Jazz and a Little Bit of Whiskey

Peter poured himself a whiskey, letting the ice clatter against the sides of the glass. The drink was still warm, and as it met the cold, a faint crackling spread through the quiet room like tiny bones snapping. He took a slow sip and instantly regretted it. Whiskey, even the cheap kind he kept around, always awakened the phantom craving for a cigarette — a craving he hadn’t indulged in for more than ten years. Yet, like every night, he resisted. Barely, but he did.

A soft, melancholic jazz record spun on his turntable — the one expensive thing in his whole apartment. The music slid around him in minor keys and sorrowful lyrics, brushing against the bruised parts of him he tried so hard to ignore. He tapped his foot lightly, staring out the window at the lit rectangles of neighboring apartments. Watching strangers live their lives was easier than looking inward. Above the city’s usual haze of light pollution, the stars burned strangely bright tonight, and for a fleeting moment, Peter let himself admire them.

“Why does everything have to be so damn hard?” he muttered, breaking the silence he’d been drowning in.

He took a longer swallow of whiskey, pushing the thought away as the burn spread through him. His favorite song began playing, the one that usually lifted him up. But tonight it felt thin, hollow, like someone had drained all the color out of it. With a tight breath, he lifted the needle and silenced the room.

He reached for his electric guitar, flicked the amp on, and plugged in. The speaker hissed in the familiar way of old equipment held together by hope and stubbornness. He played a series of rhythms he knew by muscle memory alone — the kind he could play even with a gun to his head. What he wanted was something new. Something raw. Weren’t the greatest songs born from moments exactly like this — when the heart felt scraped down to nothing?

But his instincts were right: nothing worthwhile came when he was drunk. His fingers slipped, the lyrics he’d scribbled earlier looked flat and lifeless, and frustration gnawed at him.

“Damn it,” he whispered, tossing the guitar onto the couch. The muffled thrum of the strings was swallowed by the fabric.

He stood still for a moment, arms hanging loosely, listening. The silence pressed in on him — thick and suffocating, like it had weight. For a second, he imagined grabbing it in both hands and hurling it out the window. But even that felt like too much effort.

His gaze drifted to the whiskey glass. The ice had melted almost entirely, turning the drink cloudy and dull, mirroring the fog spreading through his mind.

He took another drink and slumped back into his armchair. It creaked beneath him as if objecting.

“What am I even trying to do?” he asked the empty room. There was no answer. There never was. And even if someone tried to reassure him, he doubted he’d believe them. Over the past few years, trust had dissolved slowly and quietly — much like the ice now — leaving him cautious, skeptical, and exhausted.

Outside the window, neon reflections blended with faint streetlights until the whole street looked like a watercolor washed with violet and blue. Cars murmured in the distance, a siren wailed somewhere far off, and at one point, a burst of laughter rang out from down the street. Peter flinched at the sound. Had he ever laughed like that — freely, without weight, without calculation, without thinking about everything he wasn’t?

He set the drink aside and stood. The room felt suddenly cramped, cluttered, the ceiling too low. He crossed to the shelf where he kept his old notebooks — a decade of creative debris, held together by cracked spines and yellowing pages. He pulled out a black one, edges smudged with old coffee and something suspiciously like whiskey.

Ironically, it was the notebook with his best songs, though it looked like it belonged to a man who’d long since given up. He flipped through the scrawls — half-verses, snippets of melody, raw lines scribbled between moments of hope and despair. On the last page, he found something he didn’t remember writing. And yet, the ink was fresh.

If she’s the right one for you, not even God can keep her from coming back.

The words hit him harder than the whiskey.

A part of him — the naïve, idealistic fragment still left — wanted to believe it. After all, weren’t there couples who found their way back to each other no matter what? Stories of impossible love surviving impossible circumstances? The lighthouse in a storm, shining defiantly against the dark?

But the cynic inside him was louder.

Yeah. Sure. For everyone else. Not for me.

He sighed, grabbed his acoustic guitar, and fished a pick out of his wallet. He always carried extras — they vanished the moment he looked away.

He began to play a slow ballad he’d written back in tenth grade. For Simona — tall, confident, the girl he’d had to stand on his toes to kiss. The memory made him laugh, unexpectedly. He stopped strumming, letting the wave of nostalgia wash over him.

Then he kept playing, remembering why he had become a musician at all. Not for fame. Not for applause. But for this — the sacredness of sound, the way it healed something deep in him that nothing else ever could.

After a minute, he set the guitar aside, grabbed the now-warm whiskey, and poured it down the sink. Then he reached into the trash bin and pulled out a small photo.

Helena.

Her full lips, the soft curl of her blonde hair, the faint dimples that only appeared when she smiled. Her blue eyes pressed close to his neck in the cheap carnival photobooth picture. He felt something tighten in his chest — something painfully close to tears.

Everything had been too much lately. And he knew that continuing to push forward would demand a kind of strength he wasn’t sure he possessed anymore.

23:57. Three minutes till midnight. The wall clock — a gift from someone he barely remembered — ticked dully in the background.

“Fifteen more minutes of playing,” he murmured. “Then bed. Tomorrow’s going to be rough.”

He played, over and over, until his fingers ached. And still, the thoughts he wanted to escape stayed with him.

Then, at 12:03 a.m., the intercom buzzed.

He froze.

The building was old, no camera system, no way to know who was at the front door. Less than a minute later, someone knocked. Hard. Urgent.

Heart pounding, he opened the door.

Helena stood there — drenched from head to toe. Her hair dripping, her mascara smeared across her face, her white semi-formal wedding dress heavy with rain. And, absurdly, pink high-top sneakers.

She looked like she’d run through half the city.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Peter demanded. “Your wedding was today. You’re still in the damn dress.”

“I ran,” she whispered. Her voice cracked. “I couldn’t do it. I kept thinking about you. The whole time.”

“The wedding was at noon. What are you doing here now?”

“I’ve been looking for you. No one would give me your new address.”