Upsy Daisy: A First Love College Romance

by Smartypants Romance

  Upsy Daisy

  Higher Learning Series Book #1

  Chelsie Edwards

  www.smartypantsromance.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements & Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Sneak Peek: Stranger Ranger, Book #2 in the Park Ranger Series by Daisy Prescott

  Also by Smartypants Romance

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, rants, facts, contrivances, and incidents are either the product of the author’s questionable imagination or are used factitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or undead, events, locales is entirely coincidental if not somewhat disturbing/concerning.

  Copyright © 2020 by Smartypants Romance; All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, photographed, instagrammed, tweeted, twittered, twatted, tumbled, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without explicit written permission from the author.

  Made in the United States of America

  eBook Edition

  Dedication

  For Chris and her King.

  Chapter One

  Fisk University

  Friday, August 15, 1975

  Daisy

  “Our father said the Washington Monument really does look like a hooded Klansmen up close. It even has beady red devil eyes.”

  Dolly’s voice came into focus along with the edges of a stately building. I’d mostly spent the last three hours trying to tune her out with varying degrees of success. She was a history buff and had spent the better part of the ride peppering me with facts about Fisk University.

  Did I know it was one of the first historically Black universities to be established? Did I know it was founded in 1866? Did I know Jubilee Hall was trying to get added to the National Registry of Historic Places? (I did … it’s almost as though I’d applied to go to school there or something.)

  Sensing my lack of enthusiasm over knowledge I already possessed, she’d moved on to my father’s Washington, DC trip and was giving me—at least I thought she was giving me—his assessment of the tour of the National Mall he’d taken yesterday.

  My father was sore about missing move-in day for my first year of college, but he was away at the National Association of Black Lawyers Conference in DC, and they were doing good work. Besides, his being away was really a blessing. My sister Dolly was a nut but my father would’ve been just a little weepy the whole ride.

  I turned more fully toward the big building I’d seen and heard Dolly put the car in park and cut the engine. From the corner of my eye I watched Dolly’s head turn my way. “Oh, that’s Jubilee Hall,” she said staring past me out the windshield toward the three-story red-brick castle staring back at me. It had a black turreted bell tower and white framed windows.

  It was gothic; it was gorgeous.

  Jubilee Hall. My dorm.

  I get to stay in this fantastic old building. I get to be free!

  I imagined the high vaulted ceilings of the place, the wide-open airy rooms it must have. I imagine myself walking across the quad, books in hand, headed back to my comfy room at the end of the day. Of course I’d have an amazing roommate who’d be my best friend and—

  THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

  I jumped a mile.

  Outside my passenger window a guy had appeared seemingly out of thin air. He was tall—so tall that I could only see his legs and mid torso until he stooped down. He was lean, with an athletic build. He wore charcoal gray slacks and a pale gold shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He wore a black and gold striped tie. Unlike most guys my age, he wasn’t rocking an afro; he was clean-cut with a neatly trimmed facial hair and his close-cropped hair had a slight wave. Amber brown eyes were framed by thick, long coal lashes. The contrast between those eyes and the deeper umber of his skin was striking. He was handsome. Really handsome. Really, really handsome.

  He smirked a little, just as I noticed I was staring. Dolly looked at me, annoyed. “Roll. Down. The. Window.” Over-enunciating each word the way she did when she thought someone was a bona fide dolt.

  He reached over to tap the window again as I reached for the hand crank to roll it down.

  “Freshman?” he said, his voice smooth and untinged with the southern accent I was accustomed to.

  “I—uh—yes?” I said unsure of why my answer sounded like a question.

  He smiled and the ambient wattage went up.

  I mean, honestly. He was a bit much.

  “Okay, well that’s Jubilee Hall dead ahead. You’ll want to stop by there first,” he said, leaning back so both Dolly and I could see him. “There’ll be a table set up out front for you to check in and get your dorm room assignment. Orientation’s at four thirty with your . . . parent? Or sister?” He winked and smiled.

  I gaped. He was shamelessly flirting with Dolly.

  I turned toward her, expecting her to be indignant and waiting for the dressing down— she ran a crew full of men and never took any mess from anyone—so I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw grinning, her fluttering fingers shooing him away playfully.

  Since when did Dolly do anything playfully?

  “Get out of here, you big flirt, and you best stay away from these poor freshmen girls.”

  He laughed. “Well I can’t stay away today. I’m here to help them all get situated. But I promise to skip the orientation.”

  “Trevor!” A disembodied voice called out and Mr. Handsome turned around. He nodded his head and called back, “One sec,” to the voice before returning all his attention to me . . . I mean, to us.

  “Well, duty calls, but if you need any help don’t be afraid to ask. I’m here to serve, ladies.” His voice dropped at the end as he chuckled and backed away. Dolly was already wagging her fingers at him but she was hiding a grin.

  “Well he certainly was helpful,” I replied mildly.

  Dolly shot me a look. “Yeah, helpful like a viper. You mind me and keep away from that boy. He’s handsome as the devil and knows it. Young men like that prey on freshman girls all the time.”

  I nodded noncommittally as Dolly watched me from the corner of her eye.

  She needn’t worry. I hadn’t come to college to get entangled with young men. I had come for myself and had no intention of getting mixed up with the wrong sort.

  Who’s to say he’s the wrong sort?

  I dismissed the thought immediately. Guys that looked like him were always the wrong sort.

  Trevor

  The girl in the yellow dress with the sunglasses on didn’t look familiar but there was something about her profile and her long, beautiful braids that felt known. Like the edges of a memory I couldn’t quite bring into focus.

  My mind was probably tricking me into thinking I knew her because she was beautiful. Some primal urge to make her known to me so I could make myself known to h
er, but I definitely hadn’t met her before; I would’ve remembered that face.

  I frowned as my thoughts took a turn I was unprepared for: I wanted to know the shape and color of her eyes. Eyes were unequivocally the most alluring part of a woman. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely appreciated their faces, and their bodies . . . a lot. But there was something to the saying that eyes are the windows to the soul. Staring into someone’s eyes you could tell a lot about what they were—and what they weren't.

  Her eyes had been hidden away behind those sunshades that should’ve and would’ve looked ridiculous on anyone else. They reminded me of a butterfly—as if one was perched on the bridge of her nose—but instead of looking silly she’d looked like some type of princess or fairy come to mingle with the common folk, completely unaware that we didn’t have the power to charm butterflies.

  Otherworldly.

  Yeah, that was a good word for her. Everything about her screamed out of this world, and I was almost positive that behind those wacky sunglasses hid an uncommonly pretty face.

  I shook my head, clearing away the unsettling vestiges of whatever this girl triggered inside of me. I dislodged the thoughts of the neckline of her lovely yellow dress. I peeled off thoughts of how pretty it looked against her pecan brown skin. I wiped away any trace of how that dress dipped into a little V in the front that stopped just above the good part. I ignored the way it teased and hinted at what lay underneath.

  I would give this girl no purchase in my mind. She was too beautiful. Greater men than myself had been made fools for pretty faces.

  And yet . . . I still couldn’t turn away. My eyes lingered in the direction of the sisters still sitting and chatting in the car, and they were sisters; the resemblance was more than uncanny. The older one looked the way beautifully aged wine tasted: well put-together, balanced, mature, confident, and full of flavor. It was like looking at what the pretty, younger one would be in ten years’ time.

  I sighed, and instead of following the wild, sudden urge I had to run back to their car, to run back to her, to ask her name, to take those sunglasses off so I could see what would be undoubtedly pretty eyes. Instead . . .

  I sighed again, and I turned to face the voice that had been summoning me.

  Julian P. Marshall, or Jules as we called him, was cutting across the parking lot toward me, sans his usual swagger.

  When he was a few paces away I noticed his expression morph into panic and his steps stuttered to a stop. Ah, he’d finally spotted our student government advisor, Dr. Daniels, in the distance.

  Our advisor was a stickler for being on time and for community service. It was a quarter past ten, move-in started at eight a.m., and us volunteers? We were supposed to have arrived at seven fifteen.

  “Was Dr. Daniels looking for me?” Jules groaned.

  I smiled and scratched my chin, pretending to think.

  “Was the advisor to the Student Government looking for the Student Body President this morning? Might’ve been. Something about it being so important for student leaders to show up and set an example for all the young, impressionable minds coming in.”

  “God dammit!” Jules muttered, scrunching his eyes in defeat. A look so bleak and troubled consumed his face, I almost felt bad about pulling his leg.

  Almost.

  Freshman move in was chaos, as usual; Dr. Daniels most definitely had not been looking for Jules.

  “Luckily for you, the Student Body Vice President was here to represent the administration and to make us look good.” I motioned to myself.

  His eyebrows perked up. “So you covered for me?” His tone was so hopeful and grateful it saddened me . . . a little. Jules was my very best friend in the world. The fact that he still, after all these years, doubted my loyalty even a little bit made me want to take the joke even further.

  I’m awful, I know.

  “You know I did,” I replied keeping my face perfectly straight.

  He relaxed a bit.

  “I told him you couldn’t make it because you’d gone over to TSU last night to help with their freshman girls’ orientation and all the moving in and out you did . . .” I swiveled my hips just a bit suggestively and his jaw dropped open. “Wore you out! So I left you at home sleeping like a baby.”

  “You son of a—” He lunged at me playfully, as the realization that I was joking set in.

  “Hey, leave my momma out of this before I have to bring yours into it,” I warned as I danced out of his reach.

  He snorted and relaxed into a smile.

  I shook my head. Julian was so easy to rile up.

  “In all seriousness, no, Dr. Daniels wasn’t looking for you. He didn’t even know you were back till I mentioned it. I explained to him that you’d be by later today to help set up the office, and that you were tired since you’d driven the entire way up from Charlotte.”

  The trip from Charlotte to Nashville had no small number of backroads. Jules was lighter than me by more than a few shades so it made sense for him to drive. No need to increase the chances of getting pulled over for being dark-skinned and driving a nice car. It was his car, anyway.

  Julian wasn’t technically due to come back to school until next Friday with all the other upperclassmen, but he’d pretended he was so eager to get an early start on setting up our office that he needed to come back an entire week early. That answer was, of course, bullshit. He’d never admit it, but I knew he’d really done it because he knew I’d needed a ride back to school and didn’t want to spend, or even have, the extra money to catch the bus or the train.

  “I skipped breakfast and I’m famished. You wanna head to Swetts to grab a bite before we get to work on the office?” he asked.

  I patted my pockets flat and looked at him, exasperated.

  “Oh!” Jules said. “You know I got you if—”

  I shot him a look that silenced him immediately.

  He held his palms up in concession. “Of course. Let's just go help the freshmen instead, and then we can head to the caf when it opens in a few.”

  We turned in silence and began walking toward Crosthwaite Hall.

  Julian, like most folks, was a walking contradiction: kindhearted, clueless, loyal, scholarly, and mischievous as the devil himself. The type of person who would drive seven or eight hours to get you where you needed to go and never ask for money for petrol or anything. But he was also the type to forget that you couldn’t do the same things that he took for granted all the time like randomly eating out at Swetts because you didn’t have the money.

  It wasn’t his fault really.

  Honestly. Compared to most of the folks we grew up around, Julian was basically normal.

  Jules was my third cousin, twice removed or my second cousin, thrice removed—something like that. Our great-grandparents were siblings. Whatever.

  Growing up I knew of the Marshalls. Folks in my family occasionally spoke of kin in North Carolina that were well off. But they hadn’t been to any family reunions or functions that I recalled, so I’d thought of them in the same way one thinks of rumors that your family was royalty back in Africa. Mighta been true but probably wasn’t, and definitely wasn’t relevant to your day-to-day either way.

  Needless to say, crash landing on their doorstep in the dead of night when I was eleven had been difficult. Crashing. Yeah that about summed it up.

  Because although we were allegedly related, our families were nothing alike. Our worlds were nothing alike. And in the beginning, we had been nothing alike.

  For starters, there were a lot of rules and most of them weren’t said out loud. You see, the Marshalls were not just well off after all.

  The Marshalls were rich, rich.

  Sent us to a fancy-ass boarding school from eleven to eighteen years old, rich.

  Jules had private tennis lessons and I had an art instructor when they’d discovered I could draw, rich.

  Spent half the summer at his nana’s house in Oak Bluffs, rich.

  Spent the ot
her half of the summer at the best sleepaway camp in the entire world, rich.

  But putting all those privileges aside, that wasn’t how I knew the Marshalls were loaded.

  After all, they could’ve been leveraged up to their eyeballs in debt the same way my parents had been.

  No, forgetting the house in Martha’s Vineyard and the fancy school—the way I knew the Marshalls were rich, was that they never, ever, discussed money.

  Ever.

  And we weren’t allowed to discuss it either, hence Jules and I having a terse exchange wherein he wanted me to accept his charity and I would not. Julian was generous to a fault sometimes, but he was the exception, not the rule.

  The thing about rich people was that they knew how to hold on to money. That’s how they got rich.

  Well . . . a lot of them got rich through human pain and suffering, but they stayed rich because they knew how to hold on to that money, by hook or by crook.

  So while I was well cared for, at least, materially while I was growing up—and was given opportunities most folks could only ever dream of—the Marshalls’ money was not and would not ever be my money. And I never forgot that.

  They never let me forget it.

  Case in point: they were very graciously footing the bill for my college education, with the caveat that I begin paying them back as soon as I graduated, with eight percent interest.