Page 6 of Second Chance Fate

Art taught history at the high school for as long as Caleb could remember. He was a self-proclaimed hippie who caught Caleb and Josh smoking weed behind the equipment building when they were fifteen, and he never said a word to anyone. Caleb was scared at the time, but looking back, he realized the only reason Mr. Gardine caught them was that he was going back there to smoke himself.

As Caleb got closer, Mr. Gardine must have heard him because he opened his eyes. Caleb grinned and said, “Morning.”

Mr. Gardine’s response was a silent namaste bow as he placed his palms together in front of his heart and dipped his head forward. Caleb continued past Mr. Gardine, jogging up the stone stairs to Main Street, which ran parallel with the Riverside Recreation Area. Residents and tourists were starting to populate the sleepy downtown district.

As Caleb continued his run, he took a moment to appreciate the wooden sidewalks, black lampposts, string lights, colorful awnings of mom-and-pop shops, and window boxes filled with seasonal flowers blooming. People often remarked that the town looked like a movie set. He never wanted to take it for granted just because he’d grown up there. When he reached the four-way stop, Coach Neal, who coached Caleb in Little League, pulled up in his red Ford pickup truck and leaned out the driver’s side window. “How’s your folks doin’?”

“Good.” Caleb nodded.

“When are they gonna be back?”

“A couple of weeks.” Caleb didn’t actually know the exact date.

His parents were gone more than they were home. It was hard to keep track of them. They left a few days ago for a three-week Southeast Asian cruise. They’d gone on a lot of cruises: Alaska, the Bahamas, Greece, the Panama Canal, the Galapagos Islands, the Baltic Sea, Norway, and Australia. Every time they came home, they had their next destination planned. Since retiring, they’d already filled up one passport and had to get a new one.

Caleb’s legs were really starting to burn when he saw Sue Ann’s Café, which sat on the south corner and anchored the town. The staple landmark was only a few blocks from his house, which meant he was nearly finished with his ten-mile run. He dug deep and pushed himself for the final stretch. As he rounded the corner of his block, he nearly had a head-on collision with Sean and Rosalie Maguire out on their morning walk wearing matching blue tracksuits and knit beanies on their heads. The couple had been members of Hope Falls Community Church longer than he’d been alive.

“Woah there, stall the ball, son.” Mr. Maguire smiled, raising his thermos. Caleb wasn’t a betting man, but if he was, he’d let it all ride that inside Sean’s thermos was an Irish coffee, not regular brew.

Caleb ‘stalled the ball’ or slowed down to a stop in front of them. “Morning!”

“Morning, Caleb!” Mrs. Maguire reached up and patted his sweaty face, something she’d done since he was a boy, but at least she didn’t call him pastor.

It was strange for him to have people who knew him his entire life calling himpastor. Caleb spent a lot of time at the Maguire’s house when he was growing up because he was friends with their youngest son, Jake, who was now the fire captain.He loved being at the Maguire’s because their home was full of laughter and music, and Mrs. Maguire was always cooking something delicious.

Jake had two sisters and a brother. Jake loved to pull pranks on them when they were kids, but they were all very close now. Eric, who was the chief of police; Nikki, who ran a non-profit; and Amy, a schoolteacher.

The Maguire siblings were exhibits A-D of people around him falling in love. All four of the siblings were married and starting families of their own. They weren’t the only ones. Their cousins, Gabe and Glenn, who had both relocated to Hope Falls, also met and fell in love with their forevers and started beautiful families. That didn’t even scratch the surface of couples who had each found their happily ever after in Hope Falls. Caleb performed twenty-two weddings in the past year alone.

People joked that there was something in the water. Others said it was the Hope Falls Effect™. Caleb had no idea what it was; he just wished he weren’t immune to it.

This morning, in a little over an hour, he was going to get up in front of a couple hundred people and talk about…wait for it…love. That was what this morning’s sermon was about. All week, he’d worked on different things, trying to change the topic at least a dozen times, but he couldn’t. For some reason, he felt like hehadto speak on this subject, with which he had little to no experience. That wasn’t entirely true; there were different kinds of love, and he could speak from personal experience on most of them. But there was one he couldn’t, the elephant in the room: romantic love. When it came to that, he was flying blind. The love that people thought of when they said the word, he’d never experienced.

The closest he got was a girl he met when he was twenty-one, and he didn’t even know her last name.

3

She’s here.

Caleb gripped the sides of the pulpit. The woman who had eluded him for months had just slipped into the sanctuary and slid into the back pew ten minutes after his sermon began. The moment the back door opened, before he’d even had a chance to see who was coming or leaving, he’d had a premonition it washer. Whenever she was near, the atmosphere changed. He couldn’t explain the phenomenon and had no clue if other people had experienced it; all he knew was whenever she was near, he had a physical response to her.

The tiny hairs on the back of Caleb’s neck stood on end as he faced the congregation. His heart was pounding so wildly in his chest he was sure the mic he had on must be picking it up. Goosebumps rose on his forearms, which were bare because he’d rolled up his white button-down shirt.

He glanced beside her and in front to see if anyone looked like they were expecting her or recognized her. No one seemed to even notice she was there, just like when he’d asked around, no one knew who he was talking about, which he didn’t understand.Mysteries and secrets in Hope Falls were rarer than the Hope Diamond.

The first sighting he’d had of her was at the grocery store. She was in the produce aisle inspecting a cantaloupe with a look of intense concentration. A tiny wrinkle appeared between her brows as she stared down at the melon and bit her bottom lip in the most adorable way.

Several things stood out to him about the first time he saw her. The first was obvious: her beauty. Her face was a mosaic of angelic, ethereal features. Her skin was flawless, perfect, like a porcelain doll. Long, silky blonde hair fell past her shoulders, framing her full lips and turned-up nose. She had a dreamlike quality about her, almost as if she was too good to be true.

The second thing of note was a contradiction. She looked familiar, and he was sure that he recognized her, but he couldn’t place from where. He was generally good with faces and names, and there wasno wayhe would ever forget meeting her, so how was it possible that he knew her, but he didn’t know her?

The last, and possibly most disturbing, takeaway from that first encounter was his overwhelming and inappropriate urge to walk over and pull the bottom lip she was biting between his own lips and sink his teeth into her soft, pillowy flesh. He wanted to pick her up and set her on the display, to step between her legs, cup her face, tilt her chin up, and devour her.

He’d never had such a visceral, primal reaction to someone. He wasn’t a virgin, but he didn’t have casual sex. In fact, he had been celibate since stepping into the role as senior pastor five years earlier. Actually, even a few years before that. Caleb wanted a wife and family. When he met women, even women he was attracted to,especiallywomen he was attracted to, his first thought was compatibility. He wanted to get to know them to see if there was a chance that they could have a future together. The last thing he thought about was the physical side of things. Butnot with this woman. He hadn’t had a choice. His response had been totally involuntary. It had been a primitive reaction.

He’d been so distracted by his response to her that he hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going and bumped his cart into a pyramid of peaches. In the time it took him to pick up the fallen fruit, she’d disappeared. He checked every aisle, but she was gone.

It was three weeks before he saw her again; this time it was at Twin Pine Pharmacy. He walked in and saw a petite woman at the counter. Her long blonde hair was halfway down her back, and he couldn’t see her face, but somehow, he knew it washer, the same woman at the grocery store. That time, unlike the bridge this morning, he was right.

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