Done for the day, I took a long hot shower then sat on the edge of my bed and picked it up with sure hands. I had found it days earlier, buried in the back of my closet, behind spreadsheets printed for meetings that never mattered and suits I wore like armor. I hadn’t touched it in so long I’d almost convinced myself I never really loved music in the first place—that it had just been a phase, something I outgrew like bad hair and cheap beer.
But sometime this week, between fixing Ma’s sink and making sure she ate dinner, I pulled it out.
My fingers gently tested the strings. They bit back at first—rusty, stiff, unfamiliar. I almost stopped. Almost shoved it back where it belonged.
Instead, I played.
Quietly. Carefully. Like the house might remember.
The sound filled the room in a way nothing else ever has. Not Boston. Not glass offices or catered gin cocktails or networking dinners where everyone smiled too wide and pretended they liked each other. Not the version of me that learned how to tan just enough, highlight just enough, say just enough of the right things to look like the perfect man on paper.
That guy faded with every note.
The room blurred.
And suddenly I wasn’t here anymore.
I was twenty-one again. On a low stage with bad lighting and a borrowed amp that buzzed if I moved wrong. My bass slung low, heart pounding, crowd loud and drunk and alive.
And Erin was right there.
Front row. Always front row.
She beamed at me like I was already someone. Like she believed in me before I’d figured out how to believe in myself. Her eyes locked on mine like the rest of the room didn’t exist, like we were sharing a secret just for us.
She was my first real love. My first girlfriend. The first girl who ever made me feel chosen.
And the first one who wanted forever before I even knew who I was.
By the time I graduated, she was talking rings. Houses. Fences. Babies. A life mapped out so clearly it terrified me.
I was twenty-two. I didn’t have a job. Didn’t have a dollar to my name. I loved music and freedom and possibility. She wanted mortgages and diapers and certainty.
So we broke.
Clean. Brutal. Final.
I hadn’t thought of her in years.
Until the guitar brought her back like she’d never left.
“I heard you,” Ma said softly from the hallway.
I hadn’t even noticed I was still playing.
She stood there a second, watching me like she didn’t want to spook the moment. “You sounded like yourself again.”
I swallowed hard.
Before I could say anything, she disappeared into the kitchen and came back holding something.
An acoustic guitar. Wooden. Warm. Worn in the right places. No amp. No noise. Just strings and soul.
“I saw it at the secondhand shop,” she said. “I figured… sometimes it’s good to have something that doesn’t need permission to be heard.”
My chest tightened.
“Thanks, Ma,” I managed, standing to hug her. “I mean it.”
