Page 43 of Catcher

I don’t turn around right away, just flick ash into the yard. “You still ugly?” I mutter.

He snorts as his boots thud across the porch until he stops beside me, shoulder bumping mine once in that quiet way brothers do instead of hugging each other like damn normal people, and I glance over at him, finally.

Gray is starting to touch his temples. More lines are around his eyes. Still built solid from years of working with his hands. Still the same guy who used to bloody my nose, then help me hide it from Mom afterward.

He notices me looking. “What?”

“You got old.”

“Says the asshole with enough scars to look like a road map.”

Fair.

I grunt and take another drag. For a while, we stand there listening to the wind move through the trees. It’s easy. I figured coming back here would feel like trying to breathe underwater. Some of it does, but not this part. Not standing beside my brother while the world goes quiet around us.

Dean hooks a thumb toward the far end of the porch. “Still got ’em.”

My eyes track over. Two acoustic guitars sit against the wall near the old porch swing. My chest tightens instantly.

Jesus Christ.

I haven’t touched one in years.

Dad taught both of us when we were kids. Cheap guitars, callused fingers, country songs, and old rock played badly until we finally learned enough chords to fake our way through them.

Dean walks over and grabs one, tossing me a look over his shoulder. “Don’t be a bitch about it.”

“I ain’t touched one since…” I trail off.

Hannah loved hearing me play. She used to sit cross-legged on the couch, smiling while I butchered old Lynyrd Skynyrd songs in our living room. After she died, I put the guitar away, and never opened the case again.

Dean’s expression shifts slightly. No pity. Just understanding.

He grabs the second guitar and walks back over before shoving it toward me. The wood settles heavy in my hands, but familiar, as if picking up a piece of another life.

I stare down at it for a while. My thumb brushes over old scratches near the sound hole. I remember putting those there when I was sixteen. The memory hits low and mean.

“You gonna hold it all night or play the damn thing?” Dean asks quietly.

I sink into one of the porch chairs with a grunt. Wood creaks beneath my weight. Dean sits beside me and absently starts strumming something soft in an easy rhythm. Then I recognize it… “Simple Man.”

Of course, it’s that damn song. I huff a humorless laugh. “You’re an asshole.”

“Probably.”

The notes drift out into the yard slowly and steadily. I sit there listening for a while, a cigarette burning between my fingers while memories crawl all over me whether I want them to or not, of Dad teaching us chords in the garage, and Mom yelling through the screen door that dinner was getting cold.

Hannah would curl against me on the couch while I played quietly for her after work. The pale yellow nursery walls, and tiny socks folded neatly in a dresser drawer. I close my eyes briefly while the weight of the guitar settles heavily across my thigh. Dean doesn’t push or look at me. He just keeps playing.

Finally, before I can talk myself out of it, my fingers move, clumsy at first. The strings bite at calluses that haven’t existed in years, but muscle memory comes back slowly. I pick up the rhythm beneath his.

I feel the weight of Dean’s stare, but he never says a word.

Good.

Because if he does, I might stop.

The porch fills with music that sounds old and worn around the edges. Two grown men carrying ghosts through guitar strings under a Midwest sky. The sound drifts out across the yard toward the dark fields beyond the fence. I stare straight ahead while I play because looking anywhere else feels dangerous.