Part of Me (Jessa & Paxton #1) (12 page)

My morning started out just like yesterday – with a big boner pressed into my back and a warm hand wandering around my body. The fact that when I woke, it was from of a dream where I was riding that exact boner was alarming. The pain in my body is becoming a serious issue that I have to take care of which I can’t do if I’m spending all of my free time with Pax. And now my imagination is betraying me and infusing him into my fantasies.
This is not good
.

When he offered to bring me to class this morning, I told him I was good. When class ended I considered staying away but the truth is I want to be where he is. Especially since I don’t know how long I’m gonna have him around for.

When I get home, Pax is on the couch, just like yesterday. When I’m within reaching distance he wordlessly grabs onto me and pulls me down to him and resumes his position as my attachment. I immediately snuggle into him knowing that I’m way too comfortable in his arms. “Is this your plan, Pax? You just gonna lay around here every day?” I ask him.

“Yeah, for now this is my plan. You got a better one?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you need a hobby.”

“A hobby?” he laughs. “What, like knitting?”

“Maybe. Or what about the band? I mean, I know you can’t show your face in public, but the way the guys were talking the other night, it seems like they miss it… maybe you should start playing with them again, just to keep yourself occupied,” I say, looking up at him, trying to gauge his reaction to the idea of playing again. I want to know what the hell happened when he was here before because it’s clear, after his reaction to being at The Bottle, that it was more traumatic than I had thought.

“Nah,” he says, shaking his head, his jaw becoming
tense.

“Why not? You love playing your guitar.”

“Being in a band is not the same thing as playing my guitar.”

“What’s the difference?” I ask, taking my eyes off him, thinking maybe he’ll open up easier if I’m not staring at him.

“Playing my guitar is something I did with my dad. Not with a band.”

Okay… that’s something.
“So why did you even start playing with a band?” I ask, trying to sound casual, trying to keep him from retreating.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Jesus, Pax. I’m just making conversation – you don’t have to get all worked up. Would it kill you to tell me something about yourself?”

His arm tightens around me and he lets out a lo
ng breath – I think that means he’s gonna start talking. “I never played my guitar when I was home with Rachel, in Glencoe. I never wanted to. That part of me belonged in Venice, with Gabriel. He gave me my first guitar when I was ten years old. He taught me how to play it and I managed to hold my own when I was jamming with him and his buddies. I loved that guitar because all those badass dudes got a kick out of watching my small hands pluck and strum back to them anything they played to me.” Paxton’s hand relaxes and he starts running his fingers through my hair. He even laughs under his breath at the memory. “My dad and his vatos always called me Gringo because I got Rachel’s eyes and because, a week after showing up in California, my dark hair would be plagued with blonde streaks. I hated that name, but that summer they started calling me geetar gringo and I didn’t mind it so much.” He flips the palm of his hand, that’s not buried in my hair, over and I look at the tattoo there – the guitar that has the word Gringo tattooed inside of it. I actually know something about that tattoo – it was his first one. His uncle gave it to him when he was thirteen. I run my fingers over it for a moment before Paxton tangles his fingers with mine and closes our hands so the tattoo disappears.

I’m afraid that’s all I’m going to get from him. I can feel his body stiffening
under mine again. When he starts talking again, it’s a relief.

“But the summer before my fifteenth birthday, Pops got
sent to lock up so I was no longer sent to California for the summers. That’s when I started playing it here, in Illinois – I guess I wanted to hold onto any part of Gabriel that I could and that guitar was part of him. It was also about the time that Rachel stopped keeping tabs on me, so I would skip school most days and take the bus here, to Chicago. Back then, I always had my guitar with me, I was always playing it and eventually people started to notice. I started playing for the down and out lunch time crowd at this hole in the wall called Sammie’s. I didn’t change any lives there, but that place changed mine. That’s where I met Billy. He was playing with a band… Cause for Chaos – you’re familiar, right?” he asks me, his tone shifting.

“Yeah, Pax.”

“They needed a lead guitar player and my fifteen year old ass was the lucky bustard who got the job.”

I stay quiet, waiting for him to go on, but it’s clear that’s all I’m gonna get for now. “End of story?”

“End of story.”

I turn my eyes back to him and smile, because he gave me something, but pinch the skin on his stomach because he still won’t let me in.

“Ouch, Jesus, beso. What the hell was that for?”

“You’re frustrating.”

“You’re nosey.”

“Whatever,” I say, relaxing back into his chest.
“So what’s the ‘shit you gotta take care of’? Sounded pretty urgent. You were going to be out of my life ‘before we even had a chance to scratch the surface’, if I recall.”

“It’s just some business
I gotta get straightened out with Billy, nothing that can’t wait. Really, I just came here to make sure you were behaving.”

“That’s all I’ve been doing is behaving,” I mutter.

“Good. Keep it up.”

I laugh. “I’m hoping now
that your back and your cronies can see that we really are just friends they’ll let me off my leash and I can get some misbehaving in.”

Paxton’s arm
stiffens around me. “Jesus, kid, why don’t you simmer down for a fucking minute.”

I sit up out of Paxton’s hold. “What?” I ask, incredulously
, reacting more to his pissed off tone than the words he just spat at me.

Paxton looks at me with
indignation in his eyes. “All I hear about is how you are trying to get it in from any stray at the bar. Billy’s working overtime just to make sure you don’t go whoring your way through this town, and since I’ve been back all you talk about is how bad you need a dick in you. Simmer the fuck down.”

I stare at him, shocked for a moment by his harsh words.
I mean, Jesus, I thought we were having a little bonding moment, but I guess Chicago Paxton can only act human for a few fleeting moments. “Are you kidding me? You are such a condescending asshole, you know that? What the hell have you been doing? Every time I talk to you it sounds like you’ve got a new girl under you. This double standard is bullshit. It’s totally acceptable for any guy to fuck any girl they want, but if I want to find one guy,
one guy,
not multiple guys, that is willing to have a sexual relationship with me, suddenly I’m a slut who is trying to
whore my way through this town
? Fuck you, Paxton,” I tell him, standing and going to my room to get my bag.

Paxton follows me and when I try to get back out of the room he stands with his hands clasped aroun
d the door frame, keeping me trapped. I lock eyes with him. “Move, Paxton,” I tell him.

“No.”

“What are you trying to do here? It’s clear you suddenly have issues with me and the way I choose to live my life, so I will take my slutty ass elsewhere in order to spare your innocent eyes from all of the debauchery. But in order for me to do that, you have to move.”

Paxton stares at me in silence, unmoving
, while my blood boils. I’m trying, with everything inside of me, not to smash my knee into his balls. I’m so enraged with him that I’m shaking. “You know what sucks, Pax? I thought you understood me. I thought, when I met you, that I finally had someone in my life that got me completely. You made all the shit inside of me that I felt bad about disappear. You were the first person in my life that I felt like I could totally be myself around. And then you show up here and lay down a fistful of insults and you know what? It fucking hurts. It hurts to realize that all along you were sitting back and judging me like everyone else. So unless you want your precious balls torn off, I suggest you fucking move.”

Paxton closes his eyes and shakes his head, but he’s still not moving.
When he lifts his head again he burrows his eyes into mine. “Just stay here with me, Jessa. You’re better than that. You don’t need to go giving yourself away to some random guy you don’t even know.”

“You are un
, fucking, believable. Are you kidding me? Are you trying to talk to me about morals? Is that what’s going on here?
You
are trying to save
me
from being a whore?”

He shakes his head at me, his jaw set tight, his eyes angry as hell.
“Do whatever the hell you want, but don’t do it here, not in my life. Take your issues to campus or, here’s a novel idea, try to go a few weeks without fucking around. It might be good for you.”

“You are such a motherfucker,” I
seethe before ramming my knee up into his crotch. His arms come off the door frame and I leave the room “Fuck you,” I tell him before getting the hell out of there.

“Shit,” I mutter, standing in the middle of the street with no clue where I’m headed. What the hell just happened? Paxton and I argue all the time, but we’ve never been in a fight. Not like that. I’m pissed as hell, but the hurt is starting to sink in too and I feel like I have it in me to shed tears – something I haven’t done for probably five years.

I turn and start walking down the block, trying to clear my head and grasp this situation I’m in the middle of. I think about Paxton’s harsh words and wonder, like I sometimes do, if the way that I live my life is a problem. I know it’s not normal, but is it bad? Am I doing something wrong? I know that I will
, never again, have a boyfriend- which would be a relationship with a label that would make having sex with one guy on a regular basis acceptable. Which, ironically, is pretty much what I have been doing since I lost my virginity, but the label I get from that is apparently, slut. Is what I’m doing really that different from what every girl my age does? Not every girl. There are plenty of girls who, by choice or out of desperation, have casual sex with multiple partners. That’s never been me, but is there a difference? Is it a problem that I need to have a physical relationship but that I cannot have an emotional one?
I don’t know.

I wander into a small neighborhood park and take out my phone. I need to talk to my girl.

“Jessa! I was just about to call you, what’s going on?” Emily says and I feel better already, just hearing her voice.

“All kinds of crap is going on
,” I tell her, trying to sound better than I feel.

“Oh,
sweetie, what’s wrong?”

I take a deep breath. “Paxton’s in town.”

“Really? That’s good, right? I mean, you were missing him.”

“It should be, but all those things I’ve been telling
you; how everyone here talks about him like he’s someone completely different than the guy we know… they were right. Paxton is a total asshole.”

“Shit,” she
mutters. “What did he do?” Emily is angry already.

“Basically c
alled me a slut and told me to stop trying to whore around.”

“He did not,” she fumes.

“Yeah. He did.”

“First of all, what you do with whatever guy you are doing it with is none of his business. Second of all, didn’t you tell me that
every time you talk to him
he
is with a girl? And what the hell? He knows that’s not what you’re about. He knows you don’t sleep around. What an asshole. Is he there with you now? Can I talk to him?”

I laugh to myself. I can totally
picture Emily, ready to give him a piece of her mind like she did more than a few times over the course of last year. “No, he’s back at Violet’s apartment. I kneed him in the balls and then I got the hell out of there.”

“Good for you,” Emily laughs.
“You know he doesn’t really think those things about you,” she says, serious now.

“He does,
Em. Seriously, if you saw him, how he is here, you wouldn’t even recognize him. He’s mean and I’m pretty sure he hates everyone in this town- me included.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending the asshole, but that’s hard to believe
, Jess. When he was here it was obvious how much he cared about you. It’s got to be something else that’s making him treat you that way.”

“I get
that he’s got a messy past and an atrocious mother and that being back here is stressful for him, but it was pretty damn obvious that he believed every word he said to me. I’m not gonna let him treat me that way just because he can’t deal.”

“You better not let him treat you that way. But it would suck to see something come between the two of you, Jess. I hope you guys don’t let that happen.”