12.🔧 Exhaust Pipe 2.0

**JUSTICE**

*What will she say?*
My shoulders tense at the thought of her rebuttal. Fearing the disappointment on her face, I don’t bother turning on the light. Instead, I keep to the darkness and grab a cup from the cabinet, placing it on the countertop by the fridge.
Jerking the door open, I take a moment to notice how clean the refrigerator is. Damn thing shines. And that odor of something gone bad I’d been meaning to clean out; It’s gone.
Remorse triumphs in the face of her helping out and my shoulders sag under the weight of it. I’m not normally nasty to women, but Keke has me so twisted into knots, I can’t think straight.
She moves to stand on the other side of the open door. The light illuminates her dark eyes and instead of reproach; they are knowing... soft.
I would have preferred her anger. That I can deal with...
Not her empathy. Not her understanding.
It makes me like her even more.
*Dammit!*
“Justice,” Keke breathes, “let’s not fight, okay? Why don’t you sit and let me make some coffee... or do you prefer tea?”
*A hot drink wouldn’t hurt.*
“Coffee is fine.”
She goes to turn on the light, and the brightness warms me. I sit on a dining chair, allowing my eyes to follow her around the kitchen. She gets everything together without asking once where anything is at.
It is as if she belongs here.
As though she is home.
Keke readies the cups, placing two dollops of milk and one teaspoon of sugar in the first mug. The other, she leaves empty, except for the fragrant coffee she pours into it.
I can’t help but smile.
She remembers how I like my coffee from this afternoon.
I know it shouldn’t mean anything, and to her it probably doesn’t, but to me it does.
Keke is more than a pretty face.
She cares.
I see it in the way she got the boys to eat at the table, how carefully she drove my car. The dedicated manner in which she took it upon herself to make this place fragrant and fresh.
Ignoring the pain of regret in my chest, I follow her to the couch where we sit, taking the first sip of our hot drink.
*She must bathe in vanilla and five-spice powder.*
The aroma coming off her body is heady, like a fragrant market in Shanghai. Her thigh, pressed tightly against mine, is warm.
And I bet she’s that way on the inside as well.
“Justice,” she begins softly, “I’m not here to usurp your place in the boys’ lives. All I want to do is visit with them. And while I’m staying in your home, I’ll be as much help as you need me to be.”
*If you only knew what I’d really like. *
I quickly squash the image of my hands on her tits, plucking at her hard nipples as I kiss my way down to the arousal leaking between her thighs.
Arousal that *I*created.
To avoid my cock from rising further, I switch my attention off her body and onto my cup. After taking a long sip, I say, “I appreciate you cleaning, Keke. I do. Just don’t feel you have to, okay?”
“I know. I know. I just... I wanted to help Lilli.” She ducks her head as if she’s embarrassed. “Does that seem strange?”
My salacious thoughts completely disappear when faced with the subject of Lilli, but I’m sure I’ll be revisiting them later. When I’m alone.
I cross an ankle over my knee.
Not good.
Part of my leg now rests on her thigh, inflaming the spot with heat.
After a second, she moves so we’re no longer touching. She hides the same desire I feel by lowering her lashes and smoothing out her expression.
Clearing my throat to dispel the awkward moment, I say, “Uh…I guess I get what you mean, Keke. You wanted it to be as if Lilli were here. How she kept the place?” Lilli was a neat freak. She was constantly doing laundry and cleaning. She even taught the guys how to iron, cook, and sew on a button. My mother never taught me shit. I had to learn how to keep a house on my own.
Keke says quietly, “Yes, that’s what I wanted to do. My way of honoring her memory, I suppose.”
I nod in response and turn my thoughts to Lilli while we sip our coffee in silence.
Keke brings me to the present when she asks, “Who found her?”
I set my cup on the table, steeling myself to reply.
And I hate that Keke will hurt, no matter what I say.
Lilli had worked for the TSA. The day she died, she’d taken on a double shift at JFK. She asked me to check on the kids during my break since she’d be home late. *“Justice,” she’d said with a deep sigh, “You can’t imagine the headache I have after dealing with a drunk who came through my line. He wanted to take an open fifth of Jack on the plane with him, spilled it all over me and everything. Damn glad I had another shirt in my locker.”*
I’d laughed, imagining the scenario. Little did I know her headache, which she downplayed the severity of, was a sign of the aneurysm which killed her on her drive home from work.
“Uh...well it was late, past midnight and that evening, she had parked at the Howard Beach Air Tran station. When she left work, she headed down Aqueduct Road for some reason. The police and the coroner I spoke with think that she may have been turned around...” Keke gives me a pained look, her brown eyes shimmering with tears. I squirm on the couch; uncomfortable I’m making her so sad. “Uh, Lilli was near the casino, her windows rolled down. She had parked in one of the parking lots, and... well, that was where they found her.”
I won’t describe how Lilli lay slumped in the driver’s seat; her head lolled to the side with dried spittle down her chin. I also won’t tell Keke someone had stolen Lilli’s purse. The police had trouble identifying her without an ID. It took them until late the next evening to call me and give me the news.
The kids had been frantic.
Keke shakes her head, brushing at her eyes. “Awful. Damn awful, but it could have been worse, I suppose.”
It *was* worse.
Not that she will hear how worse from me. I’d spare anyone the knowledge if I could.
“Yes, it could have been,” I reply in a whisper.
Keke nods, resigned. Her dark eyes are so downcast, it makes me think of the boys and their pain.
It’s then that it hits me—Keke hurts, too.
The anguish on her face was written in permanent marker.
Lilli and Keke were more than just friends. They were *family.* Not by blood, but a bond just as strong.
“The kids gave me her room to sleep in. I hope you don’t mind?” her tone uplifts at the change of subject.
I cut my eyes to hers and give her a slight smile. “No problem.”
I’m actually glad the boys hadn’t offered me their mother’s room. It would have felt too weird sleeping in Lilli’s bed...among her things.
“I planned to offer you my room,” I say, tilting my head to look at her better. “I worried I’d find you asleep on this fold-out couch. It’s comfortable to sit on, but it’ll leave spring imprints on your back.”
That’s what happened to me.
I slept for one night on that hard-ass mattress and told myself never again.
In the morning, I went to a furniture store a friend of mine owns. He gave me a good deal on a bed that would fit the study and was long enough to fit me. It’s good enough for now. Nothing like my sleigh bed at the brownstone. The company I bought my furniture from delivered it last week. When I saw it, I ached to sleep in it.
*White sheets. Soft as a cloud…*
An image of Keke underneath me filters into my mind. Her eyes closed. Her mouth opened in a moan.
*Stop it, damn you.*
“I can just see that, Justice,” she says, breathing my name in that sexy way of hers that makes every cell in my body prickle with heat. For a second my heart races, thinking she saw my salacious vision.
Her sweet smile tells me she didn’t.
I lift my cup, draining the last of the lukewarm coffee to keep from staring at her like some high school kid jerking off to his first pin-up.
We lapse into silence for a few minutes until Keke shifts beside me.
Thoughts of her limbs entwined with mine flare up again. I entertain them until Keke says, “I don’t mind doing laundry.” Her gaze flits from my mouth to my chest. I take a deep breath, expanding it to give her an eye full, stifling a smile when her eyes dilate. “Um... I already have the dirty clothes from the kids sorted and I can do yours if you like.” Seemingly embarrassed by asking me to wash my clothes, she lets out a giggle. The sound is rich and full, like children’s laughter on a playground.
I like it.
No… *I love it.*
And once again, I’m caving. Folding like a card table. A newspaper. Hell, a note from school.
I force a gruffness... a self-preservation into my voice. “No need. I’ve got a company to do the wash. They come on Fridays. Good you sorted it, though. Saves me from reminding the guys twenty times.”
Keke chuckles, keeping the sound low in deference to the sleeping kids.
It’s sexy as hell.
“How was the rest of the evening?” she asks, stretching her long arm to put her empty cup on the table. “Was the bar busy?”
“Not overly so.”
She moves and her thigh brushes mine once more. Heat sears up my leg, into my stomach, and across my chest.
*Play it cool, Justice.*
I shift so I no longer touch her. It’s too dangerous. “How long do you intend to stay?”
*That’s playing it cool all right.*
Keke hides a startled look by studying her nails, picking at a spot where her polish has chipped.
*Did it happen while she was cleaning?*
“I’d like to stay until December fourteenth, if that is okay with you?”
I shrug, ignoring the elation in my heart. My happiness that she’s staying for a while will only get me into trouble.
Deep trouble.
At the frown on my face, she rushes on, a bit of nervous hesitation creeping into her voice, “I really want to help at the bar... unless you have someone else in mind for the job?” The pleading in her eyes is something I’ll see in my dreams tonight.
*I’d make her beg. I’d make her scream.*
I clear those thoughts away like I have done with the similar ones which have plagued me all night long. “If you are willing to help...I’m sure we can work out an agreeable salary.” I pause like I am thinking things through. “Wait...you *are* a US citizen, right? You *can* legally work here?” I pull my mouth up at the corner to give her a teasing smile.
She smirks. “Do you want to see my birth certificate?”
“I do. You go get it and I will pour us another cup.”
Her soft giggles float to me from down the hall. Only when the darkness swallows her do I head to the kitchen.
There’s no need to see her proof. I just wanted to watch that ass in motion.