10. Josiah #2
My body went still.
I’d seen beauty before. Plenty of it. Women who knew they were beautiful and had every right to.
But this was different. This was beauty with work in its hands.
Beauty that didn’t need to announce itself, because it was busy tending to somebody else.
Celeste stood behind that elder with her shoulders relaxed, her face focused, her lips moving as she spoke low enough that the woman had to lean into it.
She wasn’t performing care. She was giving it like it belonged to her.
Part. Oil. Massage. Smooth.
Her hands had rhythm. Not rushed. Not careless. Not salon-fast. She touched that woman’s head like there was memory there. Like scalp and silver hair deserved reverence. Like dignity could be restored with a comb, a towel, and hands that understood tenderness as ministry.
The elder’s eyes closed.
Celeste’s mouth lifted.
Something in my chest pulled so hard I had to look down at my own hands.
“Mm,” he said.
I didn’t ask what that meant.
I already knew.
Juice leaned closer, voice lower than usual. “She got you, huh?”
I watched Celeste finish one braid, smoothing the end with her fingers before tying it with a satin band.
The elder reached up and patted her hand, and Celeste bent to kiss the top of her head.
The kiss wasn’t dramatic. Nobody clapped.
No music swelled. But it put a lump in my throat because tenderness like that was rare.
The honest version. The version that showed up when no money changed hands, and nobody with influence was watching.
“She has my attention,” I said.
Juice smiled, but he didn’t joke.
Good.
Because if he had, I might’ve had to repent later.
Celeste lifted a mirror so the elder could see herself.
The woman said something that made Celeste laugh, and the sound traveled across the room like light finding a crack under a door.
I felt it in the center of me. Not in a way that made me want to rush her.
In a way that made me want to go back to God with her name in my mouth and my pride on the floor.
Lord, give me patience.
Because my flesh saw her and wanted to stand near her.
My spirit saw her and wanted permission.
There was a difference.
I had enough sense to know wanting a woman was easy.
Reverencing her life took discipline. Desire could pull up fast, loud, arrogant, smelling like cologne and bad decisions.
Love moved differently. Love paid attention.
Love asked what grief needed before it asked what a body wanted.
Love didn’t throw a man’s ego at a woman’s wounds and expect her to call it healing.
I leaned back in my chair, watching her braid another elder’s hair while my grandfather studied me with a knowing in his eyes that made me feel exposed and grateful at the same time.
Granddaddy said, “You took her to the Lord?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You gon’ keep checking in with Him?”
“Every step.”
“Good. Because a woman like that ain’t a hallway. She a house. You don’t run through her. You learn where to take your shoes off.”
Juice muttered, “Whew.”
I looked at Granddaddy, and for a second, I couldn’t speak.
He had given me a lot of things over the years. Wire cutters. Work gloves. Warnings. Lessons about current and voltage. But that right there felt like inheritance too. A man could pass down tools and still leave his son empty. Granddaddy passed down ways to handle what had power.
And Celeste had power.
Not loud. Not threatening. Hers was steadier. It lived in the way elders relaxed beneath her hands, the way children gathered around her, the way a room seemed to breathe easier when she started moving through it with purpose.
I looked toward the activity room once more.
She glanced up then.
Our eyes met.
I didn’t wave. Didn’t move toward her. Didn’t put her on display. I just let her see that I saw her.
All of her.
The woman with the guarded heart. The mother with a house full of children. The widow still learning how to stand in sunlight without apologizing to the dark. The stylist with oil on her palms, laughter in her throat, and care moving through her fingers like something she’d been raised to give.
Her hand paused in the elder’s hair for half a breath before she looked back down.
Granddaddy laughed under his breath. “Boy.”
I looked away, but it was too late.
The old man had me.
By the time we got ready to leave Rosehaven, the sun had shifted lower, throwing amber across the lobby floor.
Granddaddy had fussed at the nurse, forgiven the nurse, asked Juice if he had gained weight, accused Mr. Wallace of cheating, and told me three times to stop standing so tall because I was making the room look unfinished.
I bent to hug him, careful of the blanket and the tender places time had left in his body. His hand gripped the back of my neck with surprising strength.
“Don’t play with that woman,” he said near my ear.
“I won’t.”
“And don’t let fear make you act noble when God telling you to move.”
That one made me pull back and look at him.
His eyes were wet, but his mouth stayed firm. “Patience ain’t cowardice. But hiding ain’t patience either.”
I nodded, the weight of it pressing behind my ribs. “Yes, sir.”
He patted my cheek once, the same way he had when I was little and trying too hard not to cry. “Go on then.”
I stood and turned.
Celeste was across the room, helping Mr. Clarence put cards back into a box. Her head lifted as if something in her knew I was looking. Our eyes caught, and the room held its breath around us for one suspended second.
My chest remembered last night.
My spirit remembered what I had already placed before God.
I gave her a small nod, respectful enough for public, honest enough for her to feel it.
She looked down first, but she smiled before she did.
I left with that smile burning under my skin like a current I had no business touching without permission.
At the front desk, I stopped beside Tasha. “Can I ask a favor?”
She looked up from her computer. “Sure.”
“Ms. Coleman is still here. When she leaves, can somebody walk her to her car?” Tasha’s brows rose. I kept my voice even. “She’ll probably say she’s fine. She seems like that. But it’ll be dark soon, and I’d appreciate knowing she got out safely.”
Tasha’s smile softened in a way that told me she understood more than I’d said. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Thank you. And if you don’t mind, ask her to let somebody know when she makes it home.”
“Somebody?” she asked.
I gave her a look.
She laughed softly. “I got it.”
Juice waited until we were outside before he opened his mouth.
“That was slick.”
“It wasn’t slick.”
“It was slick with church shoes on.”
I unlocked my truck. “It was consideration.”
“It was you doing all this protecting from a distance and trying not to scare the woman. I respect it. I’m still going to clown you though.”
“Get in the truck.”
He grinned and got in.
I sat behind the wheel for a second before starting the engine. Rosehaven glowed behind us, windows catching the late light. Somewhere inside, Celeste was still giving pieces of herself away with oil, cards, peppermints, laughter, and hands that made elders feel remembered.
I bowed my head right there in the parking lot.
“God, keep me from rushing what You’re growing.
Keep me from shrinking back when You tell me to be brave.
Give me enough wisdom to know the difference between patience and fear.
Give me enough humility to remember she had a whole life before I showed up.
And give me enough self-control not to let my want move faster than her peace. Amen.”
Juice didn’t say anything.
For once, he let that moment ride.
Later that evening
I pulled up to Celestial Crowns later than I’d planned.
The streetlights had started blinking awake along DePriest, one by one, throwing gold across the damp pavement.
The shop’s front windows reflected passing headlights and the neon sign from the nail salon next door.
Inside, the front lights glowed warm, but the back half still held the evidence of repair.
Drop cloths. Labeled wires. Open wall. My crew had left earlier after finishing what they could, and I’d come back to check the panel, review the circuit separation, and make sure nothing had shifted before inspection.
That was what I told myself.
It was true.
It just wasn’t the whole truth.
I wanted to see her.
I walked in with my tool bag in one hand and my restraint in the other.
Celeste stood near the front desk, sorting appointment cards into a small acrylic holder.
She had changed since Rosehaven. Black jumpsuit now.
Gold hoops still there. Locs half pinned, half spilling over one shoulder.
She looked good enough to make a man forget every safety protocol he’d ever learned, but her face gave me pause before attraction could get comfortable.
Something was off.
She looked up when the bell chimed, and the smile she gave me was there, but it didn’t reach all the places it had reached last night. Her eyes were careful. Her shoulders held tension. Her fingers kept touching the same stack of cards like she needed something to do.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
I stepped in and let the door close behind me. The shop smelled like holding spray, citrus cleaner, and the faint sweetness of whatever oil she used in her locs. Music played low from a speaker near the front, an old R&B song almost swallowed by the hum of the refrigerator in the break room.
“I’m sorry I’m later than I said,” I told her. “I was with my granddaddy at Rosehaven longer than I planned.”
“I saw.”
“I saw you too.” That put color in her face, but it faded almost as quickly as it came. I set my tool bag down near the counter. “I didn’t want to interrupt what you were doing.”
“You wouldn’t have been interrupting.”
“Yes, I would’ve.” Her fingers stilled. I held her gaze. “What you were doing mattered. I wasn’t going to make it about me.”