Page 57 of Hardcore Vanilla
"All of this was bound to come up eventually anyway," Patrick chimed in. "Better sooner than later, especially if you can't work through it."
"Do you want to work through it?" Lexie asked.
Jake rubbed his hand over his face.
He didn't like one of the sides of Sharon that he'd seen today. Andrew had said she needed looking after because she was too independent to ask for help. Was there something he could have done to make today easier for her?
Nothing immediately came to mind. Because he didn't know her family or how to deal with them. Olivia was right that he shouldn't have jumped to conclusions about how she dealt with them.
Yeah, he'd sympathized with her parents, because that was exactly how Sharon had treated him for months, but maybe her parents did deserve it. He didn't know what they had done to make her go immediately on the offensive with them.
While he might empathize with her parents, it was because she’d done the same thing to him,notbecause it was the same situation. There had been no real reason for her not to give him a chance. For all he knew, her parents had run out of chances.
He’d been worried that family wasn’t important to Sharon, but it was clear after tonight that it was. Maybe not every member equally, but she’d been there for her cousins. Jake sighed.
“Yes, I want to work through it.” As long as she didn’t continue to paint him with the same brush she used for her parents. That wasn’t fair to him. “Luke’s been pretty quiet. What does he think about all this?”
He asked the question more to lighten his mood than anything.
“You got this, man.”
Jake couldn’t help but chuckle. “Thanks, boss.”
Although he considered knocking on Sharon’s door after he got off the phone, he decided against it. A night for both of them to cool down wasn’t going to do either of them any harm and might even do them some good.
******
To Sharon’s surprise, Kate wasn’t quite as sympathetic as she’d thought her bestie would be. After Sharon managed to stifle her initial tears and was done pouring out everything that had happened and the fight she and Jake had on the ride home, her best friend hesitated before responding.
“Do you want the supportive bestie or the tough love right now, sweetie?”
The fact that there was even an option made Sharon feel defensive.
“I want the supportive bestie.” She was going to ask what Kate meant by the tough love eventually, and they both knew it, because she wouldn’t be able to contain her curiosity, but Sharon didn’t want to hear it right now.
“I love you, Jake was a total asshat, and he sucks big balls.” There was total sincerity in Kate’s voice, but Sharon had to ask.
“What’s the tough love version?”
“You were also a royal bitch.” It was said sympathetically, but also matter-of-factly.
“I kind of was, wasn’t I?” Sharon asked morosely.
That was the truth she hadn’t wanted to face in the car. Jake had made several good points about how she’d treated him tonight.
“You know I love you, but you do have a tendency to react poorly if people do anything other than accept you immediately. I get why it pushes your buttons, but you tend to go on the offensive when you feel at all defensive.”
“I did what I had to with Aunt Lorraine but…” Sharon sighed. “I didn’t need to drag Jake into it. I did that because he pissed me off in the moment.”
She made a face and got up from where she’d been laying on the bed, starting to undress so she could be more comfortable while she and Kate talked. Pajama pants and a soft tank top first and then she started on taking the pins out of her hair.
“Granted, he could be a lot more sympathetic to your position,” Kate said. “But you could be a lot more sympathetic to his too. He’s meeting your family for the first time, wants to make a good impression, and you… Well, you were intentionally being obnoxious. It makes sense that he found you so too.”
“Ugh. Why do you have to go and bring logic into this?” Sharon asked irritably.
But she was honestly already feeling a little better. Maybe crying had helped her vent her feelings a little – and holy crap she needed to take care of her makeup situation, she realized as she glanced in the mirror over her vanity – or because she was on the phone with her bestie, but she didn’t feel like she was about to explode with emotions anymore. She tended to be an emotional person and she was fine with herself that way, but sometimes she did need someone to help ground her.
Kate was a grounded person. So was Jake for that matter.
