Chapter 10
Jackie's zen face held up well as she walked away from Hyde. But as soon as she stepped into the garage her control slipped and tears filled her eyes. Shaking with shock, she lay down on the couch and hugged a cushion tightly against her stomach, as though physically trying to hold herself together. When George found her this way, panic hit him like a falling piano.
"Jackie, what's wrong? Are you hurt?" He tested her forehead with the back of his hand, running worried eyes over her body, looking for injury.
"He's back," Jackie whispered, her eyes huge and tragic in her three-cornered face.
"Who is? Jackie, did somebody hurt you? Please, sweetheart, tell me what's wrong and I promise I'll fix it for you."
A gleam of hope shot into Jackie's eyes and she sat up, grasping George's hand tightly.
"You have to make him go away," she pleaded. "Please, Dad!"
"Who?" he asked again.
"Steven."
"Steven? You mean Steven Hyde, the kid I just hired? I know you said he was no friend of yours, but what's so bad about him that has sent you into a melt-down?"
"He is the main reason I left Point Place," Jackie said, wiping tears away with the heel of her hand. With very little prompting, the whole sorry tale poured out of his distressed daughter – their secret affair, their public affair, the nurse, the first break-up, the second break-up...
"...so then I got this fantastic job offer in Chicago and I had to choose between a great career or love," Jackie explained tearfully. "It wasn't really a hard choice – I was all in favour of choosing love but I just needed him to let me know he was serious about me, that I wasn't giving up my dream job for nothing."
"And he said no?" George guessed.
Jackie shook her head. "First he got stinking drunk when he should have been asking me to stay. Then when I figured it was pointless to stick around and wait for his rejection I went to Chicago but he followed me and walked in on me and my ex-boyfriend in a hotel room. He took one look at us, made some very insulting and totally wrong assumptions and then ran away."
"What assumptions?"
"OK, fine, so Michael was wearing a towel and talking about him and me 'doing it'," Jackie admitted, throwing her hands in the air. George raised his eyebrows in disbelief. "There was a context, damn it!"
"What context?"
"That Michael Kelso is a sex-obsessed moron who can't keep his pants on."
George drew in a deep breath. "Great – now there's two young men out there I have to punch in the face."
Jackie gave a half-smile. "You're too late for Michael. Steven already did that."
"Did he? You know, considering he punched your other boyfriend in the face, and has not only followed you to Chicago but also to California, I've got to conclude that he must still have feelings for you."
"No." Jackie's shook her head. "I haven't even told you the worst part yet."
"It gets worse?" George asked incredulously.
"When he ran out of that hotel room, he drove all the way to Vegas and went on a month long bender. Then when he came home I was waiting for him - I had given up my new job because I just missed him so much, I thought somehow we would work things out. And for a moment there I thought it was going to happen – we were just having our first conversation without yelling at each other when this... this... woman walked in and announced she was Steven's wife. His wife! Not only that, but she was a Vegas stripper." Jackie's breathing turned choppy as that memory replayed in her head. "I had spent two years of my life turning myself into someone he would want to marry one day, and then he chooses a vile naked hussy he had just met instead."
George hugged Jackie as her words heated his blood with rage. How dare some low-life punk treat his little girl that way! "God, Jackie, I'm so sorry – "
"Wait," Jackie held up a hand. "It gets worse."
"I'm afraid to ask – how could it possibly get any worse than that?"
"Because I could have forgiven him for marrying Sam. It happened when he was drunk and I know he does really stupid, destructive things when he gets drunk so I could have got past that. But he chose to stay with her. After telling me he wasn't ready to be married, he chose to stay married to a floozy he didn't even remember marrying! And then..." Jackie's eyes took on that haunted expression George had seen when she first stepped off the plane, the expression that made him want to take apart the person responsible for it with his bare hands. "...then it was like he had never loved me at all. He went back to the way he used to be before we got together, always putting me down, making cutting remarks. Except it never used to bother me when I was with Michael because back then I'd think, he's only judging on appearances, he doesn't really know me or he wouldn't think I was a stuck-up airhead." Jackie's voice started to shake. "But when you've been together with someone for so long and... and you've let them see who you really are, then when they treat you l-like you're w-worthless..."
It was a while before Jackie could say anything after that. George rocked her gently until the sobs tearing through her body quieted to a gentle weeping. Jackie hugged him back gratefully, feeling immeasurably comforted to have the sympathy of somebody who was completely in her corner.
"Please Dad," she finally said, "please make him go away." George looked into her red eyes and was disturbed, not as much by the sadness but the fear he saw in them.
"What are you afraid of, Jackie?" he asked gently.
"I'm afraid he'll make me into nothing again," Jackie whispered. "That's what he did in Point Place. It was like everybody saw me as worth less than a stripper. I saw myself as less than her. And it hurt so much that I did whatever I could to make the hurt go away. I started to like how it feels... not to feel."
George nodded. "I know the feeling."
"I haven't used anything like that in over a month. I don't even smoke pot anymore. But if he is here, making all my friends, making you, see me through his eyes... I don't know what I would do. I'm scared of what I might do."
"Alright," her father said, standing up. "I'll take care of this."
George strode across to the half-finished house, looking for the bastard who had crushed his daughter's heart. But there were no heart-crushing bastards in sight.
"Jamie," he yelled up to the roof. "Have you seen the new guy about?"
"Last I saw of him he was over by his truck," Jamie yelled back. "Is he leaving already?"
"Not yet," George muttered, changing course for the parking lot. "Not before he hears what I have to say, that stripper-marrying punk!"
When George stood in front of the El Camino, Hyde was sitting on the flatbed, shoulders slumped, too dejected to lift his head. It barely registered with him when Jackie's uncle stood fuming before him. But then he said Hyde's name with a voice like a whip crack and Hyde could not help noticing how very different this angry man was to the easy-going person who had hired him this morning.
"What the hell are you doing here?" George demanded.
Hyde blinked. "Uh... I'm on a break?"
"Don't play cute with me, punk! I know who you are. Now you tell me right now what the fuck you are doing here in California before I throw you over that cliff and leave you for the fish to eat."
Hyde started to feel a sweat build. This guy could give Red tips on how to make a young man shake in his boots.
"I... I came f-for Jackie," he stuttered.
"Why?" George snarled, getting up into Hyde's face. "So you can hurt her again? Did you run out of innocent girls to torment in Wisconsin?"
Hyde leaned away from the crazy man who was glaring at him with his mismatched eyes that seemed very familiar to him somehow.
"No, of course not! I just wanted to see her so I could... I mean, I needed to make sure she was doing OK and tell her..."
"Tell her what?" George barked, unnerving Hyde even more.
"That I'm sorry," the miserable boy blurted. "That I was an idiot and I miss her like crazy and I'd do anything if she would just come back home with me."
Silence hung in the air. It would be hard to say who was more surprised by Hyde's confession.
"And did you?" George asked.
"I tried." Hyde's shoulders slumped down an extra notch. "Before I could get past the apology she pretty much told me to shove it and walked off."
"I see." George frowned in concentration as he looked over the sorry excuse in front of him. Funny thing was, he had taken an instant liking to this kid when he had hired him; there was something about the way he seemed to step back and watch the world go by with mocking but tolerant eyes that reminded George of how he used to be. Then from the eager way he had asked after Jackie which he had tried to hide with a veneer of coolness, it had never occurred to him that this Steven Hyde was actually a black-hearted villain who delighted in the torture of helpless females. Even now, taking in his depressed response to Jackie's rejection, that description still seemed kind of... off.
"So, what now?" George asked in a more reasonable tone. "Are you heading back to Point Place?"
"Are you firing me?" Hyde answered with a question. Then he sighed. "Of course you are. I'm sure Jackie's given you a play by play." He pushed himself off the flatbed and walked around to open the car door. Then he turned to ask another question. "Can you tell me if that beach down there is public land?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Just wanted to make sure so I don't get hassled by the cops or the rich people's hired security thugs."
"You mean to say you're going to live on the beach?" George asked in surprise.
"I've got my camping gear with me. It's like I said; I've only told Jackie one part of what I came here to tell her." Hyde's blue eyes were pure determination. "I'm not leaving until she gets the whole message."
"Yes, I think she needs to get that message." George surveyed Hyde thoughtfully. As he remembered Jackie's fearful face, he came to a decision. "Break's over. Get to work on the south wall – I want to see 3 lines of brick before sundown."
"You're serious? You still want me to work for you?" Hyde was stunned.
"The question is if you're still going to want to work for me before the day is done," George gave a sinister smile. "You ever worked for a guy after you'd hurt someone he loved?" Hyde's eyes widened at the implication. "That's right, buddy. Welcome to Georgetown - you're in my world now. Let's see how long it takes before you go running back to Pointless Place with your tail between your legs."
Hyde bit back the smartass comment he had lined up and said instead, "I guess I'd better get started on that south wall."
"You do that." Once Hyde was out of sight, all the badass leaked out of George's body at the thought of the obvious consequence of his decision. How the hell was he going to explain this to Jackie?
………………………………………
"OK, what's going on?" Alex said, walking into the garage in board shorts with a towel slung over his shoulder. "I waited on the beach for you for like an hour!" Then he saw the traces of tears on Jackie's face and was instantly concerned. "Jackie, what's wrong?"
"Oh, Alex," Jackie cried, rushing into his arms.
"Hey now," Alex soothed, kissing her hair as she clung to him.
"Alex, you don't think I'm nothing, do you?"
"What, are you kidding? Any girl who can mitre a corner to a perfect 90 degrees is something special, I can tell you!"
Jackie drew her head back to look up at the handsome boy. "You're not going to change your mind about that, are you?"
"Of course not. Jackie, what's going on?"
"Nothing. It doesn't matter anyway, my fa – uncle is taking care of it." Jackie smiled a little too brightly. "Everything is fine."
"That's what I like to hear," Alex replied with a smile, kissing Jackie lightly on the lips. "Now go and change into that hot little bikini of yours – I figure we can still squeeze in a quick dip before we start on the south wall."
A.N. As you can guess, there is more drama around the corner (no surprise, this whole story is an angst-fest). It's moving slowly but I'm in no hurry. How about you?