My brother-in-law.
Forty years old. Tall, broad-shouldered, always carrying himself with the easy confidence of a man who liked being the loudest voice in a room. He held a coffee cup halfway to his mouth. The steam rose in a thin curl. His face was white as paper.
He didn’t move. He didn’t speak.
The silence filled the living room, heavy and buzzing.
I knelt down and picked up the pieces of my guitar like I was gathering something fragile off a battlefield. The lacquered wood was splintered and sharp. A sliver bit into my thumb and I didn’t even feel it at first. The smell hit me, raw wood exposed, a clean, almost sweet scent that should have been beautiful and was suddenly obscene.
Eight thousand dollars in splinters.
Five years of saving.
Forty sessions.
Something irreplaceable.
I looked up at Tyler again, because I needed to make sense of it, and said, softer now, as if quietness could reach him, “Buddy… why?”
Tyler shrugged, still smiling. “Derek said real Gibsons are super tough. So I wanted to test if yours was real.”
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