There Was Time
RECOMMENDED TRACK: Karan Aujla and OneRepublic – Tell Me
The sharp switch from spending all my time with Misha to being two hundred miles away had left me feeling unmoored while I was with my family for Christmas. It was bittersweet that my childhood home was less and less “home” as time moved on, even before I’d met Misha. But reducing his warm, captivating presence to a text thread and a few video calls felt like going from Shakespeare to Cliff’s Notes.
It didn’t help that I still had the uneasy sense that he was struggling with something he wouldn’t tell me about. I didn’t want to ask about it until we were in the same room again, but that didn’t make the feeling go away.
So even though I love my parents, who showered me with all the love and attention the baby of the family gets used to, I was more eager to return to campus than usual.
But I didn’t pry into Misha’s situation as soon as I got back, either.
I kept finding a reason not to ask. That first in-person reunion melted quickly into a reunion of our…persons, with mutual enthusiasm. We didn’t have classes for almost a week still, so the next day we lay in a warm bubble of contentment and I wasn’t ready to pierce it. The day after, we spent time hanging out at Sig House with the handful of guys who had already returned, which wasn’t the right place for a serious conversation. The day after that we drove into the city, where Misha took me to dinner and a show.
And on and on. He was attentive and sweet and although I sometimes saw his face go dark, I started to tell myself that he would tell me when he was ready. That I shouldn’t push. That there was time.
You’d think I’d have learned my lesson.
On the Saturday night before classes started back up, the Sigmas—unsurprisingly—threw a big party. I’d tried to put in more regular appearances at these events before holiday break. I wanted to be part of Misha’s world, and as I came to know more of the regular crowd, I felt less intimidated. Elliott and I joined forces with the chapter president, Jacob, and a couple other brothers and party regulars to establish the house library as a safe sanctuary for anyone who needed a little time away from all the noise.
That particular night, Misha was crushing some guy from another fraternity at beer pong and I was feeling a little awkward off to the side, so I signaled to him where I’d be and slipped away as soon as he acknowledged it with a wink and a wave.
In the library, I was pleased to find quite a few people including Elliott and a couple other lit students I knew. I dove eagerly into their conversation, which naturally steered itself towards, what else? Literature. Sort of.
“Oh, I love Greta Gerwig’s version,” Elliott was saying after we’d been discussing Little Women. “I love Gerwig generally.”
“Too bad Barbie is so misunderstood,” said someone else, a sophomore I hadn’t been introduced to. “It’s like the new Great Gatsby. Everyone shows up for the party and misses the point.”
“My kingdom for an adaptation of Gatsby that actually puts the class critique front and center,” Elliott bemoaned.
“But would anyone actually show up if they did?” I pointed out. The door opened and my eyes flicked up to see Adrian step unexpectedly into the library. My stomach tightened. Calm down. Misha trusts you. And it’s not like you can run out of the room. So I continued. “Let’s face it, audiences are drawn to Gatsby for the glitz and glamour of the Roaring Twenties. Making a more message-y version is a noble goal, but what value is a message that doesn’t reach an audience?”
“But what value is the story without the message?” Adrian offered, sliding into the conversation as easily as if he’d been there the whole time. He stepped into the awkward cluster of people beside me, the sophomore making room for him. “Wouldn’t an adaptor of The Great Gatsby have some responsibility to carry that message forth?”
“I don’t know if I agree with the premise that a watered-down version of the message is the same as ‘nothing,’” I said, not so much arguing as spit-balling. “I see your point, but there’s got to be some kind of balance, right?”
“The message has to reach the audience, and still be the message. I don’t envy anyone the task,” Adrian said, accepting an open bottle of beer from Elliott. “But no one’s managed it with Gatsby in decades. Maybe ever.”
“In all fairness, no one understood Gatsby when it first came out, either,” Elliott said.
“All that Jazz Age escapism,” the sophomore added with a sage nod, her eyes flicking to Elliott eagerly. I suppressed a little grin. “They were too busy reading Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
“Or This Side of Paradise,” I added, gesturing with my own empty beer bottle. “Lush escapism, also by Fitzgerald. People dreamed of escaping economic injustice, not analyzing it.” I tucked my hair behind my ear, thinking. “Maybe today’s audiences are the same. Maybe we’re in another Gilded Age.” I thought of Misha and his seemingly bottomless credit card. I’d had to institute a spending cap after the party dress he’d bought me opened a gifting floodgate.
Adrian shot me a look so piercing I felt it as Elliott and the sophomore carried the conversation a little longer. I tried to look the other way, but his eyes held mine for a moment, always calculating. Not sinister—more like he was trying to solve something that sat between us. “I suppose you would cast me as a Tom Buchanan in this new Gilded Age,” he suggested under his breath, leaning closer.
“Of course not,” I said, moving subtly to maintain my distance. “You don’t play football.” The quip tumbled from me naturally, as did a smirk I thought might be the beer’s influence, or Misha’s.
“Ah, right,” Adrian rolled his eyes, but his lips quirked up. “Would I be Nick, then? Just commenting imperiously from the sidelines?”
I don’t think he meant to, but his voice had a bitter aftertaste. “Nah,” I said flippantly. “Maybe Monty could be Tom,” I said without much thought, trying to keep us on safer ground. “He’s big enough for a footballer.”
“Travis is much too easygoing,” Adrian shook his head, and I was worried he might point to Misha as our Tom, with his intense physicality. Instead, he changed the subject. “You were making a good point, before. About a new Gilded Age. About people wanting to escape, not analyze.” He clinked his still-full bottle against my empty one. A smile—a small one, and a little rueful, but real—lit his face. I felt my cheeks turn pink and alarm bells began ringing in my head. “Even rich, powerful Tom wants to escape his life and slum it with his mistress.”
I shot him a look as the others around us laughed at something Elliott had said. “Are you winding up to tell me something?” I asked, a little crisply.
Adrian pulled back a little, his calculating eyes widening a fraction. “No, no. I’m not trying to overstep,” he said, hands up in defense. “You were just right, that’s all. It’s…something I’m going to think about, I suspect.”
I relaxed slightly, feeling guilty for the accusatory tone. “It’s good that you actually care about what’s under the gilding,” I said after a moment. “Not a lot of guys in your position would.”
Adrian conceded that with a tilt of his head. “More of us should,” he said, taking a sip of his beer at last. “But I don’t want to be a Tom or a Nick. I want to be…” He paused and swallowed, like he hadn’t meant to go this far but wouldn’t stop now that he’d committed. “I realized recently that I want to be more like a Roosevelt. One of the ones who actually did some good along with the bad, at least.” He looked down, inspecting the label of his beer intently.
How do you push away someone who wants to open up to you, especially when it’s so obvious that it doesn’t come naturally to them?
“Then I’m sure you will be,” I said finally. It felt inadequate, but it was better than saying please don’t tell me that because I won’t be the one next to you when it happens.
We must have felt the same undercurrent of discomfort because we both turned back to the group conversation—which had moved on to the new Wuthering Heights movie—by silent, mutual agreement. I couldn’t help continuing to think about what he said, though. Adrian was growing, was thinking about the future. He had an idea of what he wanted, of who he wanted to be…and he was even willing to share that with me.
It occurred to me that I had just pushed Adrian away for doing exactly what I was waiting, hoping for Misha to do. And I was starting to worry about why he wouldn’t.
Bonus Content:
The Contract
Author’s Note
B-Side Track: David Byrne – Doing the Right Thing
Look at Adrian maturing a little. Good for you, Adrian.
FUN FACT:
Months after I wrote this chapter, there was a little flurry of people posting a Gatsby quote:
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness”
…and talking about how relevant it still is today. (It was around the same time as Taylor Swift’s wedding but I don’t know if it was related to that or not?) Anyway, I’m certainly not the first or only person to make the comparison of the current age to the Gilded Age and the Jazz Age.
So, Adrian stepped up a bit. Will Misha? Can Misha?