Broken Records by Bree Bennett
Chapter 5
Jack woke up two hours later with a spluttering cough. Lucy rolled the new thermometer across his brow, frowning when it trilled cheerfully.
“No birds in the house,” he said, swatting it away with a sweaty palm.
“It’s just a thermometer. Let’s try and sit up.”
He shook his head like a petulant toddler and buried himself under his comforter. She slid her hands under his lean arms and tugged upwards at his shoulders.
“I’m not ticklish.” He shoved her hands away.
“I’m not trying to—I’m trying to lift you. Sit up.”
Like an engineer trying to redesign a ramshackle building, she surveyed him for the best angle before using her shoulder to push him into a forward position. Her socks slipped on the hardwood floor, and she fell to her knees, face planting into the blankets.
“Please. Sit. Up.”
He groaned, coaxing his body to incline against the pillow. Lucy placed a thermos of microwaved chicken broth into his hands.
“Drink it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Drink it.”
Intense irritation spread like a thundercloud across his face.
She stifled a shudder and tapped her fingers against her palms.
“Why are you so jumpy? Like a fucking jackrabbit.”
“You’re stuck on this rabbit thing, aren’t you?” Her nostrils twitched, and he pointed to it as damning evidence. “Please, drink the broth.”
His gaze slid to her vintage-style shirt. “Elvis sucks.” His jaw locked in arrogant defiance, challenging her, baiting her.
“Drink the damn broth.”
His lips quirked, and he looked quite pleased with himself before he took a hesitant sip, swallowing with a pained grimace. “Is Elvis your favorite singer?” He gestured at the shirt with a surly expression.
“I don’t really have a favorite. But he holds a special place in my heart.” For Lucy, listening to the King was like wrapping herself in the plushest of blankets, or drinking the sweetest of cocoas. It was music that transcended cruel laughter and busted lips and the darkest nights.
Jack grunted in disapproval, so she pushed the mug toward his lips again. “Sip it.”
“No.” He closed his eyes, shaking his mop of damp, tangled hair. “Tired.”
She chewed on her lip, fretting. Jack needed to drink more fluids before she would be comfortable enough to go back to her own apartment. Her father had had his own unique trick when any of her brothers and sisters were suffering from the inherent stubbornness of illness. Perhaps it would work on Jack. “Drink it, or I’ll start telling jokes.”
He lifted his lids just enough to peer at her through his long, thick lashes. “No.”
“What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino?” She paused. “Elefino.”
He groaned at the auditory pun and took another sip, wincing again.
“Good boy. One more.”
“No.”
“Why did the scarecrow win an award?”
“Fucking hell.”
“He was outstanding in his field.”
He took a hurried sip and glared at her, shoving the thermos into her hands. “No more. Jokes or broth.”
“You did well.” She left the thermos within his reach on the nightstand. “Sleep some more, okay?”
He grumbled something incoherent and hid his face under a pillow.
After he drifted back to sleep, she explored his townhouse. It was unkempt, and not in a lived-in, comfortable way. Minimal decor adorned the walls, except for in his studio, which had his platinum records on the wall, glittering relics from another age.
It felt like the house itself had given up on life—a little like its occupant.
A shelf held a framed picture of Jack and B.B. King. Physically, he looked the same—a little leaner, perhaps, and his mop of chin-length waves didn’t have that dusting of silver at the temples. But his smile was giddy and unabashed. He was a young man on top of the world, unaware of the drunken mess he would become.
On the second floor, there was a guest room with a television in it. The bed was neatly made, though the dusty nightstand proved no one had been in there in a while. Lucy laid down on the bed like a sleepy Goldilocks. Was this what it would be like to be Jack’s wife, or rather, glorified roommate? If that night had been any indication, it would probably be more trouble than the free room was worth. Still, walking around this lonely house, there was a tiny bit of her that wanted to take him up on his offer. They were both living alone in the dark. Maybe they could look for a little bit of light together?
* * *Lucy awoke from her unplanned nap to two sounds rarely heard together: the gentle plink of piano keys, followed by the guttural heaving of someone vomiting. She bolted downstairs to the music studio.
Jack sat on the piano bench, bent in half over a trash can. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and gulped in gasping breaths. His other hand laid on the keys, curved in the shape of a chord.
“What are you doing?”
“I thought you left,” he bit out, his face green and roughshod. The alcoholic bliss had worn off and left a feverish animal in its stead, wounded and ready to strike.
“I was in the guest room, that’s all.”
He waved her off and turned back to the piano, plunking at the keys with frenetic chaos and swiping at his sweaty forehead.
“Stop this. Are you trying to recreate the death scene of Amadeus?”
“I’m working on a song.” He stopped and clutched his stomach, closing his eyes as if in prayer.
“It can wait.”
“No, it can’t.” He swung back to the piano, running his fingers over the same keys, over and over like a hesitant spider, before roaring and slamming his hands down in a loud chorus of chords. Then he bent over again and retched into the trash.
“You’re going to throw up on your piano,” Lucy said. He flipped her his middle finger between heaves. She ignored it and waited for his body to finish casting up whatever was left in his belly. When he straightened with a pained gasp, his expression was a mixture of humiliation and pure misery.
She took a tentative step toward him as if he were a stray dog—possibly sweet, but also possibly rabid. He glared at her outstretched hand as if it were responsible for his misery.
“Do you want help going upstairs?”
“I don’t need your help!” he snapped. “Not from you, not from anybody. I can write music and save my career on my own, so just fuck off already!”
She yanked her hand back as if bitten. “Fine.”
“I don’t need help,” he repeated with a vicious snarl. His white knuckles clenched around the lip of the piano bench. “Not from some rock groupie.”
Oh, hell no. Not the g-word.
“I am not a groupie,” Lucy spat out. “I am the farthest from a groupie you’ll ever find. And even if I were, I’d hardly be a groupie to you of all people.”
Jack’s eyes darted between her and the trash can, possibly regarding them as equal worth.
“Good luck, then, with this.” She gestured at the whole mess—the trash can, the piano, the musician—before rushing to the front door. He retched again, but she didn’t turn back. As he had so vehemently stated, he didn’t need help.
Throwing the front door open, she pulled up the rideshare app to order a car and plopped down on the bare stoop to wait. Wind leaked into the neck of her jacket as she tugged it tighter around her. She could have waited inside the house, but she didn’t want to be anywhere near Jack Hunter—no, Mad Jack, because the press was right. The man was insane.
Once the car arrived and she was safely inside, her phone buzzed with a text alert from an unknown number. There was no message preview, so she ignored it. Stupid spam texts. She didn’t need a new car, a credit check, or a penis enlargement.
The text alerts didn’t stop once she was sheltered and cozy inside her apartment, her cell vibrating in her pocket like an angry bumblebee. Annoyed, she unlocked her phone to find that they weren’t regular texts, but recorded audio messages. She tapped the first one and listened with apprehension.
“I’m too sick to text. The alphabet keeps spinning.” Jack’s voice was slurred and distant, as if the phone was barely near his mouth. With a frustrated groan, she remembered she had given him her number in case of any medical costs from his Lucy-inflicted injury. She opened the next few in succession.
“Oh God, you were right. I got sick on the piano,” he moaned. “Cottontaaaaail.”
“Not my name,” Lucy mumbled, but curiosity had her listening to the next messages.
“I can’t get the water bottle open.” Next.
“There’s water all over my fucking shirt!” Next.
“Luuuuucy,” he said on the next one, before several clunks like a runaway bowling ball when the phone was obviously dropped.
“I’m using the wet shirt to clean the pia— Awww, fu—”
“I spilled water all over the piano.”
The next clip was just Jack gagging and sputtering. If Lucy had no conscience, she could have sold these to a radio comedy show, but the ridiculousness of it all gave her a warm feeling deep in her chest, like a fresh sip of sun tea.
It wasn’t until she was in bed at last that the final message, a real text message, came through on the screen.
JACK: I’m sorry.
She sighed heavily. The whole mess with Jack Hunter had been a—well, if not exactly fun, an interesting detour from her plans, but it was time to get back to business. She had to find a place to live, and a new life to carve out in the city.
LUCY: Don’t worry about it. Feel better soon.
* * *The next day, Lucy redoubled her efforts to find an apartment. She spent the morning hunched over her laptop, alternating between browsing real estate websites and formatting a hazardous materials manual for a client. She found a handful of places in Brooklyn that fit her simple requirements—a place to cook, a place to sleep, a place to work.
A place to be alone at last. To be safe.
While she threw together a simple salad that afternoon, her phone shook with an incoming text. She lifted it, expecting her daily check-in message from her mother.
JACK: You left your wallet here. Send me your address and I’ll send a driver with it.
She frowned and checked her purse for confirmation. She must have left it on the counter when she ordered his groceries. She tapped out her information, went back to her computer, and checked out a listing for a minuscule studio apartment in Cobble Hill.
A harsh knock on the door an hour later interrupted her concentration. She peeked through the eyehole and let out a groan. A bleary-eyed rock star glowered back at her through the fisheye glass, looking like the victim of a zombie bite.
Lucy opened the door. “You’re not your driver.” Jack stumbled in, dressed in a ratty tartan bathrobe and green moccasins like an illustration from Eddie Vedder’s Christmas cards. He tossed her wallet at her.
“I’m sick,” he said. “Marry me.”
“No.” Her chest twinged as he clutched the back of a chair for support. “You look awful. I would’ve come and gotten the wallet if you needed me to.”
He waved her off. “Don’t make me talk. Just come back.”
“Come back?” she repeated. “Why?”
“I didn’t mean what I said. I was sick.” He scrubbed at his face with shaking hands, his eyes wide and wild. “I don’t like being sick.”
“Ah yes, as opposed to the many people who love it.” She reached for the front doorknob and twisted it open, sweeping her arm as a gesture for him to leave.
”I shouldn’t have yelled. Kim and I got into a fight before you found me. I have to write. She booked studio musicians and a recording date. I mean—fuck. Just come back.” He swayed like a cattail in the breeze. “Please.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’m sick as hell,” he said.
“Yes, you’ve said that.” His ashen face tugged at her heartstrings, but she wasn’t in the mood to return to his house just to get snapped at or proposed to again.
“Come stay with me. Until I feel better.” He met her eyes, and though she tried to look away, his hangdog expression drew her in. “I don’t have anyone else.”
Silence yawned between them. “What about Sully?” she asked.
He frowned. “He’s my tenant. I can’t ask him.”
“What?”
“The building,” he said. “With the record store. It’s mine.”
She blinked at him in surprise. Dilapidated commercial buildings weren’t exactly something that usually attracted someone in his tax bracket.
Jack tried to straighten his posture, but a racking cough overwhelmed him. “Are you coming now?”
“No.”
“Please.” His hand darted out, circling her wrist, his calloused fingers brushing against the sensitive skin. “I’ll let you tell one joke.”
She snorted. “Why me?”
His mouth tipped up in a shadow of a smile. “You treat me like I’m normal.”
Perhaps she and Jack had more in common than she thought.
“I really shouldn’t,” she said, swallowing back any pity and half-heartedly pointing at the door again.
“Oh.” He had a stunned look of betrayal, like someone who had just taken a dodgeball to the face in gym class. His shoulders fell, and he broke into another coughing spell.
“Can I just stay here?” he asked with a half-hopeful look.
Lucy sighed. “For a few minutes.” She went to make a cup of herbal tea for him, partially because it would probably do him good, and partially because she didn’t want to be expected to make any additional conversation. Despite everything, she was starting to become a little attached to Jack. He was like a licorice twist —sharp, bitter, and liable to give you a tummy ache.
Lucy was rather fond of licorice.
When she returned, Jack’s head was on the table, cushioned by his folded arms. Lucy patted his shoulder, and he snored. With a sigh of exasperation, Lucy sat down across from him and sipped at the tea, suddenly feeling a tummy ache coming on.