Peace of Her Heart Read online

  ♥♥♥

  20-year-old Maddie Watson thinks it’s love when hippie-boy Raffie sweeps her off her feet on a patchouli cloud of sappy movies and midnight picnics. But when he leaves town for a Grateful Dead Tribute Festival, Maddie’s college study-buddy Nick helps her discover that as far as Raffie is concerned, something’s rotten in Woodstock.

  PEACE OF HER HEART

  a Redwine novel

  by Lyndie Strawbridge

  Copyright 2011 Lyndie Strawbridge

  Chapter 1

  “Oh, I’m still the Queen of the Unsatisfying One-Night Stand,” Maddie sighed, taking a swig from her beer bottle. It clanked hard against her front teeth, so she reached up and tried to waggle them with her fingers. They were still tightly rooted.

  “Good sex is all about the vibes you put out,” Lauren answered, her flower-child smile going full-Cheshire. Her hair dangled down the back of the old wooden bar chair as she lipped an unlit cigarette.

  “Maybe one of these dudes wants to be my next disappointment in love,” Maddie said. She surveyed the bar and wiped her slobbery fingers on her black-and-white stripy tights.

  “Love?” Lauren questioned, bobbing her head languidly while some noodly Grateful Dead song floated through the air. “I thought we were talking about sex.” She winked deliberately before she rose and wandered away, vanishing behind a clutch of neo-hippies and re-materializing by the jukebox.

  “Technicalities,” Maddie muttered, fingering the almost-obsolete fake I.D. in her pocket. Her days of peering at guys through downcast lashes and grinding her toe into the carpet were almost over. She’d be 21 in a month. She was playing with the big girls now.

  As Lauren left, the bartender appeared, plunking a drink on the table.

  “I didn’t order this,” Maddie said. The bartender shrugged and pointed to a guy on the other side of the pool tables, stretching her arm out indiscreetly.

  “It’s from him,” she said, and they both looked at a table-full of guys.

  “I can’t accept this,” Maddie stammered as she shook her head and gingerly pushed the drink back across the table toward the bartender. “Tell him thank you, but no,” she said with as definitive a tone as her tipsy lips could manage. She twisted to look at the guy, squeezing her lips and opening her eyes wide as if to say “come on, now.” The scents of clove cigarettes and patchouli made it hard to think. That and the beers. The upbeat Phish song drifting from the jukebox seemed to grow louder in Maddie’s ears.

  Lauren sauntered back to the table, waggling her eyebrows.

  “That guy sent me a drink!” Maddie blurted, hoping Lauren would know what to say to terminate the situation. She again peeked over at the guys and pointed at the sender of the drink. He was sitting amongst his friends with an excited grin on his face.

  “Wait a minute. Raffie? Raffie sent it?” Lauren suddenly asked, looking up at the rasta bartender with surprise on her face.

  The bartender nodded and turned back to Maddie, saying, “Please take it. It will really hurt his feelings if you don’t.”

  “Well, uh,” Maddie answered brilliantly. She took another look at the guy, who now clasped his hands in the air, waggling them and shooting her a comical, begging face. He was reasonably attractive but he was definitely a hippie. She glanced down at her red, black, and white attire and her trendy sweater. They’d be a funny pair, stylistically. “Raffie—is that his name, Raffie?” she said with a smile creeping into her voice. “Raffie is really not my type.”

  “What?” exclaimed Lauren. “All night you’ve been telling me about the guys who you think are your type, and those guys aren’t interested in you, baby,” she laughed. “But Raffie? Raffie sending you a girlie drink? Come on. Has that ever happened to you before?”

  Maddie rolled her eyes and tipped her head back. The moment was drawing on and on, and so many people were watching her.

  “Take it,” the bartender pleaded. “Maybe he is your type and you just don’t know it yet.”

  Lauren took a long draw from her cigarette, reached out, accepted the drink, and dismissed the bartender. She looked across the bar at Raffie and gave him a big thumbs-up, pinching her cigarette between her teeth and waggling it at him goofily. He returned her gesture and gave Maddie a playful, pleading look. Lauren slid the drink across the table and Maddie peered down into the cherry-topped froth.

  “If I drink this, I’m committing to something; I can feel it in the air,” she said as she placed her hands palms-down on the tabletop, flexing her fingers. “There’ll be no going back.” She leaned forward and pinched the cherry stem in her fingertips, lifting the fruit, holding it like a pendulum in the air between her nose and Lauren’s. “He’ll wanna be starting something.”

  “Mama-say, mama-sah, ma-ma coo sa, baby. He probably will,” Lauren smiled drunkenly. “But Raffie—wow. Chicks always want to date him, and he’s constantly saying he’s looking for something different. I guess you’re it.”

  Maddie tilted her head to the side and slipped a glance across the bar to Raffie. She locked her eyes on his as she took the cherry in her teeth and popped it loose from the stem. She sealed it inside her mouth and Raffie pantomimed fainting.

  “Why do girls want to date him? And what are his stats?” Maddie asked, looking back at her friend. “I need to know what I’m getting into before he gets up and comes over here, which we both know he’s going to do any minute now.”

  “No time,” Lauren answered, as she rose from the table and sauntered away, peasant skirt swirling around her ankles.

  The guy slipped into the empty seat. He was more handsome close-up than he’d been from a distance, with golden eyes and a bit of 5 o’clock shadow that brought out his cheekbones.

  “I’m Raffie,” he said as he put his hands in his lap and leaned across the table. “And I sent you that drink.” He sat back in the chair. His face beamed with satisfaction.

  “So I hear. I’m Maddie,” she answered. His golden eyes made her chest feel tight and she resisted the sudden compulsion to begin coughing. She ran a finger around the top of the ornate glass that housed the frothy drink. She’d yet to take a sip. “What the heck kind of name is ‘Raffie’?” she teased, waggling her fingers in the air as she tossed him a grin. “I know you hippie-types like to give yourselves new, spiritual, funky names.”

  “Oh, ho! You’re dishing it out, aren’t you?” he answered. “My name is Raphael. My mother is Colombian; I’m named after my grandfather.” He smiled broadly and Maddie took note of the dimples that appeared in his slim cheeks. She lowered her head and took a slurp from the cheerful red straw that was sticking out of the pretty black-and-white drink. It tasted good.

  “All right, Raffie, good rebuttal there,” she said, taking a little whipped cream on her fingertip and raising it in the air. “Now, tell me why I should be giving you the time of day, or you’ll get a nostril-full of this!” She smiled, but tried to make her eyes convey a playful sense of seriousness. She didn’t know if she succeeded. He flashed his dimples again, and her arm relaxed as she semi-consciously licked the whipped cream off of her finger. Her tongue was finishing the swipe before she realized how sexy a gesture it was. The alcohol sloshing in her belly was making it hard for her to tell if she was acting suave or just stupid.

  “I’m 26, and I make an honest, clean living in the open air, as one of the groundskeepers for the University,” Raffie continued. He nodded sagely and never moved his eyes from hers. She could tell that he was trying to transmit some deeper message in his words, but she didn’t know what it was. He patted the table with his hand, and said, “I love women but women bore me. I’m looking for a companion. I’m not looking for a woman to be my companion. I’m looking for a companio
n to be my woman.”

  “Something is off in your logic there, buddy,” Maddie laughed, again catching the red drink straw in her lips and slurping from the concoction that he had ordered for her. It was some sort of chocolate liqueur and she was genuinely surprised by how delicious it was. “Women aren’t boring,” she said after she swallowed. “We’re the most fascinating, complex beings on earth, if you believe what you hear on television.”

  “That may be so,” Raffie answered, “but I have a problem with women; they only present their boring sides to me. And if you will promise not to think too badly of me, I’ll tell you why they do that, what my problem is.” He pitched forward a little bit.

  “What is it?” asked Maddie, leaning across the table toward him with a little grin. “Tell me what your problem with women is.”

  “They’re frightened by romance,” he answered, his eyes pinned to hers, his voice sincere. A moment passed while Maddie waited for further explanation. None came. When she realized that was the totality of his analysis, she guffawed and slapped her hand across her mouth.

  “It’s true,” Raffie continued, a wry little smile twisting the corners of his lips. “They’re frightened of romance, and so when they’re confronted with it, they freeze up, stop being themselves. Get boring.”

  “Well, that is really something, Raffie,” she laughed as she gathered up her keys and phone. “You know what? This has been fun, but I’m out of here. Maybe we’ll see each other around,” she said as she stood and called out a goodbye to Lauren, who gave her another drunken thumbs-up sign. She took a moment to make sure her feet were planted securely on the floor before she began to walk to the door. She didn’t want to wobble too much.

  “May I walk you to your car?” Raffie asked, rising and pushing Maddie’s chair under the table.

  “I walked here, Raffie,” she answered. “And no, you may not walk me home. I’m not sure I want you knowing where I live,” she teased. “I hope that’s okay with a romantic like you.”

  “It’s not safe to walk alone,” he said, his beautiful golden eyes serious.

  “I’m not walking alone. My roommate’s a few bars down with some friends. We’re walking back together.” She flopped her body against the door and shoved it open. The chimes tied to the knob rang and she traipsed out onto the sidewalk. Raffie stood framed in the doorway.

  “I’ll see you again, Maddie,” he said, and his voice was musical and sweet.

  “Sure, sure, you romantic fool,” she said as she walked away with only a little stumbling. She stopped, turned, and said, “You’re such a self-declared romantic, you tell me: was that corny drink supposed to be romantic?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “It was the only drink in the house the same colors as you.” He grinned and disappeared back inside Blubber’s.

  She turned and clip-clopped along toward the streetlamp, where she was going to meet Karla to walk home. When she reached the streetlamp, she leaned against it, watching the people go by, and as she did so, she abruptly realized what Raffie had meant: black, white, and red—black and white tights, red sweater. Black chocolate liqueur, white whipped cream, and red cherry.

  Damn, she thought.

  Maybe there’s something to him after all.

  ♥♥♥

  Fearing that the clock on her phone was somehow untrustworthy, Maddie tramped across campus with her Shakespeare paper in her hand, her backpack on her back, and Raffie on her mind. She wasn’t sure if Dr. Dull’s hard-nosed late-paper policy made her respect him more or less, but she wasn’t going to mess around with it. He’d made a big speech about how any papers submitted past 10:15 a.m. would incur a letter-grade deduction, with another letter grade lost for each subsequent quarter-hour late. She was smart enough to realize he would feel more like floating her the B if she submitted the paper promptly at the actual required submission time: 10:00.

  At 10:05, calves burning from the brisk walk, she arrived and slapped the essay down amongst the post-its and electrical cords on the professor’s desk. He immediately took a red pen and wrote “10:05” on the top of the paper and then threw it in a brown shoebox. She pointed at his coffee thermos, gave him a thumbs-up and a little smile, and turned away to find Nick arriving with his paper. He had more-or-less given up his casual pursuit of Maddie a week ago, but he still looked happy to see her, and he flashed his big toothy smile in her direction while he handed in his essay.

  “Maddie, wait,” he said as Dr. Dull scrawled a timestamp on the top of his paper and slung it into the box. “We’ll walk back to the parking lot together.”

  “Okay,” she said, feeling pretty happy about having submitted the essay, and also feeling a little socially starved after spending the morning in self-imposed paper-writing isolation. She’d gotten up around 5:30 a.m., shooed her roommate away at mid-morning, and typed like mad until 9:00, when she had to call it quits because she needed time to shower. It had been almost painful to say, “Karla, I can’t get that guy Raffie out of my head, and I need to talk about it, but I have to type this dumb paper.” So now, the idea of having a walking partner sounded great. She needed human interaction, and there were far worse companions out there than reliable old Nick.

  “I’m so glad that’s over,” he said as he jogged forward to meet her in the hallway. “I’m sure my paper is pretty solid. Definitely good enough to pass.” He shrugged his backpack into place across his shoulders and unwrapped a piece of gum, tossing the wrapper into a little wastepaper basket in the corridor.

  “Mine was rough,” Maddie said, waving away the stick of gum that Nick was extending to her. “And I had a hard, hard time doing all the research and stuff this weekend because I met this incredible guy and I’ve been thinking about him.” They stepped out into the sunshine and started to cross the central pavilion of the campus. She peeked at Nick from the corner of her eyes, hoping to see him looking a little jealous. He’d been so interested in her at the beginning of the summer, and it was strangely satisfying to be able to gloat about her new guy.

  Nick shot his gaze toward the sky, then shook his head back and forth quickly. He made a kind of buzzing sound with his lips. “There is so much wrong about that statement,” he said, crinkling his brow and smiling condescendingly.

  “What? What do you mean?” asked Maddie, surmising that she was being teased, but confused as to why. She decided to pretend—for the time being, at least—that she was enjoying it. She turned and walked backward, looking Nick in the face.

  “Okay, first of all, you have a guy in your life? I just didn’t know that, that’s all,” Nick said. Maddie’s smile widened and she saw that Nick was trying to cover up his disappointment. He didn’t like the thought that she was spoken for.

  He pulled his sunglasses from atop his head down over his eyes, sucked his teeth a little, and said, “Secondly—and probably more importantly—you just researched your paper this weekend? That means you just started writing maybe yesterday. Maddie, that paper is worth 50% of your course grade.”

  “Fifteen is not that much,” answered Maddie with a playful sneer, spinning on her heel and facing forward again. They stepped from the sidewalk into the grass and the springy turf felt good under her feet. “What, are you some kind of freaky, grade-worrying guy?” She let her eyes find the breezy trees ahead, and thought about what a perfect sunny day it was for washing cars.

  “I’m in college, Maddie. I think you are, too, the last time I checked,” Nick said as he stopped walking. “We’re supposed to be worrying about grades.” Maddie heard his voice falling behind her, so she stopped walking too. She twisted and looked over her shoulder, where she saw him posed with one hand on one hip.

  “Are you coming?” she asked, turning around to face him. “The parking lot’s still over there. It didn’t suddenly move just because you’re a grade nerd.”

  “You were kidding when you said fifteen, right?” he asked.

  Maddie squinted her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. He wasn’t s
uch a fun walking partner anymore, not now that he was harassing her about her paper. She always thought he was a regular frat-guy type, with his t-shirts and khaki shorts. She hadn’t known he was a secret egghead. She sighed and thought about water buckets and soap suds and old rags.

  “Maddie, the daily assignments only totaled 30%. This major paper is 50%,” Nick said. “They can weigh assignments that heavily in the condensed summer sessions. If your paper really sucks, you need to go back and try to give Humboldt a sob story. Maybe he’ll give you an extension.”

  She peered at Nick, ten feet of beautiful day separating them and felt a sudden blast of icy panic. Fifty percent? That was huge. She’d never been required to write a paper that was weighted at more than 20%. The syllabus had been boring and she hadn’t paid much attention to what it said about grades, but she had figured the daily assignments would be worth enough to make up for any deficiencies she had on the major paper. Even so, she’d only turned in about half of those.

  “I’ll walk back with you, Maddie,” Nick said, extending a hand to her. “We’ll think of a story on the way.”

  “That man is not going to give me an extension,” Maddie said, crossing her arms and trying to regain her composure. “I’ve literally never spoken a single word to him. Why would he do me a favor now?” she asked. “Besides, if I got an extension, then I’d have to work on the paper some more. And I don’t want to.”

  “Just tell him something. Anything,” Nick said as he took a few steps forward and grabbed her backpack. She tried to turn away, so he turned her around and began to walk her back toward the building like a child being marched to the doctor’s office. “Tell him that your boyfriend is out of the country and you’re worried about him, and you’re terrified about it, and that your paper is a little sub-par because of it. Maybe he’ll think the guy is deployed or something.”

  Maddie only had a vague idea of what the word deployed meant, always making it a point to pay very little attention to depressing current events, especially ones that sounded like they might involve the military or animal rights. She frowned and saw the imaginary car wash session vanishing before it ever had a chance to materialize.