Page 56 of Hardcore Vanilla
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."
That was true. On the other hand... "She judged me, too."
"She did. Does that make you feel better about how you behaved?" Olivia asked matter-of-factly.
Dammit.He was starting to understand some of the offhand comments the other guys had made about Olivia and their relationships. She was almosttooon point with her observations. Thankfully she couldn’t actually see him; he was pretty sure he’d be squirming with discomfort if she could.
He sighed. "Maybe I shouldn't have insisted on being her date."
"Don't say that," Lexie argued immediately. "You'd have been moping and angry all weekend if she was there with Brian."
