Nearly freezing your fucking hands off really puts a damper on your guitar playing prowess. For the first two days after the accident, my fingers throbbed and ached so badly that I could barely sleep. The only thing that got me through the pain was Ruby distracting me as best she could.

She was really good at distracting me.

But after the initial pain wore off, the bandages were just annoying. I couldn't get them wet. It was a pain in the ass to go to the bathroom. And the white cloth covering my hands seemed to make them even more enticing for Ginger's kamikaze attacks.

But the one positive thing about not being able to use my hands was that it gave me a lot of time to think. And some of the thoughts I was thinking about my plan were not all that proud.

On the fifth day after the accident, Gabe stopped by with some gadget he'd seen on TV that was supposed to help people grip stuff. "Look, it's like you have a bionic arm," he crowed, looking quite pleased with himself.

I grinned. "This is actually kind of cool," I said. "Wish I could play the guitar with it, but..."

"That'll come back, dude," he said, and his voice was choked with more emotion than I'd heard from my brother in a long while.

I swallowed. "Hey man, I need to tell you something. It was supposed to be a big surprise and shit, but I got a rather massive sign from above that that was the wrong way to go about it," I said, lifting my bandaged hands.

Gabe furrowed his brow. His arm was in a soft cast now and the two of us with our bandages looked more similar than we every had before. "So what do you want to tell me?" he asked,

"Well, more show you." I gestured for him to follow me to my room where I got down on my knees and clumsily pulled the box out from under my bed.

"That's the box," he said immediately. "The one Ruby brought over and you wouldn't tell me what it was."

"I always knew you're smarter than you looked," I teased.

He leaned over and peered inside. "Tapes?"

"Yeah. Pop one in to the player there. I'd do it myself but..." I waved my hands.

His curiosity was killing him, I could tell. He grabbed a tape at random and slid it into the tape deck, then pressed play.

We both sat back on our heels as the sound of Gid's guitar filled the room. "Is that - ?"

"Yeah."

He listened, his eyes strangely bright as Gid's voice rang out. I hummed along without thinking.

"Where'd these come from?" Gabe said, pressing stop and reaching into the box to find another one.

"Gideon gave them to Ruby for safekeeping," I told him. "They were very close, actually."

Gabe blinked. "I don't think I knew that."

I nodded. "There were a lot of things I didn't know about Gid. I thought he was like...mine, you know? I treated him like some kind of human crutch to prop me up, but now that he's gone I realized I never really got around to finding out who he really is. Was." I swallowed. "Like I'll never know why he gave this box to Ruby instead of a family member, or geez, why he even thought he had to give it away at all. Why didn't he want to make a record, hell he had four nephews with insane industry connections. We could have done something with this."

Gabe was listening, tracing the outline of the box. "Sometimes people do things that don't make sense," he said, and I got the feeling he was repeating something that had been said to him a million times before.

"I re-recorded them," I blurted.

He turned to glare at me. "What?"

I nodded, shame filling my chest. "I thought I knew what Gid should have done, so I went ahead and did it."

His face clouded. "Jonah, what the fuck?"

"I know. I arranged a show and everything. That's where Ruby and I were headed last Saturday night. But right before we were set to go, I started feeling really hesitant, and you know me, I never hesitate about anything." He nodded so fast it was a wonder he didn't get whiplash. "So that's when I started to wonder if I was making a mistake thinking I should make money off this, even if I was calling it a tribute record. Because it wasn't really about Gid, was it?"

Gabe blinked slowly. "Geez dude," he finally said. "I'm honestly kind of impressed."

"Fuck you," I said with a grin.

"Maybe Ruby is good for you."

"She is," I agreed.

He looked at the box again. "I think you're right about not selling these songs. But I don't think that means you can't play them."

I was confused. "What do you mean?"

The corner of his mouth tugged up. "You're getting there, Jonah. We're gonna make a non-asshole out of you yet. I know you look at music like it's your job, but there are other reasons for playing than just making money, you know. You can make it about Gid instead." He stood up and patted my shoulder. "I have faith in you."

I looked at my brother. "I think that's the first time you've ever said something like that to me."

He shrugged. "Yeah, well, don't make me feel like a jackass for saying it, okay?"