Adelaide Gordon

I met Adelaide at the edge of September. She was still tan from the hours spent boating out of Greenwich Cove. She grew up knee-deep in the water. Callouses were the result of years running back and forth from her grand, yellow shingle house down to the shore. She was all Catholic school and Fair Isle sweaters and competitive tennis. Her father was the founder of a yacht club, for Christ's sake. I was genuinely shocked she didn't have golden retrievers. She had green eyes and flaming, mane-like red hair. She towered over me. A shiksa princess. My mother would have killed me.

Our first date went awfully. She was startlingly quick -- wildly bright, but also quick to temper and start argument. Later, I would fall hard for her Irish temper, but that first day, I was having none of it. She was out of touch, so privileged she wouldn't know poverty if it slapped her in the face; and I was nearing that. As I grabbed my coat to storm out, I spat at her that she reminded me of Bunny Corcoran from The Secret History. A huge smile grew across her face; "I love that book!"

"That's not meant to be a compliment," I hissed, fumbling around for my wallet in my coat pocket. "They literally fucking killed him." I was broke and on basically every scholarship, but I still wanted to pay.

Thankfully, unlike Bunny, she was generous with her money. She got the tab. I flipped her off and left, hoping I would never see her again. The next day in creative writing, she sat in her usual seat next to me, and slid over a chocolate rose.

"I'm sorry," she said, face all dewey from the late summer. The moment we locked eyes, I knew I was done for. She continued, "I shouldn't have been so volatile yesterday. You're just... you're really smart, Hadassah, and I wanted to keep up with you. I may have gone a bit too far with the debate."

Underneath the rough, ambitious exterior, she was sincere, empathetic, and sensitive.

She was dedicated in school. She was a poli-sci major back then, an art history minor, dead-set on being in Congress. I was never quite sure why she enrolled in that American University creative writing class, but I am so glad she did.