The room felt like it tilted.
My hands started shaking, not dramatically, just an uncontrollable tremor that made my fingers twitch as if they wanted to grab and fix and rewind time. Heat rushed into my face, then drained, leaving me cold and lightheaded.
“Tyler,” I managed, and my voice didn’t sound like mine. It sounded thin. Strained. “Why did you do this?”
He stood proud, chin up, shoulders squared. No fear. No apology. His eyes were bright, almost excited, like he’d completed a mission and expected applause.
Behind him, in the doorway, Derek stood frozen.
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.”
My head snapped toward Derek.
He flinched like the words physically struck him.
“You told him what?” I said.
Derek’s face flushed red so fast it looked like a wave of heat moving under his skin. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
“I didn’t tell him to… do that,” he stammered. “I just said, you know, craftsmanship. Durability. Like, real quality control. Those things are built to last.”
Tyler piped up immediately, eager. “You said Uncle Marcus probably has a cheap one. You said it at breakfast. You said he wastes money on fake stuff.”
Derek’s eyes widened, pleading, like he wanted Tyler to stop talking.
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