Julian nodded his head and shoved his hands in his peacoat, I got about five paces away before he called just loud enough for me to hear, “Your loss, Daisy Payton.”
I whipped my head around, stared at him, and then whipped my head around to see if anyone else heard what he said.
I stalked back to Julian’s grinning face and said through gritted teeth, “Where are you parked?”
Chapter Nineteen
Daisy
The alarm in my room went off at six forty-five on Friday morning. It was hard to believe that it had only been a little over twenty-four hours since Julian had told me that everything I thought I knew to be written in stone was, in fact, written in spaghetti sauce. It was a bloody mess.
Julian had been purposely mysterious when it came to revealing how he’d figured out my identity; he’d only mentioned had something to do with my mother’s gold watch—the one I wore all the time, and how the watch was rare and expensive. Apparently, it had been part of her prizes from winning the Miss Negro Tennessee pageant some years back. Who knew?
Then he’d pivoted the conversation to the true nature of Elodie and Trevor’s “relationship.” The information Julian provided hit like a sledgehammer. My heart had beat painfully for the girl, and then my heart had broken for Trevor. I realized how lonely Trevor must’ve been.
You told him you hated him. You’ve been an icicle to him.
He should’ve told me. He couldn’t have told you!
He’s so noble. He’s so damned stubborn.
Julian spoke and the jar of no feelings effectively toppled and shattered.
My emotions were a mess of Trevor.
Longing for Trevor, wistful over the wasted time we could’ve had, anxious for the next time we’d speak, and still angry at Trevor’s idiocy. He should’ve told me. He should’ve trusted me.
Sigh.
I spent the night replaying all of the memories I’d suppressed these last few weeks, relishing in them, letting them smash and grind the wall I’d tried to build around my heart.
I wished . . .
There were a lot of things I wished. I wished that I hadn’t gotten hurt. I wish I hadn’t hurt Trevor, because Julian told me, boy, oh boy, had Trevor been hurting.
I couldn’t wait to find him and kiss all of his cares away.
Oh, Trevor.
Hope surged more powerfully, lodging itself painfully in my chest and in my throat. The butterflies were back full force, wreaking havoc in my stomach and making it hard to eat or think of anything of except when I’d see him again. When I could apologize to him for saying such a hurtful thing. When I could kiss those lips . . .
The only reason I didn’t go to him immediately was because Julian told me that Trevor was likely to be furious with him for telling me and he needed to get to Elodie and reassure her that I wouldn’t say a word.
And then I’d been hit with a mountain of self-doubt.
Maybe Trevor didn’t want to see me anymore. After all, I hadn’t spoken to him for weeks.
Julian had laughed in my face when I’d spoken that thought aloud.
“Daisy, I wouldn’t be here if that was the case.” Then he’d added very softly, “I know you don’t like me or trust me, but know this—I will do anything for the people I love, Daisy. Trevor is my best friend and he’s the best man I know. You two are good together. I could see that from the beginning, even if I couldn’t understand it.”
“Tell him I’m sorry,” I said.
He shook his head. “You tell him yourself.” Jules looked out the windshield and then he’d turned to me and said, “Speaking of things you’re going to tell Trevor yourself . . .”
I swallowed hard. I knew what Jules wanted me to do. Maybe I wore my apprehension on my face because the question he asked next, came out gentle and that made it even worse.
“What are you so afraid of, Daisy?”
That he’ll care about me being a Payton more than he’ll care about me. That they’ll see me as a means to an end instead of a person.
I sighed, resignedly. Trevor and I were still so . . . fragile. I was enamored with him. I hoped he felt the same about me, but even the idea that we could be together was new. Telling him about the Mill, right now, would leave me . . . vulnerable. The idea of placing my vulnerability back in Trevor’s hands scared me.
“Daisy, you have to tell Trevor who you really are.”
“I will. But not right now.” I hedged. I just needed time. We needed time.
“It has to be right now, Daisy.”
“It’s not the right time.”
“When exactly is going to be the right time to tell him you lied about your identity?”
“I didn’t lie about my identity. I only lied about one letter in my last name.”
“Daisy, you cannot out bullshit me, I promise you. You lied about your identity and you lied about where you’re from.”
I sat there gnawing on my lip, trying to figure out a way to get Jules to understand. Julian seemed to know where my mind was going, or rather, not going, and leveled me with a frank glare. “Look, Daisy, the other day I tried to get Trevor to come to you and not tell you anything about Elodie. I wanted him to let you continue believing the lie about their relationship and just tell you that they’d broken up. I told him he could apologize for the way he’d treated you and that he wanted to start over.”
Jules paused searching my face for a second.
“And do you know what he told me?”
I stared at him waiting for him to continue.
He said, “‘She’s never going to go for anything other than the truth.’”
I smiled at how well Trevor knew me—knows me.
“Then he said he wouldn’t want to be with you if he couldn’t tell you the truth. Trevor has been living a relationship that was based on a lie wrapped in a secret for a very long time. Don’t make him go through that again. Tell him the truth.”
My smile dropped, processing the truth of Julian’s words.
He was right. If I wanted this time around to be different then I had to trust Trevor and he’d have to trust me. Trusting him meant telling him the truth.
A little tiny selfish voice spoke: Why should you tell him the truth right now when he was fine with you believing a lie for so long? I told the voice to hush and then responded to Julian.
“Okay.”
“Good. And Daisy, make it soon. Because if you don’t, know that I will.”
Even though he was threatening me, I couldn’t help but love how much Julian wanted to protect Trevor.
As I exited the car, Julian again casually mentioned that he was content to keep my secret from everyone except Trevor, as long as I did the same for Elodie. I let Julian know the threat was not needed and also recommended that he work on not threatening me—or anyone, really—if he wanted folks to like him. He laughed and shook his head like I’d said something funny.
And then I’d spent the next twenty-four hours in agony.
Okay, maybe not agony—but in a state of impatience.
Julian said Trevor would come find me after he’d told him about our conversation, so I’d just have to be patient.
I was being patient. I was waiting so hard.
Any moment Trevor was going to show up at my dorm. Any moment. I was positive!
I was not positive.
To make matters worse I wasn’t scheduled to see him today. Our mentor session had been cancelled due to Friday classes being cancelled for Homecoming weekend.
But I was considering sneaking away from the bake-a-thon later to see if he’d show up anyway. Maybe that was when he planned to find me. I hoped he hadn’t left a note with my dorm mother. Given what Julian said, I’d probably never get it.
Much as I’d liked to have stayed in bed to ride the runaway freight train of Daisy’s thoughts and feelings about Trevor, I had to get up. There were cookies to bake, scandalous T-shirts to don, and knee-high boots to rock.
Although . .
. I bit my lip as I grabbed my Dopp kit, the idea of seeing Trevor now in those knee-high boots and fishnets caused my stomach to swoop and drop. I grinned and stepped into the very quiet hallway. Most of my dormmates were still sleeping, enjoying the rare Friday off from class.
I stopped short.
On the wall in front of my door, there was a yellow sticky note with the familiar refrain written on it.
Call Dolly.
My dorm mother had become clever. She’d placed it where I was sure to see it since I wasn’t responding to the ones left on my door. I turned to pull my door shut and—for the love of . . . there was an identical note plastered there.
I walked down the hall to the ladies’ room. Then I looked at the mirrors over the sinks in horror. Every single sink: one, two, three, four, five—Call Dolly notes.
I snatched the notes down while I brushed my teeth, wondering who was nuttier—my dorm mother, Mrs. Johnson, or my sister. I decided it was draw but when I walked to the shower and saw another note, dread slid through me. If something was really, really wrong Dolly wouldn’t have let my dorm mother tell me, Dolly would’ve wanted to tell me herself.
And maybe my dorm mother had knocked, but I’d been sleeping so hard I hadn’t heard. Suddenly I wasn’t sure if this was just my sister being over the top or something much, much worse. Therefore, instead of taking my shower I headed back to my room, grabbed a couple of dimes, and headed down the hall to the payphone. I put the dime in, and the phone ate it.
Lovely.
I stuck another dime in and the phone ate that one too.
I sighed and hit the stairs headed toward my dorm mother’s office. There was a phone in there I could borrow.
I couldn’t turn off the voice in my head that told me something was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Not even Dolly was this extreme under normal circumstances. But I held on to a small modicum of hope; if something were truly wrong Dolly wouldn’t be calling at all. She would’ve just shown up.
Please let everything be okay, please let everything be okay, I chanted in my mind.
I peeked into Mrs. Johnson’s office ready to face her wrath. After all, all those Call Dolly requests were because of me.
But it was empty—just the fuzzy portable black and white TV blaring in the background.
I bit my lip, wondering if this was worth waking Odie up. Her roommate had a phone in their room. Maybe I could borrow hers.
As I stepped back out of the office I glanced toward the lobby and saw . . . Dolly.
My sister was sitting there dressed to the nines. Black YSL dress, black pumps, black cardigan, white pearls. She looked like a diminutive, beautiful grim reaper.
And it was the black coupled with her being here that made my heart race and my palms sweat.
Dolly never wore all black, she said it was too depressing.
“Dolly?” I said, approaching her slowly because I wasn’t sure if this was a dream or a nightmare.
She looked up from the cup of piping hot tea—Dolly hated coffee—and raised a single eyebrow at me.
“Is everything okay? Is Daddy okay?” I blurted, my voice cracking a little because the idea of something happening to my father was too devastating to even entertain.
BOOM! I turned my head, momentarily distracted by a ruckus directly overhead. It sounded like someone was pounding on the doors before opening and slamming them all at once.
“Is everything okay? Now you’re worried, Daisy? I wonder what that’s like. To be worried if someone you love is okay.”
I stood there staring at her because even though I knew Dolly wouldn’t be glib if something were truly wrong with my father, I needed to hear her say those words and she knew that.
“No, Daisy, nothing is wrong with our father. Well, nothing except wondering if his baby girl has been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped?”
BOOM! The floor shook.
“Why on earth would Daddy think I’ve been kidnapped?”
“What else was he supposed to think, Daisy, when your mail was returned to us as ‘recipient not at address’? You won’t return any of my calls. And we call the Registrar’s Office and they told us no one with the name Daisy Payton is enrolled.”
Oh shit. OH. SHIT!
“Dolly, I can explain, I—”
“Daisy!” I turned to see a very panicked looking James, still in her head scarf and PJ’s running full speed to me.
“I’ve been looking for you! We gotta go now!” She yanked my hand.
“What? James?”
“DAISY! Surprise room checks just started on the first floor. We gotta go now!”
OH. SHIT.
I left Dolly standing in the lobby yelling, “Daisy—Daisy!”
I ran so fast I beat James’s long legs up the stairs and practically knocked my door down. I felt bile rising up in my throat as I surveyed the sight in front of me. I was going to be sick. Bags of flour, sugar, cream of tartar, oats, raisins all containing Property of Fisk University Dining Services littered almost every surface of my room.
“James, where the fuck are we gonna hide all this stuff? There’s no more space!”
James shook her head in bewilderment, Odie joined us a moment later wearing the same panicked look. “Throw it out the window!” she declared. We both ran to the window and looked down.
“That isn’t going to work. The bags are going to break and then you’ll have a bunch of destroyed school property you’ll have to worry about. And they’re sure as hell going to know it came from one of the windows directly over the spot where it landed.” We all turned to see Dolly standing in my doorway.
Shit, shit, shit.
Dolly calmly addressed my friends, “Frick and Frack, this looks like an ungodly amount of trouble. If I were you, I would get out of here right now.”
“We’re not leaving, Daisy!” James said indignantly. Odie immediately agreed. My sister was still looking around the room in wonder.
“No! She’s right, I’ll be fine! Y’all need to leave.” I had a father who could move mountains. They did not.
“Daisy!” James protested, looking at me like I had two heads.
“Please, James and Odessa, trust me. Y’all need to go right now.”
My friends looked confused and scared.
“Go!” I urged them and they both started toward the door. As soon were they across the threshold my sister said, “Daisy, what in the world is going on here?”
“I was just about to ask the same thing.” My dorm mother and two RA’s stepped into the room holding clipboards, looking around wide-eyed and miffed.
I hung my head.
“I too have my share of questions about what’s going on here. Daisy Marie Payton. What on earth is all of this?” I closed my eyes, hearing the voice of my father.
When I opened them, I saw him standing in the doorframe, his tall figure blocking almost the entire thing. The look of disappointment on my father’s face filled me with a shame hotter than any I’d ever felt. Letting him or my mother down was just about the worst feeling in the world.
Someone coughed from behind my father and he stepped to the side, revealing Billy Jo and Della Boone, business owners who ran the bait and tackle shop in Green Valley. And standing there next to them, staring at me with those gorgeous brown eyes full of confusion, recognition, and betrayal, was Trevor Boone.
Silence reigned as I struggled to come up with any kind of explanation.
And then the final nail in my coffin hammered into place in the rapid-fire, accusatory, and unmistakable clip of James Jones. “Daisy Payton? I thought you said your last name was Paxton.”
Chapter Twenty
Daisy
My homecoming weekend had officially been turned into been hell-coming weekend.
As my world began to unravel, the Boones, all of them, made their leave. Trevor goddamned Boone.
He’s from Green Valley.
No, he’s wasn’t from Green Valley, not really. I knew the
Boones had another son older than me, but folks were always real secretive when talking about him.
My friends had left again right after the Boones.
The look on my father’s face when I told him I’d changed my last name on purpose and that it wasn’t a clerical error, that I’d wanted to be known by some other name . . . was crushing.
I’d expected him to be angry, I’d expected him to even be disappointed. I had not expected him to be hurt.
But hurt he’d been.
Very hurt.
I’d tried to explain that it wasn’t about him, that it was about me and not wanting all the attention and expectations that came with being a Payton, but the words hadn’t come out right.
I said, “I just needed a break from the Payton name, I wanted—to not be known and examined and scrutinized just because of my last name.”
My father was quiet for a very long time and then he said, “Well . . . I’ve worked hard to build on the things my father gave me, our good name being one of them. I’ve not been perfect, but every day I’ve worked to make the Payton name one my family could be proud of. And you’ve never had a problem with benefitting from that name when it suited you. Now though, you get to college and you don’t want to be associated with us?”
“Daddy, it’s not that I don’t want to be associated . . . I just didn’t want to be that Daisy.”
My father was trying—he was really grasping at straws trying to follow my logic. But it wasn’t his fault, it was mine. I didn’t have the words to explain and my mind and emotions were all jumbled up. This was not how the day was supposed to go.
My father’s frown deepened then he spoke again, “I know there are people who think we put on airs, that any person that looks like us, that strives for more than just scraps, is uppity. I just never expected to have it thrown in my face by my own child. I can’t understand what I’ve done to make you reject how you were raised, reject everything I stand for.”
I objected but couldn’t offer any additional explanation for my feelings. My father quietly responded, “If that’s the case, then look me in my eye and explain what’s really going on here. Tell me that my daughter is not a liar and a thief.”
Upsy Daisy: A First Love College Romance Page 26
