Page 71 of When Love Takes Root

She looked down at her plate, then smiled in a way that changed her whole face. “Flowers. Plants. Gardening. Anything I can put in soil and watch grow. I feel free when my hands are in dirt. I don’t have to perform there. I can just be. Watering, pruning, waiting.” She didn’t talk about gardening as a hobby. She talked about it like it gave her room to breathe.

“That fits you.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah. You have a way of making people feel cared for without making them feel handled. Your kids don’t just listen to you because you’re their mama. They trust how you love them. Your clients sit in your chair and put more than their hair in your hands. Even this shop feels like somebody prayed over it and meant it.”

She looked away, but not fast enough to hide the color warming her face.

“Your hands are gifted, Celeste. Anointed too. I can tell by how people sit in your chair and breathe easier.”

Her eyes came back to mine. “Thank you.”

“I mean it.”

“I know. That’s why I don’t know what to do with it.”

She looked down, but she didn’t run from the compliment. When she lifted her eyes again, they stayed on mine.

She wasn’t waiting for her turn to talk. She was listening. Fully. Folks got used to being wrong about me. Celeste wasn’t.

That changed the way I handled my own words.

She tilted her head a little. “How’d you get into electrical work?”

“Family first. Curiosity second.”

Her smile touched her eyes. “Family?”

“Yeah. My granddaddy was an electrician. My daddy too. Jeremiah Brooks could wire a house, fix half the church before Sunday service, and still have enough energy to fuss at me for taking apart Mama’s good lamp.”

Celeste laughed.

“I was the kid asking why about everything. Why the lights flickered during storms. Why copper carried current better than some other metals. Why a breaker tripped instead of letting the whole house burn down. Why magnets pulled some things and ignored others. I used to read science books at the kitchen table and draw little circuits on the back of church programs. Everybody thought I just wanted to fix stuff, but I wanted to understand what made things obey.”

Celeste set her drink down without taking another sip. “You were really into that?”

“Still am. Science made sense to me because it had order. You couldn’t sweettalk voltage. You couldn’t bully current. Power followed a path, and if that path was broken, overloaded, or poorly connected, something was going to tell on it eventually.”

She leaned in a little. “That’s actually beautiful.”

I smiled. “You calling electricity beautiful now?”

“I’m calling the way your mind works beautiful.”

The compliment hit deeper than she knew. She hadn’t noticed my hands or my business. She’d noticed my mind.

“My granddaddy taught my daddy the trade, and my daddy taught me. But Pops didn’t just teach me how to wire a building. He taught me to respect what I couldn’t see. Current. Heat. Pressure. A loose connection behind a wall can look harmless until it’s been burning for months. He used to say a man needed to pay attention to hidden things before they became emergencies.”

Celeste’s expression shifted, and I watched the words reach her. She didn’t blink fast or glance away. She sat with them, thumb resting near the salt on her glass, eyes steady on mine.

“That sounds bigger than electricity.”

“It is.”

She asked, “What did he teach you?”

I looked down at my hands. There were still faint marks near my knuckles from work, reminders of wire, tools, pressure, and years of reaching into places most folks avoided. My father’s hands had looked that way too. Scarred. Warm. Certain.