I only understand friendship or scorched earth.

Host: The bar was nearly empty — a last refuge for night owls and truth tellers, where the smell of whiskey, smoke, and broken conviction lingered heavier than the air. The neon sign outside stuttered through the window, casting its red pulse across the worn leather booths and half-empty glasses. The jukebox in the corner murmured the blues, as if afraid to interrupt what the night was about to confess.

Host: Jack sat at the far end of the counter, sleeves rolled up, his glass untouched but his eyes fierce, alive with that dangerous glow of a man who had been thinking too much and feeling too little. Jeeny slid onto the stool beside him, her hair damp from the rain, her expression calm but edged with something sharp — pity, maybe, or recognition. She set a napkin down between them, scrawled with a quote in hurried ink.

“I only understand friendship or scorched earth.”
— Roger Ailes

Jeeny: “You said this to me once,” she said quietly. “Not in those words, but you meant the same thing.”

Jack: “Did I?” he asked, voice low.

Jeeny: “You did. You said you don’t do half-measures. That if someone’s not with you, they’re against you.”

Jack: “And I still believe it.”

Jeeny: “That’s not friendship, Jack. That’s war dressed up as loyalty.”

Host: The bartender wiped a glass in silence, pretending not to listen. The world outside the window had turned to rain and reflection — the city doubled in the slick black of its own streets.

Jack: “You think Ailes was wrong?”

Jeeny: “I think he was lonely.”

Jack: “Lonely’s better than betrayed.”

Jeeny: “Not if the loneliness is self-inflicted.”

Host: The rain intensified, hammering against the glass, a rhythm of unrest. Jack turned toward her, his jaw tight, his eyes catching the neon light.

Jack: “You ever trusted someone with everything — and watched them twist it into a weapon?”

Jeeny: “Yes,” she said softly. “But I also learned that the wound doesn’t justify the armor.”

Jack: “Armor keeps you alive.”

Jeeny: “Armor also keeps you untouched. And untouched means unloved.”

Host: A small silence fell between them, filled only by the clink of melting ice. It wasn’t the silence of comfort — it was the silence of truth pressing its palms against the table, daring them to look.

Jack: “You think friendship survives without loyalty?”

Jeeny: “No. But loyalty isn’t ownership. It’s choice — one that has to be made freely, not through fear.”

Jack: “Fear’s the only thing people respect.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack,” she said. “Fear is the only thing that people pretend to respect. Friendship built on fear isn’t devotion. It’s dependence.”

Host: Her voice was steady now, her calm a blade honed by years of watching men mistake dominance for love. Jack looked away, staring into his glass, seeing not whiskey but ghosts — faces of those he’d demanded too much from, burned too fast, too bright.

Jack: “You think I don’t know that?” he said. “You think I like being this way?”

Jeeny: “Then why keep choosing it?”

Jack: “Because scorched earth doesn’t lie to you. You burn it, and it stays burned. It doesn’t come back to betray you.”

Jeeny: “But it also never grows again.”

Host: Her words hit him like ash on raw skin — soft, but searing. He looked at her now, really looked, his eyes tired, the fire dimmed but not gone.

Jack: “You sound like forgiveness.”

Jeeny: “And you sound like regret.”

Jack: “Maybe I’m both.”

Host: The lights flickered briefly, and the jukebox shifted songs — something slow, tender, cruel in its honesty. The kind of song that remembered you before you remembered yourself.

Jeeny: “You know,” she said, “Ailes might’ve believed friendship and war were the same thing — loyalty versus betrayal, victory versus loss. But friendship isn’t conquest. It’s surrender.”

Jack: “Surrender?”

Jeeny: “Yes. The willingness to be seen — unarmed. The courage to risk being hurt without trying to control the outcome.”

Jack: “That’s not courage. That’s suicide.”

Jeeny: “No. That’s intimacy.”

Host: The rain eased, turning to drizzle. Outside, the streetlights blurred into halos, and the city looked softer, almost forgiving.

Jack: “You think people like me can change?”

Jeeny: “Only when they stop mistaking control for connection.”

Jack: “And if I can’t?”

Jeeny: “Then you’ll keep winning your wars,” she said, “but you’ll never have peace.”

Host: He laughed — not cruelly, but the way men laugh when they’ve been found out. The sound cracked something open between them.

Jack: “You always see through me.”

Jeeny: “That’s what friendship is, Jack. Seeing through someone — and staying anyway.”

Jack: “Even when it hurts?”

Jeeny: “Especially when it hurts.”

Host: The bartender turned the lights down lower, leaving the bar awash in amber glow. The world outside continued its quiet cleansing, rain turning streets into mirrors.

Jack: “You know,” he said, “maybe Ailes didn’t mean it as cruelty. Maybe he meant that friendship, real friendship, demands all or nothing. That if you give less than everything, it’s not worth having.”

Jeeny: “Then he mistook devotion for domination. Friendship doesn’t demand — it invites.”

Jack: “Invites what?”

Jeeny: “The kind of loyalty that’s born from respect, not fear. The kind of love that doesn’t require a battlefield to prove it.”

Host: He exhaled slowly, the last of his defenses flickering like dying flame.

Jack: “You make it sound so simple.”

Jeeny: “It’s not simple. It’s sacred.”

Jack: “And what if I’ve already burned too much?”

Jeeny: “Then stop pouring gasoline.”

Host: Silence returned, deep and resonant. The neon sign flickered again — red on rain, blood on glass. The song from the jukebox faded to a single note that lingered, trembling, before vanishing into the dark.

Host: Jack looked at Jeeny — at the woman who had stayed through his storms — and for the first time, he didn’t feel the need to win the argument. He just nodded, quietly, humbly, as though she had handed him back something he thought he’d destroyed long ago.

Host: And as they sat there, the world softening around them, Roger Ailes’s words seemed to transform in the dim light — no longer an anthem of extremity, but a warning wrapped in truth:

“I only understand friendship or scorched earth.”

Host: For some souls, there are only two ways to love —
with total surrender, or total destruction.

Host: But the wiser ones,
the wounded and the awake,
learn that real friendship burns differently —
not in fire,
but in endurance.

Host: It is not a war to win,
but a refuge to keep —
a quiet field that grows back
after every blaze.

Host: And tonight, as the rain washed the city clean,
Jack and Jeeny sat in that silence —
no longer enemies of truth,
but its survivors.