Dear Fang

Chapter X

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”

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“Mom, can you teach me to play the guitar?”

“You’re too young, honey. Maybe when you’re older.”

As you can probably guess, I had been pretty stubborn in insisting that I was absolutely not too young to play the guitar. At which point my mom threw up her hands and agreed to teach me how to play...

It had been years since I had last played the guitar. After my mother had passed, my previously obsessive guitar playing had faced a long drought. In fact, It had only been recently that I had picked up the guitar again. Somewhere between retuning the guitar every five minutes and enduring a dead high e string, I decided it was time to get up off my ass and buy a new guitar.

“Dreadnought or parlour size?” The bored looking middle aged man behind the counter enquired, his face otherwise encouraging me to leave and let him resume his nap. I had half of a mind to go off on a rant about respecting the music, but I decided against it. Those who weren’t one with music could never see it. Averting my thoughts, I looked at the racks in front of me. After a brief glance at the jumbo and parlour size guitars, I decided against them.

“Dreadnought.” I closely scrutinized all of the dreadnought acoustics hanging up on the display. One immediately caught my eye.“Can I see that one?” I pointed to a beautiful sunburst guitar with a cutaway, feeling myself fall in love. The man behind the register looked up to where I was pointing and heaved a great sigh.

“Let me get the ladder,” he grunted, ungraciously pulling himself up. Sighing again, he made his way to a door which said ‘staff only.’ But before he could make it to the room, another man came out of the door, hauling a ladder.

“Don’t worry about it, Dave, I got this one. You can head on home.”

For once, the fat middle aged man didn’t sigh. With a kiss ass grin, he shoved on his coat.

“Thanks Z. See ya tomorrow.” Without giving the other man time to answer, the fat little man vanished out the door. What a fuck.

“Alright, miss. A dreadnought?” the other man said, his back to me.

I couldn’t see his face. Well, really I couldn’t see anything except for the fact that he was freakishly tall. Six foot four or five, maybe? He set the ladder on the floor and hoisted himself up.

I nodded, “ yeah.”

“Which one, ma’am?”

I pointed to the sunburst guitar that had stolen my heart, then realized that he couldn’t see me.

“The sunburst electric-acoustic one with the cutaway--Uh I think it’s a Taylor.” I floundered, hoping he would turn towards me so he could see where I was pointing. But it seems he had not trouble understanding what I was describing.

“Ah,” he sounded delighted, “good choice, miss.” He carefully brought it down and turned, lifting the guitar onto the counter. It was truly gorgeous. Spruce topped, and cut impeccably. My fingers ached to hold it.

“May I test it out?” I asked, not taking my eyes off of the guitar. It was made for me, I knew it. When it was gently shoved towards me, I grabbed it and started to strum, a few chords. Oh goodness, it sounded divine. The beautiful sound rung out, reverberating against the walls.

“I’ll take it,” I said--well exclaimed. In my defence, I was pretty damn excited about playing my new guitar. I gingerly placed it back on the counter and pulled out my wallet from my coat pocket.