Page 35 of Stripping the Sub
Smart bastard.
Patrick, on the other hand, was fully clothed in jeans and a t-shirt, his dark eyes appreciatively wandering over Lexie’s exposed legs. He had the smug look of someone who was feeling very satisfied at the moment. No wonder they’d been taking so long in the kitchen. Michael just hoped they hadn’t done something horribly unhygienic, because the sandwiches Lexie was setting down on the coffee table looked delicious, as did the fruit salad Patrick was carrying.
“What?” Angel asked, looking defensive as she pushed herself into a sitting position. “It’s not my fault they all flip out as soon as they hear something bad once happened. News flash guys, bad things happen to everyone. I didn’t even get to the part where we deal with this shit on a daily basis.”
“What?”
“Not, like being molested,” she waved her hand at him, as if that was going to help him calm down. “But walking down the street, the cat calling, the guys pulling over their cars to try and talk to us.”
“Theywhat?”
“Yeah, they’re the worst, cuz that’s actually scary rather than just annoying. You’d think the baby bump would put them off, but I still had a guy pull over and try to get my number the other day.” Angel looked down at her belly and poked it. “You are not the man-deterrentI thought you would be.”
Michael was practically hyperventilating. He didn’t know what was worse - hearing his pregnant friend was being harassed on the street, or that she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary about men actually stopping their cars to try and talk to her. Honking was one thing - although now that he thought about it, he didn’t particularly like that idea either. Why should Angel and the others have to put up with being leered at by guys driving by? Fuck guys who honked at women on the street.
“Calm down, Michael, there’s nothing you can do about it. Heck, there’s nothingwecan do about it,” Lexie said, popping a grape from her fruit salad into her mouth. Her expression was a little resigned but just as matter-of-fact as Angel’s. “I’ve had guys pull over when I was out for a run, wearing sweatpants, and looked and smelled like ass. Some guys just suck. But not all guys act like that and we all know it. Unfortunately, those who exist tend to spread the bad. We’re used to dealing with it.”
“Yes, but you shouldn’t have to,” Patrick said, his voice a deep growl as his eyes flashed. Obviously he had the same feelings on the subject Michael did - which probably their entire group of friends would.
“Agreed, we shouldn’t,” Lexie said, rolling her eyes, in a tone which indicated she’d already repeated this sentiment multiple times. “And yet, we all have a story. Granted, some stories are way worse than others, but that’s what it’s like to be a woman unfortunately. Why do you think Angel manages to stay employed?”
When she wasn’t making items to sell on her Etsy store, Angel taught self-defense classes, both part-time at a local community college and at Stronghold. Michael had always thought they were a good idea, but he’d seen them as a ‘just in case’ kind of thing, not something he thought all of his female friends would actually need to use at some point. The idea that every single one of them had a story made him want to stand up and rage, and then go hunt down every man who had ever hurt them and cut off his balls.
Despite Patrick’s controlled movements as he set down the bowl of fruit salad and handed out the plates stacked beneath, the fury in his eyes absolutely reflected the same sentiment. He looked like Michael felt - helpless. And even more infuriated that both Angel and Lexie acted like this was somehow normal, even expected, that they’d at some point had a man either threaten or hurt or… ugh, Michael’s imagination was coming up with all sorts of awful scenarios.
“Look, the point is, we’re fine. Some men are shitty. I was lucky, in my situation I was just scared,” Angel said. “A guy tried to follow me home and he was really loud and threatening, but I found a security officer and my story ended happily. I’m safe. That’s when I started taking the self-defense classes and decided I wanted to teach them too.”
Even the thought of Angel being threatened by a man had Michael grinding his teeth. What if she hadn’t found the security officer?
“How did I not know about this before?” he demanded.
Lexie and Angel exchanged a look which spoke volumes as Lexie sat down on the floor between Patrick’s legs as he settled onto the armchair. The kind of look that left the two men out and Michael didn’t like it. Angel hadn’t had a whole lot of female friends, other than Leigh, before she’d started going to Stronghold. It felt weird to be left out, to see the connection between the two of them, an understanding he didn’t, and couldn’t, have. It was disturbing and upsetting, considering the reason.
“It’s not really something I like to talk about,” Angel said. “None of us do. People can be kind of judgmental. When I told the girls in my dorm what had happened, most of them were sympathetic, but some of them wanted to know if I had talked to him at some point, if I’d smiled at him or something - as if that would somehow mean it was okay for him to follow me. Guys were even worse. They wanted to know where I started from, if I was at a party or a bar, if I’d been drinking, what I was wearing, why was I walking alone… and more of them were looking for some kind of explanation which would blame me instead of being sympathetic or angry on my behalf.”
What hit Michael hardest, in that moment, was that part of his brain pinged, acknowledging what seemed like legitimate questions, until Angel pointed out how looking for an explanation shifted some of the blame to her. Which was bullshit. Obviously it wasn’t her fault. He just couldn’t help but think maybe if she’d been wearing something sexy, it might have drawn the guy’s attention… but women in Stronghold could strip naked and expect to be treated with respect. Women on the street should be able to have the same expectation.Saying a woman should dress less sexy just shifted the blame to her, the advice meant shifting the predator’s attention to a different woman, a woman who was dressed more sexily, rather than focusing on the man, who was really the only one at fault.
He wanted his friends to be protected, but staying safe shouldn’t mean changing what she was wearing or not going out to parties or anything other change to her behavior. Even if it seemed like a legitimate question, he could see how it came off as pointing a finger.
“Plus, you feel super alone. I think that’s what finally helped Ellie to talk a little last night,” Lexie said, her head leaning against Patrick’s knee. She had one arm wrapped around his leg, her fingers stroking his ankle, almost as though she were consoling him. One of his big hands was on the back of her neck, the chocolate color of his fingers standing out against the pale cream of her skin. He was leaning forward, almost protectively hovering over her. “Hearing she wasn’t the only one who had been through something.”
“Who else was there last night?” Michael demanded. Even though he couldn’t do anything, he suddenly had the overwhelming need to know. Patrick shot him a look of sympathy, at the same time Angel and Lexie both shook their heads.
“Don’t worry about that,” Angel said, reaching out to pick up a sandwich. “Mmm, these look amazing.”
He made a noise of frustration. “I just don’t understand how you can act like this isn’t a big deal!”
“It’s not,” Angel said, shooting him a glare. “I mean, it is and it isn’t. We know it shouldn’t happen, it fucking sucks when it does happen, it affects us, but we rise above it. We find ways to guard ourselves and defend ourselves and we watch out for each other, but we don’t wallow in what happened to us, or we’d be walking around scared all the time instead of just aware and on guard. Although, even then, we’re a lot more likely to be hurt by someone we know than someone we don’t. Which is why it’s nice to belong to a group of friends like ours where the guys arealldecent and trustworthy. Even if you occasionally do stupid things.”
As she sat back, happily munching on her sandwich, Michael was struck by two things.
One - he and Patrick were definitely having a much harder time dealing with the women’s reality than the women were.
Two - he was pretty sure Ellie had the worst story. Because she was the most guarded. And that made him want to run around hitting things all over again.
But he couldn’t.
With Lexie and Angel’s determined help, somehow they managed to get the conversation back around to Marquis and what kind of decorations they wanted, which was what they’d been talking about before Lexie and Patrick had gone to make lunch. Both Michael and Patrick remained distracted for the rest of the afternoon though. Distracted and agitated.
