Upsy Daisy: A First Love College Romance

by Smartypants Romance

  He rocked back on his heels and shoved his hands into his pockets. He looked back at me, face hard and lips pressed together, defensive as hell.

  Guilty as hell.

  And hell, while I was thinking on it Romona Wells might as well be added to the mix. Romona was the girl his family had been pushing him to marry since before he’d even known me.

  I let that sink in. From what I could tell, Julian’s parents had his spouse selected for him practically since he was born.

  And since Jules’ parents usually did whatever they had to do to ensure they got what they wanted, she very likely would marry Jules. Green eyes, light skin, thin ski-jump nose, softly pointed chin, ramrod straight honey-colored hair.

  Pretty in a particular type of way.

  “There’s nothing wrong with having a type. A preference,” he said more softly.

  “You’re right. Nothing wrong with having a preference.”

  He exhaled at my words, though his shoulders were still bunched because he knew me well enough to know I wasn’t done.

  “But that ain’t what this is. And if it is, whose preference is it? Yours? Or your parents’?”

  Because here’s the other thing about living with a body and sharing summer vacations, and holidays and bedrooms: you got to know their personal preferences—all of them—very well.

  Jules only used Mighty White toothpaste. He could not abide sleeping in a hot or even mildly warm room—it had to be colder than the arctic tundra in there. He was meticulously neat; one might even call him anal. He had a collection of watches that rivaled the Timex Corporation, he collected books and read obsessively, and the Jet Beauties of the Week that he preferred, the girls that turned his head on an unconscious level, didn’t look a thing like the girls he dated.

  What the hell did they do to you, Jules?

  He looked at me, eyes stormy and full of so many emotions I couldn’t name them all.

  He cleared his throat and then said, “I didn’t call you up here to talk about me.”

  Typical Julian.

  “You didn’t call me up here at all, Prince,” I said through gritted teeth.

  He’d always been that way, since we were kids. Because his parents treated everyone that wasn’t a Marshall like they were their servants and they expected Julian to mimic that disgusting behavior.

  You ever seen a twelve-year-old tell a seventy-year-old cook to remake their dinner because they’d changed their mind about what they wanted to eat? You ever seen the parents laugh at his “antics” when he did it?

  Yeah. When Jules and I met, we did not get along. At all.

  Being a young asshole, he’d called me Eeyore, claiming I was sad and stubborn. He was right at the time, but he didn’t need to know that.

  And I’d called sarcastically called him Prince, his middle name and the one he hated most of all.

  He flinched now at the nickname.

  “Fine. I’ll apologize tonight.” He exhaled in frustration. “And you’ll set some damned boundaries with your mentee.”

  I opened my mouth to try to dance around his request because I didn’t want to limit my time with her.

  But Julian was right.

  I don’t care.

  Before I could speak Julian leveled me with a look, one that said I know you. Lie to me. Try it.

  Then he spoke. “Did you think I didn’t notice that your eyes and head kept drifting when we were in the cafeteria the other day?”

  Busted. Here I thought I was being stealthy.

  “I didn’t pay it any mind, because they’re a couple of stunners. Truth be told, I was looking myself.”

  The idea of Julian looking at Daisy has my pressure rising and my vision going blurry. I blinked and took a deep breath as he continued, “But just then? The way I saw you looking at her, the way you casually reached over and thumbed her nose, and yesterday—holding her hand? Trevor, none of that was innocent.” He shook his head and looked at me with confusion, like he didn’t know me.

  Then he sighed. “You’re supposed to be a good guy, Trevor. You’re supposed to be better than me. So why are you leading that girl on?”

  I wasn’t.

  I’m not. Am I?

  I thought about my actions over the last few days and suddenly I felt sick, like a piece of lead had crash landed in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t leading her on. I wasn’t. It was just Daisy made it easy to forget things I shouldn’t have forgotten.

  Jules mumbled, “You know what. I don’t even want to know what was going on or what was going through your head. The less I know, the better.”

  He sounded so tired and I remembered all the stuff my best friend had done for other people in the last forty-eight hours. Driving me to school and then turning around and driving to Lexington to be a groomsman in his cousin’s wedding, when Jules absolutely loathed weddings. Then he’d driven back here and got to work setting up our office, because he knew I had work-study and wouldn’t get to it until the end of the week.

  That knowledge made me look at my best friend through a familiar filter. Julian was a lot of things: cunning, giving, a braggadocio, loyal to a fault, and sometimes entitled. But he wasn’t cruel.

  And that was why what he said to James struck me as discordant. It was out of character, dating history aside. It was cruel and it was stupidly insulting, and Jules wasn’t either. He had to have known she’d be offended, that she’d leave.

  That they’d leave.

  Jules was aware that Daisy and James were friends. He’d observed them from the cafeteria.

  I paused. And everything clicked into place.

  This wasn’t about James. This was about me.

  “Why did you come outside just now? Where were you going, Julian?”

  “I was on my way to nowhere. I came outside to save my best friend from making a fool of himself.”

  And by saving me, he meant getting me away from Daisy.

  “Did you insult James so that she’d leave? So that they’d both leave?”

  He looked away and then back at me, all the weariness in the world on his face. And I bit back the need to apologize to my friend.

  I’ve done nothing wrong.

  “Is there some reason you wanted to keep both girls around?”

  Not a confession, but not a denial either. Dammit, Julian.

  “Trevor, people are already talking about the two of you. Even if no one had told me about yesterday, I picked up from inside a building, three stories up, and one hundred yards away that you two were more than just friendly. What do you think is gonna happen on Friday when everyone gets back? What do you think is happening now to that girl’s reputation?”

  “Her reputation? I haven’t done anything for Pete’s sake! We haven’t done anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” he hollered. “You’re gallivanting around with this girl that you’ve clearly got a thing for. You’re holding hands in public! People are gonna fill in the blanks on their own! You think none of the freshmen here have a brother or a sister that’s a year or two ahead at this school? You think folks aren’t talking? You’re not dumb enough to believe that. And that girl . . .” He stopped, like he was trying to work something out in his head. “Whoever she is, she has no clue what you’re pulling her into.

  “So, now I’m telling you, you’re going to find her tonight and you’re going to tell her that you’re not going to see her anymore unless it’s for whatever thing Dr. Gwinn has you doing. Because you’re one of the good guys, Trevor, and it’s my job to remind you of that.”

  Daisy

  We were in my dorm room, which was kind of becoming our dorm room, and I was raging. “Arrogant, imperious, smug bastard! I mean, does he think you’re stupid? Like you can’t tell the difference between a compliment and a backhanded compliment. He’s immature and can’t have anything close to common sense to say something so ugly and . . .”

  “Amen! Yes, ugly!” Odie seconded from her place in the bed waving her hand like a chu
rch lady.

  It was the church lady wave that caused me to pause my litany. Odie cracked a smile and said, “Welcome back, Daize.”

  I smiled at the use of the nickname she’s given me, exhaled the rest of my anger, and flopped backwards on my bed. James was sitting on the edge of my bed picking a piece of lint off her black V-neck halter. She’d been silent. She didn’t say anything as we made the trek back to my room or as I explained what happened to Odie who was already in my room, picking through my makeup.

  “James, are you okay?”

  She didn’t even look up from the lint.

  “Oh. Yeah,” she replied mellowly and then added, “Daisy, can I borrow your snakeskin platform sandals for tonight? I’m considering wearing my orange jumpsuit—you know the one with the little diamond cutouts at the side that you thought was so cute? Those shoes would look righteous with them. I love having a friend with the same shoe size. It’s like my shoe collection doubled overnight.”

  “James?”

  She looked up, batting her eyelashes playfully. “Daaaaiiisssy.”

  “How can you be so calm about all this? How can you just sit there talking about shoes?”

  “What would you have me do, Daisy? You’re worked up enough for three people.” She shot an exasperated look at Odie who tried unsuccessfully to cover her laughter. I tossed a pillow at her. She caught it and pressed her face to it shaking with laughter.

  “We need to—he needs to—we should make him—ARGGHHHHHHHH!!”

  There were no words for the futility I felt.

  “Daisy,” James said softly, gently, and it bothered me that she felt like she had to comfort me in this. I needed to calm down.

  “Do you think Jules is the first person to say something like that to me?”

  Yes, I wanted to say. Yes, I imagine that Jules is the first person to say something as awful to you because why would anyone go out of their way to say something terrible when shutting up was a perfectly viable option?

  But I knew better.

  As much as I wished society were different, that we were different—the reality was, what Julian said wasn’t all that out of bounds for a lot of people. And for many more, it was, unfortunately, completely within bounds.

  James continued. “Do you think he’ll be the last person to talk like that to me?” She sat up and shook her head dismissively. “Even if it’s not about my skin, it’ll be that I’m too tall for a girl . . . or about my weight.”

  Odie made a strangled little sound and said, “Amen,” again softly.

  “If I had a nickel for every time someone called me Olive Oyl.” She rolled her eyes. “I’d drop out ‘cause I’d already be rich.”

  “There will always be a Jules there to tell a woman she should be less dark or less large or less loud. Folk who feel like they aren’t enough so they spend their time making everyone around them feel like less.”

  She gave a little shrug. “Julian doesn’t deserve any more headspace. And so I won’t give him any. Instead I choose to focus on better things like, that divine cheetah print bra-top that’s hanging in your closet. Are you wearing it tonight? If not, I am! It’ll look great against this dark skin.”

  She winked cheekily and continued her perusal through my closet.

  James and Odie had previously declared my closet and makeup “The Shop.”

  James was a fellow lover of clothes and had nearly fainted when she’d seen my neat-but-well-appointed closet. And Odie had been able to name the maker of all my cosmetics when I didn’t know some of the brands myself.

  I’d explained it away with a simple, “My sister has a good job and she and I are the same size.” Then I’d added, “She orders her clothes in bulk and gives me lots of things.”

  There was no need for them to know that the ordering happened from the best couturiers in Paris, Milan, London, and sometimes from the seamstress we employed. My clothes didn’t have labels on them—since I was young, they’d been removed when they arrived.

  I waved to the closet from my spot on the bed, indicating James should take whatever she wished to wear.

  As she grabbed the top, she looked at me with that gleam in her eye. The one that I was learning meant trouble and said, “Speaking of things I do want to talk about . . . What was little Daisy Paxton doing with big fa-fa-fa-fine Trevor when I walked up?”

  “Nothing at all,” I said sighing.

  “That don’t sound like a ‘nothing’ sigh to me,” Odie teased.

  I looked back at my two friends staring expectantly at me.

  No. Not expectantly, knowingly.

  “Trevor . . . is . . .”

  How could I describe Trevor?

  Trevor was remarkable. He was so much more than just a handsome face. I hadn’t expected the funny. Or the sweet. And he was so clever. I thought of the nonsensical facts he’d come up with during my tour and the advice he’d given me on how to talk to professors, how to keep up with my course schedule, how to get ahead of my assigned reading. He’d also shared more about himself, his life . . . It had been lovely. He was lovely.

  “Nice,” I settled on.

  “Oh yes!” Odie said. “I bet he is vera vera nice,” she purred in her soft soprano.

  I burst into giggles. “In all seriousness, he is very smart and generous with his time.”

  James opened her mouth to make join in teasing me and I raised my voice to say, “And he is my mentor.”

  “All right now! Your mentor? Exactly what is he supposed to be showing you? Something big I hope,” James said shimmying her shoulders up and down.

  “Jesus, James! Does everything have to be that way with you?”

  “Oh, Daisy, it’s that way with everybody, I’m just honest about it.”

  “He’s my mentor since I’m double majoring and he’s double majoring. My advisor appointed him and neither of us knew the other was the person we’d been paired with. That is all that is going on.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince myself or them, and by the look they both gave me, they knew it.

  Chapter Ten

  Daisy

  When we arrived at the mixer it was well underway.

  That was to say, we were late.

  And not the fashionable kind of late either. Or maybe we were “fashionably late” in the truest sense of the word . . . because the reason that we were so late could be summed up in two words:

  James Jones.

  She had first tried on my cheetah bra-top paired with my white chiffon bell-bottoms that billowed beautifully at the bottom. She’d torn those off in a fit and put on a purple minidress with a flaring cape, which she also rejected, saying she looked like “goddamn Lynda Carter and not in a good way.” After that, she had tried her orange jumpsuit, stripping it off almost immediately after she put it on, saying she looked fat.

  I’d had to bat down Odie’s hand as she reached toward the back of James’s neck. James had been way too absorbed in rifling through her own clothes to even notice Odie’s momentary consternation and attempted strangulation but the look dear Odie gave her back was enough to make me worry that James would end up looking like a clown during the makeup portion of our preparations.

  She finally ended up rocking a denim jumpsuit that dipped almost to her navel—hers—and python print platforms—mine. She pulled her hair up into a giant curly puff—she’d slicked her baby hair down—and she topped it all off with a gold chain that dangled low between her bosom.

  James was a fly dresser. But tonight she hadn’t opted for fly at all; tonight it was pure foxy.

  Odie worked her usual makeup magic, lining James’s eyes with heavy black eyeliner and a coral lip.

  So yeah, no other word but foxy would suffice.

  I’d opted for the shortest cream shorts I’d ever donned in my life and the rejected cheetah bra-top. I paired it with knee-high patent leather red boots. I let my hair fly free like it’d been doing all day, threw on some pink lipstick, lashes, a bit of blue masc
ara, and called it a day—or rather, a night.

  Odie wore high-waisted, five-button bell-bottom jeans, and a cropped peasant top that showed off just the tiniest bit of her midsection when she moved. Her makeup was flawless as usual, her blue eyeshadow never out of place.

  In short, we looked fine.

  The mixer was in the same location behind the administration building as the cookout the day before. We could hear faint music and chatter, as we’d dressed with the window open, and the disc jockey was still spinning tunes as we approached. The sun was sinking below the horizon, getting to the time of the day where everything looks just a little purple as day wanes to night.

  The lamps that dotted the street were starting to blink to life as we headed toward the tables set at the far side of the grass. James’s fashion show had caused us to miss dinner in the caf and now I was a little hungry.

  A long low whistle from somewhere to my right and as I looked over. I caught Trevor leaning idly watching the scene unfold: the girl who was being whistled at by the nearby guy rolled her eyes and kept on strutting.

  My stomach fluttered with the butterflies I’d tried to capture, tried to smother. He’d changed clothes; he now wore a simple black T-shirt with his fraternity insignia in gold and jeans. But the way he wore it made my mouth go dry. The T-shirt stretched over his broad shoulders and was tucked into his jeans to show off his narrow waist. Those jeans confirmed what I felt earlier: his thighs were built of hard muscle and were magnificent.

  Our eyes met, his amber to my chocolate brown, and I stopped breathing.

  I wasn’t sure how long we stared at one another with the world spinning on its axis and everyone else turning right along with it. In that moment there was only him, and I might have stayed stuck there forever if not for the whisper at my side.

  “Looks like your tutor wants to teach you something.”