Page 51 of Rebel Moon

“That’s too bad,” he said.

“Did you write today?” I asked, ignoring him and gesturing toward his guitar.

“Yeah, I’ve been working on a song about my grandfather.”

“Oh, sing it for me?”

“It’s still a work in progress, but I’ll sing you what I have. Imagine this with Jack’s voice, not mine.”

“I like your voice.” He didn’t have Jack’s range or tone, but it was pleasant to me.

“Here goes.”

He bent his head over the strings a moment before he started to play. I’d seen him do it on stage a hundred times, and it always made me wonder what he thought about in that breath before the first note.

He started to sing.

He told me to kiss a girl under the full moon

But only if I meant to make her swoon

When the last note died, he didn’t look up right away. He kept his hand flat on the strings, stilling them. “Still figuring out the rest.”

“It’s really good,” I said.

“I don’t know what it is about this place, but I’ve been thinking about Gramps a lot. All these lessons he taught me, and how I turned them into rituals.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“You must think I’m not quite right in the head.”

I laughed. “I thought that a time or two. Especially the one about not kissing a woman under a full moon. Where did that come from?”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Come on, tell me.”

“I kissed a girl under a full moon when I was seventeen. Then her father came after me with his shotgun.”

My mouth dropped open. “For real?”

“Yep. I figured it was Gramps up in heaven, reminding me of the rules.”

I pressed my fingers against my mouth to keep from laughing again. “No way.”

He gave me a rueful smile. “I know.”

“I can tell you what your rituals are,” I said.

“Yeah?”

I rattled them off.

By the end, he was staring at me. “I didn’t realize it was so obvious.”

“Maybe not to everyone. But to me, yes.” I notice everything about you.

“I built a whole life out of Gramps’ sayings. Not the wisdom he actually meant—I turned them into superstitions. Told myself it was just something a musician did. Everybody’s got their thing, especially about performances.” He shook his head. “But that’s not what they were.”