Broken Records by Bree Bennett
Chapter 22
Eight days before their wedding, Jack and Lucy informed Jack’s manager and PR team that they were moving the wedding to Sparrow Hill, Indiana. Kim groaned. Trent laughed. Martin yelled something about #destinationweddings and #farmhousechic, and it was game on.
* * *Five days before their wedding, Jack—back in New York while Lucy held down the fort in Sparrow Hill—spent the day in the recording studio, stitching together random chords and lyrics scribbled on crinkled paper. He had yet to find his magnum opus, but he felt it coalescing just out of sight, if he could just push away enough of the clutter in his brain to find it.
* * *Four days before their wedding, Matteo, Nico, and Dante video-called Jack in a secretive attempt to throw him a virtual bachelor party, which ended up being a two-minute video of Larry dressed in a bikini while “Pour Some Sugar On Me” played and Lettie walked by in the background muttering about toxic heteronormative rituals.
* * *Three days before their wedding, Jack burned his microwave popcorn. It was a pretty boring day.
* * *Two days before their wedding, Jack realized that the weird atmosphere of the house wasn’t because of a faulty HVAC system or the foundation shifting or even a rogue ghost, but because a very vital person wasn’t there. He cut his grilled cheese into squares and slept in the guest room tucked in the world’s greatest duvet.
* * *One day before their wedding, Jack was on the way to Sparrow Hill from the Indianapolis airport. They had chartered a private plane from New York to fly him, Kim, Martin, Emery the photographer, and Parker, as well as lighting equipment and wedding decor. It wasn’t Jack’s preferred method of travel, since he was a rock star, and rock stars and private planes often led to tragedy. Kim had taken one look at a map of the area, declared that she was only driving out to “the sticks” once, and booked a hotel in Indianapolis for the night.
Meanwhile, Jack was scrunched in the back of Dante’s sedan with his future…well, Nonna-in-law might have been the right term. His future Nonno-in-law was in the front seat, lecturing Dante on everything from the benefits of celery salt to the mating rituals of animals.
“And when the male giraffe prepares to mate,” boomed the ruddy-faced former professor, his coarse voice peppered with a faded Italian accent, “he drinks the female giraffe’s urine to make sure she’s fertile.”
“He does what?” The sides of Dante’s lips twitched as he wrestled back a smile.
“He drinks her urine!” said the white-haired man, clearly irritated.
“He drinks her what?” asked Dante loudly, white teeth on full display.
“Her urine!” Nonno repeated. “Goddamnit, kid, I know you can hear me!”
“Watch your mouth,” warbled Nonna, smacking her husband on the arm as Dante cackled in the driver’s seat. She turned to Jack with a secretive expression. “If they get to be too much, I usually grab a bottle of champagne and go sit with the pig. Come find me if you need it.” She winked at Jack, and he was saved from responding by an incoming text.
LUCY: Almost here?
JACK: Your grandma winked at me and I think your grandpa suggested that I drink your urine. Save me?
LUCY: I will.
And though it was meant in jest, Jack wondered if she knew that she already had.
* * *Three hours before their wedding, Jack burst into Lucy’s bedroom, clad only in his trousers and half-buttoned shirt, slamming the door behind him as he clutched a wrapped box to his chest.
“We’ve got five minutes,” he panted. “Thank God you’re still undressed.”
Lucy cocked her head at him, tapping her fingers on the wooden vanity.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said as red blooms snaked across his cheeks. “I’ve been trying to sneak up here all day, but your mother and Nonna won’t let me near you.”
“They’re superstitious,” she said. “It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding. So now, we’re cursed.”
“Well, maybe this will counteract the curse.” He thrust the gift at her without ceremony, wiping his palms on his trousers. “Open it.”
“Thank you,” she said, her fingers tracing the loop-de-loop of the taffeta ribbon, the raised ridges of the embossed wrapping paper. She unwrapped it, and her smile fell as she opened the box. “Oh, Jack,” she breathed, blinking back tears because if she cried and ruined her makeup, Martin would probably banish her from her own wedding.
“I thought you could use them as your ‘something blue.’” Jack scratched at his pressed collar, shifting on his feet.
She lifted one of the high heel shoes out of the box as if it were a family heirloom. Her thumb caressed the material, tracing and brushing all that blue soft blue soft blue. “Blue suede shoes,” she whispered, holding both shoes up to the light.
“I’m sure the King would approve.” Jack gave her a shy smile, and Lucy threw her arms around him. He staggered back a step before he caught his balance, and she held him tighter, throwing away thoughts of contracts and social media quotas and two-year deadlines, just for one day.
“Thank you, Jack,” she murmured, her voice cracking just a little. “I’m glad it’s you.”
I wish it could always be you.
“Me too, Cottontail.” He trailed his hand up and down her back, his fingertips catching on her hair. “Me too.”
A loud rapping shook the bedroom door, and they jumped back like teenagers caught with toilet paper. “Jack? Are you in there?” Nonna’s voice was somehow both cheery and menacing.
“Oh God,” whispered Jack, tugging Lucy a little tighter. “The call is coming from inside the house.”
“Lucy? Is that man in there?”
“It’s no use,” she whispered. “You’ll have to face her.” Jack’s shoulders slumped and he opened the door to be greeted with a Hitchcockian gasp of horror. Lucy shook her head to herself as Jack disappeared down the stairs, followed by an angry Nonna berating him in full Italian.
* * *Two hours before their wedding, Jack took Larry on a panicked speed walk around the farm, because he might as well get physical cold feet in addition to his mental cold feet. After his second lap of the yard, he slowed as Ben fell into step next to him.
“Nerves?” asked Ben, his hands shoved into his coat pockets.
“Uh-huh,” said Jack, his lips too cold and numb to articulate more than that.
“It’s normal, you know,” his future father-in-law said.
It’s not normal, Jack wanted to say. Nothing about this is normal. Two years from today, your daughter is going to leave me, and I’ll be all alone again.
“Do you get stage fright before your concerts?” Ben asked.
“Nuh-huh,” said Jack, wondering if his eyeballs were going to freeze and if that would be enough to call off the wedding.
“Maybe visualize it as a concert, then,” said Ben. “That might help. I was lucky; I wasn’t nervous at our wedding. I knew I was doing the right thing.”
I’m doing the exact opposite of the right thing,Jack thought.
“Uh-huh?” he sounded out instead.
“Of course,” Ben paused, gazing at the distant, bare soybean fields, “I was high as a kite. It was the seventies, everyone at the wedding was.” He thumped Jack on the shoulder. “You haven’t lived until you’ve gone through a Catholic mass completely high, son.”
Jack turned his head very slowly and gaped at the man, because what even was this family?
“By the way,” Ben said nonchalantly, his eyes twinkling, “why did the two melons have a wedding? Because they cantaloupe!” And with that, he patted Jack’s arm, patted Larry’s head, and went back to the house, whistling the entire way.
* * *Thirty minutes before their wedding, Larry the pig ate his custom-made boutonniere and yakked all over the kitchen floor.
* * *Two minutes before their wedding, Lucy entered the granary to find the antique building transformed into a winter wonderland. Fairy lights and glittering snowflakes hung from the rafters, and a shimmering blue carpet ran down the center of the floor to a mounted platform filled with white holly berries and pine boughs. Kim was still adjusting white tulle bunting down the aisle, even though everyone else was already seated. She winked at Lucy, gave an it’s just what I do shrug, and sat in her chair next to Martin.
To Lucy’s left, Emery, the photographer, beamed up at her, holding the camera and clicking occasionally, the sound as soft as snowy footprints. To her right, her father looped his arms through hers.
“Ready?” he asked. She nodded, and they began the paced walk, lace and silk swirling around her. She gazed at each and every member of her family, her heart growing fuller with every step, every smile, every tear on their faces. They were hers and she was theirs and she belonged.
And then she lifted her head and locked eyes with the man she was going to marry. He was pale and shaky, but his eyes were sparkles fucking sparkles, and she knew that for this one moment, he belonged to her too.
* * *One minute into their wedding, Lucy kissed her father on the cheek and joined Jack at the homemade altar, taking his shaking hands in hers.
And then she frowned, dropped his trembling fingers, and placed her hands firmly on his cheeks. She tugged him closer until their foreheads met.
“Elton John once let Stevie Wonder drive his snowmobile,” she said in her calm, clear, no-nonsense voice. “If he can survive that, we can survive this.”
Jack burst into laughter, and family and photographers and insane PR agents melted away into fuzziness just outside of Jack’s awareness. “I once got drunk and broke into a ‘swimming with dolphins’ event,” he whispered. “I got caught when one of them humped me, and I yelled for help.”
“What are they saying?” Nonno barked out to no one in particular.
“I think it’s the Lord’s Prayer,” Nonna yelled back.
Lucy’s lips quirked. “Keith Moon drove a Rolls Royce into a swimming pool at a Holiday Inn.”
Jack grinned. “I rode a golf cart into a dinosaur museum in Madrid, petted a triceratops thigh bone, and rode out.”
She tapped a finger against his cheekbone. “Rock stars are unusual creatures.”
“You have no idea,” Jack said, taking her hands in his now-steady fingers. Somewhere behind them, Martin hissed out a “finally!”
Jack cleared his throat once, then once more, before realizing that the golf ball-sized tightness in his throat was there to stay. The minister said a few words in his calming drone before turning to Jack, asking him to repeat after him like a pet parrot.
“I, Jack, take you, Lucy, to be my—” his voice cracked like a middle schooler, “—my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, I promise to love and cherish you.”
Lucy repeated the vows, her voice clear as a bell. The words were more earnest, more honest coming from her lips. Jack imagined her saying them in her real wedding, at least two years from now. The thought of her starry eyes gazing lovingly at some other lucky son of a bitch made his stomach twist like an over-wrung washcloth.
The officiant cleared his throat, and Jack snapped to attention.
“The rings?” he prodded. Jack held out his hand to Trent, who dropped the banded diamond and sapphire wedding ring into his palm. He slid it onto Lucy’s finger, and her eyes rounded.
“It’s lovely,” she blurted out before covering her mouth with an “eep!” and whispering an apology to the officiant. Lucy’s smile grew as she placed Jack’s ring on his finger. He held it up to examine it, watching the twinkle of the fairy lights strike the silver and bounce off like a comet. Through the center, a strange, ribbed metal line was threaded through the metal.
“It’s a guitar string,” she whispered. “The one you broke. I took it out of the trash when you weren’t looking.”
Jack bit back a groan at the sheer unfairness of it all. The ring was perfect. Lucy was perfect. And none of it was real.
* * *Five weeks, one day, twenty hours, and sixteen minutes after a singular moment in a Brooklyn record store, Jack Vincent kissed the hell out of his new bride and realized he was absolutely and undeniably in love with her.