Page 36 of Hardcore Vanilla
Jake had sent one of his abs.
They’d flirted.
And then she’d shown up at his apartment for hot sex and…
It was awkward.
So,so, painfully awkward.
Instead of pulling her inside and taking off all her clothes, he'd been kind of stiff and uncertain. Not that he was the only one. She'd even had trouble looking him in the eye.
Ugh.
"So, ah, how was your day?" she asked as she watched him put away her coat, smoothing her hands over her short skirt.
"Pretty good. We finished out the office we've been working on, got all the small details done. We're starting on a new location tomorrow." He finished hanging up the coat and turned to look at her. "You look nice."
"Thanks."
Silence fell between them, and not the fun, wrought with sexual tension kind of silence.
Sharon eyed him. "Okay, even if we've run through our attraction, you still have to be my date to my cousin's wedding."
His laugh cut through a good deal of the heaviness in the air, his shoulders relaxing as he grinned, and that let her relax too.
"It's not that, it's just..." He shrugged, tilting his head as he gave her an almost shy smile. "This is a little weird right?"
"A little bit," she admitted. "I mean, nothing has really changed but..."
"In some ways it totally has. Did you know Andrew and Patrick came by to visit me yesterday?"
Sharon blinked in surprise. While she'd noticed Andrew hadn't been around at his and Kate's house, she figured he'd just been hiding out from the female brigade, not that he'd had an agenda over at Jake's. "No. Why...? Oh dammit!" She groaned. "Do not tell me that Andrew went all big brother on you."
"Oh, he totally did," Jake said, moving and ushering her into the living room. "Threatened to kick my ass if I hurt you."
"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I don't know why he gets like that. It's not like he doesn't have his own little sister who needs looking after."
"Yeah, but he likes looking after you too," Jake teased. "Want something to drink? I've got water, wine, beer..."
"If it's red, a glass of wine sounds great." Couldn't hurt anyway. Whatever this new paradigm between them was, it clearly wasn't going to involve immediately jumping each other. Not that they'd been solely focused on the sex, it was just that the sex had been coming before the conversation.
Sitting down on the couch, Sharon curled her legs underneath her for warmth and turned so she could rest her head along the back, watching Jake in the kitchen. He was dressed in his regular jeans and long-sleeved shirt. Today's was a dark blue that made his eyes look even lighter and bluer, and his hair was slightly mussed in the way that she liked. It looked like it might be a little wet too, like he'd taken a shower not too long ago.
Unlike her, he was dressed for comfort and warmth. Not that he'd ever dressed up much anyway.
Should she stop dressing up? Would he still want her if she came over in sweatpants and a t-shirt? Now that was an interesting theory to test one day...
"Andrew said I should ask you about your family," Jake said, coming back into the room, a glass of wine in each hand.
Sharon made a face. The traitor. Although she probably would have told Jake anyway, rather than letting him walk in completely blind.
Probably.
"They're mean, they're going to be horrified by your job, and they're completely self-involved," she said succinctly, taking the glass from him. "The wedding is probably going to be one tiny nightmare after another on top of the larger nightmare of the wedding itself. I have a few normal family members, but mostly picture the worst family relationship scenarios you can imagine and then extrapolate from there."
Jake chuckled. "So... inbreeding?"
She snorted, nearly choking on her wine. "Maybe not quite that bad, but... kind of close. My parents' generation all had what amounted to arranged marriages. Most of them are desperately unhappy but refuse to divorce. My parents get along pretty well but it's more a business relationship than anything else as far as I can tell."
