Inside of You (Jessa & Paxton #2) (24 page)

I don’t know the guy personally-
I definitely wasn’t playing organized sports and didn’t sign up for gym as an elective, but I know who that motherfucker is. I can see him in his stupid running pants and tight t-shirt, thick black hair and white teeth, getting the auditorium pumped up for spirit week. He looks like one of those douche bags who stuck around the high school because he was the captain of the football team and bagged the head cheerleader and didn’t want to leave his glory days behind so he moved in as the gym teacher. How many girls has he seduced in that school? How many members of the girls’ basketball team has he taken under his ‘wing’ and convinced he cared about just so he could take their virginity.
Jesus
. He took Jessa’s virginity. He was her first kiss. She went through that with him then proceeded to have to be in the same building with him for the rest of the year and the three following it. Because…
he is still there.
(xx)

I’m pacing the room now, my
hands are balled in fists. When I hear the water turn off I try to get my shit under control. She’s gonna walk out of that bathroom with a smile on her face. She’s gonna pretend like everything is fine. She’s gonna try to put it all back in its box and lock it away, but I’m not okay with that. I know how it feels to keep secrets. To keep things inside. How it eats at you. How it never really goes away. How it grows into something bigger and completely detached from the thing it grew out of. How hard it is to get it out of your system. I’m not gonna let her live with it all inside of her.

I take a few deep breaths, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the dresser. My eyes have darkened, my face is red,
the veins under my skin are pulsing. My muscles are tight. I need to fucking relax. I take a seat in one of the chairs and try to calm myself.

Jessa steps out of the bathroom completely naked, strutting herself in front of me. She’s trying to
distract me. She’s relying on the one thing that lets her forget, lets her regain control – her body. Her beautiful perfect body. But I’m not gonna let her use it like that anymore – as a weapon. As an object.

“How long are we gonna play this game, Pax?” she asks me as she leans over her suitcase,
pulling out a small pair of black panties.

“For a while,” I tell her through
my teeth. I’m not gonna have sex with her until I can have sex with her and not some means to power and control that that motherfucker turned sex into for her.

“This is stupid. We are friends, okay? Haven’t we established that by
now? I mean, hell, I just told you things I’ve never told anyone. You are clearly my best friend, and I want my lover back. I want all of you back.”

“How is it that you just told me
that awful story, and now you’re right back to unaffected?”

Jessa throws a t-shirt over her underwear and flops down on the end of the bed, facing me.
“Pax… trust me. I’ve spent years coming to terms with the fact that I had sex with a married man. I know it was wrong. I know I’m an awful person for what I did. I just… I don’t really want to hear you telling me that. I get it.”

“Jesus, Jessa. That’s not what I’m saying. You are not the awful one. Don’t you fucking get that?
He was not your boyfriend, Jessa. He was not some guy you were having an affair with. He was your teacher and he raped you. You gave up your future because of what he did to you. Your whole life has been created around that day.”

She tilts her head at me and it looks like she’s holding back a smile. “
He didn’t rape me. I never tried to stop him. I didn’t want to stop him. And yeah, it was kind of the nail that drove everything home for me, but I already understood that men only want one thing from women and that love is not something that is ever concrete. And as far as my future goes… It was never going to be basketball. That was just stupid. I wasn’t good enough and it wasn’t what I really wanted. I was just trying to hold on to my dad in some fucked up way. So please, just let it go. I don’t want to rehash it with you and have to listen to you be all melodramatic about nothing.”

I stutter a laugh and shake my head at her. “Don’t do this, Jessa. Don’t try to brush it off like it was nothing. What
happened that day is still messing with you. If dealing with this will help you love me, help you finally let yourself be with me, then why wouldn’t you want to do that? For yourself. For us.”

She stares at me with a blank face, but I can see the pain in her eyes. I can see the thoughts running through her head. But she’s not speaking.

“Jessa, you were just a kid. He was a grown man. He knew that your dad was gone. He knew you would trust him and let him get close to you. He knew what he was doing. He took advantage of you. If you don’t want to call it rape… whatever. But the fact is that you didn’t want to have sex with him- he was your coach, your mentor, your father figure. You didn’t want it, but he did it to you anyway. Jesus, you were his student, he took you out of town, set you up in a hotel, had you isolated in his room, spent the day telling you that your future depended on him, then he took your fucking virginity.

“
Don’t tell me that you wanted it. That it wasn’t wrong. That he didn’t take anything from you. Don’t fucking say that ‘cause your lying to me and your lying to yourself and all this bullshit that you believe in, that you base your life on -  that men are in control and you are taking the control back- is bullshit. That asshole has been in control of you from that day. Unless you let yourself move on from what he did, from what your dad did, those men will always be controlling you.”

Jessa’s eyes
close and I can see the stress in her face as she tries to hold back the pain. Her hands are gripping the bedspread and her jaw is set tight. She begins to shake her head back and forth in small, slow motions. It hurts to look at her, to imagine what thoughts are running through her head but for once I’m glad to see her hurting.  I’m relieved to know that she is feeling the pain that she should feel because maybe it won’t be as easy to bury. Maybe she’ll be forced to do something about it. All I want to do is go to her and wrap her in my arms, but I’m not gonna do that. She needs to feel this. “What are you thinking, beso?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I don’t know what I’m thinki
ng. I never saw it like that. I don’t know if you’re right.”

“I am right. And you do know. You said it yourself. After he did that to you
, you changed. You let yourself die and you created someone new who could deal with an asshole like him. You made the decision to become a girl who would not let herself love so that she would never have to be hurt. A girl that every man would want but who would never want any man. Who would never let herself be anything with a man but in control. And that’s who you’ve been. And that’s who you still are. And that fucking sucks because I’m right here. I’ve been right here. Begging you to let me love you. Begging you to let me treat you right. But you won’t take it. You won’t take me. And it’s not because of you and it’s not because of me. It’s because of him. I can’t have you and you can’t have me because of what that sick, sorry motherfucker did to that fifteen year old girl that night in that hotel room.”

Jessa covers her face with her hands and shakes her head. Her entire body is trembling and I’m holding onto the arms of the
chair with all of my strength to keep myself from going to her. From wrapping her in my arms. I don’t know why, but I know it’s necessary.

“Jessa,
it’s okay to admit that something awful happened to you. It’s okay to accept the fact that you let him take those years from you. But it’s not okay to let him keep doing it. What you had with him wasn’t love. What he did to you is not normal. It’s not okay. You need to accept that. You need to accept that he hurt you. That your dad hurt you. That yes, there are shitty men out there who do fucked up things to young girls. And yes, there are men who fall out of love with their wives and fall in love with someone else. But there is also a kid who has been waiting his whole life for the girl who would finally let him feel whole. You have to take all of the shit that they planted inside of you out so that there is room. So that there is room for this love that I want to give you.”

Jessa removes her hands from her eyes and I’m not prepared to be hit with the pain in them. A raw
, ugly pain that shoots through my veins and into my heart. She looks so vulnerable. I feel her – the fifteen year old girl. How scared she was. How bad it hurt and I can’t handle it.

“I
thought I loved him,” she tells me, her voice horse, but there is still no sign of a single tear in her eyes. “I thought he was going to be the one who would save me. Who would wipe away all the pain I felt knowing that my father had abandoned me. My dad had left me, his daughter, for a woman that he barely knew. He threw me away for a woman he had just met. All those years that I had spent believing he loved me, that I meant the world to him – they were all lies.

“
He chose her and now I had a choice. I was going to love Dan Benson more than I ever loved my father. I was going to replace him just like he replaced me. When Dan kissed me that night in that hotel room I think I expected it. I knew what he wanted. And I wanted it too, because I understood that it was the only way to really make a man love you. Letting Dan love me like a daughter wasn’t going to compete with the way my dad loved Cindy. So when Dan kissed me, I kissed him back. And when he told me that he loved me I told him I loved him too. And when he put himself inside of me I watched his face and I smiled. Because I was the lover. I was the one who was going to get to keep him. I wasn’t his boring wife or his needy children. I was his lover. And at that moment I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care about my dad or my mom or my problems. I didn’t care about sports or grades or my future. None of that was going to get me the one and only thing I would ever really want. None of that was going to give me control.

“
And the sad truth is that I was right. No one will ever have control over a man like his lover. Like the woman who he cannot have but who will give him more pleasure than he has ever known. I mean, what’s more powerful? Love? The kind of love that you feel for your family – your parents and your spouse and your kids… your girlfriend? Or the kind of desperate desire, the obsessive mind consuming lust that you have for your lover?

“
Yes, what happened between Dan and I was wrong, but when I walked into school that next week, with my short dress and my exposed chest, my hair flowing down my back in soft curls and my lips shiny and pink, guess who noticed? Guess who was begging me back into his bed? Guess who was promising me that he would leave his wife, that he would find a way to make things work? And when I told him to fuck off and I meant it, who was in control then? Who was fucking over whom? I thought about him at home with his drab wife and his screaming kids and I felt sorry for him. When he would stare at me wrapped up in the arms of a young, strong kid, all I felt was sorry for him.

“
So yeah, maybe what he did was wrong, but it didn’t hurt me. All it did was finally set me free from the kind of pain you feel when your happiness, your future, is dependent on a man’s love and they take that love from you.”

I stare at her
eyes that are full of steely resolve. She just explained to me exactly why she can’t love me and yet she’s still looking at it like it’s good. Like it’s strength. Like it’s what she wants. She sounds and looks so sure of herself that I almost get up and walk away because she doesn’t want to change. I don’t know if she can change.

“I don’t know what to say to you, kid. That is some seriously fucked up shit you just told me. Do you realize that? Can you hear the words that are coming out of your mouth?”

Her eyes burn with anger, but she doesn’t respond.

“I’m going to take that rapist out of t
he equation for a minute. Your dad too. Like neither of them ever existed. Like I’m the only man in this relationship with you. Like it’s just the two of us,” I tell her slowly, calmly. “Can you picture that, Jessa? Can you imagine just you and just me for a minute?”

“It is just us,” she tells me through her teeth.

“It’s not.” I stand now and grab a hold of her hand, pulling her to me and setting her on my lap, her eyes inches from mine. How do I make her see the truth? That it’s not just us.

“Close your eyes.” It takes her a moment, but she does. “
Think about that girl – the one with the perfect family who cared about nothing but sports.” I give her a minute to think about it and I do the same. “Think about how happy she was. About how much she loved her dad and how much he loved her. About how she felt out on the soccer field, scoring a goal, her dad on the sidelines cheering for her.”

“Pax,” she says shaking her head.

“Please, Jessa. I know it hurts, but I’m here, okay. And it’s just a memory. Just please, try to put yourself back there.”

The tension leaves her face and I know she’s trying for me.

“Can you see him? Do you remember what is was like to feel loved by him?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

“Where is that girl? Is she still inside of you? The one who knew she was loved and never even considered that one day
that love would leave her?”

“I remember her
, Pax, I remember how she felt, but I can’t be her anymore. I can’t feel that way anymore.”