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“I’ll throw in a blueberry muffin with each purchase, how’s that?”

“And you’re trying to make me fat! I see how you are! Anyway, sorry again about leaving so abruptly. Thanks for letting me stay and for chilling with me.”

“Anytime,” Vanessa assured her, opening the door for Megan who stepped through with a wave before heading west along Grand.

Vanessa couldn’t help it. Leaning out from the doorway of the shop, she watched Megan walk away, her eyes fixating first on the bouncing of Megan’s auburn ponytail as she moved and then fixating on those incredible legs. Impure thoughts of what Vanessa wanted to do between Megan’s legs made her aware of a heat blooming between her own.

But those thoughts were suddenly interrupted when, at the corner of Grand and the next street, Megan turned to look back at Vanessa.

Fuck! Busted!

The heat between her legs transferred up to her face as she blushed.

She sheepishly waved to Megan who gave a wave back, and then Vanessa retreated to the sanctuary of her shop. Closing the door and leaning against it she couldn’t help but start laughing at how embarrassing that was.

“Smooth, Vanessa. Real smooth.”

Chapter 5

As she started her drive back to her neighborhood from downtown Carlsbad, Megan couldn’t help but recall catching Vanessa watching her from La Vida Mocha’s doorway. The implications caused goosebumps of excitement to spring up on her arms and she blew out a deep breath to re-center her focus. The idea that someone as heart-stoppingly stunning as Vanessa was interested in her, enough to watch her walk away, was...wow!

However, true to form, Megan also tried to see a more rational, if less exciting, side of things.

Perhaps she just wanted to make sure I was okay. I did leave kind of abruptly. So...don’t read anything into it. Yet.

There was also something else to consider. New York.

Flirting—and possibly doing more—with Vanessa was fine, as long as it didn’t lead to anything serious because of New York.

After almost running a stop sign because of thinking about Vanessa, Megan focused. Then, she gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white.

“Fucking Cindy!” she said out loud.

Cindy was Megan’s ex. Megan had once had hopes she and Cindy would eventually marry. Though she hadn’t proposed to Cindy yet, Megan had found herself staring in jewelry store windows or reading articles online about destination weddings or the 10 Best Places to Honeymoon. Cindy was supposed to be Megan’s forever. They had been together for two years and she was ready to take it to the next step.

And then Megan discovered Cindy had been cheating on her.

With a man.

From the beginning, Cindy had told Megan that she had dated men in the past, the key phrase being in the past. And Megan hadn’t raised an eyebrow. After all, it wasn’t unusual in the lesbian community to meet women who currently identified as lesbian but who’d had relationship

s—even sexual relationships—with men. The reasons were varied, of course, but Cindy’s story was a common one: in her teens and early twenties, Cindy had dated men as she came to grips with her sexuality, her Christian upbringing in Minnesota refusing to allow her to see that her attraction to women was perfectly normal and fine. But at twenty-five-years-old Cindy had finally embraced her attraction to women and by the time she had met Megan at a Pride barbecue Abby had dragged Megan to, Cindy had been exclusively dating women.

Then this past January, Megan discovered her potential wife was having an affair, with one of Cindy’s co-workers. A male co-worker.

When Megan confronted Cindy about the infidelity—with a fury that Megan hoped she would never ever feel again—Cindy had turned into a blubbering mess. She begged Megan to not end things, insisting they could work it out. She begged Megan to understand that she had come to the realization that she was more bi than gay but that it didn’t have to mean the end of everything they had built together. She promised Megan that Megan would always be her priority, that anything she ever did with a man would be just “scratching an itch.”

For her part, Megan couldn’t believe what she was hearing, especially when Cindy said she too had been hoping they would get married. That had just made Megan’s jaw drop. Did Cindy actually believe that Megan would marry her and allow her to keep seeing men?

That night had been the hardest of Megan’s life. At one point, as she coldly sat next to a sobbing Cindy on the couch in the living room, Megan saw the end of all her dreams of happiness vanishing like smoke in a breeze.

The betrayal was just too much. Megan viewed loyalty in a relationship as being as essential as sex and respect. She herself had had plenty of opportunities to cheat on Cindy if she had wanted to take them. One thing Southern California was not short on was lesbians and many of those lesbians were not too shy to let Megan know how attractive she was. But always—always—the thought of what she could lose by losing Cindy...it was never a risk she wanted to take.

But apparently Cindy hadn’t seen things the same way. And Megan realized her trust in Cindy could never be restored.

And yes, it was worse that Cindy’s infidelity had been with a man. Megan couldn’t really articulate why; she had nothing against bisexual people; she had nothing against men, for that matter, except the usual complaints. But it didn’t matter. Cindy had crossed a line that Megan hadn’t even known was there.

So, she ordered Cindy out and while Cindy spent two weeks finding a new place to live and then moving, Megan spent those two weeks crying for hours in Abby’s spare bedroom.