Meant to Be (The Saving Angels 1)

“Have you always lived in Santa Cruz?”

“No, I lived in Arizona when I was younger.

“How long have you been here in Santa Cruz?”

“About five years. My dad and I moved here after my mom died.”

“Why Santa Cruz?” I asked, sensing what his answer would be.

“I was drawn here.”

I wasn’t surprised. It made crazy sense that he would be drawn here also. I had been drawn here, Sam was here, and now he was too. What did this all mean? What was going on? I leaned forward and placed my head in my hands.

“What’s the matter?”

“I met a girl yesterday at school. She was in your class yesterday with me, her name is Sam. Do you remember her?”

He laughed. “I didn’t notice anyone yesterday, except you.”

“Why, what does she have to do with us?”

Us. The way he said that gave me goose bumps. I liked it that he thought of us as a pair.

“She and I have a lot of things in common, too many to be a coincidence.”

“What do you mean? What kinds of things?”

I suddenly felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to tell him about all my downfalls. Would it ruin his illusions of me if he knew about all my quirks? I had always been such a private person, and in the course of twenty-four hours, I had already spilled my guts out to one person.

He seemed to sense my inner turmoil. “You can trust me,” He said in a quiet voice.

“I know,” I said. “I just don’t want to change your opinion of me.”

“There’s nothing you could say that would ever change the way I feel about you.”

I took a deep breath and told him everything. I first filled him in on my childhood, and how my adoptive parents had figured out my sensitivity to emotions. I told him how I had always been a loner. How I found comfort with him in my dreams when my dad died. I told him how I had always hoped that he was really out there, and not just some person that would only visit me in my dreams. I told him about the pull this city had on me. Then I told him about Sam, and how she seemed to be the carbon copy of me. How we felt a connection to each other that was similar to ours, but not as strong. I let all the words pour out of me while he sat there quietly holding my hand.

I looked down at the uneven boards and watched as a fat bug struggled over the cracks between the boards. Every so often, half of its body would fall between the groves and it would flounder around trying to work its way back out.

“Sam even suspected that you were the guy from my dreams,” I continued on a little self-consciously.

“How did she know that?”

“Because, she has dreams just like ours.”

“What do you mean she has dreams like us?” Mark asked amazed.

I told him everything we had discussed the night before. About having the same kind of dream, and that Sam had already met her dream guy.

I could tell that he was having a hard time believing me, just like I had with Sam.

“It had never occurred to me that there were other people out there just like us,” he said, trying to grasp what he had just heard.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you something else bizarre.” He raised his eyebrows at my choice of words.

I laughed. He was right of course; all of this was turbo-bizarre.

I filled him in on the circumstances surrounding both of us being left when we were young.