Part of Me (Jessa & Paxton #1) (23 page)

“Paxton…?” a quiet, familiar voice says.

Vi’s head lifts and her arms release me. “Thank God,” she whispers at Jessa’s sudden appearance in the bar. I watch as she motions Louis and Jimmy out of the booth and they all walk away.

I take a deep breath and harden myself.
Fucking, Vi.

I will just look at her, tell her
goodbye and walk the hell out of here.

I turn then and
see her. She doesn’t look like herself. Her eyes are red and her naked skin is pale. Her hair is barely held up by her binder and pieces of it fall around her face. She’s wearing one of my hoodies that didn’t make it into my bag, a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee and she’s got her Vans on. It throws me off my game for a second. Why does she look so broke down?

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asks, taking a tentative step towards me.

“I was just heading out, Jess,” I say, forcing my foot to take a step towards the exit. She grabs onto my hand then and my whole body goes tense when her skin is connected to mine.

“Please, Paxt
on. Just for a minute,” she says, her voice shaky.

I know I need to just get t
he hell out of here. Seeing her… feeling her… is making me falter and I cannot break down in front of this girl. “What do you need to say?” I ask her, taking a step back to the table and grabbing myself another beer. I sit on the end of the booth and she stands in front of me.

Her hands are in the pockets of my hoodie and her eyes are trained on the ground. She looks back up at me then and I can see the pain in her blue eyes. It hurts my heart to see that. Right now, I hate her, but I care about her too much and I have for too long for it not to hurt to see that.

“This is hard, Pax. I don’t know how to say the things I want to say to you.”

“Well figure it out, kid. I want to get out of here,” I tell her, keeping my voice hard.

She stares at me and I can see her eyes glossing over, just like Vi’s did.
Shit.
I can’t sit here and watch her cry.

“I’m scared, Paxton,” she whispers. “The way that I felt whe
n I was with you was scary. I didn’t know how to deal with it.” She inhales a lungful of air and slowly blows it back out her mouth.

I’m waiting patiently for her to finish her sentence that
is going to end one of two ways: she’s scared and she can’t handle it and she’s sorry that she’s so fucked up but that’s just the way it’s going to be and she can’t change that. Or, she’s scared but she doesn’t care because she loves me and she wants to try and work shit out.

Jessa opens her mouth to speak wh
en she’s suddenly shoved aside by some bitch. I stand up and grab onto Jessa’s arm and hold her to me before addressing the girl. When I turn, my entire body goes completely rigid. Julia is standing in front of me. Julia Dixon, Rachel’s precious little stepdaughter.

“Oh my god, I thought that was you,” she says with a huge smile on her face.

“Let it go, Julia,” I tell her. “I was just leaving.”

“Let it go? Are you kidding me? I’m well aware of the contract you signed Paxton.
My dad is taking our money and giving it to you.
Our money.
Like we need to be paying your way and supporting your loser ass.”

My body that was already at it
s emotional breaking point with Jessa is now shaking with rage. “Whatever, Julia. I don’t give a shit anymore.” And that’s the truth. I really don’t give a shit.

“Okay,” she says in a high pitched voice. “Like I’m going to believe that. You are such a delinquent. All you hav
e is that money he’s giving you but you are such a fuck up you couldn’t even manage to follow one simple rule. All you had to do was stay away from all of us. God, you are so stupid.”

All I can do is laugh at her ignorant ass.

I watch as she pulls her phone out of her purse and dials a number before bringing it to her mouth. “Hi, mom,” she says cheerily into the phone. “Guess who I ran into…
in Chicago
?”

“Fuck off,” I tell her, turning and heading for the door.

“You’re a waste of space, Paxton. I wish your suicide attempt would have been more successful,” she calls after me.

I’m so enraged I can’t see straight as I head towards the door. I can hear Jessa calling after me, but I don’t stop for her. I can’t.

I make it out the door and when I feel Jessa’s hand reaching for me I shake her off. “You don’t want to be around me right now,” I warn her, heading to the back parking lot.

“Paxton, stop,” she says as I reach my car.

“Jessa, I’m not fucking around. Get out of here.” I open my door and get in, slamming it behind me and turning over the engine. I hear another door slam and I look in the rear view and see Jessa in the backseat on the passenger side. “Get out,” I tell her.

“No.”

“Fucking stubborn,” I mutter, pulling out of the lot, needing to get away from here whether Jessa’s with me or not.

When I get to Billy’s I don’t bother telling her not to follow me. All I want to do is get my shit and get the hell out of here. I can hear her little
footsteps as she chases after me. She follows me into the apartment. I can feel her watching me as I gather up the shit I have laying around the apartment. “Pax, what are you doing?” she asks me.

I don’t answer her. When I have all my shit together I head to the door where Jessa is standing with her arms and legs spread out like she’s going to stop me. I’m tired of telling people to move, so I grab onto her arm and pull her away. She’s resisting but with the rage that’s pumping through my body, it’s not an effort.
I open the door and then I feel Jessa jump onto my back. She’s got her arms wrapped around me so tight she’s choking me. I get her unwrapped, but when I go to unhook her feet that are wrapped around my waist, she grabs on again. Harder this time. I pull her arms away and hold hard to her wrist. “Jessa,” I tell her, trying to keep my shit together. “I have to go. You need to let me go.”

“No, Paxton. You’re drunk and
you’re angry and you are not getting in that car. Where the hell are you going anyway?”

“I’m going home,
” I tell her long and slow, containing my anger as best I can.

“What? You think you are getting in your car
, drunk, and driving to California?” she laughs. “That’s stupid, Paxton.”

“No, Jessa. W
hat’s stupid is that I have a little girl wrapped around my back thinking she’s going to stop me. Get down before I hurt you.”

“Do what you gotta do, Pax. I’m not letting you go.”

Fuck.
I drop my bag and unhitch her legs, holding them so she can’t reattach them. I wrench the bottom half of her body around until she has no choice but to slide to the front of me. She’s staring at me now with her determined eyes, her hands still clinging tightly to my neck, but no longer strangling me. I lay her down on the floor and put my knees on her thighs to keep them in place. She’s staring at me in silence. I peel her hands off my neck and pin her to the floor.

I stare down at her. My
breaths are ragged from the effort of getting her ass off of me. She knows I’ve won and now her determined eyes are full of pain again. I can’t look away from them. It hurts, but I can’t get myself to look away.

“Paxton, don’t do this,” she whi
spers and then a tear falls from her eye.

Jessa, the girl that has no heart, no feelings, no emotions
, who I have never seen cry, not once, is crying.

“
Fuuck,” I yell, standing up and going to the kitchen. I grab Billy’s bottle of whiskey and pour it down my throat before smashing the empty bottle into the wall. I start clearing out his cabinets, smashing anything I can get my hands on into the wall. That fucking bitch, I was one fucking second away from leaving this town… leaving my fucking heart here, but maintaining Gabriel’s independence… and fucking Julia walks through the door. “Bitch,” I growl to the sound of breaking glass. Her cheery fucking voice is running through my head
Hi, mom.
“Fuck.” And why was I still standing in that fucking place? Because of Jess. Jessa and her broken mouth and her sad eyes and shaking voice. “Fuck,” I mutter one last time, leaning over with my hands on my thighs, trying to catch my breath. I raise my eyes and see Jess on the floor where I left her, propped up on her knees, tears streaming down her face.

I close my eyes and take a few more breaths before walking over to her. I reach down and pick her up into my arms. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I know that
, right now, I need her. And I can’t leave her crying. I walk us to the couch and lay down. She curls up on my side and lays there with me in silence. My head is pounding and my body is spent. I close my eyes and pull Jessa’s binder out of her hair so I can put my fingers in it.

“Who was that awful
girl?” Jessa whispers.

I let out a huff of breath and s
hake my head. “That was my stepsister, Julia,” I say with mock enthusiasm.

“You had to live with her?” Jessa says with a combination of sadness and
disgust.

“In my awesome family, she was the best of the b
unch,” I tell her because it’s the truth.

Jessa holds tighter to my side and whispers, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m leaving tomorrow and I’m never coming back. That girl is no longer part of my life.”

I was up most of the night, laying on Paxton’s sleeping body, touching him and looking at him, trying to remember everything about him because, although I’m with him now, he’s not mine. He’s leaving today and going home. And after the spectacle I saw last night I won’t try to keep him here and I know he’s never coming back.

These past four days have been the hardest days of my life. It was a shock moving from the happiest I have ever been into the most depressed I had ever felt so quickly. After I talked to Paxton on the phone I knew that he was gone from my life forever. I thought he had gone back to California. I did nothing but cry and stare at his wall and wrap myself in anything he had left behind. I couldn’t imagine getting out of that bed. I couldn’t imagine doing anything. I didn’t get out of that bed, I didn’t do anything. Not until last night when Vi called to tell me Paxton was still in Chicago.

But
my pain, my hurt, is new to me. Until I lost Paxton I didn’t really understand what it meant to be hurt by another human being. I saw it happen all the time; to my mom, to Emily, to any girl that had ever loved a boy. I thought I had felt that pain once too, but now I know it’s not true.

But Paxton…
Paxton understands pain. I’ve never seen such real, raw pain as I did in Paxton’s face as he destroyed Billy’s kitchen last night. My heart was already in pieces, but it completely crumbled last night. If he grew up with that girl, Julia, and if the rest of her family is just as bad as she is, then Paxton knows pain. It’s been made crystal clear that his life in this city was defined by the pain it brought him. And from what I understand from Violet, Paxton’s girlfriend caused him pain. And me too. I hurt him and caused him pain too. And those awful words that that girl yelled across the bar… I can’t even think about them. Did Paxton hurt so badly that he didn’t want to live anymore?  I don’t want him to hurt anymore.

When Paxton
groans awake I pull my hand out of his shirt and wrap it around his waist. I don’t know how he’s going to react when he realizes I’m here with him. He passed out almost immediately after we laid down- it’s possible that he was so drunk he won’t remember me coming here with him.

He groans again and turns on his side. His arms wrap around me and he turns me into his chest, his fingers clinging to my hair. I let out a breath of relief.

I listen to his heart beating and take in his scent and it breaks my heart all over again.
He’s leaving.

He lays there with me in silence. His breathing sounds strained. His heart is beating so fast. Eventually he takes his hand out of my hair and unwraps me. I force myself to let him go and I look up into his eyes. They look dejected and I have to bite my lip to stop it from
trembling. Paxton gives me a sad smile and runs his finger over my face. I have to close my eyes so I don’t fall apart. “I’m going to miss you, beso,” he whispers. It feels like every organ in my body is being squeezed. The pressure from my sadness that wants to cry out hurts. “Hey,” he whispers, “look at me.” I force my eyes open and the moisture escapes down my cheeks. He dries them with his thumb, leaving both of his hands wrapped around my face. “It’s going to be okay,” he tells me. I manage to nod at him, but I know that I will never be okay.

I can’t ask him to stay for me. I won’t do that to him. But I want him to know that in the end I
wasn’t scared and that I do love him. I take a deep breath and try to calm my insides. “I love you, Paxton. When you told me how you felt about me I should have realized how amazing it was that you were willing to give me all of you. But I knew that I felt exactly how you did. I knew how much I loved you and how much I needed you and I was terrified. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I’m sorry if I ruined what we could have had. This hurts, Pax, but I know that it was worth it to have been loved by you. And I need you to know that I fell in love with you too. That you were never just the guy I was having sex with. So thank you, for loving me, and thank you for helping me understand that it’s okay to feel. That it’s okay to want to be loved. Thank you for being my first love, I never would have known what it feels like without you.”

Paxton’s
face is tense but his eyes are soft. “I’m sorry things had to end like this, beso.” He lowers his lips to mine and kisses me. It’s soft and it’s sad and it’s perfect and it hurts so fucking bad. My hands cling onto the back of his head and when he takes his lips from mine, I don’t want to let go, but I do. He wipes my fresh tears away, then sits up with his arm around me. “I gotta go, beso,” he tells me.

I stand on shaky legs
and pull his sweatshirt off to give it back to him.

“Keep that, kid,” he tells me.

I hand it over to him. “I don’t want to.”

He nods and takes it off my hands.

When we walk out of the living room, Paxton sees the disaster he created in the kitchen. “Shit,” he mutters, running his hands through his hair.

“I’ll help you
clean it up,” I tell him, trying to hold onto any extra seconds I have before he leaves me.

“I lost it last night. I’m sorry you had to see that,” he tells me, going to retrieve our shoes.

“I would have lost it too,” I tell him, putting my shoes on and going to the kitchen to find a trash bag. Paxton joins me and we start throwing the large pieces of glass into the bag.

I feel terrible, but this reminds me of that morning that he and I had to clean up the lamp – which was another awful morning, but I think of that girl and I can’t help but laugh.
I look up at Paxton who’s staring at me with confusion. “I’m sorry. This is the least laughable moment of my life, but I just had a flashback of Sadie.”

Paxton scrunches up his face like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“Sadie? The girl you drove to insanity, causing her to break Vi’s lamp. Which I had to clean up… with you?”

Paxton gives me an amuse
d grin. “That girl… I swear to God, the things I was willing to do for you.”

“For me?” I stutter, offended.

“You think I hung out with that girl all night, brought her home and let her sleep in our room, for me?”

“Umm…yeah,
” I tell him, feeling dumbstruck. Who else would it be for?

“No, kid,” he mutters. “That was all a show for you.”

A laugh of disbelief escapes my throat. “Thank you, Pax, for bringing a girl home and having sex with her in our room. That was a very generous thing of you to do,
for me.
”

“I didn’t have sex with her, kid,” he says.
“I didn’t even touch her.”

“What?” I ask, confused. “But I heard her, and you told us…
are you serious? What the hell was she moaning and screaming for if you didn’t even touch her.”

Paxton shakes his head, smiling. “Jesus, you don’t want to know. That girl was more desperate to get off then you at your worst.”

“Wow, that’s really bad,” I tell him laughing, thinking about how hard up I was when Paxton came back to Chicago.

Paxton i
s laughing, but then his face goes blank before it hardens. “I got this, Jessa. Go wait for me by the door.”

I stare back at him wondering what just happened. I was just fucking with him, like I always do. That’s what Pax and I do, it’s who we are.
I stare back at his dead eyes and take a deep breath, letting reality sink in. This is us. It’s not two sad people saying goodbye. This is us, who we have always been, and this part of us is over too. I feel a piece of glass, that I didn’t realize I was clenching, breaking into the palm of my hand. “Shit,” I mutter, dropping the glass and turning my palm up to look at the bleeding wound.

“What the hell did you do, kid?” Paxton says, standing and going to the sink.

I stand too and run my hand under the water, watching the blood become deluded. Paxton grabs a hold of my palm and holds it up to his face. “Jesus, beso,” he mutters, returning my hand to the water and leaving the kitchen.

He comes back with a towel and a giant bandage. He pulls my hand out of the water and pats it dry, “
This must hurt like a bitch,” he tells me.

It
doesn’t hurt at all actually. I can’t even feel it. “It doesn’t,” I tell him.

His eyes flash to mine, questioning me, before he returns his focus t
o my hand. He opens the giant bandage and tries to wrap it around my hand, “Couldn’t you have found me something a little bigger? I don’t think that one’s gonna cover it,” I mutter.

“Why is your
hand so damn small?” he asks, struggling to find an angle where it will cover only my palm. I can’t help but smile at his frustration. I’m going to miss him so much.

“I have a perfectly normal sized hand,” I tell him.

“For a two year old,” he tells me, finally getting it secured on my hand.

I hold it up
in front of my face and I can’t help but smirk at the ridiculous site. “It’s perfect. Thanks, Pax.”

He’s trying not to, but he smiles too.

His phone sounds with the tone dedicated to his dad. Paxton’s face becomes tense as he pulls it out of his back pocket. He shakes his head and then answers it. “Don’t even fucking tell me,” is how he greets his father. “Shit, that bitch. She’s fucking fast.” I can hear his dad yelling on the other end of the phone. “I ran into Julia last night,” he says in response to whatever his father is yelling and I know right then what has happened. Paxton’s mom has cut him and his dad off. “I can’t do anything about it Gabriel…. I don’t know, I’ll figure it out…. Hell no, I’m not going anywhere near that bitch… are you fucking kidding me?.... shit, yeah, yeah, yeah…. I don’t know, I guess I’m gonna have to now…. Hell no, Gabriel, I’m not begging that bitch for nothing… no, I know. It was stupid. I’ll handle it…. Yeah, I’ll talk to you later.” Paxton grabs tight onto his phone and starts yelling a long string of obscenities directed at his mother. I lean against the counter and wait it out, prepared to bolt if he grabs a hold of anything breakable. His tangent slows down and he turns to me with murder in his eyes. He grabs a hold of my face and says, “Fucking women, what the hell is wrong with you guys?”

I can’t help but see the irony in that statement. That’s exactly how I feel about men.
I stare into his raging eyes until he removes his hands from my face and pushes them through his hair. “She closed the account?”

“Of course she did
,” he says, propping himself up against the adjacent counter.

“What are you going to do about it?” I ask him.

“There’s nothing I can do about it. The money’s gone. It’s a done deal. When I get home I gotta find a way to pay his bills.”

Those words feel like cement. He has no choice now but to go home. “He wants you to go talk to her?”

“I have to go talk to her,” he says, running his hands over his eyes. “A man showed up on Gabriel’s steps this morning to collect the beamer.”

“Which you sold?” I guess. He always hated that thing and when he came back to Chicago he was no longer driving it.

“Yeah, I did. And I used the money to buy Gabriel his dream car which he smashed into a cement wall the night of Billy’s party. Fucking totaled it.”

“Oh my god.” That was the call he got, that he dismissed, that he pretended to forget about in order to finish what he started with me.
“Why didn’t you tell me that? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine
but without that car I don’t have the cash to replace Dr. Dixon’s vehicle and Rachel’s not gonna let that shit slide. Her lawyers are going to be all over my ass before the day’s done.
Fuck.
”

“So you’re going to go talk to her?” I ask, my limbs trembling at the thought of Paxton going anywhere near his stepsister.

“I don’t have a choice.”

“I’m going with you.”

Paxton turns his eyes to me. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. I’m not letting you go near that bitch stepsister of yours alone.”

“You gonna be my bodyguard?”

“If it’s necessary – yes. I would love to punch that girl in her face.”

“Thanks, kid, but I can handle it,” he says, pushing away from the counter.

“Paxton, don’t be stubborn.
In case you didn’t understand me earlier, I am in love with you, you are leaving me and it’s breaking my fucking heart, so do me a favor and let me ride with you. I’ll stay in the car.”

He shakes his head at me and gets in my face. “
In case you didn’t understand, I offered myself to you and you weren’t interested. I’m sorry that your heart is breaking, but you have fucking destroyed me and I’m not interested in prolonging the pain.”

My intake of air is audible as Paxton’s pain creeps into my heart. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, I literally haven’t crie
d for years… and now it seems like it’s all I can do. I wipe them away from my face because I know, this time, he’s not going to do it for me.

“Dam
n it, kid,” he mutters. “Fine... that’s fucking great.” He tells me before storming out of the kitchen.