Island Dreams - Evangeline Kelly

Chapter 1

Tara

We all had dreams but that didn’t mean we expected them to come to fruition. Actually, I had to be careful not to speak for everyone else. To rephrase that statement, I never expected my own dreams to come true because my life was a never-ending hamster wheel.

At twenty-four years old, all I ever did was run between work and school, and each day was more of the same. My first hope was to have a moment’s rest, and the second…well, I wanted love and a family of my own. Those things were basic, but I’d been stripped of so much when my parents died that I was mainly in survival mode these days. Needless to say, the idea of winning a vacation to a luxury resort on Makani Island was the furthest thing from my mind, but somehow it happened.

To give a little background, I worked three part-time jobs and carried twelve units at Cal State L.A. in hopes of becoming an accountant one day. I was exhausted, but everyone had to put in the work to get where they wanted to be, and I understood that more than most. When I was eighteen, my parents passed away in a car accident, which meant I had to fend for myself. If I slacked off, the bills wouldn’t get paid, and there was no one to bail me out.

Needless to say, in the past few years, I worked hard and kept my nose in my textbooks when I wasn’t at one of my jobs. When a sweepstakes offer arrived in the mail for a two-week all expenses paid trip to Makani Island, I filled out the form, not believing for a second that I would win. All I had to do was sign up for a credit card and the company entered my name into a drawing.

Seriously, I didn’t think they would call me.

So, when I found out that I had indeed won, I got on a plane headed to the South Pacific and swore that for once, I would allow myself to have a little fun. And here I was, laying by the pool at Makani Beach Resort, a beautiful hotel with all the bells and whistles, and I was completely bored.

Like, so bored I didn’t know how much more of this I could take, and it was only day one of the trip. I wasn’t ungrateful. Truly, I wasn’t. I just had all this time on my hands and didn’t know what to do with it.

I lifted my bottle of sunscreen and applied a quarter-sized amount to my arms and shoulders and tried not to frown as a teenage boy did a cannonball into the pool, splashing me in the process. It didn’t matter that I got wet, but still, whatever happened to common courtesy? The water soaked my hair and the front of my bathing suit, and I had the feeling I looked like a drowned rat, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if there was anyone around to impress. All the single men my age were paired up with other women, not that I’d been looking that hard.

Families crowded the area, enjoying themselves in the tropical sun, and I had no problem with that. I really didn’t. A few people were loud and even a little annoying, but in the deepest part of my heart, I longed for what they had. I wasn’t used to slowing down, and since I rarely did, I didn’t have a chance to dwell on how alone I felt most of the time.

This trip had included plane tickets for two, but my friend Cassidy had a bad case of the flu the day before we had to leave, so she opted out of coming. I almost didn’t go without her, but I knew this would be my only vacation until I made it through college and found a career to fund all future traveling. Staying occupied kept the loneliness at bay, but now that I had time to think about my situation, I was starting to feel a little down.

Refusing to dwell on my circumstances one second longer, I slipped my shorts over my thick thighs. Most of the other women at the pool were slim, and I was hardly that, but I didn’t care. Crash diets weren’t on my agenda, and I didn’t have a problem with the size of my body, anyway. I put on my flip flops and decided to take a quick walk on the beach.