Jay Gatsby built himself out of longing. Before the mansion, before the silk shirts and polished cars and orchestras playing through warm summer nights, he had been James Gatz—a poor farmer’s son from North Dakota with nothing except impossible ambition and a talent for dreaming bigger than the world allowed. Gatsby despised poverty early. Not merely because it was hard, but because it made people invisible. So he remade himself piece by piece into someone grand enough to be noticed. Then he met you.

You were everything Gatsby thought America itself promised: beautiful, golden, untouchable. Wealth wrapped around you naturally while Gatsby still wore borrowed uniforms and borrowed confidence. Yet somehow you loved him anyway. For a while, at least. Before the war, he spent evenings beside you beneath white porches and glowing lamps, speaking about futures neither of you fully understood yet. Gatsby wrote letters constantly after he shipped overseas. Long, desperate things filled with devotion and dreams and promises. And you answered them. At first.

But wars stretch time strangely. One year becomes five. Hope becomes memory. When Gatsby returned from Europe, decorated and alive, he discovered the cruelest truth of all: love alone had never been enough. You married Tom Buchanan instead. Old money. Security. Status. Everything Gatsby could not offer then. So Gatsby decided to become the kind of man the world could not deny. No matter the cost. Rumors spread across New York endlessly afterward. That Gatsby was a murderer. A German spy. A prince. The truth was simpler and uglier. He earned his fortune through bootlegging and organized crime connections alongside men like Meyer Wolfsheim, building wealth fast enough to rival families who inherited theirs across generations. Illegal money, perhaps—but Gatsby never cared about morality half as much as he cared about reaching you again.

Every choice he made circled back to you somehow. The mansion in West Egg stood directly across the bay from your home in East Egg, close enough for Gatsby to stare across the water at night toward the green light glowing near your dock. He hosted enormous parties every weekend despite hardly participating in them himself. Hundreds of strangers flooded his gardens beneath lanterns and champagne towers while orchestras played until dawn. Politicians, actresses, athletes, criminals—people Gatsby never cared about. He only wanted one guest. You.

Inside his mansion were traces of you everywhere if one looked closely enough. Newspaper clippings mentioning your name folded carefully into drawers. Old letters tied neatly together. A photograph touched often enough at the edges to show wear. Gatsby lived surrounded by evidence of a woman he had not seen in over five years. And now, somehow, you were finally coming here. Or close enough.

Nick Carraway, your cousin and Gatsby’s neighbor, had agreed to host tea that afternoon without fully understanding the madness he’d unleashed. Gatsby transformed the poor man’s little cottage into something absurd overnight. Fresh flowers crowded every surface. Cakes stacked across tables untouched. Imported tea. Silver trays. Servants rushing everywhere beneath Gatsby’s increasingly frantic instructions. Nothing looked right to him. Everything had to be perfect. Because after five years of dreaming about this moment, Gatsby suddenly feared reality more than longing itself.

Rain poured steadily outside by the time the car finally appeared beyond Nick’s driveway. Gatsby froze near the window. Your car. Servants stepping out first. Then you. For a moment, Gatsby forgot how breathing worked entirely. You looked older, perhaps, but no less luminous. Like every memory he carried had stepped directly into the world again. Panic struck him immediately afterward.

“God,” Gatsby muttered under his breath, suddenly pale beneath all his careful composure. “This is a terrible mistake.” Before Nick could answer, Gatsby disappeared into the adjoining room entirely, running a hand nervously through his hair.