9. Celeste
Friday Morning
By six forty-five Friday morning, my house had turned into a small nation with unstable leadership, missing socks, and a cereal crisis that somehow required my direct supervision.
The kitchen smelled like cinnamon waffles, hair oil, coffee, and the faint citrus cleaner JJ had used on the counters the night before because he was either growing into a responsible man or hiding something.
Skye sat sideways in her chair with one knee tucked beneath her, eating waffles.
Zuri stood at the island packing her lunch one grape at a time.
Maya leaned against the refrigerator in oversized sweats, sketchbook under one arm, face arranged into the dramatic exhaustion only fifteen-year-old girls and retired actresses could execute before seven in the morning.
Kayden hovered near the pantry with a bowl in his hand, tall, watchful, pretending he wasn’t watching me.
I moved between them with a coffee mug in one hand and a brush in the other, my robe tied crooked around my waist and my locs wrapped high in a scarf that had seen better days.
“Zuri, put the grapes in the container, not on trial. Skye, both feet under the table. Maya, your uniform shirt is in the dryer because you left it under three hoodies and a tote bag with paint pens in it. Kayden, don’t just stand in front of the pantry looking grown and suspicious. Eat.”
Kayden turned his head. “I’m not suspicious.”
“You’ve been standing there stirring that cereal like you’re waiting on it to testify.”
Skye giggled with syrup shining at the corner of her mouth.
Kayden gave her a look. “Eat your food.”
“I’m eating my food.”
“You eating like you got all day.”
“I’m savoring.”
Maya lifted her eyes from the refrigerator door. “She learned that word yesterday and hasn’t stopped using it.”
“I’m savoring my vocabulary too,” Skye said.
I pointed the brush toward her. “That vocabulary better savor itself into your shoes in the next ten minutes.”
JJ walked in wearing gray sweats, a Self Ridge State hoodie, and the familiar half-awake expression that still made him look like my baby. He kissed the top of my head as he passed me and reached for the coffee pot.
I blocked him with my elbow. “Absolutely not.”
“Mama Cee.”
“You don’t need coffee.”
“I’m twenty-one.”
“You’re twenty-one with finals and a bad habit of calling energy drinks hydration. Get orange juice.”
He looked wounded. “I’m an engineering student. Coffee is part of the major.”
“Then your department needs prayer.”
He laughed and reached for a glass. “Yes, ma’am.”
Then Zuri looked up from her grapes and ruined me. “Mama, what time did you get home last night?”
The brush in my hand paused halfway through Skye’s ponytail.
Maya’s pencil stopped for half a second, then started again with less commitment.
Kayden’s spoon stilled against his bowl.
JJ turned from the counter with his orange juice untouched in his hand, and the slow smile spreading across his face told me my oldest had already put two and two together and planned to enjoy watching me pretend the answer was zero.
Skye tried to look over her shoulder, and I gently turned her head back toward the front before her part came out shaped like a lightning bolt.
“Hold still,” I said.
Zuri blinked at me with innocent eyes that hadn’t been innocent a day in their life. “I’m just asking.”
“Uh-huh.”
Kayden crossed his arms. “You texted that you were leaving late, but you didn’t say how late.”
“I was at the shop.”
That wasn’t the whole truth, and the part I left out tugged at me before the sentence finished leaving my mouth.
Maya looked up slowly. “At the shop doing what?”
“Paperwork. Receipts. Electrical stuff.” I smoothed Skye’s hair down and wrapped the band around her ponytail. “Grown people things.”
Skye turned around again. “Was Mr. Brooks there?”
I closed my eyes for half a second.
Lord.
“Mr. Brooks is the electrician, Skye. He’s been at the shop because the shop has electrical problems.”
“But was he there last night?”
JJ leaned against the counter with his glass in hand, smiling like a grown man who had suddenly remembered he was still somebody’s nosy child. “Yeah, Mama Cee. Was Mr. Brooks there last night?”
I pointed the brush at him. “Don’t you have a class to be late to?”
“Not yet.”
“Then find one.”
His grin deepened.
Kayden didn’t grin. Kayden looked like somebody had asked him to guard the front gate of the kingdom with a butter knife and no backup. “Was he there?”
“Yes,” I said, reaching for the jar of edge control. “He was finishing work.”
Kayden’s stare sharpened. “Finishing work, or taking you somewhere?”
Zuri’s eyes widened. Maya’s pencil stopped again, but her expression stayed unreadable. Skye’s mouth dropped open in pure delight.
“Did Mama have a date?” Skye asked.
“No,” I said.
JJ sipped his orange juice, eyes dancing over the rim. “Sounded a little date-adjacent to me.”
“JJ.”
“What? I’m just observing.”
“You’re instigating.”
He shrugged. “Both can be true.”
Zuri looked between us. “I mean, if Mama did have a date, that’s okay, right?”
Maya lifted one shoulder. “As long as nobody tries to be weird at breakfast or call us a blended blessing.”
“Please don’t say blended blessing in my kitchen,” I said.
Skye kicked her feet under the table. “If Mama gets married again, can we have a baby brother?”
Every head turned toward her.
“What?” she asked. “I’m just saying. We got enough girls.”
Maya frowned. “I’m literally sitting right here.”
“I said what I said.”
JJ choked on his juice.
I pressed my fingers to my temple. “Nobody is having a baby brother. Nobody is getting married. Nobody is planning anything before school.”
Kayden’s jaw tightened. “That’s not funny.”
The laughter thinned around the edges.
I looked at him. My seventeen-year-old stood there in his uniform pants and white undershirt, shoulders broad, mouth hard, eyes carrying more alarm than the conversation deserved.
It would’ve been easy to fuss at him for doing too much.
He was doing too much, but beneath the attitude was fear wearing his father’s face.
“Kayden,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, I’m just saying. Y’all joking, but this is real.”
JJ lowered his glass. “Man, relax.”
“I am relaxed.”
“You standing by the pantry looking like you about to pat Mr. Brooks down for weapons and intentions.”
“I don’t know him.”
“You barely know half your teachers and still ask them for recommendation letters.”
Kayden glared at him. “That’s different.”
JJ pushed off the counter, still calm but no longer amused. “It’s different because you’re scared.”
Kayden’s face changed.
I stepped in before the kitchen became a battlefield. “Enough.”
Both of them looked at me.
I set the edge brush down and wiped my fingers on a towel. “I had dinner after work because I hadn’t eaten all day. That’s it.”
“With him?” Maya asked.
Her tone held more curiosity than judgment. The girls looked curious more than anything. Skye looked thrilled by the imagined baby brother. Zuri looked concerned, only because tension made her nervous. Maya looked like she was collecting material for later commentary.
“Yes,” I said.
Zuri’s mouth opened. “Like a date?”
“No.” The answer came too fast.
Too sharp.
Too guilty.
JJ’s smile faded into something gentler. Kayden heard it too. That little crack in my voice. The truth I had tried to outrun and brought into the kitchen on the bottom of my slippers.
I softened my voice. “It wasn’t a date. We were hungry. The shop ran late. We got food.”
JJ watched me the way his father used to. JJ set his glass down. “Mama Cee, nobody’s mad you ate.”
Kayden looked at him. “Speak for yourself.”
“I am, and I’m speaking with sense.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Then stop acting like Mama got caught sneaking in through a window.”
Kayden’s face tightened. “You don’t care?”
“I care that she’s happy.” JJ looked at me then, and the softness in his eyes nearly undid me. “Or trying to be.”
The kitchen went still again, but this time, the stillness had weight instead of shock.
I looked at my oldest son, at the man he was becoming, at the boy still tucked inside him somewhere with his daddy’s laugh and my stubbornness. “I’m good.”
Another lie. I wasn’t good. I was trying to be.
JJ’s brow lifted. “Mama Cee.”
I sighed. “I’m trying to be.”
His mouth curved with approval. “That’s better.”
Kayden picked up his bowl and carried it to the sink harder than necessary. “Just text us next time.”
“I did text.”
“Not the real update.”
My chest tightened.
His words stayed behind after he walked out of the kitchen, dragging his backpack from the chair near the hallway. Not the real update. His words stayed with me. But Kayden wasn’t my confessor. He was my son.
So, I packed lunches. I fixed bows. I signed a field trip form I should’ve signed two days earlier.
I told Maya her attitude needed breakfast. I told Skye her shoes were on the wrong feet.
I reminded Zuri that lip gloss wasn’t a personality.
I kissed every forehead I could reach and accepted Kayden’s cheek when he bent just enough to let me have it, though the stiffness in his shoulders told me he was still standing guard at a door no one had asked him to protect.
By seven thirty, the house emptied in stages until only the echo of them remained.
JJ paused on the porch, keys in hand, and looked back at me. “For real, Mama Cee. Don’t let Kayden make you feel bad for living.”
My eyes burned. “JJ.”
“I’m serious.” His gaze moved over my face, careful and older than I wanted it to be. “Daddy loved you. We know that. But he didn’t love you so you could spend the rest of your life proving it by being lonely.” The sentence reached somewhere I had been avoiding all morning.
I gripped the doorframe. “Go to class before I remember I can still ground you.”
He smiled, but sadness touched the edge of it. “Love you.”
“Love you more.”
When his car pulled away, the driveway looked too empty.
I stood there until the street swallowed the sound of his engine.