It’s an acoustic guitar, the one Mom and Dad gave me for Christmas when I was in seventh grade. Up until then, I’d rented one from school. But I loved playing so much that my parents bought me my own.
It was a big deal considering we really had no money growing up. Hell, my brothers and I only recently paid off the mountain of debt my parents left when they died.
My throat closes in all over again when I think about all the sacrifices they made to give us the best childhood ever.
I wish they were still around.
The force of that desire, the weight of it, knocks the wind out of me.
This is why I don’t revisit the past.
This is why I don’t play the damn guitar anymore.
Before the accident, I never went anywhere without this guitar. That’s why I had it with me the night I played Taylor Swift for Billie. I loved showing off, playing songs by ear. She was so freakingdelightedthat I’d even try to learn what she liked.
The skin on my face feels tight from tears that have already dried. A voice in my head repeats over and over again that I should put the guitar back down. What business do I have playing music? I’m a grown-ass adult. I got things to do. Sleep to catch up on. Feelings to avoid.
Only I’m not trying to avoid them anymore. I’m trying to feel them, sit with them without dying, and I think this guitar might help me do that.
Ain’t gonna be any sleep for me tonight anyway.
Maybe…hell, maybe playing will also help me capture some of that joy, that exhilaration, I saw on Billie’s face when she was racing. I can’t stop thinking about it. The good’s gotta come with the bad, right? Right now, all I’m feeling is shitty stuff. Grief and sorrow and regret. But there’s two sides to every coin.
What if joy’s waiting for me on the other side of this valley of awfulness?
So before I can talk myself out of it, I tuck the guitar under my arm and head outside. There’s a full moon tonight, and the gravel drive is lit up enough for me to see across the yard.
My knees crack as I sit on the step by the door and settle the guitar on my lap. Gliding my fingers along the dusty strings—by some miracle, all six are still there—emotion clogs my throat. I realize I’ve already curled my body around the guitar the way I did when I would play, left hand on the neck, right arm draped over the front of the instrument. I’m leaning forward a little, just enough so I can see the strings.
Muscle memory is a weird fucking thing.
The knife in my pocket digs into my thigh. I suddenly remember that time Mom lost her wedding ring. Dad used his knife to cut a length of kitchen twine and tied it in a little circle before slipping it onto her finger.
Touching my fingertips to the strings, I hesitate. What if this just makes the grief worse by unleashing…I don’t know, memories that will kill me to revisit?
Today, I faced down a five-hundred-pound bull, had several near misses with a huge rattler that followed me around everywhere, and dodged a literal bullet when Colt’s shotgun misfired.
And yetplaying a guitaris the thing that scares the living daylight out of me.
Which means I gotta play, right? Otherwise this will haunt me too—the knowledge that I was too chickenshit to pick out a single song.
I brush my fingers over the strings, and I’m shocked when I let out a bark of laughter. The guitar is horribly out of tune.
I take a minute to tune the strings as best as I can. Years of heat and humidity have clearly done a number on my instrument.
I’m taken aback by the knowledgeable way my fingers turn the knobs that tighten the strings. It’s like I’ve been possessed by the ghost of my middle school music teacher, Mr. Martinez, whotaught me how to tune my guitar. The experience of not knowing how to do something, but still doing it, is a mind fuck.
I strum the strings. They need to be replaced, but I get them to a good enough place to play.
My fingers slow. I adjust my leg, straightening my knee a little.
Next thing I know, I’m playing a song.
My whole body rises on a tide offeelingthat has goose bumps breaking out on my arms when I realize?—
Hell, it’s a Brooks & Dunn song. Alovesong—“Ain’t Nothing ’Bout You.”
Brooks & Dunn was Garrett Luck’s favorite band. Mom played their music a lot, too, on the little portable speaker she kept on the windowsill in the kitchen. She was always shimmying to one country song or another, with regular appearances by Fleetwood Mac, Carole King, and Bonnie Raitt interspersed between Tim McGraw and Trisha Yearwood.
