Free Beach House Beginnings by Christie Ridgway

noticed you, the way you sparkled, the way you seemed to embrace life with wide-open arms. And I only admired Peter more for winning you. After he was gone, you would come to mind from time to time and I’d wonder…”
    “Wonder what?”
    “If I should try to contact you.” He shrugged. “I talked myself out of it, though, until that day I woke up from surgery and was told that I’d survived the crisis and would have a complete recovery. Remembering my dream, I knew I had to follow it. I had to at least come to the cove and see what might happen between us.”
    “I might not have been here!” she said. “I haven’t been back since that summer.”
    He shrugged again. “Fate at work?”
    Meg swallowed. “It’s ridiculous to think something like fate or a dream had a hand in…in our meeting or anything that came after.”
    “It didn’t have a hand in what came after. When I arrived and met you, not the dream you, but the real woman, that’s when I fell in love. That’s who I’m in love with. You, Meg. You still sparkle, you know. And I think that hand-in-hand, the two of us could do a damn good job of embracing everything life has to offer.”
    She was already in her clothes. Without even being aware of it, during that speech she’d found them and quickly pulled them on, like armor. Caleb didn’t seem interested in stopping her; he just gazed on her with a steady, self-possessed regard.
    It made her want to throw things.
    It made her want to throw up.
    It made her want to fall down on her knees and cry.
    Instead, she ran away, returning to her childhood bed where she crawled under the blankets and pulled them over her head, though she knew such an action never kept the monsters away.
    * * *
    The next day, aware she’d have to face Caleb sometime, she couldn’t stand hanging around the property management office. Instead, at about eleven, she left a note on the door, saying she’d be back after a thirty-minute walk.
    Then she took off down the beach, the wind fluttering the hem of her sleeveless cotton dress. The sun was out early, the morning was as warm and beautiful as high summer, and the smell of sunscreen was in the air as she traipsed past small groups on the sand, their camps delineated by bright beach towels and low fortress walls made up of coolers and beach chairs. Meg waved when people called out her name, but didn’t stop to chat. She’d have to pass Caleb’s rental and she wanted to be moving at full steam when she did so.
    Yet her feet came to a sudden, panicked halt when she caught sight of him at the water’s edge, bare-chested and wearing a low-slung bathing suit. With a kayak.
    Her mind flashed back ten years before. Peter, giving her a jaunty wave as he started off that late afternoon.
    Never to return.
    Her rubbery legs still managed to break into a run and she raced toward Caleb. “What are you doing?” she screeched.
    “Going out,” he said calmly. He was already in the water up to his knees and was stepping into the molded plastic watercraft.
    Without even thinking, Meg waded toward him, barely registering the cold water on her toes, her ankles, her shins. “You shouldn’t do this!”
    But he was already moving off, stroking with the aluminum-and-plastic paddle. A small wave tilted the kayak’s nose higher, and she saw a lei nestled in the bow.
    “Why do you have flowers?”
    He glanced at her over one bronze shoulder and raised his voice as he moved farther from her. “A tribute for Peter. Would you like to go out with me? This is a two-seater.”
    “ No .” Anxiety was churning in her gut, swirling like the sea water around her legs. “Please, Caleb. Please come back.”
    He looked at her again, the kayak still cutting through the water. “Of course I will, sweetheart. Keep the faith.”
    I don’t have faith. I don’t have anything like that. But her throat was too tight to say the words and he was now too far from her to hear. Her eyes still on him, she walked