Gemotions

The jazz club was dark, smoky, and alive with sound. He'd come to relax, to escape. Then the house band started playing. The song was familiar. His song.

The arrangement was… strange. They were taking liberties with his melody, improvising, adding their own flourishes. He watched, his brow furrowed, his fingers drumming a nervous rhythm on the table.

He didn't hate it, not exactly. But the disrespect. The casual disregard for the structure he'd painstakingly crafted… that was what rankled. He signaled the waiter for another drink, his gaze fixed on the stage, the music washing over him, a complicated mixture of annoyance and, if he was honest, a small measure of something else.