Inside of You (Jessa & Paxton #2) (19 page)

When Jessa and I got home last night, Lydia was up waiting for us. I’m guessing she was upset about the breakdown she had with Jessa and wanted to make sure she came home, but she was back to acting like her old lifeless self. I was shown to my room and decided to accept the fact that I wasn’t sleeping with Jessa in my arms.

I woke up to the sound
of Jessa telling her mom, loudly, that she was not going to church with her and Dean. Lydia, of course, said nothing, at least as far as I could tell. The front door just shut, so I get out of my bed and head into Jessa’s room.

I’m not sure what to do with her. I’m just gonna t
ry to avoid all conflict ‘cause all that does is get her worked up and spewing off more jumbled reasons why I don’t love her. I’m just gonna be her shadow and keep loving her and hopefully she will have some sort of mental breakthrough eventually.

She’s sitting up in her bed, staring at her phone. When she sees me, she closes whatever she was looking at and throws her phone down, looking up at me like she just got caught doing something wrong. “What
were you looking at?” I ask her through the anger that is suddenly in my body. What the hell would she have been staring at that she needs to hide from me like that? A guy? Pictures of some dude that she’s playing with?

“Nothing,” she tells me.

“Why’d you shut it down so quick?”

“
They were pictures, of your show, that your girl took, okay?”

“Jesus, not this again.”

“If I want to find out how you guys did, I gotta go through her.”

“Or, you could just
ask me. You could have just stayed there and been with me.”

Jessa closes her eyes and runs her hands over her face, like she’s
finally sick of talking about Stella. For sure, I am. I climb in her bed before picking her up and setting her on my lap. “I was wondering where that shirt went,” I tell her, looking at my old, ragged black T that has Emilio’s shop logo on it. I can’t help but smile. The girl ganked some of my shit before she left me.

“I don’t know why I put it on. It still smells like you.”

“You put it on because it’s part of me and you know it belongs to you.”

She rolls her eyes at me like I’m being stupid but the hint of a smile crosses her lips. “Is this where you got all your tattoos done,
at Venice Ink?”

“I wish,” I tell her. “All of the good stuff is from Emilio.”

Jessa runs her hands over my skin where I’m inked, her eyes staring at the designs. “Tell me about them,” she whispers.

“There’s not much to tell.”

“That’s what you always say. I want to know, Pax. Tell me about your tattoos.”

“This i
s what we’re doing this morning while your mom is off at church – talking about my tattoos?”

“If you just start talking, maybe we
’ll have time to do something else,” she tells me seriously.

“Jesus,”
I muter.

Jessa grabs a hold of my right arm, turning it over and tracing he
r fingers over my palm and wrist. “This was your first one – the gringo guitar, right?”

“
Yeah.”

“Tell me about the rest of
them.”

I look
down at my palm where the guitar is. “That’s the sun… you know – Venice.” I tell her about the Aztec looking sun that shoots off the bottom of the guitar and up my fingers. “All this scratchy shit is from Santos. I was his guinea pig when he was just starting to ink. He’s got plenty of rank shit on his body from me too.”

“I didn’t know that –
that you know how to tattoo.”

“
Yeah, I can run an iron, but it’s not my thing. The motherfucker is good now, but shit, look at this one,” I tell her, lifting my arm and pointing out a shaky looking lopsided cross on the backside of my bicep. “Asshole couldn’t even follow a line, and the free-styling he did on me is even worse. But it’s okay ‘cause it’s part of him, you know. Besides Gabriel, he was the one I hated leaving behind the most. Even now, all this stupid shit makes me smile. I miss that asshole. He’s like my brother.”

Jessa peeks up to smile a
t me before returning her eyes to my skin. “What about this one,” she asks, tracing her fingers over the cross that starts just under my clavicle bone, ending in the middle of my sternum. This cross is done right. It looks real.

“That one Gabriel did
. I didn’t realize it when he started putting all these things on my skin, but the guy’s a legend in the tattoo world. Guys fly to L.A. just to get work done by him. I got this one when I was fourteen. It was my first big piece. I asked him for it. I don’t know why. I was never into church or praying or Jesus Christ, but all the guys have a major cross on them. You know; Catholic fuckers who never go to church but have crosses and candles scattered around their homes and hanging from their rearview. It makes me think of him and my dad. He told me it would protect me from my mom,” I tell her, laughing. “Which, maybe it did. Sometimes I think about living in that house and I think I should have ended up a lot more fucked up than I actually am. I should have been more depressed and hateful when I was there. I never really felt that way though.

“
Anyway, a lot of this shit is just decoration. I got most of them over the course of two summers when I was fourteen and fifteen so I didn’t have a whole lot of life experience to draw from, you know… all of it is just what all the vatos got: a skull, L.A., the snake, I got the pin-up who, it turns out, looks a lot like you,” I tell her.

Jessa looks
closer at the girl on her knees, looking over her shoulder, one of her perky breasts showing in her profile. “Oh, please,” she tells me.

“It does-
look at that hair flowing down her back. It’s unreal. No one has hair like that in real life except for you. And when Emilio asked me what color I wanted my girl’s eyes to be I told him blue, like the ocean, and guess what color eyes you got? Blue, just like the ocean. You’re lips are prettier and your tits are nicer, but you look like her.”

She smiles at me again as she continues to explore my skin. It makes me a little uncomfortable. I don’t know why.
“What about the flower?”

“That’s my grandma – Gabriel and Emilio’s mom, Rose. We all have that one in the same place.”

“Over your hearts.”

“
Yeah.”

Jessa rotates herself off m
y lap and slides behind my back. I lean forward, making room for her. She wraps her legs around my stomach and runs her nails through the short hairs on the back of my head and down my neck and I really just want to rip her damn clothes off. But I’ll sit here and talk about tattoos if that’s what she needs to do.

“What are the birds for?” she whispers.

“That’s the only major piece I have that Santos or Emilio didn’t do.”

“You got it done in Chicago?
” she asks, her voice flat – something about it is off.

“Yea
h. I was missing my family. Missing my dad. I walked into a tattoo shop and it felt like home. I just went with it. I was gonna get Alvarado tattooed across my shoulder blades for Pops, but then I had this vision flash in my head. I was high, so it could have just been the drugs, but I told the guy I wanted a black bird on my back, you know… Gabriel… flying free, not locked behind bars. I told him I wanted it where I couldn’t see it… not able to see him but knowing he was still with me. I told him I wanted the big strong bird and then a kind of metamorphosis of me trying to catch up with him... small, weak birds, maybe with broken wings or whatever, that were growing, trying to get back to him, trying to become him. My dad. The guy I looked up to. The guy I always wanted to be. Anyway, that’s what I ended up with. It’s not like the vision in my head. I should have waited ‘till I could get Emilio to do it – it just looks like some fucked up flock that can’t get their flying pattern down,” I tell her, laughing.

“So it’s not a flock, like, bi
rds of a feather flock together?” she suggests.

“I don’t know, you could look at it that way I guess. It could be m
e and my Venice family. But, nah, that’s not what it’s about.” That’s the only interesting thing I got back there, so hopefully the tattoo tour is over.

Her
fingers round the back of my bicep, “This is Stella,” she says, doesn’t ask.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“P and S forever,” she says and I can hear the anger.

I laugh, reaching back and grabbing ont
o her waist, dragging her back onto my lap. “You’re crazy, you know that? Hell, no, it’s not her. Fucking Santos… got that one when I was passed out drunk, Pax and Santos forever… motherfucker. I don’t put girl’s names on my skin, for sure not hers. It’s a law in the tattoo world – you don’t get a girl’s name on your skin. Inevitably, it will end and then you’re stuck with it.”

“So my name is never going on your skin?”

“You want it to?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if I want this to end or not. How does
that work, you just fall out of love with the person as soon as the ink dries? ‘Cause then maybe I should get your name on me.”

“A
tattoo isn’t getting me out of your life. There is nothing you can do that will ever get me to go. You shouldn’t want me to go.”

Jessa gives me a sad smile and drops her eyes. “I didn’t sleep last night. I just kept thinking about you. About us. About who we were when you were here last.”

“Yeah? That’s good. You should be thinking about us. Me and you. Not anyone else. Not your mom or Stella. Just us. It’s all that matters.”

“I miss it,” she tells me. “I miss who we used to be.”

“When we were just friends?”

“Yea
h,” she says, her eyes coming back to me. “When you were just Paxton and I was just me.”

“What does that mean? Who are we now?”

“We’re us. PaxtonandJessa,” she says like it’s one word.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know. I just think about you and Vi, or you and Emily even. You love them. You are good with them, you know. Your relationships are fun and easy. And then I look at you and Stella. The way she loves you and the way you claim you hate her. I don’t want to lose all of you completely.”

“So, what? You want to be my friend?”

“Yeah, I do. But that’s not who we are anymore.”

“That ain’t true. You’re still my best friend.”

“I’m always going to be worried about you leaving me,” she whispers.

“You think I don’t worry about that?”

“No, I don’t. You know I’m never going to leave you.”

“Really? ‘
Cause I’m pretty sure that’s what you’ve been trying to do since I came here.”

“But you know it’s not because I want to let you go.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? ‘Cause no matter what the reason, I don’t want to live if I can’t do it with you.”

“Exactly
,” she tells me, her eyes glossing over with tears, my heart pounding out of my chest.

“
You don’t gotta be my friend in order to keep me forever, beso,” I whisper.

She drops her head again, shaking it.
“I don’t want to lose you, Paxton. I don’t want to lose any part of you. I just can’t help but think that things are eventually going to end badly between us and then I won’t have any of you. If we are who we used to be, I can hold onto you forever – even when you fall in love with someone else I can still be in your life.”

I take a deep breath, trying to keep my shit together, trying to go with the class 6 rapid-filled flow with this girl.
Friends.
How the fuck is that gonna work? “I’ll be your friend, Jessa, but only if you never touch another guy while you’re my friend.”

“Like I’m ever gonna want to touch another guy
,” she says, like she’s disappointed. This is seriously fucked up.

“Cool, so no more kissing?”

She doesn’t answer me.

“Right, I mean, I don’t get to put my hands on you anym
ore… I don’t get to touch your naked flesh or put my fingers inside of you. For sure I don’t get to have sex with you. ‘Cause I don’t do that friends with benefits bullshit with you anymore.”

Jessa closes her eyes and breathes heavily through her nose. “You need to go home, Pax. Back to Ch
icago. This isn’t going to work if you’re here with me. In my bed.”

“Why not, kid? We used to spend all kinds of time together in this bed… as friends. We can be
whatever you need us to be, but I’m never leaving you. If you’re in this bed, then I’m in the bed.”

Jessa’s agitated eyes flash to mine before she gets out of her bed and
goes to her suitcase, stripping down completely before pulling out a jersey dress and throwing it on. She starts heading to the door before I even have a chance to think. “Jessa, what the hell are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” she tells me sounding genuinely confused. My instinct is to go chasing after her, but I think I’ll let her cool down and think about how well it’s gonna work… being my fucking f
riend. “Beso, you don’t have no panties or bra on,” I call after her.