AN: So, here's the update I promised. This one is longer than the last, and I hope you guys enjoy it. The reviews were wonderful as always!
Chapter 8: Reflect the Storm
"Where's Kat?" Jeff asked everyone in the basement. After a little bit of begging and compliments, Josh and Jeff finally convinced Donna to let them hang out in the basement. Jackie saying that it was fine with her as long as they didn't dirty up any of her things helped a bit to.
"I called her earlier and she said she felt bad." Meg said with a flip of her long, black hair. She sat in the middle of the couch next to her boyfriend, Chase, with Jeff to the right of them. Zach, Josh, and Jeff met Chase a few months before and started hanging out because he had interest in being in their band. Ever since then, Meg, who was seemingly Kat's best friend had been sucking face with him. Zach couldn't help but feel angry at the disinterest that hung in Meg's voice, even though he was the one that caused Kat's pain in the first place.
Zach watched as Chase and Meg began making out again. Usually he just didn't give a damn about Meg and her slutty friend forgetting ways, but he was already pissed off. "So Chase, when are you going to come to the Jam Room and start writing some songs with us?"
Chase peeked an eye open and slowly peeled his face away from Meg. "Um… soon guys, I just haven't come up with any material, that's all."
"Hmm…" Zach hummed sarcastically, loading his gun. "That's funny. That's exactly the same thing you said the last time I asked, and the time before that, and the time before that."
Chase was taken slightly aback but recovered like any decent bullshitter would. "I just haven't been inspired. That's all."
"Well, me, Josh, and Jeff here get inspired when we play together. Maybe you should just come one day." Zach leaned forward on one of his knees and stared at the boy. He could feel the malice in his voice drip off the words that poured out of his mouth.
"What are you trying to get at Zach?" The tension in the room was high. Everyone sat dead still as they waited for Zach's response. Zach was planning on retaliating with something nasty. He was officially tired of life, and he just didn't want to deal with people like Meg and Chase anymore. He caught Josh's eye from across the table. His face told him to hold his tongue and play nice. No matter how much Zach wanted to get in a fight, pound this guy's face in, and just say "fuck you" to everybody, he actually held his tongue.
"Nothing man. Just trying to get this band started." He leaned back in the folding chair again and relaxed his body, but his muscles just wouldn't loosen. He was tense, angry, and just wanted to be left alone. "Well guys," he said while standing up. "I gotta use the John."
Zach made his way up the stairs of the basement knowing fully well that Meg would start running her fat, whorey mouth. Maybe they would just leave. He hoped so.
When he entered the kitchen, he found Donna and Jackie sitting at the table drinking coffee. It appeared like they were in a deep conversation due to the solemn look on their faces. When Donna finally noticed him at the refrigerator, she stopped whatever it was that she was saying.
"Hey Zach. How are you today?" Donna asked in a pseudo cheerful voice. Zach opened the soda can that he had grabbed from the fridge and took a sip. "Um, I was actually wondering if I can talk to you for a second."
Jackie immediately stood up and looked to the red head. "I'll just go make that phone call to Dennis." She walked out of the kitchen, giving Zach a smile as she left.
Zach took Jackie's empty seat next to Donna. He could tell that she was very concerned about him. Everyone seemed to be concerned about him lately. He just didn't understand why. They all took careful steps around him and watched what they said. He guessed they just didn't understand that all he wanted was the blatant truth behind everything.
"What is it that you wanted to talk to me about Zach?" Donna asked while taking a sip from her mug.
"I want to know what's going on."
Donna squinted her eyes at him in confusion. "About what?"
"About everything." Zach stated in a sigh. He began tracing patterns in the table cloth. "About what you told me last night. I just don't understand it."
He looked up at her and he saw a small smile form on her face. "What? That your father actually loved somebody?"
Zach looked down in shame. He wasn't sure why he felt so shameful for wondering about something like that. Anybody using logical reasoning could see it was a perfectly innocent thing to question, but something unexplainable tugged inside Zach. He just couldn't pin point the feeling. "Yeah. He has never loved any woman before. Not that I have seen."
He heard Donna let out a big sigh. He took it as a signal that she would begin explaining everything to him. He could always count on her to tell him the truth. "Look Zach. Your father and Jackie dated a long time ago, when they were still in high school. Their relationship lasted for two years and then things just got out of hand and they broke up."
"That's it? They just broke up? Well what happened to make them break up? Something had to." Zach felt himself growing impatient with Donna's vagueness.
He watched as Donna had a tiny internal battle within her self. Her eyes grew sad and she let her head drop to her shoulders. She looked back up at him and into his eyes. Melancholy danced across the shimmer of her green orbs. She finally spoke up. "That is something your father will have to tell you."
Zach clenched his fists together. "No." He shook his head in disagreement. "He won't tell me. He doesn't talk about things like this. He barely talks about my mother." Zach placed his forehead in his upturned hands. He was really counting on Donna tell him what it is that he wanted to know. Zach wasn't even really sure why he wanted to know so badly. He guessed that this feeling of emptiness and not knowing who he truly is had to deal with not knowing anything about his past. If this woman was apart of his dad's life at one point, that meant she was apart of his.
He felt Donna's comforting hand rest on the top of his head. "Zach, I'm sure he'll tell you if you just ask."
Zach shook his head from side to side, still covering his eyes, and said in a defeated tone, "No he won't." He released his head and looked back up at Donna's comforting eyes.
"Zach," She stared directly into Zach's eyes, demanding him to listen to her. "Honey, I know that your father is withdrawn, and doesn't like to talk about things like this, but you just have to tell him that you need to know. Just explain to him that you are tired of not being told things."
"Why can't you just tell me?"
"Just trust me. He has to tell you." Her voice dropped signaling the importance in her words. "He's the only one that can."
Zach gave up and relaxed a bit. He leaned back in the chair, and sighed at his surrender. "So I guess it must be pretty important if he has to be the one to tell me."
Donna gave a light smile again. "It is." She got up and walked over to the sink to dispose of her mug. As she began to walk away, she stopped for a second and looked back at Zach. "I do want you to know, that what they had was special."
Zach sat stunned in his seat. His mind kept rambling on and on with all of the possibilities that could have been his father and Jackie. Donna said that they dated while they were still in high school, so that must have meant that Jackie came before his mother. He wondered what it was that drove this Jackie woman to run away, and if it really had anything to do with his father at all. But most importantly, Zach wondered what the looming feeling of dread that hung over his body was and if this new situation was creating it. Zach shook his head again and brushed off the icy feeling, blaming it on his nerves about talking to his dad later.
Donna left Zach with is thoughts to find Jackie sitting on the living room couch with her back towards her. She had the phone pressed against her ear while having her other arm hold her body together.
"Yeah, alright. Okay…. Just send them in the mail. …. Okay. Bye." Jackie clicked the phone off and softly set it onto the table next to her. Donna watched as her friend stared off into space. She didn't look sad or angry. She looked numb and out of touch with everything.
"So what did Dennis say?" Donna quietly asked as she took her place next to Jackie on the couch.
Donna carefully watched as Jackie shifted her far away eyes to her. It was eerie seeing Jackie like this, so out of tune with the world.
"He said he'd send the papers in the mail. They should be here in a few days. He already has them written up and ready for me to sign." Her voice drew out dryly and no emotion was visible on her face.
"Are you okay Jackie?" Donna asked. She watched the question bounced around in Jackie's body.
"Yeah, actually I'm fine." The words came out with realization moving them along. Donna could tell this wasn't Jackie's way of clamming up and hiding from her. She really meant what she said.
"He was so emotionless on the phone." Jackie began as she retold the experience she just had to Donna and to herself. "His words were so cold. I think he has been waiting for something like this to happen for a while now. It hurt to hear him respond to me that way, but then I just couldn't help remembering that that is how it has been for years now."
Jackie met Donna's eyes once more and saw tears welling up in their corners. She felt her own tears pushing through and didn't bother to stop them.
"Jackie," Donna's voice cracked through the air as her tears rolled down her cheeks. "I know I said before that I understood why you left, but I really want to know why it was you left. What finally pushed you?"
Jackie didn't have to question which time Donna meant. She quietly laughed to herself as she realized that she actually had a list of times she had run now. She answered Donna with open sincerity.
"It really wasn't one thing that pushed me. Just one day I realized just how unhappy I was with everyone… with Steven, with you… with myself. The night that I left, just something inside of me snapped and forced me to leave and never look back. I can't tell you any more than that."
Jackie watched as Donna silently cried to herself. In their youth, there were only a few times that Jackie had ever seen Donna cry. It was always a hard thing to watch. Donna had always been strong and independent one of the two of them, even though sometimes Jackie questioned that assumption. In the darkest hour of her life, she cursed Donna's name and all the times she wasn't there for her. She couldn't help but laugh then at what a charade Donna put on to everyone else. Donna was just as weak of a woman as Jackie was, but Jackie was never one to hold grudges. All she could feel now was the need to comfort her best friend.
"I'm sorry Jackie." Donna said through her tears. "I'm sorry for what I did to you back then. I don't know what was wrong with me." Donna began to sob as the guilt held her down. "I'm sorry that I was even friends with Sam. I just didn't think about how much pain you were in. I was way too caught up in Eric being gone and my own shit."
Jackie scooted over to her friend and wrapped her arms around her body. "It's okay Donna. I understand."
Donna cried harder into her hands. "I've wanted to tell you this for so long. Whenever you left, I was so angry at you. I hated you for weeks for not saying goodbye. But then," Donna stopped herself, questioning whether she should reveal the identity of the person that set her straight. "But then, one day I really thought about everything and the more I thought about it, the worst I felt. I was no longer angry at you though. I was angry at myself. I was a horrible friend Jackie, and because of that, I lost you."
Jackie hugged Donna closer stroking her hair. "It's okay Donna. I forgive you."
The two women hugged and cried for a little bit longer, cherishing the moment between them. Donna felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders while Jackie felt satisfaction with being able to forgive her best friend. No longer was there anger or hate between the two. Their tears washed all of the animosity away.
While recovering, Donna asked Jackie another question that had been bothering her for quite sometime.
"Why didn't you say goodbye to us?"
Jackie bit her lip and responded solemnly. "I knew that if I said goodbye, you guys would just convince me to stay."
"Yeah," Donna laughed while wiping the remainder of her tears away. "Probably."
"Are you happy that you came back?"
The question hit Jackie like a ton of bricks. Was she happy? Was all of this trouble with her husband and son in Boston worth this? Jackie compared her life in Boston to the feeling she was feeling at that very moment. For years she lived dead inside, just scraping by the days with nothing to live for. She lived in a beautiful house with beautiful possessions, but her heart had turned to stone. She ran away to Boston to get rid of her sensitivity and emotions, and that was exactly what happened. Sitting on the couch next to her best friend with fresh tears on her face and a warm feeling in her chest was answer enough.
"Yes, I'm very happy."
A few weeks after Jackie left, 1981
Donna, Eric, and Hyde sat in the basement, each one of them trying to watch the program on the television. Hyde wasn't even concentrating. Guilt and loneliness had began eating away at him as soon as he and Jackie were broken up for good, but these past few weeks with Jackie AWOL, he felt his depression eat away at him faster. Donna was livid inside, silently cursing her best friend for ditching her and not even telling her goodbye. Eric was just trying his best to ignore all the angry tension that had built up in the room.
"I can't believe Jackie just left!" Donna said with a burst as she continued to steam on the couch. "She could have left a note, left a message with someone, anything!"
"Donna!" Hyde barked, holding his hand out to silence the girl. "Just shut up, will you?"
Donna sneered in his direction. "Don't tell me to shut up Hyde! She left you just like she left me."
Hyde turned his body to face the blonde, as he prepared himself to lash out at the girl. "Yeah, well I've actually accepted my fault in it, so why don't you just shut the fuck upt and think about why it's your fault, too."
Donna was shocked and outraged, "My fault?" She held a stiff hand pointing at her chest. "How is Jackie leaving MY fault?"
"Well let's think." Hyde began counting on his fingers. "You never even consoled her whenever I married Sam. You just became buddy buddy with her, showing no loyalty whatsoever. You never even stopped to think the kind of shit Jackie has been going through these past two years. You were just too wrapped up in your Eric mop fest like you always are. Plus, don't play this innocent crap anyways, because you did the same thing when you left with Kelso, Jackie's BOYFRIEND at the time, whenever you went to California!"
Donna stood up and Hyde met her. Eric sat nervously as he watched his girlfriend and best friend get in the biggest argument of their entire friendship.
"Don't pin all of this shit on me likes it's entirely my fault Hyde. You married a stripper when Jackie said she wanted to get married."
Eric prepared himself for it. The look in Hyde's eyes gave all the signs that he was going to explode right there. But when the loud voice never came, and a simple low nod of his head replaced the anger, Eric watched closely to catch the very next thing his friend said.
"I know, okay." His voice was silent and Eric could never remember a time that he heard so much remorse in the bad boy, stoner's voice. "I know that, and everyday I hate that I did that too her. For some reason I thought I was doing that right thing." His voice trailed off and Eric took notice of Donna's down turned face as she too was being deeply affected by the sudden change in emotion in Hyde. "Now I have to live with that guilt forever. I know that I drove her away, but you just have to stop and think about how you weren't there for her either."
Hyde walked back to his bedroom as he left Donna standing in the middle of the basement with Eric cautiously staring up at her. A wave of emotions hit Donna all at once.
"Donna, are you okay?" Eric asked as he grabbed for her limp hand that hung at her side.
Donna slowly sat down next to Eric not looking at him as she continued to think about Hyde's words. "I really was a bad friend Eric." She murmured.
Eric wrapped his arms around Donna's shoulder and placed her head on his shoulder with her face pressing against his neck. Donna promised herself at that very moment that if she ever saw Jackie again, she'd apologize to her with the drop of a hat. She just hoped it would be soon before the guilt ate her alive.
AN2: You guys know what to do. I just can't get enough of your reviews. Next chapter is Zach and Hyde's confrontation about what happened between JH so get ready!
