“You always bring that?” he asks.
“Almost,” I say. “Keeps me out of trouble.”
He smiles faintly. “Debatable.”
I snort and open the case, running my hand over the familiar wood before lifting the guitar into my lap.
The first chord rings warm and steady in the room. I don’t even think about what I’m playing. My fingers fall into patterns I’ve known for years.
Ollie goes still.
“That one,” he says quietly.
I glance up. “Yeah.”
He swallows. “You never played it for me.”
I didn’t. I couldn’t. For years it was too raw, too sharp. It belonged to absence, to silence, to the shape of him missing from my life.
“You weren’t there,” I say simply.
His gaze drops. “I know.”
Silence stretches, and I let it.
Then he says, almost shy, “I’ve been playing again.”
That surprises me. “You have?”
He nods. “Recently.”
“Why?”
He hesitates. “Because it was something that used to be… ours.”
The words hit me harder than I expect. “Get it,” I say.
He blinks. “What?”
“Your guitar.”
He studies my face, like he’s trying to decide if this is a test. Then he pushes up and disappears down the hall.
When he comes back, he’s holding an acoustic I’ve never seen before. It’s good quality. Not flashy, but solid.
“New?” I ask.
He nods. “A couple of months.”
He sits across from me, shifting awkwardly like he’s suddenly self-conscious.
“Play,” I say.
He exhales and strums. The opening of “My Stupid Heart” fills the room.
It hits differently when he plays it. Not just because he knows exactly where the weight of each chord sits. Not just because his hands are bigger, rougher, shaped by a different kind of discipline. But because he knows what the song is.
He knows it’s him. He knows it’s what I bled into music when I couldn’t speak.