His grip on her softened even more, then changed from a restraint to a big bear hug as he squeezed her close for a moment. “I know,” he said sweetly. “I knew when I sent that drink across the bar that you and I would probably not work out. I just thought I’d try, because you seemed so beautiful to me.”
She relaxed and the anger began to ebb away. “What are you doing out here, anyway? Did Karla recruit you to reel me in?” She turned her head to see that Nick was now sitting in his car with the door shut and the window down, and he and Karla were exchanging a few last words. He didn’t look angry anymore; now both of their gestures seemed to hold a quality of reconciliation. She strained to hear what Nick and Karla were saying. She couldn’t. “Please tell me why you were with Nick,” Maddie whined, squirming around in Raffie’s lap to look him in the face. Her eyes were clouded with confusion and her mouth turned down at the corners. “What were you guys doing hanging out together?”
“Ah, it’s really not for me to say,” Raffie answered after a little hesitation. “Nick should be the one to tell you, since he’s the guy who’s actually with you.”
Maddie shook her head vigorously. “Not anymore, nope,” she said with conviction. “No, not after he avoided me all day and then had a clandestine meeting with you,” Maddie said, pleased that her buzz had faded to the point that she could now explain herself more clearly. “Current boyfriends should not sneak around talking to ex-boyfriends.”
“Maddie,” Raff sighed as he flopped her off of his lap and laid back against the mulch of the flowerbed. “He hasn’t done anything wrong. He really hasn’t.” Raff’s voice was a little sad.
Maddie watched as Nick’s sleek white car slid out of the parking lot and down the street. Karla crossed to the flowerbed, plopped down in the wood chips and said, “You really stomped the hell out of him, Maddie. He was pretty mad about that.”
“Oh, whatever,” Maddie said, shaking her head and looking up at the stars. “He deserved it.”
“Actually, to be honest,” Karla said, exchanging a look with Raffie, “he didn’t.”
“Oh, et tu Brute?” Maddie said gloomily. “If it’s not as bad as it looks, why won’t any of you level with me?” she pleaded. “Won’t one of you tell me what’s going on?”
Karla deflected, saying, “Okay, I confess. When you took off after Nick, I ran over to Raffie to confront him and see what was going on, and he said it was nothing.” She shot a look across the azalea bush at Raffie.
“And then we both kind of realized, ‘Oh no, Maddie is going to go out there and yell at Nick!’” said Raffie. “So we went running out of the bar to look for you.” They again swapped looks.
Maddie looked back and forth between the two of them. A cricket chirruped loudly in the night.
“And then we heard him yelling, so we ran faster, and then you were stomping the hell out of his feet,” Karla concluded. The three of them sat in the mulch, gazing up at the stars and the streetlights.
“Maddie, I still care about you,” Raffie said after a moment. “You’re a good person, and you’re sitting here tonight, on this beautiful summer night, sitting in a flowerbed amongst beauty, with two people who care about you more than you can know. And we’re telling you to go home, go to sleep, and forgive Nick in the morning.” His voice had taken on that magical, golden quality that had so swept Maddie up in the first few weeks.
Karla said, “Be nice to him. Please take it from us that he doesn’t deserve your anger at him.”
Maddie sat forward, hanging her head between her knees. A little bug zipped across the pavement in front of her. She’d wondered why it wasn’t yet asleep for the night. “All right,” she said quietly. “Let’s go get Clover and we’ll all walk home together.”
“Don’t worry about Clover,” Raffie said. “I’ll take care of her. I need to make things right with her anyway. I’ll make sure she gets back to your house safely.” Maddie shot him a look but didn’t fight the plan. It sounded like a good one.
“Come on,” said Karla, climbing to her feet and extending a hand to Maddie. “Our house wants us. Let’s not disappoint it.”
Chapter 18
In the morning, Maddie awoke to the sound of her phone buzzing. She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. She felt awful. Her mouth was dry and her head was full, and she’d slept fitfully, roiling with curiosity.
“Sometimes I hate people,” she muttered to herself as she flipped in bed, reaching out for the phone. It had stopped buzzing, and its happy little screen said that Nick had been the caller. Doubt and fear began to set in; she’d been led to believe that everyone was hiding a good secret from her. She might have messed it up by stamping the hell out of Nick’s foot the night before. And kicking his car. She was positive car-kicking was the kind of thing that would make him really angry.
The phone buzzed again. The little screen again lit up with Nick’s name. She froze. She wanted to talk to him, but still had no idea what to say. She had to decide fast, though, so she answered it. “Hello,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant but instead sounding grumpy.
“Hi, Maddie,” said Nick. “Did I wake you up?”
“Sort of,” she answered.
“Did they…tell you anything?” he asked, hesitancy in his voice.
“No.”
“Maddie, I want to see you,” he said. “Can I come over?”
“It doesn’t make any difference to me,” she grumbled. Even as she was doing it, she hated herself for it. Why couldn’t she be sweet to him? She wanted to, but the embarrassment and icky feelings from the night before wouldn’t allow it.
“All right,” Nick said cheerfully. It only sounded a little forced. “In that case, I’ll be there at noon. Get dressed, we’ll go somewhere for lunch and talk this all over.”
“Whatever,” she said, and hung up without saying goodbye.
Noon. It wasn’t much time but she wasn’t sure she cared. Let him see her in all her scraggly hung-over glory. She flipped the blankets aside and fell out of bed. In the den, she found Karla and Clover lying around reading magazines.
“Wait a minute. Isn’t this supposed to be at your first day at work?” she asked Clover.
“I’m not going, man!” the little hippie answered with a huge smile and joy in her voice. “Something wonderful happened!”
“Really?” Maddie responded curiously. She sank onto the couch and wrapped herself in a little blanket.
“Yeah, get a load of this,” Karla said, clearly having already heard the story.
“Okay, so, I met some people last night, and they were really cool, man. Really nice people. And we were getting along really great, you know? And I was telling them about the Rainbow Family and about Denver and about my van and about Feral, you know? And they said—dig this—they said that they would love to caravan with me back up to Denver, see some stuff, check things out! Can you believe that? They will road-trip with me back up to Denver!
“And I was like, wow, man, I would love to do that, but I don’t have any gas money. And they were like, Oh. And then I said, but if you buy the gas for me, you can stay with my family when we get there, and we’ll give you some stuff in exchange, whatever you feel is fair. So we talked about that, and they were like, ‘Cool,’ and so we’re going today!” She was beaming from ear to ear. Maddie noticed that Clover’s duffle bags were packed and in a pile next to the door.
“Clover, you’re leaving today? But you don’t even know these people!” Maddie felt shocked by the suddenness of it all.
“It’s Jacob and them,” Karla clarified.
“Oh,” answered Maddie. Jacob and his friends were safe people, and they did like road trips, and they did lean to the hippie side of things, although Maddie would have classified them more as granolas. “But, what about your van?”
“Oh, wow, someone paid for it, anonymously! I am supposed to pick it up today. So I’m going to do that in a few hours and then we leave!” Clover hopped up and ran across
the room to sit next to Maddie. She wrapped her arms around her. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked.
Maddie squeezed her tight and bit her tongue—she knew she shouldn’t reveal that Nick was the anonymous person who’d paid for the car repair. He wanted that to be a secret.
“But Maddie, there’s even more. Two more great things happened last night,” Clover continued.
So Maddie listened as Clover told her about great things. Raffie had approached Clover and opened his heart to her. He’d apologized for his poor treatment of her, for romancing her and luring her back to Redwine. He’d explained that he’d gotten caught up in the fantasy of having a relationship with a little wildflower like herself, and he’d been selfish in hoping that he could keep her—if not as a lover, then at least as a friend—and also keep Maddie, too. He’d explained that karma had taught him a lesson about love, lust, and romance that he couldn’t have learned if Clover hadn’t come into his life. Clover had been very moved by it all. She held his hands and they’d both grown teary-eyed together.
And the second great thing involved Maddie. “When Raff was walking me home last night, he said he was a part of this thing—” Clover hesitated, searching for words. “—A part of this thing that would make it up to you, too. This thing would make up for some of the awful stuff he did to you. But I can’t tell you what it is. It’s a surprise.” Clover’s freckles shined at Maddie.
“Oh, great,” Maddie spluttered. “Is this the thing with Nick? I don’t even care,” she asserted. “He’s coming over here at noon, and I don’t even think I’m going to brush my hair.”
“He’ll be here at noon?” Karla asked, sitting upright and at attention. “Look missy, go shower and get ready!”
“Ugh, that’s what he said,” Maddie groaned. “He said for me to get ready because he was taking me to lunch to explain last night, and you know what? I don’t care. I’m not going anywhere with him. If he wants to talk to me, he can do it right here at the house because I am not getting out of my pajamas.” And she meant it, too. “Look, I can tell from the cryptic, sneaky ways that all of you are acting, that he hasn’t done anything rotten, okay? But I hate this suspense thing, and I am not going to play along.”
“Aw, Maddie, no, you have to!” pleaded Clover, but Maddie would not relent.
“Okay, fine,” said Karla. “You don’t have to play along. You can be all sulking around the house in your pajamas if you want. But I absolutely insist that you go in there, take a shower, do your hair, and put on the nicest, cutest pair of pajamas you’ve got.” Maddie tried to protest, but Karla yelled at her, “Do it, for Pete’s sake. Okay? Do it. You can be a brat if you want to, but if that’s what you are going to do, you have to look your best doing it. Right? Right?”
Maddie looked at the clock. There was still enough time. No matter what was going to happen with Nick, she should indeed look her best for it. With a few token protestations, she dragged herself from the couch and into the shower. And once she got into the shower, she allowed herself to daydream. Everyone had implied that he had done nothing wrong. Clover had even gone a step farther and said he had a nice surprise for her. What could it be? And how was Raffie a part of it?
By the time she exited the shower and began drying off and fixing her hair, her imagination was running wildly in all directions. Although she could think of no reasons at all as to why Raff and Nick would suddenly be friends, she could think of nice surprises. Plans for a trip would be a nice surprise. Tickets to a concert would be a nice surprise.
“Something unexpected is going to happen,” Maddie whispered to herself as she exited the shower with a thumping heart. She wrapped in a towel and crossed the hallway into her bedroom.
She dug through a laundry basket looking for her best pajamas, a designer set with flowing loose pants and a strappy, close-fitting shirt that had ribbons woven through it. In the magazine, the model had been wearing the pajamas with stiletto heels, but of course they looked just fine with bare feet, too. She looked in the full-length mirror, tugging the ribbons a little to make them hang evenly.
It was almost noon. She looked nice, she thought. A dusting of powder and a little bit of blush finished her look. “Mm hm,” she murmured to herself. “I look like I just woke up, only better. This will do fine.”
She padded down the hallway into the den, only to find that Clover’s new friends had arrived and taken her things out to their car. The plan was to stop and get Clover’s van on the way out of town, and then enjoy whatever the long, strange trip to Denver would bring. Everyone was talking all at once, and there was laughter and happiness, and Maddie leaned down to give Feral a hug and tell him thank you for being the kind of dog he was.
As she held Clover in an embrace, she said, “I really will miss you, Clover girl. You’re something special, you know?”
Clover pulled back from her a little and said, “I probably won’t ever see you again, Maddie, but you’re my Sister forever, and I won’t forget. Someone—me—is always out there for you.”
When Maddie and Karla went out onto the front porch to wave goodbye to Clover, Maddie noticed that Nick had arrived and was leaning against his car on the other side of the lot. He apparently didn’t want to interrupt the goodbyes that were taking place, and Maddie thought his body language actually showed some insecurity instead of the self-confidence he normally exuded. She felt bad for him for a second. She felt bad that she had been snippy to him on the phone. She felt bad that she had refused to get dressed and wouldn’t allow him to take her to lunch.
Clover had just closed the car door when she flung it open again, and she hopped up the stairs back onto the porch. She took Maddie’s hands in her own, wagged her head in Nick’s direction, and said, “Be happy about it, Maddie.” Then she bounced back down the stairs and into the car, which drove slowly down the gravel drive and out onto the street, and away.
“I second that,” said Karla, jingling her car keys in her hand as she, too, bounced down the stairs, got into her car, and drove away to destinations unknown by Maddie.
She stood on the front porch of the duplex house alone, in her bare feet and gold-and-maroon designer pajamas, and watched Nick push himself away from the car. He crossed the parking lot with a gait that wasn’t quite his usual; he seemed slower than he had yesterday. Maddie twiddled with one of the ribbons hanging from the bottom of the shirt and managed a relatively normal-sounding “Hi,” when Nick came up the stairs.
“Hi,” he said, standing in front of her and looking down into her face. Subdued, she suddenly realized. Nick seemed subdued.
“Well, come in,” she said, gesturing to the still-open front door. He went ahead of her and she shut the door behind them. He sunk onto the sofa, and Maddie stood in the center of the room, unsure of what to do or say next. “Do you want anything? Like, a glass of water or something?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, I had thought that we might go to lunch, but I realized, when I saw you still in your pajamas, that you don’t want to go anywhere with me. Do you?” he asked.
She sat down on the opposite end of the couch. She actually wanted to sit close to him, but felt too awkward to do it. “Well, I don’t know,” said Maddie. “Maybe, I don’t know. I think we should just talk here, though.”
“Fair enough,” Nick said, with a sigh. “So, to cut straight to it, obviously you got really angry last night when you saw me playing pool with Raffie, and you thought something fishy was going on, right?” He adjusted himself on the sofa so that he was leaning toward her. She did the same, and it was nice to be a bit closer to him. She wasn’t angry; it was only the embarrassment and the curiosity that was making her act weird. But she didn’t know how to fix it. She didn’t want Nick to be subdued. She nodded and encouraged him to continue saying what he needed to say.
“It makes sense that you would think something fishy was going on. But surely you can think of a reason that a boyfriend might act sneaky right? A reason that isn’t a ba
d reason?” He looked into her eyes but didn’t hold her gaze the way he usually did; his eyes flicked away after a quick moment. He was nervous.
Maddie nodded and dropped her head. She examined the hem of her pajama pants as she quietly said, “Yes. Maybe a boyfriend is planning a surprise, and a girlfriend ruins it by stamping his foot a whole bunch of times, and screaming.”
Nick smiled and his voice lifted a little. “Yeah, maybe something like that.” He paused, and then said, “I was with Raff all day. All day yesterday. I went and got him from his house and had a talk with him.” Maddie looked up at Nick with disbelief and confusion in her face. Nick had spent all day yesterday with Raffie? Whatever for?
“We talked about you, Maddie. I took that guy to lunch and we talked about you. But first I made him put on some damned shoes and a full set of clothes. Did you notice, last night when you saw him, that he had pants on?”
“Yeah, I did notice,” answered Maddie, thinking back on it all. “Why did you spend all day with Raff?” The flame of curiosity was burning out of control inside of her.
“Well, I needed his help,” Nick said with a little shrug of his shoulders. “We talked about you, and I told him I wanted to try to do something romantic for you—since you like romance and stuff—and that I needed his help to be able to do it.”
Maddie didn’t like that at all. It just reeked. “I would rather have you just be yourself than have you take smarmy romance ideas from Raffie. God!” she said, more loudly than she meant to. “I mean, come on. It’s you I’m dating, not him.”
“I know, I know!” said Nick with a wave of his hands. “I didn’t take a romantic idea from Raff. I came up with it all on my own, the day that he was over here and that dog nearly ripped him apart. But I still needed his help to do it. Maybe Clover or Karla could have helped me, but I thought they’d blow my cover. I knew he wouldn’t.”
Peace of Her Heart Page 16