Broken Records by Bree Bennett

Chapter 23

It was Lucy’s wedding night, and she couldn’t find her husband.

After a quick dinner with her family—a thankful trade-off to a noisy and crowded wedding reception—the New York travelers had boarded their chartered plane and headed back home. Jack had opted to stare out the window for the two-hour flight, not even engaging as Martin posted their wedding picture to Twitter and Instagram. Lucy and Jack had gotten home around nine, at which time Jack set his suitcase in his room, grabbed his wallet and house keys, launched a half-hearted “I’m going out” at Lucy, and left.

It was nearly midnight when her phone chirped, Jack’s name blinking across the screen. She answered so quickly that she almost dropped the phone. “Jack, where are you?”

“Hey, Lucy.” Jack drawled. “Guess what?”

“What?”

He sighed like a teenager with a new issue of Tiger Beat. “I got married today.”

Lucy rubbed her temple. “I know. I was there.”

He lowered his voice. “You should have been there. My wife was so beautiful. Sometimes I just look at her, and I want to—I want to—” He paused and shouted something away from the phone speaker that sounded suspiciously like Latin. “You should come here. I’m at the Blue Monster.”

Lucy was frozen in shock at his almost confession of—well, something. You want to what? “Jack, it’s almost midnight.”

“Well, get over here before your Uber turns into a pumpkin then.”

She sighed, looking down at her flannel pajamas. “I’ll be right there.”

When Lucy entered the bar, she was immediately pelted with a tsunami of cheers and applause. She scrunched her shoulders, ready to back out through the door into the street, but a grinning man ran up to her and shouted in a brash but friendly voice, “We got another one!”

The man dunked a beat-up Yankees cap on her head. As she recoiled, he asked, “Which house are you?”

“House?” she stammered, unable to see past the low brim.

“Yeah. Gryffindor, Slytherin…”

“Oh.” She twisted and looked back at the door sign to make sure she was in the correct bar. “Ravenclaw, I guess?”

He raised the cap from her head and declared in a haughty tone, “Ravenclaw!” From one corner of the seating area, a group of people whooped and banged glasses against their table. The rest of the bar patrons were separated into the other three corners, each group filled with a handful of very drunk, delighted people.

“Lucy?” A familiar voice shouted from the back of the bar. Jack’s head popped up from his usual booth, which was definitely not the Ravenclaw table. He sprinted to the front of the bar—knocking over a bar stool in the process—and seized her hips with his long hands, lifting her into the air and then drawing her close into his arms. He was very inebriated, but unlike their last visit to this establishment, his eyes were shining with humor and happiness.

“You were Ravenclaw, weren’t you?” he murmured into her ear, nuzzling at her neck, his lips warm against her chilled skin.

“Naturally.” She closed her eyes, attempting to tune out the rowdy laughter and general noise of the bar. “What’s going on here?”

He clutched her hand and tugged her toward the middle of the barroom. “Everyone!” he announced. “I’d like you to meet my new wife, Lucy! We got married today!”

He boosted her fist into the air as if she were the victor of a boxing match, and everyone cheered. She immediately covered her ears, and Jack waved his arms in the universal “lower your volume” gesture.

“Now, as a wedding present, if you could all keep your voices down, that’d be awesome,” he said, winking. “We’ve had a long day.”

“Why should we do something for a Slytherin?” someone hollered from another corner, their entire table booing.

“Ten points from Gryffindor!” shouted a female bartender, scaling a step ladder and erasing some numbers from a dusty chalkboard on the wall.

“Because it’s the Hogwarts way,” Jack said solemnly, but then he turned to Lucy with a faint smile. “Dumbledore, could we have a little music, please?”

“For the last time, my name is Dave,” mumbled an older bartender, but he fiddled around with some electronic equipment mounted on the wall. The classic rock switched to some guitar chords, pure and sweet, that Lucy knew all too well.

“Mrs. Vincent, our wedding dance?” Jack bowed at the waist and held out his hand, humming along to Elvis’s “Love Me Tender” in his low rasp. Lucy took it with a sheepish laugh and looped her arms around his neck, fingering the thick, dark tendrils at his nape.

“You are so very, very…” she trailed off, grimacing in place of the missing adjective.

“Oh, I am absolutely very,” he said, dipping his head closer to her ear. His breath was warm and ticklish against the surface of her neck, sending shivers sweeping down her spine.

“You organized the whole bar into Harry Potter houses?”

“At least you missed the wizard duels earlier.” He bit his bottom lip in a hangdog expression before continuing. “On a related note, we have to buy the bar a new table.”

“Of course we do.” She paused. “You do realize Slytherin’s symbol is the snake.”

He glowered. “And all the snakes are evil, which just supports my point.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a Harry Potter fan.”

His eyes glinted, and he looked away. “Something about dead parents and a shitty childhood resonated with me, I guess.” He gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry I ran off earlier.”

“You’re fine,” she said, even though she wasn’t. “It was a strange day.” The best day of my life.

Jack gazed at her, his eyes trying to impart something that his intoxicated tongue could not. “I just—I don’t know what’s real anymore. All of it? None of it? Half of it? Three-eighths of it?” He closed his eyes with a long-suffering sigh. “I’m not good at fractions.”

“Wingardium Leviosa!” bellowed a man across the room, tossing his whiskey glass into the air. His face fell in bewildered despair as it plummeted to the ground and shattered.

Jack clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Those are the Hufflepuffs.”

“Clearly.” Lucy bit her lip and looked at Jack again, unsure of how to draw out whatever he was trying to say through his drunken mumbles. She wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, but it felt important.

He wiggled his fingers into the belt loops of her jeans and pulled her closer. “You know, we’re in public,” he said, his eyes darkening and darting to her lips. “And I don’t want the other Slytherins to think I’m not capable of seducing my wife.”

“There’s a lot of competition, but that may be the weirdest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Lucy whispered.

He brought one of his hands to her face, cupping her cheek and stroking his thumb against her skin before he pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was light and wistful, a wedding dance of its own. He moaned, and deepened the kiss, sliding needy hands into her hair and winding a tendril around his fingers as if it were his soul’s only tether to his earthly existence.

But then he drew back, his eyes glossy and delirious, and she snapped back to reality. They couldn’t do this. He was drunk and not in his right head. Anything he was trying to say was null and void. He wouldn’t even remember this the following day.

But she would.

For the next two years, every feigned embrace and deceptive kiss would be etched into her memory, unforgiving and unforgettable. For Jack, they were memories drawn in the sand, just waiting for the tide of alcohol to wash them away in its never-ending ebb and flow.

This kiss was just another drunken shenanigan, and she had signed up to suffer through them all. When Elvis’s last chord played, Lucy’s heart broke.

“Fellow students, I must take this beautiful Ravenclaw home,” yelled Jack, swinging another arm around Lucy and buzzing her cheek with his lips, not noticing her consequent flinch.

Another round of cheers and one woman shouted, “Show her your wand, Jack!”

“Now, now.” Jack winked and flashed his half-grin, in total Jack Hunter, flirter of fans mode. “Thank you for tonight, and until next time, don’t let the muggles get you down.” He stumbled forward, and Lucy caught him, wrapping his arm around her body to steady him.

In an all-too-familiar process, she escorted Jack out of the bar and they rode back to the townhouse without speaking. Then she walked him up the stairs to his bedroom, placed a rolled-up blanket behind his back, and waited until he fell asleep before she began to cry.

* * *

The following morning, Martin was saying words. Loud, loud words. Words that wriggled their way into Jack’s hungover brain and spun around like a ballerina in a carwash.

“I want to talk to Lucy. Put me on speakerphone,” demanded Martin. Jack waved Lucy over with an exasperated gesture before tossing the phone on the table next to his breakfast.

“Lucy, what the hell,” said Martin. “Couldn’t you keep your husband under control for five minutes?”

Lucy didn’t even wince at his harshness. “I’m his spouse,” she said flatly. “Not his nanny.”

“It’s the same thing when you’re married to Jack Hunter.” Martin muttered a few curses before continuing. “Let’s just walk through this, shall we? Yesterday afternoon, we posted an amazing, very romantic wedding picture. The buzz starts.” He pitched his voice higher and quoted, “‘OMG, Jack Hunter is married!’ You were trending; you had a gazillion likes on your Twitter post; Mark Hamill wished you well, and then you know what happened next?”

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” said Jack, adding an additional spoonful of sugar to his coffee.

“Five hours later, there’s a picture of you in a dive bar, without your wife, on your wedding night, holding a pool cue like a sword—”

“Technically, like a wand,” Lucy corrected.

“And then the Internet thinks you abandoned your wife. Next thing we know, #wheresmrsjack is trending. Not even who you are, where you are. Like Jack left you on the doorstep of an orphanage or some shit like that.”

“I was at the bar later,” she offered.

“Oh, I know you were.” Martin’s snarl smacked of sarcasm. “Because there are pictures of you helping your husband’s drunken ass out the door and into a car.”

Jack squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the center of his forehead. “So, let me get this straight,” he mumbled, his tongue tripping over itself. “I sorted an entire bar into Harry Potter houses, then the world thought I misplaced my wife, and now they think I’m a drunk?”

“Pretty much!” snapped Martin.

Jack glanced over at Lucy, but she averted her eyes, her fingers smoothing out the edges of a placemat.

“But…isn’t that just…the status quo?” Jack asked.

Martin made a strangled noise, hung up, and then called back ten seconds later. “We need to fix this now,” said Martin in a false, methodical tone. “Get out there and do some romantic shit.” After he hung up again, Jack squinted at Lucy.

“Was I at least a Gryffindor?” he asked.

Lucy threw him a pitying look before retrieving her own phone. “Okay, something romantic,” she said, tapping at the screen. “Let’s check and see what people are posting on Instagram. It’s the holidays, so there’s bound to be some basic themes out there.” Her voice was peculiar, a little shaky, almost as if she were winded.

“You’re not getting sick, are you?” asked Jack, searching her face for signs of distress.

She hummed tightly, and Jack’s heartbeat flopped like a fish out of water, gasping for precious air.

Something was wrong.

“I’m fine,” she said, scrolling through her phone without glancing up. “We could get a tree and take selfies in front of it while we decorate.”

“I don’t have a tree,” he admitted. He’d never really wanted one before, but now that Lucy had requested it, its absence felt like a vacuum.

She shrugged. “We can get one.”

“I also don’t have lights.”

“We can pick some of those up.”

“I’m also fresh out of ornaments.” He sent her an apologetic grimace.

“Okay, that might take more time than we’re ready for,” she said with a resigned sigh. “I’ll order some ornaments and we can decorate next weekend. What about Christmas cookies?”

“That sounds simpler,” he said absent-mindedly, still studying her pinched expression.

“I have an errand to run; I can pick up some supplies on the way back,” she said, rising and pushing her chair in.

Jack stood as well, his knee knocking into the table and splashing coffee onto Lucy’s placemat.

“No.” She held up a hand with a smile, and Jack’s chest throbbed. He knew each and every one of her smiles, and goddamnit, that was not a genuine smile. She touched him on the shoulder, her thumb rubbing against the seam of his shirt. “You stay and rest.” He followed her to the hall, watching dully as she slipped into her coat and picked up her purse.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come?” Jack asked. He ran his finger over the crest of the guitar string in his wedding band. “It won’t take me long to get dressed.”

Lucy halted, her hand curled around the doorknob. She turned to him slowly, locking her cocoa-brown eyes on his. There was a flash of something like fear and pleading and guilt all at once, and then it was gone, replaced by a carefully crafted expression. “I’ll be fine,” she said, and then she bolted out the door, quick as a jackrabbit.

Jack stared at the door before trodding back to the table, where Lucy’s breakfast plate lay untouched. He sat down, unsure what had just happened, unsure if anything had happened. His face felt swollen and strange, and he wondered if he’d gotten into a fight last night that he couldn’t remember. But his nose looked fine with no bruises—so why were his eyes stinging?

Jack got dressed in what he thought was an appropriate outfit for Instagram cookies, which, of course, was his standard T-shirt and jeans. He went to his studio and picked up his guitar and continued to work on his new song, “THE SONG” as he called it in his head, all caps included. He hadn’t played any of it for Lucy yet, but Hasan, Lainey, and Maya were extremely enthusiastic about what he had so far.

It wasn’t a Jack Hunter song, to be sure. It was…different. It was fun and had its share of br-ahws and hwah-chas and even a little bit of Diamond-esque musical foreplay. But the chord progression wasn’t right and had evolved into a musical Rubik’s Cube, something Jack had to twist and turn until he found the right sequence. It was difficult when his mind was consumed by thoughts of anxious brown eyes above lightly freckled cheeks.

His phone rang after an hour, breaking his concentration further. A glance at the caller ID showed it was Parker, most likely calling to have Jack confirm the album art proofs. Jack hadn’t even opened the file yet, so he ignored the call and tried to get back into the writing zone.

He hummed and tapped out an accompanying drumbeat on the guitar’s waist. The phone rang again, and once again, it was Parker.

“Hold your damn horses,” Jack said, flicking the phone across the sofa with a feigned drum roll. The phone dropped between the cushions and the ringing ceased. Jack struck a victory chord on the guitar, but seconds later, Elvis Presley’s sultry tones began to play from the phone, muffled through fabric and cushions.

Jack froze. That was Lucy’s ringtone. Suddenly, Parker’s previous calls seemed a lot more ominous. He dove across the seat and scrambled for the phone.

“Lucy?”

“You’re screening me,” said Parker.

“Why do you have Lucy’s phone?” Jack asked, ignoring the pointed accusation. Parker’s lengthy pause caused the hair on Jack’s arms to stand stiff as icicles.

“You have to promise not to freak out,” Parker said. “Or I’ll hang up.”

“I won’t freak out,” lied Jack. “I never freak out.”

“You’re freaking out now,” Parker said.

“Parker,” Jack said, over-pronouncing his name. “Why do you have Lucy’s phone? Where are you?”

“So,” Parker sighed. “We’re at the hospital.”

Jack, as predicted, freaked out. “What? You’re where? Why? Which hospital?”

“Brooklyn City ER. She’ll be fine, but—”

“I’ll be right there.” Jack hung up, tossed his guitar onto a chair, threw on mismatched shoes without socks, and ran out the door to get his wife.