Finding a Soul Mate (Meant to be Together Book 1) Read online

  We thought we saw Orion, the North Star, the Big and Little Dippers, the Seven Sisters, and Venus. In the morning my mom found us still sound asleep. She woke us and told Joan to get cleaned up and dressed because she would be getting off the train right after breakfast to meet her parents.

  I said good-bye to her after breakfast and ran up to the Vista Dome. I saw my mom and Joan meet Joan’s family on the station platform in Everett, Washington. There were hugs all around. As Joan and her family turned to leave, Joan looked up to the front of the Vista Dome car and waved to me. I waved back and soon the train was on its way again.

  * * *

  Every day during fifth grade, my best friend, Tim, and I would walk together to school and home. After school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we would walk into the center of town, as I was going to Hebrew school and Tim was going to Catechism. The Synagogue was a block further than the church so it made sense for us to walk together. One day we were goofing around and arrived at the Church about twenty minutes late. Father Hanrahan was standing in the doorway waiting for us.

  “Aren’t you going to be late for Hebrew School, Meyer?”

  “Yes, Father,” I told him and took off running.

  As I arrived at Hebrew School, Rabbi Hirschman’s countenance left little doubt I was in big trouble. “I understand you made your friend Tim late for Catechism today. I expect a minimum paper from you in no more than two days, on the Jewish value of friendship and how we use those values to show our respect for our friends. And believe me; making them late for their religious duties is not one of them.”

  When I arrived home the look on my parents’ faces told me they had heard from the Rabbi and I was in deep trouble.

  While walking to school the next morning Tim told me, “We can’t be late for religious classes again. My parents almost killed me for making you late for Hebrew school and Father Hanrahan has me writing a paper on the Christian value of friendship.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t until a school dance during the spring of seventh grade I had a chance to have much interaction with Joan again. Karen O’Reilly had begged me to be her date for the dance, which I ultimately agreed to do. At the dance it became obvious she wanted to go with me so she could be close to my best friend, Tim. I ended up alone standing in a corner, feeling much the village idiot.

  I noticed Joan and some guy were having an argument. It ended with a few obscenities on the guy’s part and tears running down Joan’s face. The guy and his buddies were laughing at her as they walked away. She wasn’t far from where I was standing and she looked in my direction, shrugged her shoulders, and used the back of her hand to wipe away a tear.

  I approached her. “He doesn’t want to know why minnows do what they do.” She tried to manage a smile.

  Summoning up all my seventh-grade male charm and debonair manner, not to mention courage, I informed her, “A hummingbird’s heart beats two hundred fifty times a minute when it is resting and twelve hundred beats per minute when it’s feeding.”

  She stared at me for a moment and then laughed her wonderful melodic laugh. We talked and joked for a bit and then, after summoning up more courage, I asked her to dance. She agreed and we enjoyed our first dance.

  Junior-high dances mostly played fast dance music with an occasional slow song. Joan and I had danced five fast dances when a slow one began. I was hesitant because only couples who were going steady danced slow dances together. As the music began, I held out my hand out to Joan, she took it and we started our first slow dance together.

  As I held her against me, it occurred to me this felt much different from the little girl who reminded me of a lamppost when we hugged. Joan was soft in places not even in existence a few years ago. As we danced, the feeling of having a special connection to someone came back to me, but it was different this time.

  Joan put her head on my shoulder with her face close to mine, but not touching. Even so, I felt the warmth from her cheek. She gently sighed, placed her cheek firmly against mine, and slipped her hand around the back of my neck.

  Somehow this was different from the other times I had danced slowly. As we moved, wrapped around each other, I began experiencing a feeling from deep inside me I wanted to protect her.

  There I was, this thin seventh grader who probably couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag, suddenly entertaining thoughts that if Joan and I had to get out of a paper bag, I would somehow lead the way out.

  That fall, Joan went off to high school and I was a busy eighth grader. I saw her around the neighborhood a few times, but other than an occasional hello, I only talked to her when she attended my school’s performance of “Oklahoma” in which I was one of the leads. She told me I was a great actor and should try out for some of the plays when I arrived in high school.

  Chapter Two

  ~ The Cabin

  High school was the worst four years of my life. I wouldn’t know why until many years later. I couldn’t concentrate as long as the other kids. With the exception of Algebra and Geometry, my grades were terrible.

  I also experienced mood swings, resulting in my getting extremely angry over minor incidents. This rarely resulted in a physical outburst. I could reduce a girl to tears, or lose a guy friend, in a handful of choice insults thanks to the huge vocabulary I had from all my reading. My best friend once told me, behind my back I was known as the “Lone Ranger of Character Assassination.”

  The worst physical harm I endured in high school was when I tried to separate two girls who were fighting over my friend, Tim. Both girls were in the group of friends I ran around with during high school. As I tried to separate them, one of them hit me on the head with her clutch bag. I swear she must have had a brick in it. As the room started spinning, I saw stars.

  One of my fellow drummers saw my predicament and pulled me away from the two fighting females. I had a throbbing headache all the rest of the day and a lump on my head I was sure was the size of Nebraska.

  Joan saw me later in the day with an ice bag on my head so I related why I needed it. She advised me, in no uncertain terms, “Do not ever do something as stupid as trying to separate two girls who are fighting over a guy.”

  Throughout high school, Joan and I remained friends. I had a few girlfriends and Joan had a few boyfriends, but other than a couple trips to the art museum, we never dated each other.

  After Joan completed high school, she worked as a nanny for a year to save money for college. I had been desperately looking for a summer job. The only thing I could find was a part time job washing dishes at a restaurant for fifty dollars per week.

  A day before summer vacation began I received a phone call from the owner of the farm where Joan worked. Joan told him that I was looking for work, and he was looking for summer help. He needed someone for about four hours each day for mowing, taking care of his vegetable garden, and tending to the flower gardens around the house.

  “It’s going to be hot and sweaty work,” he told me.

  Suddenly washing dishes in a restaurant wasn’t such a bad idea, until he said he would pay me a hundred and ten dollars per week. I knew I could handle hot and sweaty for that princely sum so I rode my bike the seven miles out to the farm and met Mr. Horner in person.

  He told me he and his wife usually took care of the gardens, but he had a lot of debt this year and they were going to take factory jobs for a few months until they were caught up.

  Each day I rode my bike out to the farm. I mowed, weeded, or completed a list of chores. I arrived at sunup each morning and finished by mid-afternoon.

  Most days I brought a lunch and ate with Joan and the Horner’s little kids. They adored Joan. She would read to them, play games, and teach them songs. While the kids napped mid-afternoon, Joan and I would sit on the big porch swing. We would talk and read for a couple of hours before I’d head home. With all the work, my body lost nearly all its fat and I was in excellent physical condition.

  Our jobs at the farm lasted un
til the end of August and the Horner’s had enough money put away to quit their factory jobs. Mr. Horner was relieved to get back to his farm and leave, what he called, “the mind-numbingly boring assembly-line work.”

  Shortly before I went to college, Joan told me we could drive up to northern central Washington State and use her family’s A-frame cabin for a week. Her parents weren’t too happy with just the two of us spending a week there, but thought it was better than Joan being at the cabin alone. Joan sternly informed me, “The cabin has two separate bedrooms, and we will be sleeping separately.”

  “There’s no TV so we should bring lots of reading material,” Joan warned. “Also there’s a shooting range nearby, so you can bring your rifle and teach me how to shoot.”

  Oh wow! I had just received a Remington Model 700 rifle—7mm Remington Magnum caliber— as a graduation present. It was suitable for hunting any large animal in North America. My friend Gene, and I had just zeroed the sight a few weeks prior. I would also take a .22 rifle for Joan to learn on since the 7mm had too big a kick for a beginner.

  We left early on Saturday morning so we would complete the four-hour drive before noon. I was allowed to take my father’s 1961 Corvette. As my dad watched me drive away, I had the feeling his main concern was my taking good care of the car, rather than the fact Joan and I were spending a week together in a cabin.

  As I pulled onto I90 and headed into the Cascade Mountain Range, I was tempted to open up the Corvette to show off for Joan, but a certain feeling was creeping back into my life. I tried to ignore it at first, but it was there whether I liked it or not. It was that old feeling in my gut that I wanted to be Joan’s fearless protector. For the first time in my life, I drove a powerful sports car well within its limits and as smoothly as possible.

  As we cruised, Joan and I started talking about the Vietnam War, but then it was laughing and joking with each other over the roar of the wind coming into the Corvette. I preferred the top up to avoid the sun, but Joan wanted it down to feel the wind in her hair and to see all the scenery during the drive—it was a breathtaking ride through the Cascade Mountain Range, many of whose peaks were snow covered.

  After leaving the interstate we started into north central Washington’s mountains and forests. We cruised through the town of Cashmere and Joan noticed a farmer’s market. I wanted to keep driving, but Joan insisted we stop, “just to see what they were selling.”

  It was a bountiful display and we loaded up on local nectarines, peaches, apricots, apples, zucchini—and zucchini flowers, oddly enough—various fresh vegetables, plus fresh herbs and garlic. Joan picked up flowers to “beautify the cabin.”

  The next part of our drive took us along the broad, swift moving Columbia River. Joan was radiant as each new panorama came into view. We talked and debated many topics along the drive, but our conversation was regularly interrupted by Joan’s shouts of delight as she directed my attention to yet another gorgeous view.

  We laughed a lot, and with each golden peal of Joan’s melodic laughter, I felt closer to her. A few times I interrupted our high-speed cruise, to take pictures for her.

  As we stopped at yet another scenic view, I tried to tease her. “You’ve been up here many times before and you still get excited to see all this again?”

  She shrugged. “I guess I’m wired that way. It’s truly as beautiful and amazing to me as the first time I saw it—it’s more special this time, because I get to share the beauty with someone else.”

  Joan gazed up at me with those incredible sparkling, blue eyes and took my hands in hers. “I knew I wanted to share this with someone crazy. Someone crazy who was willing to spend time with me kneeling by the side of a stream looking for minnows.

  I knew it was supposed to be a platonic week, but I couldn’t help myself. I wrapped my arms around her, pulled her tight against me. She stood on her toes and kissed my cheek.

  “I’m so glad you were willing to come with me. I’ve been thinking about it all summer and it would have been sad if you weren’t able to join me. According to my mom, being able to share scenery like this makes the experience better.”

  “I’d say she’s right.”

  As we drove out of the mountains and into a wide valley we were greeted by deep blue Lake Chelan. The lake is a pristine, glacier-fed body of water, fifty miles long and one and a half miles wide at its widest and over one thousand feet deep at its deepest.

  The surface was cluttered with motor boats, water skiers, and sailboats. The lake begged us to dive into its clear waters on this hot August day. We stopped a few more times for pictures and then at a small grocery store where we bought sufficient provisions for our first few days at the cabin. The little Corvette had so much stuff in it, poor Joan had to have the last two bags of groceries in her lap for the fifteen-minute drive up the gravel road to the cabin.

  The cabin was located on the side of a mountain with magnificent views. The shimmering blue of Lake Chelan, seen from our lofty perch, was quite a contrast to the intense green of the surrounding farms and forest-covered mountains. The cabin itself was a small A-frame with two bedrooms in the rear upper half of the unit, and a kitchen and bathroom below the bedrooms.

  The interior front of the cabin was completely window covered from the floor to the steep sides of the A-frame’s roof; the view only interrupted by the centrally located stone covered fireplace. A wide deck on the front of the cabin had enough furniture for al fresco dining plus a wide porch swing, some simple chairs, and a lovely hand-hewn railing around the deck edge. Various trails led away from the cabin and around the forty-acre property.

  We unloaded all the groceries and luggage and stored them in the cabin. I opened windows to let in some fresh air while Joan found vases for the flowers and placed them around the cabin.

  I was hanging clothes in my bedroom when Joan called to me to say she was going out to look for berries on the trail leading away from the front of the cabin. There was a hundred-yard-long tangle of raspberry bushes dotted with bright red berries about twenty-five yards in front of the cabin.

  I walked onto the front deck and spotted Joan just off the trail near the first group of bushes. She was putting berries in a large colander. I was admiring her cream-colored skin, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a large black bear enjoying the same row of raspberry bushes. It was fifty yards away from Joan and hadn’t seemed to notice her.

  I briefly thought about yelling to alert her, but realized I might also alert the bear to her presence. Instead, I quickly ducked into the cabin and retrieved my new rifle. I ripped open a box of cartridges and just as I started loading them into the rifle, I heard Joan’s blood-curdling yell.

  My pulse began racing as I rapidly stuffed a handful of extra rounds in my pants pocket while running onto the deck. I saw Joan trip and fall as she started up the trail from the bushes.

  The bear, running now, was not far behind her. I raised the rifle to my shoulder, and with Gene’s marksmanship advice echoing through my head, I calmly and carefully sighted the cross hairs at the bear’s shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The rifle’s booming sound echoed throughout the surrounding forest. I immediately racked the bolt and chambered another round in case I needed to shoot again. Looking through the scope, I saw the 7mm Magnum round had done its job. I clicked the rifle’s safety on and took off running down the trail toward Joan.

  She was trying to stand.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Twisted my ankle. It hurts like hell.”

  “Let me help you.” I put my arm around her waist and helped her back inside. “I should call the Sheriff and tell them what happened.”

  “Hold me first, please.”

  Putting the rifle down, I held her, Joan’s face buried against my neck and her arms around me, while she cried.

  Without letting go of me she looked up smiling. “I always pick berries in the summer when we come here—I’ve done it a thousand times by myself. The one time I’m i
n great danger, there you were. The moment I saw you on the deck with the rifle against your shoulder, I knew you were going to do whatever it took to protect me. And you did.”

  She started kissing me but when she put weight on her twisted ankle, she groaned in pain.

  I helped her to a chair.

  “I’ll get some ice to put on your ankle.”

  I called the Sheriff’s office and they said they would be right there. It turns out they had been worried about this bear, as it was losing its fear of humans and was believed to be responsible for mauling some hikers a month before.

  “We tried moving it some distance away last year, but it found its way back,” he told us. They were grateful for my actions, and as regrettable as the animal’s death was, they agreed it was the only option.

  * * *

  I made dinner for us so Joan could stay off her sore ankle. Afterward, we went onto the deck and read together on the porch swing. Joan insisted on positioning us in a way so we were touching each other, even if it meant only our feet were touching.

  When it was too dark to read outside, we went in and sat in front of the fireplace. All the cabin lights were off so the only light was from the burning logs. I sat on the floor with my back against a big chair while Joan sat between my legs leaning against me.

  As we bathed in the light and warmth of the fire, enjoying each other’s warmth as well, I had one arm wrapped around her abdomen. She took my hand and pushed it under her shirt and onto her breast. I remembered during dinner, thinking her breasts seemed to jiggle more than usual, but my still somewhat adolescent mind only now realized she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  I wrapped my other arm around her so I had both breasts in my hands. She sighed and wrapped her arms over mine to hold them in place while I caressed her.