Meant to Be

By

Tiffany King

Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2011 by
Tiffany King

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All rights reserved. Except as permitted
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The characters and events portrayed in this
book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or
dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

http://www.authortiffany.wordpress.com

To my wonderful husband, Karl.

None of this would have been possible without
you.

And also to my beautiful children, Ashlynn
and Ryan, for being so patient

throughout this journey.

I love you.

Meant To Be

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?”

“Because we are never going to let go of him
if we stay in this town, everywhere we go reminds us of him. The
movies, our favorite restaurants, even the mall. I’m reminded of
him wherever I go, and I know you are too. We need a new
beginning.”

“Isn’t moving expensive?” I asked, not sure
my mom had thought this through completely. We weren’t poor, but I
knew that both my parents had to work to maintain their lifestyle.
I had been worrying about how we were going to make ends meet since
my dad had died.

“We have the money from your dad’s life
insurance.”

“Dad had life insurance?” I asked
surprised.

“Yes, we both had policies in our name. We
took them out after we adopted you. We wanted to make sure if
anything ever happened to us, you would be taken care of.”

I felt the familiar pang in my heart. I knew
I should get over being abandoned, but for some reason I could not
let it go that my “real” parents didn’t love me enough to keep me.
I knew my adoptive parents loved me like I was their own flesh and
blood, but I couldn’t help wondering why I had been left behind by
my real parents.

“How much money is the policy?” I had asked,
shaking off the bothersome thoughts.

“Enough that you never have to worry about
college and you get to spend your last couple months of school in
private school.”

I was thrilled. Attending a private school
had been a lifelong dream of mine. Not because I was vain and
wanted to surround myself with other smart kids, but because I felt
if I attended a school where there were other kids with high IQ’s,
I could get lost in the crowd. Don’t ask me why I had assumed
everyone at private school were smart, I had just always perceived
it that way.

In public school I always seemed to be the
smartest in my class, and my teachers were always trying to get my
parents to have my IQ tested, but I always fought it. I didn’t want
to skip grades. I didn’t want to be tested for gifted classes. I
just wanted to be like any other teenager. For years my goal was to
fly under the radar. I always got straight A’s, but I never went
beyond that. The less attention I got, the happier I was.

It was easier when I had teachers that didn’t
care much about their jobs, and had only gone into teaching for the
summers off. They appreciated kids like me who made their jobs
easier. The teachers that actually liked their jobs were harder to
fool. Usually, after a couple of months, they would catch on to
just how smart I was and then the cycle would start over again.
They would meet with my parents.

“Do you know Krista is gifted?” They would
ask.

“Yes,” my parents would reply.

“Would you like us to test her?”

“No,” my parents would say. “We think Krista
is comfortable where she is.”

I had seen this cycle many times and just
wanted to put it all behind me. I felt a private school was the way
to go, but they were expensive and I knew that it would be too
costly for me to attend one, so I had never asked.

“Yes,” my mom replied.

“There’s more, I’ve been researching private
schools and guess where one of the best in the nation is
located?”

“Santa Cruz?” I asked, not daring to believe
my good fortune.

“Yep!” she replied, using one of my favorite
slang words.

Except for being overly sensitive and
dreaming about some guy I had never met, the next craziest thing
about me was my ridiculous, burning desire to visit Santa Cruz. My
parents could never explain this strange desire of mine, but I
couldn’t help wondering if I was born there or something like
that.