Cruel to Be Kind

by Stephanie Vaughan

  Pulling in to the parking spot, Megan grabbed her backpack and headed for the restaurant. Although the business was new, the building it inhabited wasn’t. Most of the three blocks that made up the main drag were filled with authentic original architecture dating to the 1800s. It was what gave Remington its historical feel and what drew the vacationers. The big picture windows of the building revealed that two of the six tables the little eatery contained were filled. It took all of two seconds for Megan to see that Steve wasn’t there.

  She stood, mulling her options and absently scanning the street when something caught her eye. It wasn’t the ratty ol’ sign on top of Goldie’s, with its ugly yellow light bulbs. Lately driving by and seeing its familiar red door, or even just thinking about it, made her smile. But the black Dodge truck parked two doors down from it was familiar.

  It was Steve’s truck.

  Oh, yeah—definitely his. She knew, even from this distance, that the antenna ball perched atop it advertised his beloved Kings basketball team.

  Without conscious thought Megan’s feet began moving in the direction of Goldie’s. Either she’d gotten her signals crossed or … she couldn’t think of what else it could possibly be. Steve must have arrived early and stopped in to wait for her there. Was there a game on? She had no idea.

  Pushing through the door, Megan smelled the familiar mix of odors that seemed uniquely Goldie’s. Equal parts beer, popcorn, and kitchen smells, it never failed to put a smile on her face. Not like the smile she got when she thought about the old manager’s office upstairs, though. Her smile held as she spotted a familiar back, bisected by a ponytail of a particularly fetching shade of red-gold.

  The music from the jukebox—the Rolling Stones. Jaci must not be on duty—made calling Steve’s name pointless. Megan crossed the floor, running a finger down his arm when she reached him to alert him to her presence. “Hey, there.” Butterflies flitted in her stomach, like this was her first high school dance.

  Steve turned on his stool and Megan’s hand fell away. He looked down at her.

  “Oh. Hi.”

  “I must have gotten things backward. I thought we were meeting at my place. I hope you haven’t been waiting long?”

  The man on the seat next to Steve turned to look. Too similar physically to be anything other than Steve’s brother, he looked her up and down before casting an equally assessing eye on Steve.

  Things were getting stranger by the minute. Why would the brother be checking her out? And why was Steve looking at her with all the enthusiasm of a man greeting an IRS auditor? Megan didn’t necessarily expect a kiss in public, but would it kill him to smile?

  “Sorry. I should have called. I can’t make it tonight.”

  “But—”

  She looked from one face to the other, and then back again, while a sick feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. There was no mistaking the coldness in his tone and it felt all too horribly like déjà vu.

  Eerily similar to another time and place.

  “Steve, could I talk to you outside for a minute?”

  “No. Sorry. No can do, babe. You can talk in front of my brother.”

  Her mind raced, running through their last conversation. Their last three conversations. What could she possibly have said? What signs had she missed? Why was he doing this? He looked like the same man who had trusted his most vulnerable feelings to her. But he didn’t talk like him. And he certainly didn’t act like him.

  Experienced in the art of the public kiss-off, Megan knew one when it was handed to her.

  “All right.” Things were most certainly not all right. “Some other time, then.” She searched his eyes, tried to read his thoughts on his expressive face. But it was no use. He had closed himself off from her.

  Well, then. If this was going to be it, Megan decided, then she wanted her kiss after all. She wanted to leave knowing her taste was in his mouth. Let the other women watching know he bore her mark. The barstool Steve sat on brought him low enough that she didn’t have to reach as far as she would have had he been standing. Taking his chin in her hand, Megan leaned in close and spoke softly in one ear. “Be well.” She slid down to press one last kiss on his tempting mouth.

  At the last second, though, he turned away. Her kiss fell on empty air.

  Chapter Ten

  Steve didn’t think he could handle watching her walk away so he kept his eyes fixed on his beer as he drank it down. That didn’t mean that he couldn’t still see Megan with his peripheral vision. He concentrated on breathing through his nose as he drained the heavy glass schooner with steady swallows. He told himself it was drinking too fast that made his stomach knot up and twist like pythons mating. It had nothing to do with Megan stopping at Evan Coughlin’s table, exchanging a few words, and Evan leaving with her.

  How could she even think of going anywhere with that slimy fuckwad?

  Everyone knew that Evan was a player. Evan changed women like most men changed their shirts. Steve was sliding off the barstool in pursuit when he remembered. He didn’t care. Megan was free to do whatever she wanted with whoever she wanted.

  His stomach rolled over again.

  Glancing over to see if Rick had caught his move, he realized his brother was no longer seated on the next barstool. There were now two empty seats between them and Rick was frowning into his beer.

  “What’s with you?”

  Rick looked away, out the big picture window to Sutter Street where Evan could be seen dropping an arm across Megan’s shoulders as they disappeared from view.

  “I’m getting out of the way. Just in case.”

  Jaci came out of the back room and Steve caught her eye. Nodding in the direction of his empty glass, he held up one finger before turning back to face Rick. “In case what?”

  “In case ‘dumbass’ is contagious.”

  “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course not. You’ve obviously got it all under control.”

  “Thanks. I do.”

  He concentrated on the big screen showing the Kings game until Jaci appeared with his beer. The jukebox thumped along with a k.d. lang tune now, drowning out the television. “Here ya go, babe. Hey, Rick. Long time, no see.”

  Steve took a long pull off his beer and watched Jaci make small talk with his brother while the Kings tried to come from behind. Why couldn’t he fall for someone nice and normal, like her? She smiled that cover girl smile and reached across the bar to ruffle Rick’s hair. She was so pretty, with her big blue eyes and her perfect features. Why couldn’t he be turning himself inside out for Jaci?

  He drank more of his beer, trying to drown the sick feeling he got when he thought of Megan’s face. Steve had wondered if he would twist the handle off the mug as he held it, trying to keep from reaching for her. It tore him up inside when he thought about how he felt when he was with her. How much he wanted her. What a sick fuck he must be for needing her the way he did. And wanting the things she did to him.

  “So what do you say, Steve?”

  While he’d been off in his own little world—little fucked up world, he corrected—he’d completely tuned out the conversation going on around him.

  “Sorry. What was the question?”

  Jaci smiled as though she knew the nature of his thoughts. “Another beer there? How about something to go with it?” Steve started to protest, only to find that his mug was empty. Not a good sign. When had he pounded the last of it? “How about some nachos? Or, have you tried the potato skins yet? They come covered with cheese, sour cream, bacon pieces … You’ll love ‘em.”

  Steve’s stomach roiled at the thought.

  He thought of Megan’s face. “Steve, could I talk to you outside for a minute?” “No can do. Talk in front of my brother.” The voices picked up speed in his head, until they ran together. “I want to fuck your pussy. How do you feel about ass play? If anyone would know, it would be you, Steve-o. Fuck me, nasty boy.”


  “What’s it going to be? Potato skins?” Jaci looked first at Rick and then back to Steve. “Or nachos?”

  His guts heaving, Steve bolted for the bathroom.

  He lasted three more days.

  Rick had driven him home after he’d puked his guts out in the toilet at Goldie’s that night. Just to torture himself, he’d insisted they go by way of Megan’s place. He’d told Rick he just wanted to make sure she got home all right. But they both knew he was looking for that fucker Evan’s convertible in her driveway.

  It had been there, alright.

  Fuck, he was an idiot. Full of drunken self-pity, he’d said as much aloud as his brother drove him home. Rick had cheerfully agreed.

  “If you’re looking for an argument, you came to the wrong place. She looked at you like you were better than shoes and chocolate rolled into one. And you kicked her to the curb. Way to go, asshole.”

  Steve had stopped asking for advice at that point.

  For the next two days he had thrown himself into his work, the first to arrive every morning and staying after everyone else had gone home. Steve had hung sheetrock, spackled joints, taped over them, then spackled some more. He had had some half-baked idea that hard physical labor would keep him from thinking. That was a joke. He’d had nothing but time to think.

  With every nail he pounded or seam he sanded, Steve had thought about other women. He had tried to remember every female he’d ever been intimate with. From Sophia Santisi, the foreign exchange student and older woman who’d helped him lose his virginity in his fourteenth year, to Rachelle Billingsly, his first steady girlfriend, to Martha Cho, whom he’d dated off and on for a couple of years before she’d moved to Oregon. And all the ones in between.

  What had Megan asked him? Something about feeling different? Like he wasn’t getting what he needed. And maybe the sex wasn’t all that?

  Not that it had been bad. It was fine. He’d never had a bad orgasm. Every single one of them had been right on the money.

  But they’d been nothing compared to what he’d found with Megan. It was like a shoe dropped. Like a normal orgasm multiplied exponentially. An ‘a-ha’ moment when suddenly everything had changed. And suddenly everything was right in a way it had never been right before. When he had been with her, nothing had ever felt so perfectly natural, so fulfilling, so fucking hot. It still gave him a shiver to remember how it had felt to be stripped down to nothing but his most basic, elemental self. To live completely in the moment, nothing but a sexual creature.

  Steve had been working in one of the second story bathrooms, cutting tile when it had come him. He had repeatedly measured the piece he needed to replace. His old man had drilled into him ‘Measure three times, cut once’ from the time he could hold a hammer. After measuring and cutting, particles of tile dust floating in a shaft of afternoon sunlight, he had shifted back to place the new piece. In turning, the irregular triangular shape that was part of the black and white star design had been rotated by ninety degrees. As Steve rotated the sliver of tile and dropped it into place something clicked.

  The piece dropped into the hole like it had been specially made for it—because it had. Steve sat back on his heels and stared at it. And stared.

  It was a perfect analogy for his life. Something was missing from him and not just any piece would fill the empty space. It required something very special. Something unique.

  Megan.

  He was different and so was she. But together they fit.

  Too bad he told her to take a hike.

  She’d done it.

  She had made it through the week.

  Except for the gaping hole where her heart used to be, Megan felt pretty okay. Normal, almost.

  Too bad her overdeveloped sense of responsibility wouldn’t let her pull the covers over her head and sleep until the hurt was gone like she’d like to. There was still Christa’s business to tend and customers who relied on it.

  Besides, she should know by now that some things just weren’t going to happen for her. It shouldn’t come as such a shocked surprise that she was dispensable in the lives of the people she most cared about. Maybe it was connected to whatever broken thing inside her it was that needed something different that most women needed to be happy. It made sense. It seemed reasonable that the two were connected.

  But she kept hoping. Was it so hard to believe that somewhere out there a man existed who could love her the way she was?

  She was in a maudlin mood, Megan realized, and the music she’d chosen didn’t help. She knew she had a tendency when things got her down to give in to her sentimental side and this definitely qualified as one of those times. Megan had loaded up her CD changer with her favorite heartbreak singers and planned to wallow in her misery all the way to San Francisco.

  It was a measure of her pain that she had called Patrice. She hadn’t talked to her old mentor since she’d come home to Remington, tail between her legs. Megan knew the fault was hers that they hadn’t stayed in touch. Patrice had never been anything other than an utterly calm eye in the storm of her life.

  A small, delicate woman in her forties, Patrice came from one of the city’s oldest Chinese families. The oldest of five girls, she had traveled with her businessman father from an early age. Raised on two continents and educated in Paris, her speech still contained a hint of both the French she’d spoken in school and her family’s native Chinese accents. A tiny woman weighing barely one hundred pounds, Megan had seen her bring down the strongest men, taking them apart piece by piece until she owned their very souls.

  While Megan had attended culinary school in San Francisco, her nights and weekends had belonged to another type of education altogether. Patrice had served as her mentor and guide into San Francisco’s dominant/submissive lifestyle and Megan had spent over a year learning the submissive role under her tutelage. She had barely graduated to the dominant role when she had met Damian Ruiz.

  Although close to Megan in terms of age, in every way that counted he had proven to be much older. Active in the D/s community for years, Patrice had known him, of course, and had done her best to warn her pupil away from him. But Megan had been sure she knew better and wouldn’t be persuaded. She had been eager to stretch her Domina wings and fly. And a willing, eager submissive with a little more experience had seemed perfect.

  But what had appeared just right had proven to be too much over time. What had looked at first like an eagerness to please had begun to feel like overwhelming neediness. No amount of mental and sexual dominance had been enough for Damian. And when Megan had introduced limits to the relationship, Damian had reacted by becoming more clingy and submissive. Flowers and gifts had begun to appear, both at home and at school. What her classmates had seen as wildly romantic was, in fact, mentally and emotionally exhausting. Bombarded by emails and phone messages, Megan began to avoid him. Until the night she had gone to a D/s club and found Damian tied to a St. Andrew’s cross, his body covered with welts, being caned by one of the scene’s most physically punishing Dominas.

  If you can’t give me what I need, then I’ll find someone who will. I want a real Domme, not a little girl playing dress-up.

  And he had been right. Megan didn’t have that in her. Barely six months into her debut and she was a failure already.

  She hadn’t been able to face Patrice in the wake of her catastrophe with Damian. She had left school without a word to anyone, packed up a U-haul full of her belongings and come home to Remington. Megan hadn’t had the courage since to check into her status at the school. She had been less than four months from finishing her certificate when she left. Her roommate Michelle had probably made Megan’s picture the bullseye on her dartboard for taking off and sticking her with a hundred percent of the rent. She had trashed every relationship she’d had with her immature behavior. You could span a continent with the bridges she’d burned.

  And here she was again, running away from disaster. Maybe that should be her motto: When the going gets toug
h, the tough leave town.

  Megan had her weekend all planned out. Friday night would be spent at her favorite hotel near Union Square, where Patrice had agreed to meet her for dinner. Saturday she would spend the entire day at a spa she knew in Burlingame, being massaged, mud packed, and steamed. Sunday would include visits to all the stores small town Remington couldn’t support, from the chain department stores to the big name designer boutiques. Megan would blow some of the money she’d been saving to open her own restaurant. She squelched the pragmatic voice in her head that squawked at spending a dime of her nest egg by telling herself there was nothing wrong with a little retail therapy. Sunday night was soon enough to start putting herself back together.

  Her only chore still left undone was to stop by Goldie’s on her way out of town. Jaci wanted to borrow Christa’s truck to move some furniture and, since Christa have given her permission, Megan had agreed to drop off the keys. Fully expecting to have to pull around back and use the employee parking, Megan was pleasantly surprised to find a parking spot directly in front of the pub. ‘Charlie’s Angels’ parking, Jaci called it—her term for any time she found an unusually lucky close parking spot. ‘Because they never had to look for a place to park. Get it?’ she’d explained when Megan had to ask what it meant.

  Palming the truck keys, Megan pushed her way through the heavy red door of Goldie’s. Welcomed, as always, by the sound of the jukebox and the smell of popcorn and cooking, she carefully made her mind a blank, blocking out the memories of her last time she’d visited her friend’s business. It was still early for the Friday night happy hour crowd and the place was relatively quiet. Just Joe, one of the back up bartenders, Natalia, who would make two-hundred dollars in tips tonight with her amazing memory and even more amazing body, and a middle-aged couple enjoying a late lunch kept the place from being deserted.