18.🍸 Hangover

**KEKE**

I wake the next day, deeply feeling the consequences of last night’s actions. My body... my spirit feels heavy and lethargic. It’s like I’m in a tightly-sewn shroud, sinking to the deepest part of a lake with boulders the size of breadboxes on my chest.
How can I stay here now?
It’s a week before Thanksgiving and other than my health, I have nothing to be thankful for.
My relationship with my parents is in tatters. The pain from my wound is ever-present in this cold weather, my best friend is gone, and I’ve screwed up any chance I had at a lasting relationship with her kids because my thirst got in the way.
After the kiss fiasco, Justice and I worked in silence. On the way home, I let him walk a few paces ahead, so that when he opened the door and turned to take off his jacket, I scuttled like a crab to Lilli’s room. My breath catching in my throat when he stopped outside my closed door.
Only when he walked away a few moments later could I breathe again.
With regret in my heart, I let out a deep sigh and accept an invitation to my very own pity party. After ten minutes of deep self-loathing for acting a fool and accepting a kiss from a man who wouldn’t care if I fell off the face of the Earth, I’m worse off than when I woke up.
A rapid knock at the door has me sitting up, scrubbing a hand down my screwed-up face.
“Come in,” I squeak, forcing a bright, albeit brittle, smile.
The door opens on a crack. “Aunt Keke,” Cameron calls, “you decent?”
“Yes, sweetie. Come on in.”
A small face peeks through. It’s Cam. When he gets close, his face scrunches. “Are you okay? You look weird.”
“Sure!” I say much too chipper to fool anyone.
Cam looks around the room, before landing his eyes on me. “Justice asked me to ask you if you wouldn’t mind going to the bar around nine instead of ten ‘coz the beer man is coming, and someone needs to let him in. Justice said he had to leave early this morning to take care of some business.”
A glance at the clock shows I have forty-five minutes before I have to be out the door.
I can do it. I can get over Justice and that kiss. Justice and those beautiful eyes of his. Justice and that hard body pressed impossibly close to mine...
“Uh, have you guys eaten breakfast?” I say, trying to stop the panty-melting images.
Cameron shakes his head. “Justice said Blake was bringing donuts from the shop we like. I’m getting one with chocolate sprinkles and a cherry-filled one.” He places his hands on his narrow hips and cocks his head back, making a stink face. “Seth likes the maple glaze ones. Yuuuk! I think those are wack.”
I laugh and my ache loses some of its power. “I actually like the maple ones. I’ll have to head over to that shop soon.” I rub my hands together to displace the chill. Justice still keeps it cold in the house... in more ways than one.
“Aunt Keke,” Cameron drawls, “you’re crazy if you like those things.”
I play-swat at him.
He giggles like the child he is, and my tap connects with air as he moves lightning-fast to the door. Before he can scamper into the hall, I ask him to get a Clancy’s shirt from Justice’s closet. Cameron nods before closing the door.
When we were on friendlier terms, Justice said my presence helped Cameron not to dwell on his mother’s death.
And I almost upset the balance by going after his guardian. The guardian who is obviously hung up on the girl that got away.
How could I forget that he likes Mrs. Perfectly Pretty Pippa?
Yeah, I googled Mrs. Sayle’s ass.
Pippa Sayle (née Hofacker) married a billionaire that looks like a male model. They have twins and another on the way. She has a college degree, runs a café in her husband’s building, and does charity work at a women’s shelter in her spare time.
It seems all her blessings aren’t enough for her. She has to have a side man too. Through her texts and phone calls, she keeps Justice wrapped around her finger so tightly no one else has a chance.
Least of all a big sassy girl like me.


Halfway into the prep work at the bar, the phone rings. Thinking it’s the “beer man” to tell me he’s waiting at the back door, I answer with a friendly “Hello.”
Still embarrassed about last night, I cringe when I hear Justice say, “Keke, Cameron got into trouble at school.” He lets out a frustrated sigh. “I’m on my way to pick him up.”
I set down the knife I’m using on the limes to better clutch the phone to my ear. “What happened? Is he okay? He was fine this morning.”
Cameron had taken a while to get the shirt I’d asked him for, but he’d come back with a smile on his face. Soon after that, the kids left for school.
Justice has been to all their teacher-parent conferences and he’d received nothing but glowing reports. Just this week, Cameron’s school and his therapist said he was making strides in the right direction.
What could have gone wrong?
Apparently, a lot.
Cameron, according to his teachers, had been surly and sullen all day. During the second to last class before early dismissal, the damn broke when Cameron clapped back at his English teacher, Ms. Tomey.
Ms. Tomey said she couldn’t read his essay on the Pilgrims and had instructed him to do it over during the break. Cam replied that if she’d wear her bifocals, she could read it just fine.
Enough was enough. Cam got a slip for the office and the school called Justice.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No. I’ll be there soon.”
An hour later, I’m filling the buckets of peanuts when I hear a loud commotion of what must be the back door bouncing off the wall. A second later, Cameron yells at the top of his lungs, “Don’t tell me what Mom... what Lilli would want. I’ve seen our birth certificates. My father isn’t listed on mine.”
“Cameron…”
“Leave me alone. Leave me alone!”
Another door slams and a painful silence breaks out.
My heart leaves my chest and drops to my toes.
Lilli had told the kids when they were old enough she wasn’t their biological mother, explaining that their mother Tia was too sick to keep them.
Always the curious sort, Cam somehow found his birth certificate and discovered the circumstances of his birth.
No father listed.
If any woman was a candidate for Maury, Tia was. Lilli had told me Tia didn’t have the first clue who fathered Cameron, her boyfriend on a couple of men she was seeing on the side. Lilli had always promised that when the time was right, she would tell him the truth.
I guess that time never came around.
It hurts my heart that Cam, at such an impressionable age, had found out too late for Lilli to explain her actions or reasoning.
I walk to the back to try to be of some assistance.
If either of them will let you.
Justice leans against the wall his head bowed, blond hair hanging in his face. He tosses his keys from one hand to the other, making soft clinks in his palms.
He looks up at my approach and I don’t like what I see in his turquoise eyes. The pain in them constricts my chest, making it hard to breathe.
I forget the humiliation of last night as his distress propels my feet forward. My only concern is making Justice whole. Without thinking things through, I wrap my arms around his narrow waist. Breathing in his sandalwood scent, I place my head in his neck.
He stiffens.
I hold on for a few more seconds, wanting to provide him comfort even as I know I’m making a fool of myself.
His body is still tense when I give up and step away. I struggle to keep the pain of rejection from my eyes and out of my voice. “Sorry.” My face burns under his neutral look like I just peeled it away from the surface of the sun. “I didn’t mean...”
“It’s okay. Really.” His wan smile doesn’t reach his eyes which scream disinterest.
I let out a nervous laugh, hating that I’m not in control over my embarrassment and my hurt. “I just wanted to convey that I’m here for you and the boys.”
“Just be here for them, Keke. It’s better that way.”
Oh that stings. It really does.
“Uh...yeah, sure. Whatever you say.” I stand there awkwardly, wanting to sink through the cool floor so I can stop the fire of shame spreading through my skin. “Um, I’ll go in there and talk to Cam.”
Justice pushes from the wall, straightening his broad shoulders. “That’s a good idea. Maybe you can get through to him.”
“I’ll try.”
“You know where Sam is?” he asks, changing the subject.
“He went home to get an early dinner. It was busy this afternoon. He said he’ll be back by five.”
Justice nods and heads to the front, dismissing me.
I place my cold hands on my burning cheeks. When they cool, I open the door to the office.
Cam is not there.
I move to the next room and find him on the bed, curled into a ball. After sitting down close to him, I reach out a hand and rub his back in what I hope are soothing strokes.
“Did you know, Aunt Keke? Did you know I might not have the same father as my brothers?” he says, turning his tear-stained eyes to mine.
“Yes, I knew, and right now you may not see it, or understand, but Lilli raised you to be tighter than any brothers can be. A full-blooded relationship isn’t everything,” I say, thinking of my parents and how they had cut me off, refusing to take my calls after I moved in with someone of a different religion and color. Pain lances through me at the thought of seeing them soon and getting the full brunt of the judgement and their rebuke.
Cameron rolls over and sits up. His normally sweet face scrunches and his lips quiver. “You knew. Justice knew. And you didn’t tell me? Do my brothers know?”
Honesty is best, so I tell him the truth. “I don’t know, sweetie.”
Cameron drops back on the bed. Placing his hands under his head, he stares up at the ceiling, more ridged than Justice had been. “I didn’t tell them I found the certificates in Justice’s closet when I got your t-shirt this morning. I only looked at them when I got to school.” His small chest hitches as wipes away his tears. “I got so mad...”
I go to place a hand on his arm. He rolls away, shutting himself off.
I recognize, as I had in Justice, Cam’s body language says “stay away.”
Inadequacy overwhelms me. I have no idea what to say or do to make it all better.
Lilli was right. I wouldn’t have made a good mother.