, but Jordan barely notices him: her ears, eyes and mouth too full of Daisy.
She’s suddenly standing up, and and an invisible force guides her feet towards Daisy. Carefully, she stalks closer, until not one note of her voice is lost to her ears.
Daisy’s eyes dwell for a second on her, and Jordan feels her pulse quicken, and her cheeks burn, and a mix of expectation and anxiety build up in her chest, but just as quick something else has caught Daisy’s attention, and her head flicks in another direction, quick like a bird who has seen something shiny, her blonde hair bobbing along.
Jordan’s heart sinks, and that’s the moment she knows she’s in love with Daisy Fae.
Temperantia
Jordan starts playing golf because someone tells her Daisy sometimes attends the matches. To her surprise (and her family’s) she’s good enough that she doesn’t even have to to try too hard. Winning has an addictive taste, it’s true, but it’s not that she loves winning; she simply hates losing. And it’s silly, really, the first time it happens, the first time her long flamingo-like legs carry her way faster than her opponents’ and victory is just a nudge away and there’s no one with her but green artificial grass and silent trees. And as they hand her the trophy, she spots the glint of sun shining on blonde hair, and her heart soars.
The next day she’s delivered an invitation to a party in the Fae household, the ink lightly imprinted on amber paper: she holds it close to her heart and breathes in a faint smell of chrysanthemums.
And so it begins.
Daisy takes an immediate shining to her, to her dark hair and hard angles, so unlike her: she seats her down in front of her mirror, traces lovingly her lips with red lipstick and carefully paints her nails, softly blowing on them to dry them off. Her lips are so close to her hand Jordan wonders what it would be like to reverently trace them with her index finger, smudging the red lipstick first with her hand, then with her mouth. She shudders, and wills those feelings to wither and die.
And there’s a twinkle, in Daisy’s eyes, sometimes, shinier than her voice, softer than her skin, when they’re talking with their heads close, thighs and hips touching, there’s something in her tongue sharply clicking before she leans in to say something mean, and Jordan allows herself to hope. Sometimes.
But when Tom’s booming voice thunders through, the spell is broken, and Jordan retreats beyond glass walls, and waits.
She’s good at that. Waiting. And enduring.
Fortitudo
Gatsby. Of course. Of course it would be him, she thinks when he finally reveals himself, the most obvious sleight of hand ever performed, still craftier than her own ones.
Her body wants to shake. She can feel quaking start slow in her knees, but she won’t let herself do so. Instead, she swallows, and subtly raises her chin, and regards him with just the right mix between wonder, distance and sympathy.
«Tell me the whole story.» she says, just pliant enough to sound like an invitation and not an order.
He smiles that handsome smile of his, and starts his fairy tale, a myth that starts and ends like every other myth before ( once upon a time there was a boy who had nothing, and now he’s the king of the realm ). Poor Gatsby: he thinks he’s charming a snake, but it’s the snake, really, who’s hypnotising him. For Jordan knows the epilogue, she knows what happens after the happy ever after: Menelaus comes for Helen; Mark kills Tristan (Iseult won’t die, not this time); Delilah causes Samson’s fall. The princess gets bored, the young suitor dies, and what of the princess’ unnamed maiden, safe in her anonymity? She stays by her side, until it’s just the two of them standing. Jordan knows this that Daisy is both the princess and the dragon. Gatsby, deluded Pygmalion, will too, soon enough.
And later, between the first and the second act of their story, she realise this: she loves Daisy and no one can have her; but if you can’t win, you can’t lose either, and that’s enough for her (but not for Gatsby).
Iustita
Daisy kisses her on both cheeks, eyes fixed on something distant behind her. Jordan wonders what is she actually seeing — of course not the dirty white wall, no.
«Absolutely dreadful, Jordan, honey, Tom and I really need this journey, you’ll see… »
I’ll see what, Jordan, thinks, but keeps her mouth shut. She just wants to forget the horrible match between Tom and Gatsby, with herself as the referee and Nick as the radio commentator. No, she wants to put it all behind her, winners, losers, penalties. She wants to forget it all, and go back to normal.
«You’ll call.» she says, her lips moving on Daisy’s cheek. «You’ll call and you’ll let me know when you come back.»
«Oh, Jordan.» Daisy lets out, and burrows her face in Jordan’s shoulders. Jordan raises her long arms, and wraps them tightly around Daisy’s slight frame. She can feel her heart beating like a songbird between a feral cat’s paws. «I’ll try, I’ll try to call.»
Tom’s dry voice barks his wife’s name behind them.
Daisy’s back goes rigid at the sound, but she slowly disentangles herself from Jordan’s grip.
«I’ll try.» she repeats as Tom takes her hand. «We’ll be back soon enough, anyway.» she smiles, charming and childish.
«I know.»
It’s enough.
Jordan doesn’t play this game. Jordan can’t lose.
Trying is good enough.