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

“I’m gonna take care of you, P
ax. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I won’t let those crazy fuckers in the crowd get near you,” I tell him, running my hand over his face.

“You are su
ch a badass,” he laughs. “You’re the only security I need, huh?”

“I’ll keep those groupies in the parking lot off you too. No one gets to touch my man but me.”

“That’s right,” he tells me, pulling me close and biting down on my lip. “You’re the only one who gets to touch me and I’m the only one who gets to touch you. It’s just us.”

“Us and the thousands of people in the audience who love you.”

“Just us, beso. You’re the only one I see.”

“Do you think we’re going to be alright, Pax? I mean, do you think this is going to be good for you… for us?”

“Yeah, I do. But, beso, you just gotta say the word and we’re out. All that really matters is us and I don’t want to do this if it’s not what you want. If it doesn’t make you happy.”

“I think I can deal with this. Watching your sexy ass up on stage. Keeping you safe with me – in bed. I think I’m going to be just fine.”

Chapter 1 - Paxton

“I’m damn proud of you, niño. You’re really making something of yourself. I always knew you would. Ask Emilio, I’ve been telling him since you were a kid –
my boy’s gonna do something big with the Alvarado name.
That’s what I always told him. And I was right.”
Gabriel slurs his last few words and I cringe. He never had a problem holding his alcohol, but lately he’s having trouble keeping on top of, not only his drinking, but his emotions too. And apparently the information he’s getting from Santos is a little skewed. I mean, yeah, we don’t have any trouble booking gigs, but we’re not exactly killing it. We would have to leave Chicago in order to do that. We would have to go on the road, which is not something I’m willing to put Jessa and I through right now.

“We’re just local, Pops
. It’s nothing to brag to your vatos about. How are you doing?” I ask quietly. It’s only one AM in Venice, but it’s three AM in Chicago and Jessa is sleeping peacefully next to me. Lately Gabriel’s been calling me more often when he’s drunk then when he’s sober which means I’m having middle of the night conversations with him on a regular basis.

“Nothing to brag about? How mu
ch money are you making putting on those shows?” Maybe Gabriel’s inflated perception is not coming from Santos, but from the checks I’m sending him every month. The last one was pretty fat, but he probably don’t realize how big of a cut he’s getting.

“Gabriel, it’s no big deal. What’s going on aro
und there – are you staying off the pain meds?” Turns out the mess Pops was in when he crashed his car and couldn’t hold his shit together was the result of the Oxy he had gotten hooked on in lock up and had started buying off the street after I left Venice.

“Yeah,
yeah, of course I am. Santos told me about that record deal you signed. Don’t try to play like you’re some small fry,” he says, steering the conversation away from himself again.

Record deal?
What the fuck?
I would never take this shit that far. Why the fuck would Santos say that? And then I realize Gabriel must have misunderstood my cousin. “Shit, Pops. You need to go get a set of hearing aids. I ain’t signing no record deal. Some shitty local station is putting on a show for us and recording the thing… making a dvd and audio recording. It’s no big deal. I’m not trying to make anything huge out of this.”

“Why not,
niño? If you can be some famous mo fo straight out of Oakwood, then make that shit happen. Represent.”

“You don’t get it, Gabriel
,” I tell him, looking down at Jessa’s profile, her open lips, her silky hair. All I need is Jessa and a means to support us. What I got going on now is plenty. I’m not interested in changing that. “Listen, it’s late here. I have to go. Stay straight, okay. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yea
h, okay kid. We miss you. We want to see your pale face and meet your woman. You come home soon. I need to see you.”

“I’ll catch you later, P
ops,” I tell him, hanging up the phone, running my hand through my hair. I don’t miss Venice unless I’m on the phone with my dad, cousin or uncle, so talking to my dad ain’t easy. I should be there with him. I wish Jess and I were there with him, watching out for him.

But things in Chicago are smooth. Things with Jessa are unreal
. I don’t want to miss home. I don’t want to think I made a mistake telling Jessa this is where we belonged when she wanted to go to Venice.

That was three months ago
. Jessa was strictly generals. But now she’s all into her fashion design major and it makes her happy. She’s finding people outside my life that ‘get her’. She’s figuring out her future, and I’m figuring out how to have one too. I can’t start getting homesick. All that matters is that Jessa is happy.

I close my eyes and try to p
icture us there – in Venice. An image of Jessa in her pretty clothes, all done up from head to toe on a skateboard pops into my head and I laugh. “Shit,” I mutter to myself. That’s never gonna happen. But her, in a bikini, laying on the beach… yeah, I can definitely wrap my head around that picture.

I turn my eyes on her,
looking at her in the almost non-existent light. I’ve spent so many hours staring at this face, even when it’s sleeping, that I don’t need light to see it. She is my angel. She is the thing that is making my life- that has never been anything but chaotic at best- good. Calm. Easy. Perfect. Complete. This girl is everything to me and sometimes I worry that I can’t return the favor. That I will never be able to make her happy and full and alive like she makes me.

But e
ven with Jess, sometimes I still feel unsettled, like Chicago is not where Jess and I belong. If I were home right now I would get on my board and let the world disappear around me. It’s the only time I can really think clearly – on my skateboard or my surfboard.

I get out of bed and grab my guitar
because it’s a close third.

I creep over to the other side of the room where the other twin bed is. This side of the room is like a ghost
town – we never come over here. I sit on the bed and quietly run my fingers over the strings, trying to latch onto it and forget about the shit in my head. I’ve banged out a lot of new material in the past few months, but I haven’t performed any of it. The lyrics are right, but the music ain’t. And these songs, unlike the shit I still gotta perform on stage, are important to me. I don’t want to play them half assed.

The guys and I have been trying to change shit up-
even added a rhythm guitar player to the mix so I wouldn’t have to cover it and the lead. Turns out Jimmy had been holding out on us. He let us sit through an hour of auditions before I noticed he was air guitaring the songs and called him out. That motherfucker is good and I really didn’t want to be doing this with some stranger off the street. Plus, the kid’s got connections in this town and hooked us up with a warehouse space on Michigan where we’ve been practicing. The biggest plus with Jimmy though is his knack for intervening when Billy and I start going at it, which happens about every day. It’s all good, but I still can’t get any of this shit nailed down properly.

My eyes are closed and I’m lost in my thoughts
. When I feel a hand on my thigh I open my eyes and see Jessa sitting on the bed with me.

“What are you doing, baby?” she asks me in her sleepy voice.

“I didn’t mean to wake you up. I couldn’t sleep.”

“I don’t mind,” she tells me, reaching o
ver to turn on the lamp on the bedside table. “Why can’t you sleep?”

“Gabriel called,” I tell her.

“Is he okay?”

“Yea
h, he’s good. But you know… just missing home,” I tell her.

“You
gotta tell Billy to schedule a break so you can get back there and see him,” she says, pulling her blanket, that she brought with her from our bed, tighter around her shoulders.

Our schedule isn’t out of hand.
I mean, there are only so many places you can play in the area and we’ve hit most of them, even made a few trips over the state border. But now we’re doing all kinds of other shit like this thing with the radio station and we don’t get big enough breaks for me to head home.

“What about you?” I ask her. She’s making just as many
sacrifices for the music as I am. “How are you feeling about being here over spring break?”

“It’s fine. We’ll both make it home eventually.”

“I’m sorry, beso, that I dragged you into this.”

“What are you talking about, Pax? I love this life we’re living. I love listening to you play, watching you on stage. I love that it makes you happy. You didn’t drag me into anything. As long as I have you, I’m good. You don’t gotta worry about me.”

“You’re too good to me,” I tell her ‘cause it’s the truth. Sometimes I feel like this life we’re living revolves around me and I don’t want it to be that way. “If I don’t get some shit figured out with this new material I might just have to call it quits. I can’t keep singing about taking drugs, hating people and having sex with strangers. It ain’t right.”

“You’ll get
it figured out, babe. Maybe you’re just thinking too much. Maybe you just need to have fun with the songs, like you used to.”

I smile at her, strumming my guitar. “Fun, huh?”
I ask her, knowing the solution to getting the material worked out isn’t to take it less seriously, but deciding to fuck around for a second anyway. I mean shit, Jessa’s sexy ass is in bed with me. I gotta quit feeling sorry for my lucky ass.

“Are you gonna write a song right now?” she asks me.

“Jessa,” I belt out her name.

“A song about me?” she asks with mock adoration, putting her hand over her heart.

“Met you in a field full of piles of cow shit. You lookin’ like you didn’t belong,” I sing through my laughter. “I couldn’t keep my mouth off of you, but that shit didn’t last very long,” I belt out the words like the smartass I’m being. She gives me a cute smirk. “All you gave me was a dance and a song, telling me my lips on yours felt wrong.”

“You’re a terrible kisser,” she tells me.

“Jessa’s got a big fucking mouth, oh yeah. Jessa’s got a big fucking mouth,” I tell her in a deep, slow voice, trying my best to act serious.

“The next verse better say something nice,” she tells me.

“I left her there, her and her pretty hair, but I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Her lips are fat, her body’s tight, I want to make her mine tonight. Moved into her bed, she gave me head. Jessa’s got a big fucking mouth, oh yeah. Jessa’s got a big fucking mouth,” I manage to sing through my laughter. Jessa’s mouth pops open like she’s shocked by my lyrics.

She reaches her foot across the bed and kicks me in the thigh. “You love my big fucking mouth.”

“I love her big fucking mouth, oh yeah. I love her big fucking mouth.” I do some fancy finger picking, playing the musician, but I can’t stop laughing. 

“That’s my song?” she asks
after my guitar stills, her face all screwed up.

“That’s my love song to you,” I tell her.

“That’s terrible. Jesus, you are supposed to be a professional. I could write a better song.”

“Show me,” I tell her, handing my guitar over.

She props herself up on her knees, her blanket falls off of her and she holds my guitar in front of her naked body.

“It’s fucking great already,” I tell her. She looks sexy as hell, holding my guitar.

She strums it softly and I wince at her, like it’s terrible. She sticks her tongue out at me before kind of saying, kind of singing in a sweet voice, “The moment I met you, I could not forget you. You were beautiful in the ugliest of ways.”

I give her a crooked smile. She’s so damn cute.

She smiles back then sings, “Your kisses were vicious, but your mouth tasted delicious. I wouldn’t have wanted you any other way.”

I cock an eyebrow at her. It took her a while to admit
how much she fucking loved that kiss.

“You were closed off and pissed off and you never got me off. But I lo
ved you more every single day.” She pauses to strum the guitar softly.

“
When you left me, I missed you. I only thought of you. I was living your life, but you were far away.” I get a cute little pout during the vocal reprieve.

“And then when you came home, you were cold like,” she pauses for a moment, faltering for
the first time. “… a big stone,” she sings, laughing at her own lyrics.  “But your hands in the mornings were sweet.”

“I really didn’t want to, but I fell in love with you. And now I can’t imagine me any other way.” She plucks the strings a few times and I clap because that was seriously one of th
e sweetest things I’ve ever heard.

She bows and tells me, “Thank you,” befo
re handing my guitar back to me, which I set on the floor before reaching for her and folding her up in my arms.

“I’ll write you a good song, beso. Like the one you wrote me. I promise,” I tell her, even though I’ve already written he
r all kinds of songs. That’s my main problem – my emotional lyrics about her aren’t fitting into our hard core sound.

“Good, ‘
cause I don’t want you up on stage singing about my oral sex skills.”

“I really do love your mouth,” I tell her, bringing my lips to hers so I can taste her. “
Let’s get you in bed, beso. You got that test tomorrow. You need to get some rest.”

“Ugh,” she mutters as I stand with her
and her blanket in my arms. “School… maybe I should just drop out.”

I lay her down in our bed and fold her back up in my arms. “No, beso,” I tell her. “You gotta get an education and get a good job so you can support my ass when I’m ready to quit all this shit.”

“So you’re just using me for my big brain? Keeping me around so I can support you?” she asks, pinching my stomach.

“Yea
h, beso. Some day you’re gonna get a big job. Maybe we’ll move to Venice and you can start your design business in L.A. I’ll be a house husband and take care of all of those babies you are gonna pop out for me.”