Page 26 of Hardcore Vanilla
"The usual," Sharon insisted, sticking her tongue out at Leigh. "He was a dick and took it too far, so he came out to apologize. I went home. I don't know why he didn't go back inside; you'd have to ask him."
"Uh huh." Angel gave her a look. "You know he's totally got a thing for you, right?"
This was not a conversation she should be having.
Rolling her eyes, Sharon shrugged. "Then he's got a shitty way of showing it."
Total lie. She got why he'd been a dick last night. If she'd thoughthewas fooling around with another woman before going home with her... Yeah, she wouldn't have reacted well either. But it wasn't like either of these two knew anything about that.
They were just fishing for information.
"The Stronghold gossip train is already up and running this morning, huh?" she asked, making a face. The whole group could be worse than a bunch of old ladies sometimes, men included. Heck, sometimes the men were worse gossips than the women. Before she’d become a part of this group, Sharon hadn't realized exactly how gossip-y men could be. The Stronghold Doms were tightly knit and it showed in how fast news spread among them.
"Just people making sure I'm in the know," Angel said, blinking sleepily as she grinned at Sharon.
Uh huh. Sharon saw a lot of future competition for being the first to update Angel and Adam on any juicy gossip. She and Jake were going to have to conduct themselves more carefully if they didn't want their friends butting in.
******
Planning Lexie and Patrick's engagement party wasn't really something Jake was interested in, but he found himself sitting through a planning session anyway - mostly because once the topic started over dinner, his mom wasn't about to let it go. He was absolutely willing to help out, but he'd rather just be told what to do, rather than involved in figuring out what they were going to do. His dad was the same way, and tended to grunt when asked for an opinion.
Not surprisingly, Patrick - control freak that he was - jumped right into being involved. Lexie was interested but not particularly picky about any of it. Watching their dynamic always made his lips twitch, especially because right now Patrick was trying very hard to make sure Lexie had everything the way she liked it, while Lexie didn't care as much as Patrick did about the gritty details.
"I don't really care if we have it here or if we go out somewhere," she told him, obviously exasperated. She looked at her mom. "Although I'm a little worried about clean up and imposing on you and dad if we did it here."
"Oh, don't worry about that." Mom waved her hands, as if she were shooing Lexie's concerns away. "We'll get it catered and they'll do all the work."
Lexie and Jake exchanged a glance. Their mom might say that, but they knew she'd be right in the thick of things. On the other hand, that would be true regardless. She loved events, and the fact that this one was for her daughter's upcoming wedding...
The nice thing about Lexie getting married before him was that, hopefully, his mom would have most of this out of her system by the time Jake was ready to settle down. He wasn’t ready to settle down yet.
Sharon's face flitted through his mind, and he dropped his head down to focus on his food so that no one could see his smile. They weren't seeing each other again tonight, but he'd texted her earlier to say that he'd enjoyed last night... And she'd texted back saying that he better have, because it was going to take a few days before her love tunnel was open for business again. Since she hadn't been there to hear him, he'd laughed his ass off.
He was pretty sure she'd been trying to annoy him with the unsexy euphemism, but he'd just found it very entertaining, and very Sharon.
"What about you, Jake?" His mom asked, dragging his attention back to the conversation. "Will you be bringing a date?"
"Ah, no," he said, immediately pushing aside any thoughts of Sharon.
For one, she would be at the party anyway, as one of Lexie's friends - hell, possibly as a bridesmaid for all he knew – second of all, he was not going to be introducing her to his parents as a date. Just trying to imagine her being her usual blunt, occasionally foul-mouthed self in front of his mom made him feel twitchy. It was going to be a big party though, so hopefully his parents wouldn't spend much time with her, although if she were there as his date his mom would have laser-like focus on her.
Big nope there.
Plus, it seemed like bad form to introduce his fuck buddy to his parents as a date. This was also why having a fuck buddy within his circle of friends wasn't the best idea, although he still didn't regret it.
Jake averted his eyes away from Patrick, who was suddenly looking at him a little too closely. His best friend was uncomfortably observant and knew Jake far too well. Trying to hide anything from him was always a crap shoot, but Jake was going to try.
Their friendship really hadn't changed that much... Except that Jake wasn't sure Patrick would be able to keep something like him hooking up with Sharon from Lexie. And if Patrick told Lexie, she would probably tell Angel or Leigh, whom she was especially close with, and then things would just snowball from there. That was how it worked in their group of friends. Everyone had just that one person they would tell, and within a day they all knew.
Fortunately, Patrick couldn't exactly question him at the dinner table, and he was quickly distracted by talking about themes, food, and decoration possibilities.
It looked like Jake was going to make a clean getaway after dinner, until Patrick followed him outside to his car. Bracing himself for the inquisition, Jake's put on his poker face.
"Hey, so ah... I've been wanting to ask you..." Patrick looked a little uncomfortable which was surprising. Normally he didn't hesitate with questions, even if they were invasive. "Will you be my best man?"
Jake blinked.
His thoughts took a hard turn away from where he'd thought the conversation was going to go and he floundered for a second.
