Whiskey in the Jar

On the way back from running errands Jordan thought it would be a great idea to get food to bring back for her and Brian. Spending time by herself after so long was weird for her; a good weird and bad weird. She was so used to spending all her time with Brian, it was silent and boring without them exchanging sarcastic comments but at the same time it was nice to leave the Brian bubble. Jordan texted Brian asking him what he wanted to eat in case he was awake but she never got a reply so she assumed that he was still asleep and got a variety of Mexican food.

As Jordan was parking in Brian’s driveway, she bopped her head to the Drake song that was blaring from her car speakers feeling pretty content. But strangely enough as her own music turned off she could just about hear loud music coming from the house. Jordan furrowed her eyebrows in confusion because she knew Brian doesn’t play music in the house, not since Becca’s passing. The feelings of content were erased from her body as she rushed to the house worried about what was going on.

The sound of obnoxiously loud distorted guitars attacked Jordan’s ears as she walked into the house. She jog walked into the open plan living room/kitchen only to find out that there was no one there. Jordan bit her lip as anxiety crawled into her body, and turned the loud music off so that it would help her find Brian. Thanks to the absence of heavy metal music, the distant sounds of cursing and things crashing were heard so she hurried into the hallway to find out where it was coming from. It sounded like it came from a room that Jordan had yet to explore, she didn’t know what was in it but she got the feeling that the room was off limits. The crashing didn’t stop so Jordan quickly went to open the door and went down the stairs to find Brian hitting a broken guitar against a wall. With two other broken guitars on the floor, other organised instruments like an electronic drum kit and studio equipment it was apparent to Jordan that this was Brian’s home recording studio.

“Fuck this fucking guitar!” Brian shouted as he smashed the remains of the black and silver striped guitar. Jordan didn’t know what to do in this situation, her work experience was very limited since her only previous client was a small middle aged woman not a grown angry man. She tried to inch closer but didn’t want to get hit by the guitar so she awkwardly stood there in shock as Brian completely destroyed the six string instrument. In fact she wasn’t so sure he even noticed she was there.
“Brian stop smashing that guitar!” Jordan tried to shout over him but he didn’t listen at all.

“BRIAN!” He finally carelessly dropped the guitar onto the others and looked at Jordan. Brian’s chest was rising rapidly as his breath was ragged, his hair was a mess and was all up in his face and his eyes were crazy. Jordan swallowed thickly as they stood in silence holding eye contact. The look in Brian’s eyes was something she hasn’t seen in a long time; so full of anger to the point where her sympathetic nervous system was confused whether her response should be fight or flight.

“Get out of my life, you stupid bitch! Who do you think you are trying to replace my wife?!” He screamed at her and threw his hands around. It was obvious that he was very drunk and even though Jordan knew this, it didn’t stop her from feeling hurt. “You think you can just come into my life, smile at me and think that everything is fine?! Well news fucking flash nothing is fine! Everything is fucked so why don’t you take your ass upstairs pack your shit and go?! I can’t fucking stand you, you’re a worthless cunt!” He pushed past her and ran up the stairs bashing into the walls on his way up.

Jordan tried to rationalise her thoughts but the situation had slightly reminded her of the way that her father would treat her mother. Her dad always had a facial expression which she would recognise when things would go south and she saw that same look in Brian’s eyes. She would be foolish to try and lie to herself that she wasn’t scared of Brian because her shaking body and the tears that helplessly fell down her cheeks were an obvious giveaway. As Brian continued to shout obscenities that lacked any sense and bashed into walls and things, Jordan didn’t know what to do so she texted Matt.

Matt I need your help. Please come ASAP. – J

For a minute Jordan contemplated whether stay in the studio and hide like she did when she was younger or whether to go upstairs and try to control the man that was almost twice the size of her. She started pacing around avoiding the broken guitars and noticed two bottles of whiskey; one empty and one still half full. Holding onto her necklace, she hoped that Matt would come right away or at least respond to her text. But after what felt like lifetime later there was no sign of Matt so Jordan convinced herself that she is tough enough to handle Brian and walked up those stairs pretending she was brave.

Meanwhile Brian was upstairs in his living room and moved on from smashing his guitars to smashing all the photographs he had in his house. The photographs of the memories he made with his best friends, his family and his wife. Not bothering to look at what photo he was smashing and what he was smashing it on, Brian was creating a dangerous mess around the house and he didn’t care.

Finally, Matt came and with the urgency of Jordan’s texts he didn’t care to knock on the door, he just walked in. Just as he did so, Jordan walked out the door which led to the recording studio looking shaken up.

“What happened?”

“He’s drunk.” Jordan stuttered and wiped a tear away causing Matt to look at her with a sympathetic expression.

Before Matt could say anything else, they both heard Brian scream in pain so they hurried to quickly find him. They had to be careful so they wouldn’t step in any glass but they found him sitting on the floor next to his piano with blood on his right forearm. Brian seemed to be slurring drunken nonsense to himself and tried to pick at his injury ignoring the company he had. Jordan and Matt exchanged worried looks and sighs then Matt went to find a first aid kit while Jordan pulled Brian up to sit on the piano stool.

“Don’t pick at the cut, you’ll just make it worse.” Jordan spoke quietly and slowly like she was tired of fighting, tired of regressing. Brian just whimpered in response; it was evident that his mood took a dramatic turn and went from aggressive to depressive. Just the way that Jordan would find him months ago.

“I found some bandages and shit” Matt handed the kit to Jordan who began to clean and wrap Brian’s injury. Brian was compliant now; he was beginning to fall asleep sitting down.

“This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have left him alone.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” Jordan just accepted the blame.

“He was doing so well…” Jordan tried to stay strong but her voice was weak. The unexpected turn of events had messed her up intensely.

“Why were you in the studio?” Matt asked as he grabbed a broom and started brushing up the glass after he looked around and saw what a mess Brian made.

“He was down there drinking and breaking his guitars.”

“That means he was trying to write music again…” despite Brian’s relapse, Matt was happy to know that Brian was getting back into music. He knew that besides the people he loved, music was his life so Matt assumed it meant Brian was beginning to truly move on. As Jordan finished tending to Brian’s cut, Matt pulled him up and began to drag him to bed so that he can sleep off the drunkenness.

“Come on drunky, let’s get you to bed.”

“Matty boy, I tried to write a solo for you but I can’t” he slurred to the point where Matt struggled to understand him “please don’t kick me out of the band.” Brian let out a sob as he pleaded with Matt.

“I’m not kicking you out, drunky. Go to sleep, I’ll talk to you soon.” Matt laid him down onto his bed and put the covers over him. It was heart breaking for him to see his best friend like this but it was hard for him to look after his children, his band and his best friend.

After he knew Brian was asleep, Matt went to help Jordan clean up the house. It was awkwardly silent as they did so but Matt was scared he would say something that would further upset Jordan. He knew that their relationship was difficult but he didn’t want to be an asshole towards her.

“Did he hurt you?”

“Not really. Seeing him like this brought back some bad memories.”

“Is there…uh… anything else I can do or should I go? He’ll be knocked out for a long time now so…”

“I’ll be okay. Thank you for coming.” Jordan sensed that he was uncomfortable around her and she really wanted to know why.

Matt left, Brian was passed out and the house was cleaned up leaving Jordan to be tortured by the silence of the big house with nothing to do. She had a lot to think about; Brian said some nasty things to her and even though he was drunk there must have been a part of him that truly meant what he said. The more she thought about it the more she believed she should have told Matt to find someone else for Brian but she knew that she was too attached now. Leaving Brian now in the middle of the battle would be a bad decision on her part. After all she vowed to herself that she would do anything it took to help Brian get better. And now that she got to know him properly and caught a glimpse of him smile, she knew she liked the person he was flaws and all. It was too late for her to leave the Brian bubble without leaving a part of herself in this house with him.

Hours after overthinking and beating herself up for letting Brian relapse, Brian woke up with a severe hangover. He groaned and moaned his way into the kitchen with the sole purpose to hydrate his parched system. With no recollection of his previous antics, he didn’t get to drink water he wanted as he had to run to the bathroom to vomit his guts out. Finally after being able to keep the vomit down he drank what felt like all the water in the world, he noticed a pile of photographs sitting on the coffee table.

Frowning to himself, Brian texted Jordan to see where she was so that he could ask if she knew anything about this. Jordan walked through the double doors leading to the garden wrapping a cardigan around her body.

“How are you feeling, Brian?” She tucked her hair behind her ears and refused to look into Brian’s eyes.

“Not the best if I’m being honest…” Brian managed to croak out. “Do you know what happened to my photos?” He scratched his head and sounded super confused so that he didn’t sound accusatory.

“You mean you don’t remember?”

“No…” and there he went running to the bathroom again to vomit. Brian bushed his teeth and washed his face before plucking up the courage to find out what he did.

Going back to the kitchen, he found a sad looking Jordan sitting on a breakfast bar stool stirring a cup of coffee. Brian had this feeling in his stomach which indicated he knew that he did something wrong he just hoped that he didn’t hurt Jordan in any shape or form.

“Um what happened?”

“Well you broke some of your guitars downstairs and you smashed all your photograph frames and cut yourself. Oh and you called me a worthless cunt and kicked me out…again.” In response Brian shut his eyes and bit his lip instantly regretting his actions. He got some flashbacks of what he did, of what he said to Jordan and couldn’t figure out where to begin to apologize to Jordan.

“Jordan…I can’t stress how sorry I am for saying those things to you and for putting you through all that. You mean so much to me and I appreciate everything you do for me, there is literally no part of me that meant any of those things.” Jordan lifted her eyes from her coffee and looked at Brian. “I’m just a total douchebag and I don’t deserve to have you in my life.” He walked over to her, grabbed her face and looked deep into her tear induced eyes. “Please believe me when I say I’m sorry not just for being a quintessential dickwad but also for drinking in the first place.” Their faces were incredibly close and Jordan had a tough time breathing properly. She stared into his eyes and felt like she was being hypnotized by his brown orbs. He then kissed her forehead, his lips lingering on her skin longer than he intended to and hugged her tightly letting her head rest on his chest. She was losing herself; any fear she previously had simply disappeared with the words he spoke and his apologetic eyes made her swoon. There was no longer any point in Jordan denying to herself that she had feelings for Brian, she was still aware that he had a lot of issues to get through and it was inappropriate on so many levels to like him but she couldn’t help it.

After their embrace had ended, Jordan thought it would be a great idea to start whipping Brian into shape. She composed herself and straightened herself out, trying to smooth away any indications that he likes Brian.

“So why did you drink? Matt thinks you were trying to write music again…”

“Matt was here?! Well, I mean…yeah I was but it didn’t work and it got really frustrating and I broke.” He hung his head in shame, not just because he disappointed Jordan but because he was disappointed in himself.

“Listen Brian, it’s time to make some serious progress. I’ve started a list of major steps you can take which will get you to the finish line. I could only come up with three at the time but we can work on that…one of them was writing music again and while it didn’t work when you did it alone… I was thinking you could call someone from the band to come over and help you write? Your hand is alright now and your cut shouldn’t interfere so playing shouldn’t be a problem…” She was very nervous proposing this idea hoping that he wouldn’t put up a fight. “Unless you want me to stop pestering you? I can pack my things and go…if you want me to I’ll leave you alone…” She looked down and felt very vulnerable but she couldn’t help but doubt him and herself. After all, this was his house and his life so she couldn’t force her way into his life even though he forced his way into her heart.

“No Jordan. I promise I’d prefer to have no one but you here helping me through this. I really meant what I said…now sober not when I was drunk.” He laughed nervously. “And I’ll do whatever you think is necessary. I can’t live like this anymore!”

“Great go call someone and do the magic things you do with your hands and I’ll make myself scarce!” Jordan air guitared in an attempt to get rid of the awkwardness. In response Brian laughed and hugged Jordan tightly again causing Jordan to fight a teenage puppy love kind of sigh. He then let her go and called Zack, the man that had the hots for Jordan.