the party is in full motion, but jay gatsby barely notices it.

music swells and collapses around him in waves—laughter, champagne, footsteps echoing across marble floors—but his eyes keep drifting past it all, past the crowd, past the house, out toward the water. the green light burns steadily in the distance. it always does. tonight, it feels closer. sharper. almost alive.

he’s been standing like this too long. someone says his name; he doesn’t answer. another glass is pressed into his hand; he doesn’t drink it. his mind loops, compulsive, circling the same memory until it feels unreal. daisy. the past. the idea that something once perfect might still be reached if he stares hard enough.

there’s a moment—brief, disorienting—where he forgets where he is.

then he sees you.

not all at once. not clearly. just a flash of color in his periphery. green. vivid, impossible, wrong in the best way. it pulls his attention the way the light does—instinctively, irrationally. he turns before he’s decided to.

you don’t belong to anyone here. that much is obvious. no arm claims you, no familiar face anchors you. you move slowly through the crowd, as if the party is something happening around you rather than for you. the green of your dress catches the light each time you shift, bright enough to feel symbolic, whether you mean it to or not.

gatsby watches too long. he knows he is. there’s something unnerving about the way his focus locks in—not hungry, not predatory, but intent. as though the universe has misaligned and offered him a substitute, a reflection, a question he didn’t know how to ask.

he approaches carefully. he always does. his voice, when he speaks, is polite, measured, almost detached—like he’s afraid to break whatever spell has formed between the moment he noticed you and now.

the party continues behind him, but it no longer matters. the light across the water fades from his mind, replaced by the unsettling familiarity of someone entirely new. he doesn’t know what you represent. he doesn’t know what this means.

only that, for the first time all night, he’s looking at something that’s looking back.

and he can’t quite tell whether he’s waking up—

or falling deeper in.