"Is this distance okay between us?" by Addison Long

Fiction - Grapevine, Winter 24/25 Issue

I never wanted to play the guitar. I was more of an arts and crafts kid. My father was a woodworker, and I would spend my summer afternoons in the garage watching him work. By the age of ten, I was right there next to him, making little lopsided birds and mini versions of household objects. By my junior year of high school, I was nearly an expert, navigating each piece of wood like I was an experienced sailor and my dad was the captain passing on his ship to me. And then my father retired. I quickly ran out of wood to take my creativity out on, since he refused to buy more. So my friend took me thrifting in case we found anything. I doubted we would, but I went along with it because I just needed to get out of that crowded workshop. There, I found it. That antique guitar, made of dark mahogany, the messy glue visible where the neck met the body. It infuriated me. I brought it back to the workshop to fix it up.

It only took a few days. I sanded off the old glue and straightened out the neck. It was still a beautifully kept piece of wood, and I couldn’t stop admiring it. The next day, I went out again and bought another old guitar. This one didn’t have any problems, it was just ridiculously beautiful. Who would ever give this up? Over the final months of the school year, I was rarely home. I was out shopping, scouring every antique shop and thrift store in the city looking for more guitars. My parents were worried and tried to limit my spending. But I had a one track mind, hiding money under my mattress and selling my old wooden creations. The music stores got sick of me since I couldn’t afford the guitars they had but would come nearly every day to admire them. Such amazing art. Guitars decorated the walls of my room, and then the walls of my home. My parents hounded me to at least learn the instrument if I was going to buy so many. I wasn’t interested. All I wanted to do was stare at them and admire the craftsmanship.

When I moved out for college, I could only take a few with me. Among those was the first one I bought. I hung it above my bed, a reminder of my old hobby I could no longer afford, a reminder of my home. I worried that my parents would get rid of the wooden wonders I spent so long collecting, but when I went back for Christmas, they were all there. College kept my mind off of the guitars, busy teaching me composition and the best materials to build an up-scale home. But I never truly forgot. And one day, when I was out getting lunch after calculus, I happened upon a boy. He was sitting on a bench, skin the familiar color of mahogany wood, long hair pulled back. Plucking at a guitar with the paint chipping off. He noticed me staring and smiled. He asked about guitars, and I, fumbling over my words, said I was a collector of antiques. His smile grew wider, more genuine, and asked how long I’d been playing. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I never even strummed a single string. He gave me a time and place on a napkin from the nearby coffee shop and said we should play together.

When I got back to my dorm, I took down that guitar and sat on my bed, placing the wrinkled, yellowing book from the city’s library on my desk. It was time to finally put this art to its proper use.