It felt as if no thoughts crossed his mind when a man stood from a desk in a carefully built room. It was an office in an apartment that connects to a living area off the side of a three-story building. His mind felt blank though he was taken to a wardrobe setting at the other end of the room. Harry reached out and opened the doors of the cabinet.
At first, all he stares upon is his more standard work suits. They were simplistic and just there in case he was called in late for work. It was all a bleak scene to look upon though he pushed the items away and noted the three objects hidden behind the clothing.
Two cases sit flush in the back of the cabinet when Harry reaches in to grab one. A small amplifier had sat in between the black cases. When the man took one guitar case and went back to his desk with it; He removed the item it had held and placed it on the scattered papers he had piled on his desk.
A sigh comes before the man has traveled back to the wardrobe and collected the other items he seems to be gathering.
It takes a good while to get where he's going with everything, and then he seems to be there; Sitting back in his roll-around chair with a bass in his hands. Harry Bright is trying to tune the bass as the amp flairs to life as he plays a note on the strings.
He never was much of a bass player, but something in him made him reminisces about something he couldn't touch on with anything else.
"No more carefree laughter...silence ever after.." The music was soft and quick as the man picked his tab with his fingers. He was still trying to figure out why the song was playing in his head.
"Walking through an empty house; Tears in my eyes...Here is where the story ends; This is goodbye."
Why was it ABBA?
Harry grew up on the coat tail of the phase and knew he had been around for the girls. The group he pushed further back into his mind than the guitar cases hidden away.
"Knowing me, knowing you; There is nothing we can do...Knowing me, knowing you; We just have to face it, this time we're through."
'I don't know what you want from me, Harry! Did you think we were going to just settle down and...live together!?'
His hands stopped having clasped the strings to silence the music he had been playing. "For christ's sake!" The man shouts and then can't help but chuckle at the realization. Even after all that time she was still there on his mind.
"Breaking up is never easy, I know, But I have to go...Knowing me, knowing you; It's the best I can do." He finished the next part of the song in a casual voice before shaking his head in aggravation.
'That's not the kind of girl I am, this was about...'
"It's was about fun, and rebellion...not love!"
Her words echoed in his mind the day he believed his whole life had left him for a trip to another country. Harry had been accepted to a college not far from where his parents had placed him in the states. He even fought for grants so every dollar he saved could go to the future he was building for himself...but it hadn't just been for himself.
"This is why I can't commit to anyone.." A harsh breath came before Harry put the bass guitar on his desk again. He was facing an inner torment that caused something that the forty-something male had dreaded the very moment he realized what he might have to do.
"Damn it, Tanya! I want my bloody six-string back!"
It was a quick jump to his feet when Harry went off for the door leading out of his office. Only to stop as he made it to the archway, a hand pressed on one side of the opening. "N-no that's the right.." Harry looks back to his desk and remembers something he hadn't thought about in a decade or more.
"Donna."
The Dynamos were a rough and lingering memory to Harry Bright. After he had met the Dynamos he had been the focus of Tanya. Tanya was like an addiction to a younger Harry Bright. She wanted everything from him and he had asked for nothing.
Originally he had been introduced to Donna by Rosie and Tanya, and it had been beautiful uneasy music.
He thought he was in love so much he chased her all across Greece. His guitar had been left with her way back when. Along with his virginity and a broken heart when he believed she had moved on so quickly.
It was Tanya that had soothed his broken heart and shattered in only some months afterward.
"Memories, good days, bad days...They'll be, with me, always.." He began to sing again as he turns and his eyes move back to the wardrobe. "In these old familiar rooms; Children would play...Now there's only emptiness; Nothing to say." His eyes had started to well with tears in them.
"I remember now."
Harry Bright went back over to the wardrobe and opened the cabinet. He reached inside and grabbed the other guitar case. Having taken out a basic acoustic guitar that someone had given to him long ago.
Flashback;
"I want you to learn a song for me.."
A woman spoke with a soft smile as she was staring at a younger man. "It's a song for the girls, I think it'll work in an act one day and I want you to learn the chords so I can sing it to you."
"I'll do anything for you, Tanya. I can learn a song." He answers her. "I-I just don't have my guitar anymore," Harry admitted nervously.
"It figures you'd tell me that." Says the brunette who moves away from Harry to grab a guitar case in the corner of her bedroom. "I've been meaning to try and learn to play but you need it more."
Tanya had gone and bought an old guitar with some money she saved for a bus ticket. Considering what would happen next, she didn't think she needed the ticket any longer.
A couple of weeks would pass before the couple was at a small bar. Tanya was on the stage preparing herself while Harry was practicing the song bit by bit before they were to play. Tanya would look at Harry off and on as she was readying herself. Her nerves were getting the better of her.
Tanya was feeling both butterflies and a pain that was almost a warning.
"Do you think it would be wrong to sing along with you?" Harry speaks from the stool he was seated on as Tanya's head jerked to look at him once more. "Like with a microphone?" The young man chuckled and shook his head. "N-no, of course not." He answers her honestly. "Just more or less to myself, but with you."
The brunette gave Harry a stern look before she looked out into the crowd. "No, do that if you want to."
A smile came to Harry Bright as his head lowered to look at the guitar. He was thinking about what might happen after their performance; While Tanya was thinking the same except her view was a very different one.
"Knowing me, knowing you (a-ha); There is nothing we can do
Knowing me, knowing you (a-ha)...We just have to face it. This time we're through; Breaking up is never easy, I know..." Tanya sings partway through the song as she turns to Harry who was playing as she sang. His eyes were fully on her with a grin on him. " But I have to go; Knowing me, knowing you; It's the best I can do."
The woman had tears in her eyes when she repeated the last part of the song she was singing again. She never even tried to stop the performance and even kept up her showmanship when Harry realized what the song truly meant.
"Geezus bloody christ, Tanya!" He says jumping up off of the stool. A man stood up that was near the stage as if ready to do anything if Harry tried to hurt Tanya. When he put even more of the pieces together. "I'm sure it is difficult when you have already made other arrangements."
"Harry, no...I'm sorry!"
Present;
Remembering the fight they had felt as if a wound had reopened in his chest. When he opens the guitar case his breath catches in his throat. It wasn't a valuable piece at all, Tanya thought it was a Fender or even a Martin but she didn't know anything about instruments.
It was just a nameless piece made of rosewood that still had the same strings from that very night on it. Along with the word 'whore' carved into the back of it over another name.
"I don't regret that," Harry murmurs to himself just as he goes to put the piece back.
"It's been fifteen years, and I haven't the faintest idea why I could be thinking about...Tanya."
It was still far from the man's mind when he sighs and moves to leave the room. Back on the man's desk, under the black bass guitar, he had left behind. A newspaper was sitting under the item, with a headline that read.
'Did David Chesham find love, with Tanya Leigh?'