Meant to Be (The Saving Angels 1)

Chapter 1

The dream was as familiar as always, but that didn’t keep my heart from practically beating out of my chest from the anticipation of seeing him again. The bright moonlight overhead and the lights from the amusement park in the distance provided just enough light to see him waiting for me. I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corner of my mouth as I slowly walked toward him. The hard packed wet sand crunched under my bare feet as I walked along the tide line. I could feel the cold water lapping over the top of my feet, reaching my ankles. The fact that I have never seen his face didn’t diminish the intimacy that has blossomed from the many nights we have spent together. There was a subtle, cool breeze off the ocean that might have chilled me if not for his warm embrace that comforted me like a down blanket on a cold winter night. I hoped against hope that the new twist of the dreams was a fluke, and that tonight would be different. I felt his fingers tighten around mine, and I tried with every bit of strength I had to hold on, but the invisible force yanked him away like a kite in the wind, and in an instant he was gone.

I woke to a damp pillow from the tears I had shed while dreaming.

The dream had changed over the last few weeks and I could hardly control the sorrow that filled me when I awakened. I didn’t understand why, after dreaming about him my whole life, the dreams were now different. What was this mysterious force that suddenly pulled him away, leaving me all alone in the darkness?

I sat up and brushed away the wet blonde strands of hair that was stuck to the moisture on my face.

Glancing at the alarm clock beside my bed, I was dismayed to see that dawn was just minutes away, and my alarm would be going off any minute.

“Well, I might as well go take my shower now,” I told Feline.

Feline was my cat, and even though he was getting up in cat years, and would rather stay on my comfortable bed, he peeked his eyes open at the sound of my voice. When he saw me watching, he closed his eyes back up and snuggled even deeper into the blankets.

For the first time that morning, I smiled. Even though he looked like he was zonked out, I knew he would beat me to the bathroom.

Sure enough, the instant I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, Feline was at my feet.

Bending over, I scratched him behind his ears before heading out of my room. With Feline at my heels, I walked down the hallway to the bathroom.

I was finally getting used to the set up of the new house and had stopped opening the hallway closet door to go to the bathroom. The first night, I actually walked all the way into the closet before realizing I wasn’t in the bathroom. In my defense, I had been half asleep, but it was still embarrassing, especially after telling my mom. My mom teased me and said maybe we should put signs on the bathroom doors like you see in restaurants, if that would help.

I could feel the flush of embarrassment begin to creep up my neck as it headed for my face. I knew my mom didn’t really think I would have used it as a bathroom, but it didn’t take much to embarrass me. “Just joking sweetie,” my mom had said, reaching over and patting my hand.

“I know.” My red face couldn’t hide my embarrassment.

If I could change one thing about myself, it would be the fact that everything made me blush. Most girls would want to change something about their appearance, but not me. Not that I think I’m anything great, as a matter fact, I pretty much feel I’m a lost cause.

If asked to describe myself, I would mumble medium height, blue eyes, dish water blonde hair, average build, and a chest not worth bragging about. There were so many ordinary aspects to my body that I was in the opinion you would have to change my whole palate to make me beautiful. No, if I could change anything, I would change the fact that my face flushed red at the drop of a hat. Everything seemed to tinge my cheeks with color. It didn’t matter if someone paid me a compliment, or if a teacher called on me in class, everything made my face bright with color.

Often, even watching sitcoms was difficult for me. If I sensed something was going to embarrass a character on a show, I would have to flip the channel to avoid almost becoming sick from empathy. My dad used to lightly tease me about it when I was younger. He would call me their “sense-a-meter.”

There was no denying that I was sensitive. If a book was sad, it was a given that I would cry buckets reading it. If a movie had a sad ending, I would walk around sad for days afterwards. My parents quickly learned to curb my movie watching and to keep all depressing movies away from me. They often joked that they were the only parents that had to keep their child away from Disney movies. When I was eight, it had taken me weeks to get over Bambi’s mother dying. It wasn’t just books and movies that I was sensitive to. I was also keenly aware of the emotions of other people around me. If my parents were happy, I was filled with a warm joyful feeling. To the other extreme though, if they were sad, I was filled with unexplainable grief.

Growing up, once my parents became aware of just how sensitive I was, they tried to mask their emotions to spare me the agony they felt I went through. This adjustment made life easier for me and for the most part I lived my life relatively happy. That is until a year ago when my dad died from a heart attack during his morning run; my world was shattered.

After his sudden death, I wound up spending a few weeks in the hospital. At first the doctors thought I was suffering from depression, but it was more deeply rooted. My own grief compounded with my sensitivity to my mom’s sorrow was almost enough to kill me. The doctors were flabbergasted that even sleeping pills did not seem to give me the peace I needed. They observed that if I fell into a natural sleep, I seemed more peaceful.

My dreams had always been the soothing medicine that I needed for any pain that I experienced in life. We have never once, in all our years together spoken a single word, but we share a conscious bond that makes it unnecessary.

For obvious reasons, I had to keep this info to myself since the doctor’s already thought I was a basket case. I could just imagine what they would think if I told them I was comforted by some boy I had been dreaming about all my life, and even though he always stood in the shadows, and I had never seen his face clearly, I was in love with him. Not even my parents knew everything about the dreams. Sure, they knew that I occasionally dreamed about some boy I had never met, but I never let on that I dreamt of him every night, and that he is the reason I paid no attention to the boys in school.

My grief over my dad’s passing gradually lifted, and I started to function again. I knew a big part of this was because my mom realized that I could not handle her grief on top of my own. She learned to hide her own grief when I was around. I felt bad that she had to mask her own sorrow, but I could not help appreciating the loosening of the band of sadness that had encircled me.

I knew my mom still missed my dad even a year later, and often at night I could still sometimes hear her crying in her room.

That’s why we were in a new house, in a new town.

Two months ago after our first Christmas without my dad, my mom abruptly closed the book she had been reading at the breakfast table. At the slam of the book, I looked up startled from my own book.

“That’s it,” she had announced. “We’re moving.”

“What?” I asked, not sure I heard her right. “Moving?” We had lived in this house as long as I could remember.

“Were moving,” she repeated.

“Why?”