Hardcore Vanilla

by Golden Angel

  Family was really important to him, whereas Sharon seemed to go out of her way to antagonize hers. She didn't even try to get along with her parents from what he could tell. Sure, her parents were kind of cold and formal, and snobbish, but they didn't seem like totally terrible people. Whereas Sharon had deliberately tried to provoke their displeasure from the moment she'd arrived home.

  Then, rather than finding a nice way to distract her aunt, she'd done the exact same thing and used Jake to do it. Finally, when he'd made his unhappiness with her tactic clear, she'd just accused him of trying to boss her around and swanned off instead of apologizing. If he hadn't followed her, would she have just left him in a sea of strangers that she'd just embarrassed him in front of? It seemed likely.

  Yes, he got that she wasn't her best with her family.

  Yes, a lot of them were kind of assholes.

  But to be perfectly honest, she was being one too, just in a different way than they were.

  While he was trying really hard to be understanding, his patience had pretty much run out.

  "She said you're in construction," Rina said, moving closer and licking her lips with deliberate interest. This time Jake did take a step back. "I love a man who's good with his hands."

  Despite how pissed he was getting at Sharon, he would have given anything for her to step in and save him. But she didn't - the dinner bell did.

  Rina pouted as she turned away from him, the room falling silent, and Jake closed his eyes for a moment in stark relief before turning his attention to where Melinda and Mark were standing at the other end of the room with their parents.

  ******

  Sniffling slightly, Courtney let Sharon direct her out into the hallway. Fortunately, no one else was out there and the noise from the party was muffled as soon as the door closed.

  "Alright, sweetie, what's going on with you and Joseph?" Sharon asked gently, putting her arm around her cousin's shoulders. Even though Courtney was only about five years younger than her, Sharon felt a lot older as Courtney's story poured out.

  Basically, Joseph was being hot and cold lately, constantly testing Courtney's devotion to the relationship.

  "I don't know what to do," Courtney said, working her way up to tears again. "No matter how I try to reassure him, it's never enough. Then it seems like he doesn't even want to be with me anymore and I'm so angry with him. I feel like I should put my foot down, but relationships aren't supposed to be about ultimatums, right? What if he's the one? My parents adore him, I know he's an amazing catch, what if I never find another guy as good as him? I can't just set down rules and say, 'you have to do this' even though sometimes I really want to."

  "Honey..." Sharon hugged her. Her poor cousin. Joseph was her first real relationship and she was trying so hard while he was giving her the run around. He totally didn't deserve her. Plus, it sounded like Courtney was with him to please her parents more than anything else. "You have the right to set rules for how you'll be treated in a relationship. If he can't treat you in a manner that makes you feel respected and loved, then he's not the right guy and he can get the fuck out. Penis is literally everywhere. Everywhere! And it's dying to get inside you - with whatever rules you set. This loser is playing games and for whatever reason, you're allowing it. You have the vagina. Act like it."

  The expression on Courtney's face was full of shock and awe, and more than a little desire. "But... what if he leaves me because I'm bossing him around?"

  "Setting down standards so that a man treats you well is not bossing him around, and anyone who doesn't treat you well and make you feel loved is a shitgibbon," Sharon insisted, utilizing one of Angel's favorite insults. It had such a nice ring to it.

  Covering her mouth, Courtney giggled, looking a lot less teary. Then her expression dropped.

  "My parents will be so disappointed in me if we break up," she said mournfully.

  "That's because they wouldn't have to live with him," Sharon pointed out. "Look at your sisters. Rina married Dave, like your parents wanted her to, and is now miserable and cheating on him with every man she can sink her claws into. Melinda, on the other hand, is marrying who?"

  "Mark," Courtney answered, her smile returning.

  "And did your parents want her to marry Mark?"

  "Definitely not."

  Melinda had met Mark at college and while he was successful in his own right, he didn't 'bring anything to the table,' as Aunt Lorraine put it. Nothing other than warmth, love, and making Melinda excessively happy.

  "So, who would you choose as relationship goals?"

  "Yeah I get it," Courtney said, elbowing Sharon gently. She sighed. "It's just harder than it sounds."

  "Oh, I know, honey," Sharon sympathized. "But it's worth it to be happy in the end."

  The muffled ding of the dinner bell had both of their heads turning. Sharon gave Courtney a quick hug.

  "We'll talk more this weekend," she told her cousin. "But seriously, just remember, if he really wants you, he needs to be willing to meet you at least halfway and he should damn well be treating you as well as you’re treating him. Which, from what I’ve seen, means he should be treating you a million times better than he currently is."

  “Thank you, Shar,” Courtney said, looking incredibly relieved before they went back into the other room, just in time to see Melinda and Mark doing the official welcome for the evening.

  Sharon was feeling pretty good about herself until she looked over at Jake to find him staring at her with a seriously pissed off expression on his face with Rina next to him looking smug.

  Fucking donkey dicks.

  Chapter 14

  Dinner was a pretty uncomfortable experience for Jake, although he did his best. He was pissed at Sharon and for some reason she seemed ticked at him too, which only pissed him off even more.

  He wasn’t the one who had made a scene, no matter the provocation.

  He hadn’t set her up to be looked down on by anyone.

  He hadn’t gone around telling anyone they were fuck buddies.

  He hadn’t brought her to an event as a guest then attempted to abandon her once before successfully abandoning her.

  No, he had been the perfect gentleman. He’d been a good date. He was still trying to be a good date, to the best of his ability considering how ticked off he was.

  Somehow, they muddled through, mostly by talking to everyone else at their table. Thankfully there didn't seem to be anyone sitting with them that Sharon felt the need to provoke, otherwise it probably would have been even more uncomfortable.

  Of course, getting back in the car with her was even worse.

  Neither of them had had much to drink. Jake had been afraid that if he did, he wouldn't be able to control some of his responses, and Sharon had needed to be sober to drive.

  There was no buffer against the very tense silence. As cool as the massage chair was in the passenger seat, it wasn't helping him.

  It wasn't a long drive, maybe about ten minutes, but every passing minute felt more like an hour. Halfway there, Sharon broke the strained quiet.

  "Go ahead and say it."

  Jake turned his head to look at her, but she was staring straight ahead at the road, both hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. "Say what?"

  She snorted. "Whatever it is you're holding back, whatever the bug is that you've had up your butt all night. Go ahead and say it."

  "I haven't had a bug up my butt all night," he snapped back at her. Seriously, if she wanted to know what he was pissed about, couldn't she just ask? Did she have to go straight for the insults? Why not try to make the situation better instead of worse? But that seemed to be her M.O. "Just since you decided to use me to piss off your family."

  Sharon scoffed. "I wasn't using you-"

  "Yes, you were," he said, not caring that he was interrupting her. "I'm proud of being a soldier, I'm not ashamed that I'm not using my college degree and that I'm working for Luke, but you took both of those things and downpla
yed them in order to rile up your aunt."

  "I was just trying to help Melinda! You heard her ask me to distract her mom."

  "Yeah, but I didn't hear you ask me if I was okay with being the sacrifice for it. You didn't extend me the courtesy of letting me know what you were going to do. You just went straight into making a scene and using me and making it clear that I'm not good enough for your family."

  "I don't think you're not, that's what they think! I don't care what your job is!"

  "If you really didn't care what my job was, you wouldn't have used it as a weapon and you would have talked it up, not down," he snapped, turning his head away to glare out the window. He crossed his arms over his chest. "You could have done something else to distract your aunt, but you didn't. You deliberately chose to do something that would be embarrassing for me."

  "You were already embarrassed by me," she snapped back. "From the second I called out to her, don't deny it."

  "So, because I was uncomfortable having everyone stare at us... What? You decided to make it worse for me? Why? What the hell is the point?"

  "The point is I successfully distracted her, like my cousin asked me to. You have no idea what my aunt is like when she's on a mission - the only thing that was going to distract her is making a bit of a scene!"

  "You didn't even try," he retorted. "You've been deliberately getting under your parents’ skin since we arrived, without even attempting to get along with them. You were completely normal at dinner, so it's not like you can't behave with your family if you want to."

  ******

  Later, Sharon would realize that it wasn't entirely Jake's fault he'd hit on the two phrases guaranteed to piss her off the most, especially since Rina had already faulted her for not being 'normal' earlier that evening. And yeah, she could behave if she wanted to, but she didn't. Behaving actually made her parents worse, not better. They took it as an invitation to try and push their agenda and control her.

  "You have no idea what my family is like." The wheels on the Mercedes squealed a little as she made a sharp turn into the driveway. "You don't know what will and won't distract my aunt, you don't know what will and won't make my parents not be dicks to me. You have an awesome family that loves and supports you unconditionally and you have no clue what it's like to not have that."

  "Fine! Your family sucks and they totally deserve how you treat them. What about me? You've had a 'bug up your ass' from the moment you met me, and I thought you'd finally gotten it out, but tonight I can see that you haven't."

  "Because you're just like them, Judgy McJudgerson Asshole!" she shouted at him, slamming on the brakes in front of the house hard enough that both of them jerked in their seats. She whipped her head around to glare at him. If she could have burned a hole through his head with her gaze, she would have. "The second you met me, you were judging me and finding me lacking, why the hell should I try to impress you?"

  "You didn't have to impress me, you just had to not deliberately go out of your way to be as obnoxious as possible. It's not like I knew your parents when I first met you - I didn't know anything about you. And you didn't give me a chance to get to know you, did you? No, you just immediately decided I was like your parents, and went out of your way to antagonize me and make sure I didn't get that chance. Who's really the judgmental one in that scenario? And just for the record, I liked the you I've gotten to know, up until tonight. I don't know what version of you this was, but she's a royal bitch."

  Shaken, Sharon just sat there as Jake practically hurled himself out of the car and slammed the door behind him. She watched him walk up the stairs and into the house, a very large lump in her throat.

  Part of her wanted to run after him to yell at him some more. A much smaller part of her wanted to run after him and apologize. But she was afraid that if she moved, if she tried to speak, she would burst into tears.

  Swallowing hard several times, she angrily wiped the tears away from her eyes as Thomas came down the stairs of the house. She clenched her jaw and straightened her spine, taking in several deep breaths through her nose as she pushed down all her emotions. It felt like icing herself over, like an impenetrable shield that she could hunker down inside of.

  It was a tactic she'd taught herself growing up, the only way she'd been able to deal with her parents' constant disappointment that she wasn't the daughter they wanted. Eventually she'd managed to stop caring at all - mostly. She hadn't had to do this in years.

  Now she felt even more resentful. She really, really, really hated that she cared so much about what Jake thought. That he'd managed to hurt her.

  Nodding regally to Thomas as she passed him, she walked quickly into the house and up the stairs. Jake had apparently already found his way without her. The door to the room he was staying in was firmly shut. Yeah, her plan to head over there tonight... definitely not happening.

  Quietly she let herself into her room. She thought about slamming the door for a minute, just so he'd know she was there, but she didn't. It might be satisfying for a moment, but it would also prove his point about her deliberately doing whatever she could to be provoking.

  And, despite how mad she was, she already knew there was some truth to his words.

  Pulling her phone out of her clutch, she tossed the small purse on the bed as she called Kate even before sitting down on her bed to take off her shoes. The super cute strappy sandals that she'd been so sure Jake would like. Well, he had liked them when he'd first seen them. She blinked back a few more tears that had sprung to her eyes.

  "Sharon? What's wrong?" Kate's greeting, the sympathy in her voice, undid Sharon completely.

  She burst into tears.

  ******

  Pacing back and forth in the guest room, Jake raked his fingers through his hair.

  Dammit.

  He should turn back around and find Sharon and apologize. No matter how pissed he was, he should haven't called her a royal bitch. Even if she was being one and even if she'd called him an asshole first.

  But he couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't end up yelling at her again if he tried. Because he was still angry. He didn't doubt she was too.

  Groaning, he shook his head as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. It was close to midnight, but Patrick would still be awake. Stronghold didn't close until two, and he usually stayed the full night. Hopefully he'd be in his office and not on the floor.

  Jake blew out a sigh of relief when Patrick picked up after just two rings.

  "Jake?" Patrick sounded confused and a little concerned. "What's up? Everything okay?"

  "Not really," Jake said, sighing as he fell back onto the bed. Reaching up he loosened his tie. "Sharon and I had a fight tonight."

  "Already?" Patrick asked, sounding amused. In the background, Jake could hear his sister demanding to know what was going on. "Hold on, I'm going to put you on speaker."

  "Do you have to?" He tossed his tie to the side and undid the top button of his shirt to give him more breathing room. The protest was only half-hearted though. He'd known his sister would be there and that she'd insist on being part of the conversation. In fact, he'd kind of been counting on it. He wanted her perspective.

  "Yes. Just so you know, Olivia and Luke are here too," Patrick said, his voice sounding a little farther away now that he was on speaker. "Although they can step out if you need."

  "No, it's fine... Who's running Marquis tonight?" Olivia was the manager of the other club, which Patrick, Luke, and Michael were all part-owners of.

  "Michael and Ellie." Olivia's crisp tones were immediately recognizable. "It's my night off this week."

  "Ah... gotcha. Well..." Now that he had his friends ready to hear him out, it was like he stalled out on what to say.

  "Spit it out big brother." There was a tinge of amusement to Lexie’s voice, but she sounded just as concerned as Patrick. "What's this about you and Sharon fighting already?"

  Starting at the beginning - not just the rehearsal dinner, but what she'
d been like from the moment she'd irreverently greeted her parents with monikers that obviously made them uncomfortable - Jake went through all the events leading up to the blow up in the car. Other than a few mutters and murmurs that he couldn't quite make out, his audience let him get through the whole story.

  "So now she's in her room, and I'm in my room, and we still have her cousin's wedding to go to tomorrow. Plus, we'll be staying in the same room at the hotel tomorrow night." Just unloading everything to his friends made him feel strangely hollow inside; the anger had finally left, but there was nothing to take its place.

  "That sucks, man," Patrick said after a long moment. Jake got the feeling they were all trying to figure out what to say. Because it really did suck.

  "I can't believe you called her a royal bitch." That was Lexie, sounding both awed and chastising at the same time. "I've never heard you call anyone that before."

  Closing his eyes, Jake pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing in shame. "I'm not exactly proud of it. I completely lost my temper.”

  "Understandably," Lexie said, sounding a little sympathetic. "She did warn you that she doesn't get along with her family though. I know she did."

  "She doesn't seem to want to get along with them," he pointed out. "She didn't even give her parents a chance before she was doing her best to tick them off."

  There was a moment of silence, and then Olivia spoke up.

  "Jake, I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to really think about the answer. If someone wasn't nice to you, regardless of how you treated them, after a while, would you bother trying to be nice to them?"

  "Well... but... She didn't even give them a chance."

  "You saw one interaction between people whose relationship has taken years to develop. Are you saying you can judge the entirety of the situation based off that?" Olivia sounded completely reasonable when she asked the question, but it was a very pointed question.

  "No," he admitted. His chest tightened uncomfortably. "Am I being entirely unreasonable?"

  "Not entirely," Olivia said, and three other voices immediately murmured their agreement. "But it sounds like you went into this weekend with certain expectations of her behavior and as soon as she didn't meet them, you became disapproving. From what you've said about how her family reacts to her, it sounds like you touched a nerve."