Peace of Her Heart

by Lyndie Strawbridge

  Maddie and Karla circulated through the party, stopping to chat with people they knew a little bit, then pausing to flip through the music over by the television. The guy choosing the tunes was heavily into 1970s funk, but was worried about overwhelming the party with his choices.

  “It’s a heavy weight, really,” he explained to Maddie. She tried to look interested, but her eyes darted here and there, hoping to spot Raffie. “It’s hard to pick music that everybody likes,” the guy said, rubbing his bearded chin as he flicked through music files on the little laptop that was running the stereo. “Lauren asked me to do it because I’m a thinker. Someone who’s not in the right head-space could botch up the mood by choosing the wrong song,” he explained.

  Maddie peered at the list of songs and suggested a pianist who played old-timey blues.

  “I love that chick’s music,” a smooth, calm voice said behind Maddie, right into her ear. She turned and there was Raffie. His second impression matched up to his first impression: his dark, shoulder-length hair shone, and his eyes gleamed golden like the sun. He smiled and she again noticed the dimples on his slim face.

  Maddie pushed her hair behind her ear and stammered, “Don’t you love her songs?” She cast her face downward and looked up through her eyelashes coyly. “It’s kind of cool to see you again,” she said, nodding. She toed the carpet with her boot.

  “You came here looking for me,” he said, his smile revealing straight, white teeth.

  “I didn’t!” she said with false shock. “But I admit, when Lauren asked me to this party, I knew she was planning for us to meet up,” Maddie said with a flirty grin. “I came because I didn’t want to crush you, not because I was looking for you.”

  “Oh, is that it?” Raff asked, nodding his head and looking off into the distance as he pursed his lips. He turned his gaze back to her and looked her straight in the eyes. “Well, thank you, Maddie Watson, for not crushing me. I would have been. You know, I would have been crushed.”

  Maddie found herself tongue-tied. She moved her lips a little, but no words came to her mind. After a moment, she turned to look for Karla, and found her nowhere in sight. She looked back at Raff, sideways.

  “My friend left,” she said.

  “I know,” he answered. “She winked at me before she walked away.”

  “Well, I guess I’d better just stick next to you, because I don’t know many people here,” Maddie said with a little shrug of her shoulders. Excitement trilled through her spine.

  Raff reached out and took her hand. He led her through the den, and she realized that more than one girl was taking notice of her. She wondered if she was imagining the envious look on their faces. It must be my mind playing tricks on me, she thought. Or maybe not; they don’t know me, and yet I’m with the hottest one of their guys. Maybe they are jealous, she thought, and her heart jumped a little. Pride swelled in her chest.

  In the dining room, Raff knelt down and dug through the ice chest until he found a cold beer bottle for her. He hooked the edge of the cap along the side of the cooler and slapped it with his palm, popping it off, and then he stood and handed the bottle to her. She smiled up at him, hoping she looked bashful and inviting. She allowed herself to be led around the party for the next ten minutes, meeting people and smiling and making small talk. It was as if she were already his girlfriend.

  “I could get used to this,” she said with a giggle as he led her out the back door and onto the porch where a dozen people sat and smoked. They smoked cigarettes, they smoked cloves, they smoked pot.

  “Get used to what part of it?” Raffie asked as the two of them jostled to a stop in the corner of the porch, surrounded on three sides by potted plants.

  “All of it,” Maddie said with another little laugh, looking at Raffie surrounded by foliage. She hoped her voice sounded seductive. “I could get used to hanging out with a hippie like you, for starters,” she answered. “I could get used to these kinds of mellow parties.” She smiled up at him. He smiled back down at her and she suddenly felt that she’d been too saccharine, so she added a little playful venom to her sentiments, saying, “It wouldn’t be a total waste of time to be with you.”

  “Oh, you’re dishing it out again,” Raffie laughed, tossing his head back for a moment before pinning her eyes with his.

  “And you’re taking it!” she teased, and Raff took her hand again, swinging their arms back and forth a little.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s not just stand here in this corner amongst the plants. Let’s go out into the wilds of Lauren’s backyard.” They wove through the crowd on the porch and made their way down the little concrete stairs to the backyard. In the middle was a picnic table, and the two of them sat on it, their feet on the wooden benches.

  “You know a lot about plants? From tending the grounds at the University?” Maddie asked. Raff didn’t answer; he was instead gazing up into the night sky. She turned her head and looked up along with him.

  “You don’t have to know a lot about them to know how to love them,” he said after a long moment, his eyes still focused on the sky. “People try to make things so complicated. It’s like magic. It’s love. We’re born knowing how to love the plants and the animals and the world.”

  Music from the party floated across the little backyard. Maddie thought of tie-dyed shirts and the kind of plants that hippies loved the most. She laughed a little to herself and then felt bad about it because Raffie seemed so sincere.

  “Look up there,” he said, lifting his arm and pointing into the darkness above their heads. Maddie peered up into the starry blackness. Raff leaned back on his elbows, and she did the same, reclining on the picnic table.

  “What am I supposed to be looking for?” she asked.

  “I’ll show you some magic,” he said quietly. “Do you see that star up there to the right? The big one next to the two little ones?” She squinted a little and tried to follow his finger into the sky.

  “Yes,” she finally answered. “I think we’re looking at the same ones,” she amended.

  “That’s the constellation Tortuga. Do you see how those three stars form a shape that looks like a turtle’s head? And then if you look further off to the right you see the rest of the stars that make up his shell,” Raff said, gesturing up into the sky and looking over at Maddie expectantly.

  “I guess. I’ve never been very good at seeing constellations,” she apologized.

  He smiled and looked back up at the stars. “That’s the turtle that carries the world on his back. The first one,” he clarified.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she answered, enjoying the sound of his voice in her ears.

  “You know, a turtle carries the world on his back. It’s Navajo lore. They used to sit in the desert and look up to the stars for answers in this world, looking through the smoke from their fires.” Maddie looked away from the sky and turned toward Raffie’s handsome profile, his lips moving as he told his story. “And what came to them in their search for answers was that it was a turtle holding the world on his back, and that is him, Tortuga, in the sky. And Tortuga stands on another turtle who stands on another turtle who stands on another turtle. It’s just turtles all the way down.”

  Maddie laid back on the picnic table, her arms crossed behind her head. She stared up at Tortuga. She could almost see him. “But it’s not turtles all the way down. The earth doesn’t ride on anything’s back. I guess they thought the earth was flat,” she murmured, lost in thought. “What would it have been like to lie on the sand in the desert and look up through the smoke, wondering?”

  Raff shifted on the table next to her, turning a bit onto his side. “It’s a metaphor, Maddie. They knew more about the earth, in their hearts, than we do,” he said. He took her hand in his and twiddled with the fingers.

  “I can’t imagine living the kind of lives the Native Americans did,” Maddie mused distractedly, her attention focused like a laser beam on Raffie’s warm palm against her wrist.<
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  “I can’t either,” Raff answered, his fingers beginning to twine through hers. “But if I were one of them, I know I couldn’t study the sky if someone like you were lying next to me.” His hand clamped tightly to hers and she felt a surge of adrenaline. Something was about to happen. The kiss.

  “Oh, yeah?” was all she managed to choke out.

  “Yeah,” he said, leaning down and kissing her. It was barely a kiss, just a faint brush of his lips against hers before his head continued to move and his lips were at her ear. “Maddie,” he breathed. “I have a confession to make.”

  “Oh, yeah?” was again all she could say.

  “I don’t know the true astrological name of those stars. I wove that story just for you, for your beautiful ears to hear and for your beautiful mind to paint in colors across the canvas of your soul.” He sighed as he twined his arm through hers, his body sliding tightly against hers. “I have begun to write our own personal tale of celestial love,” he said. “I’m a shooting star, a dying star, a star that can’t bear to live anymore without romance. You’re the woman to walk the world with me; I know it.”

  She twisted against him on the scabby picnic table and crushed her lips against his, reaching for him with her free hand, clasping his head in her palm, and not letting go.

  Chapter 4

  Maddie wasn’t sure where to park but at this point it didn’t seem to matter; she was late to meet Nick and she didn’t want him to be irritated. It had been hard to get up and get moving; sweet dreams of Raffie’s mouth and hands and words kept pulling her back into sleep. The two had made out on the picnic table, under the stars that Raff had filled with romance, until it had been time to leave the party. Maddie’d floated home in a cloud.

  She flung herself out of her car and into the daylight of the library parking lot, where she could see Nick on the building’s front stairs. He leaned against one of the guardrails, arms folded across his chest. Maddie gave him a little wave as she walked toward him. It was a long walk, and apparently Nick was going to watch her the whole time. She looked away from him, then looked back, but each time she found he was still watching her. It made her self-conscious.

  After the first five seconds of this staring game, Maddie decided she’d just stare right back at him. She smirked at him a little as she evaluated him. He looked pretty GQ, with his white t-shirt stretched across his pecs and those silly biceps flexed below his short sleeves. And his jeans, slung just so across his hips, with that belt and those shoes that were just a little trendy but not too much. And the hair. And the watch. It was ridiculous. It was like he’d dressed nicely on purpose.

  Maddie fought the compulsion to look down at her own attire. She’d basically rolled right out of bed and gotten in her car immediately. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She’d rolled out of bed, pulled on some shorts and a t-shirt, and brushed her hair and teeth, but she hadn’t done full makeup or really put much thought into her outfit. Her thoughts had been elsewhere.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said as she finally got within ten feet of Nick.

  “It’s not a problem,” he said, shaking his head and smiling a little. “You’re only about fifteen minutes late. I wasn’t mad yet.” He pulled open the library door and ushered her in ahead of him. “I wasn’t going to get upset until twenty minutes late, and I wasn’t going to get perturbed until thirty minutes late.”

  “Perturbed? Who says things like ‘perturbed?’” she asked, laughing a little as she ran her hand across her hair to make sure it wasn’t too lumpy.

  “I do,” Nick answered with a shrug and a little smile. “Let’s sit back here,” he said, steering her to a table near a window. He flopped his bag on the table and pulled out a laptop. “Do you have a mini-disk or something?” Nick questioned, his eyebrows raised and his hand outstretched.

  Maddie shrugged. “No,” she answered.

  “Okay, well, the library internet connection fades in and out but we’ll see,” Nick said, flipping the computer open and tapping some keys. Maddie sat next to him with her hands in her lap. “What’s your email?” Nick asked.

  “Why do you want to know?” she responded, confusion and irritation creeping over her.

  “I’m trying to get a copy of your paper, Maddie,” Nick answered. “I need to see a copy of it before I can start helping you with it.”

  “Oh, duh!” she said with a little laugh. “I have my paper here.” She pulled her big purse into her lap and tugged it open. She rummaged through the contents until she found the paper. Maddie had tucked it in there last night so that she’d be sure to have it for the study date. She unfolded it and smoothed it out on the table between the two of them.

  “Okay,” said Nick, and she thought she heard bemusement in his voice. She looked down at the battered paper with all the folding lines cutting through it and the lipstick smear on it from when the cap came off earlier.

  “Oh, shut it, Egghead,” she said with a sigh and a laugh. “It’s a perfectly good copy of the paper. It’s the copy that I was going to turn in originally, see?” she said, tapping the timestamp that Dr. Dull had scrawled across the top a few days ago.

  “Sure it is, sure it is,” he answered, and she could see what a deliberate effort he was making to wipe the grin from his face.

  “You’re making me feel perturbed,” she said, but her straight face broke and she started really laughing. Nick cracked up, leaning his face into his hands and guffawing. “Okay, so, I admit it,” she said. “It was kind of spacey for me to just bring this and not bring an electronic copy of it,” she giggled. Somehow this little encounter had become hilarious.

  “That’s a-okay, Maddie,” Nick said, sobering a little. “Let’s start with you just telling me about this paper. What’s it about?”

  “Why don’t you just read it?” Maddie asked, straightening herself in her chair and looking at Nick with a smile. He really was handsome. It was a shame he was such a boring guy; sometimes she felt bad for avoiding his advances earlier in the summer.

  “Because that’s not how you tutor a paper, Maddie. I need you to tell me about it first, in your own words,” he said, leaning back in his chair with a little smile. He twiddled with an ink pen and watched her with a friendly look on his face.

  “What do you know about tutoring people on research papers?” she challenged, leaning back in her own chair.

  “I’ve been working at the tutoring center here on campus for three years now,” Nick replied, knitting his eyebrows in confusion. “Come on, Maddie. I’m one of the Student Directors of it. I’m one of the Student Directors of the Redwine Tutoring Clinic.”

  “Oh my god, you’re kidding me. You’re a huge egghead,” she answered, laughing and shaking her hair. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “How did you get that dorky job, anyway?”

  Nick hesitated for a moment. “I took the job to get to know a girl I liked. How’s that for an answer? Turns out, I was good at tutoring people, and here we are a few years later and I’m not a tutor anymore; I’m one of the Student Directors.” He lifted Maddie’s paper from the table and looked at it absently. “It’s actually kind of a big deal,” he said, and his voice was a little quieter. Maddie wondered if she had hurt his feelings.

  “You just don’t look like the kind of guy who has a job like that, that’s all,” she said, a little disconcertedly. She wasn’t sure what to say and she wasn’t very impressed with the job. Perhaps it was kind of a big deal but it was the kind of job a total nerd would have. A square. There was absolutely nothing romantic about doing that kind of thing for a career. She knew she’d made the right choice in rebuffing Nick a few weeks ago; she’d have been bored out of her brain with a guy like him, nice as he may be.

  “Well, anyway. Tell me about your paper,” Nick said, subdued but still friendly. So Maddie began trying to tell him. It was actually pretty hard to explain the paper. Nick glanced down at the pages now and then, but mainly he listened. After a few moments, he turned his laptop to
ward Maddie and told her to take a few minutes to type down her thesis statement.

  She sighed and laid her fingers on the keyboard. “I don’t remember exactly what I wrote,” she said. Nick told her it didn’t matter; it was okay if it was a new version of the thesis statement. At that point he pulled a notebook out of his bag and occupied himself with other things.

  “I’ll check back with you in a few minutes. Take your time,” he instructed.

  Maddie wasn’t amused with this at all. When Nick had offered to help her with her paper, she thought he meant he’d fix it up for her. She hadn’t bargained on being tutored. This was going to be a royal pain in the neck. She stared into the blank page on the computer screen. Her thoughts wouldn’t focus on the paper.

  Instead, her mind insisted on remembering Raffie. He had a good job. A landscaper here at Redwine. That career had promise. She could imagine him out there somewhere right now, mowing or edging. Planting annuals, trimming bushes. It was indeed honest work, as Raffie had described it. It didn’t have the prestige of a doctor or a lawyer or such, but Maddie wasn’t ready for one of those men anyway.

  No, a gardener is better for me at this point, she said to herself sensibly as she thrummed her fingertips against the keyboard gently. The keys made a sound but did not produce text on the screen. She thought about Raffie’s landscaping company. Surely one day he would have one, and they could be married and have kids and a beautifully landscaped yard. She laughed to herself and forced her hands to type out a thesis statement. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t awful, she thought.

  “Okay, check it out,” she said to Nick, who set his notebook aside and slid the laptop toward him. He furrowed his brows and seemed to read the sentence several times.

  “I’m not quite understanding the connection you’re making between Othello and King Lear,” he said after a few more moments.

  “Othello?” Maddie replied. She was confused. “Do I have to discuss Othello? My paper is on King Lear.”