“No, I mean… shit. This is my fault. I should know better. I should have known that that one line was gonna lead to dozens more. I can’t do this without you. I don’t know who I am without you.”
“That’s a bad excuse. You didn’t even try. You didn’t even try to hold onto me. I should have been able to come home and you should have kept me inside of you, but you forgot all about us the minute I left town,” I tell him, crying silent tears because the truth hurts.
“No, beso. That’s not right. I just… fuck, I just need you here.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Pax. I’m not there.”
“Jesus, why can’t you just give me something… anything…. How am I supposed to hold onto you when all you give me is this indifference? Yeah, I fucked up when I started in with the blow, but you… you don’t even have an excuse. You could give a shit less that we’re apart. It doesn’t even affect you. How the fuck do you think that makes me feel? I literally can’t live without you and you…just head out of town with no warning and once you get there you are just living your life, with no fucking emotions, not even missing me, not even needing to talk to me. What the fuck? It hurts.”
I’m literally shaking with anger now, but I’m holding onto reality, a little bit. I can’t do this with him right now. I can’t blow up on him right now, but I’m not gonna listen to this bullshit and not say anything. “You think it doesn’t hurt to be away from you? Since the minute I left you I’ve done nothing but think about you and miss you. That’s all I fucking do. You love to tell me that you miss me, that you need me, but what have you done? What have you done that is so epic that proves that your love for me is real and that my love for you is nothing? Words aren’t enough for me Paxton. You don’t give a shit and I’m tired of you trying to tell me that I’m the one who doesn’t care. Seriously… fuck off.”
“What’s going on here?” he whispers. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t fight with me.”
“God, Paxton. I am so sick of everything being about you. Of having to walk on egg shells and pretend like what you are doing isn’t killing me because you could crumble at any moment. This shit is all in your head. You don’t need me. You don’t even want me. So I’m not taking the blame for this.”
“The blame for what? What the fuck are you saying? What is going on? Jess, I can’t think. I’m so fucked up. What the hell are you saying to me?”
I close my eyes and inhale a deep breath. Tomorrow. I can let everything out tomorrow. “Nothing, Pax. I just… I don’t know who you are right now. I don’t understand what’s going on with you. I don’t want to fight with you. We shouldn’t be doing this right now.”
“I don’t know who I am either. It hurts, waking up in this bed without you. It’s like I can’t even remember us. I can’t even remember you in my arms.”
I close my eyes as the tears pour out of them. He doesn’t even remember us. Four days and it’s all gone. “Just stay there, Pax. Let Violet take care of you, okay? Get through your gig and then I’ll be back,” I say through the pounding in my head and the pain that is searing through my body.
“I don’t want to do this. I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Try, Pax. We’ll talk after Friday, okay?” I tell him, trying to keep my voice even.
“What the fuck, kid? After Friday? I don’t… I don’t even know what that means.”
“I can’t do this right now, Pax. Just get your shit done and then we’ll figure it out.”
“Figure what out? Jesus, Jessa, you don’t get it. You don’t get how fucked up my head is right now. I can’t think. You gotta tell me, beso. What the hell does that mean? What’s going on?” he says and I can hear it in his voice that he’s losing it.
Jesus, he really is fucked up. What the hell is he doing to himself? “Paxton, I love you. I love you so much it’s painful. I want to be there. I want to be in that bed with you so much my body is aching. This isn’t good for either of us. We shouldn’t be apart. I know it’s hard, baby, so just hold on, okay. Just get through tomorrow and then things will be right, okay? Everything will be exactly how it was before I left you.”
“Stay with me. Don’t hang up on me. I don’t want to let you go,” he whispers and I feel like I’m there with him. In our bed with him with his arms wrapped around me. It feels like us. It feels so perfect. It feels like none of this ever happened. But he doesn’t even remember. Four days and he is no longer the man I left there.
“I can’t, Pax. It hurts too bad. I can see you in that bed. I can feel your hands on me and it hurts. I gotta go, babe.”
“Jessa… please. Fuck, just stay with me.”
My tears have turned into sobs because I can hear the sadness in his voice. I know he needs me. He needs me now because he’s in our bed and I’m all he has. But as soon as he gets out of that bed he’s just going to forget again. Stella’s words come back to me. Her story that is being repeated right now – Paxton would disappear from her life, take his drugs, fuck his women, then come back to her bed when it became too much to handle. I guess this shit has gone full circle seeing how Stella is the girl he goes to when he is on his binges and I am the pathetic girl he needs to comfort him when his habits become too much to handle. “I love you so much, Pax,” I tell him, no longer able to keep the sound of my crying out of my voice. “I love you too much baby. I have to go.” I take the phone away from my face and hang it up. I duck my head into my knees and cover it up with my arms.
Oh my god. What am I doing? What am I doing to him? To us. Shit.
Chapter 13 - Paxton
It’s madness when we get to the Lincoln. There is a camera crew and an audio crew. They descend as soon as Vi, Jimmy and I walk through the front door. We gotta run sound check now, someone is telling me and I’m ushered up to the stage where Billy and Louis are along with five tech guys.
Vi just dragged my ass out of bed about a half hour ago. The bed that was covered in Jessa’s scent. The bed I couldn’t get out of for two days. My mind has turned to mud and I feel like I’m living in sludge. When I come off a binge it’s always bad. It’s always the worst fucking depressing thing, so I don’t know if I’m turning whatever the hell is going on with Jessa into something more dramatic than it really is or if it really is all crumbling to pieces. I can’t even think about getting up on stage. But I gotta. This stupid fucking show is the whole reason I’m not with Jessa and why I’ve let my life go down the drain.
Billy hands me my guitar and asks, “How are you doing, man?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
“I made some changes to the set list. Hopefully you’re cool with it… I could have used your input. What’s with the two day MIA right before the show?”
“Just trying to get off the blow – you know. It’s not super fun,” I tell him with a forced smile.
“Shit, Pax. I shouldn’t have let it get so out of control. I was right there with you and I shouldn’t have been. I shouldn’t have kept on shoving that shit in your face.”
“I’m a grown man. It’s my own problem. This is going to be a shit show though, Billy.”
“We can play it like any other show if you want to. We don’t gotta throw the new songs in, but you have to figure it out now. I already handed the run down over to that fucking assistant douche who’s been up my ass.”
“I don’t know if it matters. No matter what we play… it ain’t gonna be good.”
“This is your thing, man. No one’s better on stage than you are. Once the house is packed and the lights are on, you’ll be fine. It’s gonna be good.”
“Are you guys ready?” Collin, the ‘director’ of this shoddy operation shouts out from the floor.
“Yep,” Billy calls back. He hands me a piece of paper that he has scratched out our set list on. I glance over it then drop it to the floor and strap my guitar on.
We run through two songs before Billy tells Collin we’re done with the sound check. I keep fucking up the cords and my voic
e is barely audible. Collin’s ranting at him but Louis pulls me off the stage.
We head back to the green room where the tech crew is hanging out along with Violet and fucking Stella. “What the hell is she doing here?” I mutter to Louis.
He stutters a laugh. “Fuck, Pax. She’s tight with that Collin guy, you know the asshole that likes to shout out instructions… she’s taking the stills - a photographer was part of that contract we signed. Just ignore her. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Fucking perfect.” I head to the fridge in the back corner and grab a bottle of beer then take a seat by Vi.
“You feel any better?” she asks me.
“No, not at all,” I tell her. All I can hear is Stella’s grading voice as she snaps pictures of whatever the hell she’s snapping pictures of.
“Just get through this, Pax, and then everything will go back to normal.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. Normal seems like years ago. I can’t even remember what normal feels like. “Have you heard from her?” I ask Vi. When I talked to Jessa yesterday she told me we would figure shit out after the show. I called her back a few times last night but she’s got her fucking phone off. I eventually passed back out and now I’m here. At this point I don’t expect anything from her. She should be here with me but she’s not. I would like to think that at the very least she would give me a call, via Vi’s phone, before the show but I’m definitely not counting on it.
“No,” she tells me. “I haven’t been able to get a hold of her today,” she says and I can hear the anger in her voice. She knows as well as I do that what Jessa’s doing is fucked up.
A flash blinds me then and I turn to Stella. “Can you not fucking do that,” I tell her.
“What? Take pictures of you guys? I have to, it’s my job,” she says snapping another picture as I try to murder her with my eyes.
“That was a shady fucking move. When you got this job did you mention the fact that you are the one person that I don’t need to see before I gotta do this shit?”
Stella crouches down in front of me and drops her camera. “Actually, I thought you might prefer it be me back here with you guys rather than some stranger. You gotta stop hating me for no reason, Pax.”
Vi lets out a laugh of disbelief but doesn’t comment. I choose to ignore Stella altogether, looking away from her, swallowing down the rest of my beer.
“What do you think she had to do to Collin to get this gig?” Vi mutters.
I laugh at her comment. Stella snaps another picture and I’m having a hard time pretending she’s not there. I turn my angry eyes on her and she snaps another picture. “Will you get out of here with that thing?” She snaps another picture. “God damn it,” I say, lunging like I’m gonna make her stop. She snaps another picture. This is fucking ridiculous. I’m laughing it’s so ridiculous. I flip her and her spastic camera off then head to the fridge to grab another beer.
An hour later, I have enough alcohol in my system so Stella and her fucking camera are merely irritating rather than rage worthy. The guys and I went over the set list a few times, playing through some of the parts we still don’t have nailed down. Through all of it, I’m waiting for Vi to come over and tell me Jessa’s on the phone, but that doesn’t happen. One of Collin’s assistants comes back and lets us know it’s time to go and I know I have to put Jessa out of my head for the next hour and a half.
This ain’t like a regular show. Collin’s people are all over us, holing us back at the stage entrance as one of the DJs from the station makes a long winded introduction and gets the already whipped up crowd even more frantic. When he’s done, Collin’s people send us out one at a time. My band’s on stage but some asshole is telling me I have to wait. After a minute the crowd starts yelling my name and the adrenaline starts flowing through my body. The guy finally lets me go and when I hit the stage the crowd erupts and I finally feel the energy that I need to get through this.
I pick up my guitar and strap it on. The crowd is still screaming too loud for me to start playing, so I head to Billy and Louis and the three of us play our guitars, making sure we’re in tune together. We have ear pieces for this show but I’m still having trouble hearing over the crowd. Billy nods at me like it’s all good. I nod back and then I head to the mic. On our run through the other day Collin was telling me when I needed to address the crowd and what I needed to say, but shit, I knew at that point I was gonna have my hands full with the new songs. “Thanks for coming out tonight,” I say into the mic before playing the opening notes to our first song.
We get through the first two songs and the whole time I’m searching through the crowd, looking for Jessa, like she might be here. A pain sears through my heart because song number three is the first new one we’re performing and, like ninety percent of the new songs, this one is about her. And she’s never heard it. All of these songs that are about her, that are so personal, that I wrote only for her… she’s not here to hear them. I feel overwhelmed.
I clench my eyes tight, trying to force the emotions out. Trying to detach myself from the lyrics I have to sing. Shit. I turn from the mic and try to get my shit together. Jimmy runs through the opening rhythm again, covering for my stall. My eyes are burning. My heart is beating and I don’t think I can do this. Jimmy gives a slight pause when the lyrics are supposed to start, but I can’t do it. He starts the run again and I take a deep breath. When it’s time for my guitar I start playing it. I turn back to the mic with my eyes still closed. I blow out a long breath and then I manage to start singing.
#
When we get through the last song I feel the weight finally fall off of me. This was by far the hardest show I’ve ever had to play. Singing about sex and drugs – facing my old life, seeing how fucked up and pointless it was and realizing how easy it is to start walking that road again- was hard. Singing about the way I love Jessa was impossible. Jesus, I mean, shit, it was bad. I kept my eyes closed through all of them, the words being forced out of my gut in hard rasps, my face probably looking exactly how I felt – like I was going to fucking lose it and have a break down. Knowing that Jessa was not here – that she didn’t give a shit- feels like more than I can handle.
We head off stage and the guys are pumped, hollering and fist pumping and celebrating already. All I feel is relief and heartache. I manage to slap a few hands, give a few smiles, but I’m ready to walk away and leave this night behind me. I feel completely drained.
“Holy shit, Paxton,” Billy says, wrapping his arm around me. “That was one emotional fucking performance, man. Those people loved it. Shit, you almost brought me to tears. And it’s all on record. This is going to be huge. Jesus.”
I head into the greenroom and listen to the chatter around me. Stella’s still snapping photos but I don’t have it in me to fight with her right now. Vi comes over to me and wraps me up in a hug. “Pax… that was… so sad… and beautiful.” She pulls away from me and looks in my eyes. Her’s are glossy with tears. “I don’t know what’s going on with you… with you and Jessa, but you have to make things right. You have to figure out what’s going on and make things right.”
“She’ll be back in two days. I’ll figure shit out then.” I don’t have no energy left to give. Not even to Jess.
Vi shakes her head at me. “No, Pax. I don’t think she will.”
My body retracts from her words. “Why would you say that?”
“She called while you guys were on stage. She wanted to know how you were doing, how the show was going. She told me not to tell you she called. She was upset, Pax… crying. She told me she’s not coming back.”
Chapter 14 - Jessa
The girls and I are having a sleepover at Danny and Emily’s tonight. They are trying to play it off like it was just a fun sporadic thing they decided to do before I leave, but I know better. I haven’t had a sleepover since seventh grade. I’ve definitely passed out in Nat’s bed drunk, but a proper sleepover with pajamas… no.
The
y’re doing it ‘cause I’m a basket case. They’re doing it because they know Pax’s show is tonight. They’re doing it because they know if he happens to call when it’s over then shit is probably going to go down that will leave me more fucked up than I have ever been.
Right now we’re trying to pretend like everything is cool. Nat has been making fancy blended drinks which I’m sucking down at lightning speed. But it’s not helping. I feel awful inside. I wish I would have let Vi come pick me up. I wish I wouldn’t have ever left him. I wish I didn’t have to face reality. I wish I was there with him now as he gets ready for his show. But I don’t know if I have a place in that life anymore. I called my advisor at school and talked to her about getting an extension on my classes in case things go exactly how I’m pretty sure they are going to go with Paxton.
I take out my phone and check Stella’s Instagram account. She’s been posting about her ‘baby’s’ show all day, but so far the only picture has been of the empty stage they will be performing on. “Anything new?” Nat asks me.
“Don’t encourage her,” Emily mutters.
“I’m not encouraging her, she’s gonna keep checking no matter how much we manage to distract her. If there is an update, I want to know about it.”
“What’s the point of looking at it? You haven’t even asked him about her, Jessa. You’re taking all your information from her. That’s just stupid,” Emily says.
“I’ll talk to him about it after the show. You know I’m not gonna do it before.”
I refresh the page on my phone. “Fuck,” I mutter. The new picture is of the guys on stage. It’s too far away for me to make anything out besides the fact that they are there. This is real and I’m not there with him. I should be there with him. Sound Check! her caption reads. #babysbignight #sexyboy #almosttime.
“What?” Nat asks.
I pass the phone over to her. “God, this girl is psycho. She’s totally obsessed with him.” Nat tries to pass the phone to Emily but she stands up and walks to the kitchen so Nat gives it back to me.
Inside of You (Jessa & Paxton #2) Page 13
