Inside of You (Jessa & Paxton #2) (23 page)

“I don’t need
your sympathy, Paxton. I don’t need to be comforted right now,” she tells me with a laugh like I’m over reacting.

“So none of this shit upsets you?”

“No, Paxton, not anymore. It was years ago. I don’t even remember that girl.”

“Bullshit,” I
mutter.

She laughs at me. “Honestly, Paxton - it’s the truth. I’m not pining for my days spent on parquet courts. I promise you.”

“I don’t believe that, beso, and I think if you start admitting some of this shit to yourself then you could get over the insecurities he left you with. If your whole life was playing sports and you gave it up when he left, then he took something from you. He took your purpose away from you.”

“Babe… please
. Most people give sports up when they start high school. I was just like every other girl. I traded in my tennis shoes for heels and my hair binders for a curling iron. Going to parties and making out with guys was more important than playing with balls. It’s just what happens,” she says with a look that tells me I’m stupid.

“So it wasn’t a conscious decision. You didn’t sit down one day and tell yourself you were going to have to change?”

She looks away from me and shakes her head like she’s done talking.

“Why did you do that, Jessa?
What were you thinking when you gave yourself up and became someone else?” I can tell from the shift in her voice and her body language that it wasn’t because she wanted to go to parties and make out with boys. There is something else there that she’s not saying.

She reclines her seat and pulls her legs up under her, crossing
her arms and closing her eyes- trying to shut me down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I know we are trying to find some insight into my fucked up head, but reliving my glory days as an athlete is not where your answers lie.”

I let
her sit in silence for a while, not sure if I should believe her, not sure if I should push her. I think about what she said last night – that, out of the two of us, I should be the fucked up one. I’m not sure she understands that, even though my issues were obvious, her issues are just as big as mine were. I’m not sure she gets how similar our pasts are.

“When I had to leave
Venice after the summer was over and go back to my mom’s house I had to change,” I begin to tell her, thinking maybe I can get her to open up if she knows I understand. Which I do. I understand having to change. “In order to survive, to not become completely depressed and to avoid whatever bullshit my mom was going to pull on me for acting like a ‘street rat’, I had to completely change and shut down all the parts of me that cared about anything. It was a survival skill and I became an expert at it when I was six.” I don’t look at Jessa, but I can tell her eyes are open and on me now. “I came back to Illinois after the summer and I was wearing my vans and my board shorts and my scrappy little t-shirts. My mom took them all out of my bag and threw them in the trash. She brought me to the barber and had them shave off my hair that had grown into my eyes. When I would talk like Santos or throw out some Spanish word she would slap me across the face. Those first few weeks, being back with her, were hard. But I understood it. I understood that my two lives were separate. That the real me was that kid in California and that I just had to keep him buried until I got back there.”

I look at Jessa now. Her eyes are wide open and her defensive posture is now gone.
“Seriously, Pax, I’m such a dramatic brat. When I put my life in perspective, based on yours, it’s all so petty. I gave up sports. You had to give up your whole existence. At the age of six.”

“
That ain’t the point. I’m just trying to let you know I get it… what you went through. And I want to understand. I want to hear what you got to say.”

She takes a deep breath and I know she’s gonna tell me whatever it is that she
doesn’t want to think about. Doesn’t want to talk about. “This story is so stupid, Pax… I was so stupid. I don’t even want to tell you. It’s embarrassing.”

“Every time I tell you something from my past, even the stupid shit that I didn’t think had anything to do with my current life, I feel so much better. It feels good to just let it all out. I’ve told you everything. I want you to do the same thing for me.”

“Yeah… okay,” she agrees, taking another deep breath. “So, basketball…I was a ninth grader playing on the Varsity basketball team and I was the best player they had. Coach Benson knew this and he also knew, like the rest of the town, that I didn’t have anyone around to support me as far as basketball went, so he took it upon himself to mentor me. Which was awesome. He made that season possible – easy, even. He went out of his way to be there for me – he would pick me up for our home games so I wouldn’t have to ask my mom to bring me, he would stay after practice to train with me, he even brought me to his house most Sundays… I guess so I could feel like part of a family. Or maybe he just wanted someone to watch sports with,” she pauses to laugh. “His wife would make us dinner and his two little boys would fill the house with noise. It was nice.” 

“
But it sucked too because I knew that he was doing the job my dad should have done. But that didn’t really matter because I knew I needed Dan – someone in my life that cared about my performance as an athlete and who believed in me. Someone that was willing to support me after my only support had left. Plus, there was a part of me that would fantasize about my future – I would go on to play for a big ten team and Coach Benson would be on the sidelines cheering me on. I would win the player of the year award. My dad would be flipping through the channels on the TV and come across my press conference where I would thank Coach Benson for being the most inspirational man in my life. I would look into the camera and tell the world that I couldn’t have done anything without him and my dad would regret leaving me. He would wish he was the one by my side as I accepted my award.”

I look over at her, feeling her pain and already worried about how this story is going to end.
“What happened?”

She shrugs her shoulders, an easy smile on her face.
“Our team sucked so we didn’t make it to the finals in our crappy division. But Dan wanted me to see what my future could be like after I left River Bluff so he brought me and a couple other girls from the team to Minneapolis for the weekend to watch the semi-finals and finals. The other two girls were seniors and they didn’t like me because I was tight with Coach Benson. I ended up hanging out with him all weekend, which was fine. I liked hanging out with him and it felt like we were friends. He didn’t treat me like I was just a player or a student. We were close.”

My body tenses. Nothing in her voice suggests that she has regrets about that or that
she knew it was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t wrong- being that close to a grown man- but Jessa’s story has paused, I can tell she’s thinking about her next words and all I can do is hold my breath.

“I was
hanging out in his room watching the Timberwolves play the Rockets, sitting on the bed, eating pizza. We had spent the day at Williams’s arena and it was the first time I got to watch girls play basketball on that kind of level and I was so excited because I knew it would be me one day. That I would be playing basketball in an arena in front of thousands of people. For the first time since my dad had left I was excited about sports again. I was excited about my future. I was excited about leaving River Bluff and my past behind. Everything seemed possible that day. And as we sat on that bed, Coach Benson promised me that it was – that there was absolutely no reason I couldn’t make all my dreams happen and he told me he would never leave me. It was probably the best day I had ever had, for sure the best day I had had since my dad left.”

She pauses again and I’m praying the rest of the story involves a broken leg or
some other disaster that would prevent her from playing basketball that has nothing to do with Coach Benson. But I know that’s just wishful thinking.

“
This is where shit gets a little sketchy,” she warns me. “That night, on that bed, we kissed. I knew in my head it was wrong – the guy had a family. But I was young and stupid, I mean… I had never even kissed anyone before. And when he told me that he loved me and cared about me, I believed him. I just… accepted that it was who we were. I knew I didn’t want to lose him and that I needed him. I cared about him and I knew he cared about me too, and on that bed I came to terms with the fact that our relationship was something bigger than I had understood.”

What the fuck, what the fuck,
are the words that are spinning through my head. I can’t even see straight. I don’t want to hear the rest of this story, but I need to. And I need to hear her tell it because the way she’s talking about it is fucked up. Like she was falling in love. Like what he did was okay. “What happened, Jessa?”

“
He told me that we belonged together and that he would always be there for me. And then we had sex.” As she tells me these words, without a hint of pain in her voice, my mind is blowing up with so many thoughts and revelations and a strong desire to go find that fucker and kill him. I pull into a motel lot and shove the car into park.

“Motherfucker,” I mutter
under my breath, trying to control my anger, pushing my hands through my hair then down my face. “Jesus Christ, Jessa. What the fuck? What the hell happened?”

She laughs like this is all so funny.
“I believed him. I let myself believe that the tender way he held me and kissed me meant that he did love me. That we were meant to be together. I went back to my room and fell asleep next to those girls and I felt happy. I was so stupid, I mean, I seriously thought we were falling in love.

We spent the next day in the city, this time we were at the Targ
et Center watching the finals. When the girls would leave to go get a pop or use the bathroom or whatever, Coach Benson would grab a hold of my hand and look at me in a new way. I started to realize that everything had changed. I thought it was for the better. My future would not only be basketball, but him too.”

I don’t have a response to her words. She’s totally glossing over the
fact that that motherfucker raped her.

“
He brought me home and stopped a block away from my house and kissed me. He told me not to tell anyone about us and I never did. Not until now. I mean, I can’t believe I’m telling you about it. It was so stupid and wrong.”

“Why was it wrong?” I mutter. I don’t think she has a realistic view of what went down with her and fucking Coach Benson.

“What do you mean?” she asks, looking perplexed. All I can do is raise my eyebrows at her. “He was married, Pax. He had two little kids.”

Yeah
… the girl doesn’t get it. “Finish,” I mutter.

“
The season was over, but we still managed to see each other when we could. I was living under this delusion that he was going to leave his wife. That he was really in love with me. Then one day I showed up at school and he was treating me different – treating me like he treated any other girl on our team and it hurt because I knew that whatever we had was gone. He told me that what we were doing was wrong and that it had to stop. He told me he couldn’t even talk to me anymore. He was no longer going to help me or care about my future and I knew I couldn’t do it without him. And I didn’t care. I didn’t even want it anymore.

“
So, yeah, Pax. I went home and I made a conscious decision to change who I was. I went down to the basement and found my mom’s old clothes – the sexy, beautiful clothes that she had worn for my father. I spent the weekend figuring out how to do my hair and put makeup on. I threw out all my t-shirts and tennis shoes and trophy’s and awards and I never played basketball again. And it was fine. It felt good to leave all of that in the past. I was moving on from Dan, but I was moving on from my dad too. I mean, it’s nothing like what you went through. I didn’t change as a means to survive, but I guess I did it so I could start over. So I could try to move on from my failed attempt to get over my dad’s abandonment once and for all. I just wanted to leave it all behind.” 

I turn to her, ready to shake her until she realiz
es what Dan Benson did to her, but the expression on her face stops me. She looks like she’s in shock, like she just put two and two together and is maybe seeing how fucked up this is.

“Jesus, Jessa. Are you just figuring this shit out?”

Her eyes meet mine and I watch as she shuts it all down. Stops herself from going where she needs to go. My chest gets tight as I watch her. She gives me a smile.
A fucking smile
. “Figuring what out?”

What the…? Is she fucking serious?
I literally feel like I’m going to reach over and start shaking her and unloading my pent up rage on her, so I get out of the car, slam the door shut and start yelling obscenities into the air. When I’m calm enough, I head to the office and get us a room and when I head back out, Jessa is leaned against the car, her suitcase next to her. No emotion in her expression. No tears streaming down her face. Nothing.
What the fuck?

I get the door open and she tells me she’s gonna take a shower. I can’t even fucking talk to her right now.

I sit on the bed and stare at the TV in front of me. All I can see is that motherfucker seducing a fifteen year old Jessa in a hotel room like the one I’m in. I want to destroy the bed and the walls and everything that happened to her, but since that’s not an option I’m just trying to stay cool until I can find another way to deal with what he did to her.