4. Josiah
Juice waited until we were good and gone from Celestial Crowns before he started running his mouth.
I knew it was coming. My cousin had been too quiet while we were inside the shop, and quiet on Juice meant he was collecting evidence.
He did that often. He’d let people think he was just joking around, let them get comfortable, then come back later with a whole case file and a closing argument nobody asked for.
I eased onto Langston Avenue with one hand on the wheel and the other resting near the console.
Late afternoon traffic had Self Ridge moving like it had nowhere to be and too many people trying to get there.
Cars stacked at the light. A man stood outside the gas station, selling cold waters from a cooler.
Two boys cut across a corner lot on bikes, school shirts untucked, laughing like nobody had told them life would try them soon enough.
Juice leaned back in the passenger seat with that stupid grin already on his face.
I didn’t look at him. “Whatever you got to say, keep it respectful.”
He laughed. “You asking for respect already means I’m right.”
“It means I know you.”
“Same thing.” He turned toward me. “So we not gon’ talk about how you walked into that lady’s salon and got real still?”
“I was looking at the setup.”
“You were looking at the setup, the owner, them locs, them hips, them lips, them eyes, and whatever she had on, smelling like somebody’s grandma made a vanilla cake and opened every window in the house.”
I glanced over at him. “You doing inventory?”
“Nah, you did. I just watched your face submit the report.”
I shook my head and kept driving.
Juice laughed because silence never discouraged him. If anything, it made him believe he was making progress. “Siah, you stood in that shop like the breaker box personally introduced you to your future.”
“She’s a client.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“A widow.”
“I know.”
“A mother of five.”
“I heard.”
“Her salon has real electrical issues.”
“And you’re going to fix them.” Juice lifted one shoulder. “You can keep naming responsible facts. It still doesn’t change the way Celeste Coleman had your attention.”
He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing me admit it out loud, but he wasn’t wrong.
Some women pulled attention because they asked for it.
Celeste hadn’t done that. She hadn’t flirted, posed, or tried to make the room revolve around her.
She’d done the opposite. She’d tried to make herself smaller than the situation, tried to be calm enough for everybody else not to worry. That was what caught me first.
Not just her face, though her face was enough to make a man lose his train of thought if he wasn’t watching himself.
Not just her long, red-and-brown locs, though I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t noticed them.
And not just her shape, though Celeste was voluptuous in a way a man noticed before his good sense could catch up.
Full hips. A grown woman’s waist. Curves sitting everywhere they were supposed to sit, making me tighten my hand around the wheel like the steering column had offended me.
Si, focus.
It was her mouth that almost got me.
Biggest, plumpest, juiciest lips I’d ever seen on a woman, and she kept pressing them together like she was trying to hold back every word she didn’t have room to say.
I made myself look at the road.
What stayed with me was the way she held herself while bad news moved through the room. She was scared. I saw that. But she didn’t unravel. She listened. Asked questions. Nodded when she needed to. Thanked me after I told her half her shop needed to stay shut down.
That wasn’t nothing.
I’d seen grown men fall apart over a tripped breaker.
Celeste had looked at those dark stations like they held more than equipment. Shutting them down cost her something I couldn’t see yet.
“She handled herself,” I said.
Juice got quiet, which meant he was taking me seriously now. “Yeah, she did.”
“She was worried, but she listened. Didn’t get defensive. Didn’t rush me. Didn’t pretend the problem was smaller because she wanted it to be.”
“You like how she thinks.”
“I respect it.”
“You like it too.”
I stopped at the light on Cullen Boulevard and looked through the windshield.
The sun caught the street sign, and for a second, I thought about how many names we passed every day without paying attention.
Langston. Cullen. Zora. Folks put history on street corners, and half the city still drove over it, trying to beat yellow lights.
Celeste had history in that shop. I didn’t know all of it, but I saw enough to know those walls had witnessed more than appointments. That place had been built with somebody’s hope, somebody’s money, somebody’s hands. Maybe Jamal’s hands. Maybe hers. Probably both.
“She looked tired,” I said.
Juice nodded once. “That woman looked like she been being strong so long it became unpaid labor.” I looked at him. He shrugged. “What? I read too.”
“Barely.”
“Don’t hate because I’m layered.”
The light turned green, and I drove.
For a few blocks, neither of us said anything.
I kept my eyes on the road, but my mind kept putting me back inside that salon.
Celeste standing near the front desk with her water bottle in her hand.
Celeste trying not to react when I told her the repair might take a week.
Celeste looking away when her sisters and Leilani started teasing her, embarrassed but not cold.
Celeste saying my name near the end, careful with it.
I’d noticed women before. I was single, not buried.
But I hadn’t felt my attention move like that in years.
Domonique had done more damage than I cared to admit.
Not because she broke my heart beyond repair.
I wasn’t giving her that much power. It was more that the whole situation made me distrust my own judgment for a while.
A man could survive betrayal and still hate that he hadn’t seen it sooner.
Celeste didn’t feel like a trap.
That was the issue.
She felt like a door I had no business touching yet.
Juice turned the purple, stuffed elephant over in his hands and studied me. “You ain’t denying it enough.”
“I noticed her,” I said.
He sat up. “Oh, we getting somewhere.”
“Relax.”
“No, sir. This is growth. I feel like I need to call Aunt Yolanda and tell her to warm up her intercessory voice.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’ve been waiting on a reason to be messy in a meaningful way.” I let out a short laugh. Juice grinned. “I’m serious, though. You haven’t been interested in anybody in a minute. You see fine women all the time and look at them like they invoice attachments.”
“Because I have work to do.”
“Work never stopped a man from having eyeballs.”
“My eyeballs work fine.”
“They sure did today.” I gave him a look. He held up both hands. “I’m just saying. You weren’t nasty with it. You weren’t doing too much. But you saw her. And she saw you seeing her too.”
That had me quiet again.
Because I thought she had.
Not in a bold way. Not like she was inviting anything.
But there were a few moments where her eyes caught mine and stayed before she pulled them back.
A second too long. A breath too honest. A quick glance down, then away, like she’d noticed something in me and didn’t want to admit it to herself either.
A moment like that could make a room feel smaller if a man wasn’t careful.
I was careful.
I had to be.
Her grief still had a seat in every room she entered. Her children still needed her steady. Her shop needed real work. The last thing she needed was a man confusing attraction with permission.
“Whatever I felt, I’m not acting stupid behind it,” I said.
Juice nodded. “I know. You got too much sense for that.”
“I’m grown enough to know attraction doesn’t give me rights.”
He looked at me for a second, then nodded again. “That’s why I said something. Because if you ever did step to her, you’d step right.”
“If.”
“Yeah, yeah. If.” He grinned. “Look at you, leaving the gate cracked.”