The next few days were uneventful in the basement. Jackie had Kelso running around town looking for the perfect wedding venue, checking out tuxedo shops and florists, scheduling cake tastings and every other possible wedding related planning imaginable. Despite not having a date set, she is determined to get a head start on the fairy tale wedding she has always envisioned. Fez would sometimes tag along, probably more excited than Jackie herself. While Jackie and Kelso were too busy to stop by the basement for longer than thirty minutes, Fez would fill the rest of the gang in on the ongoing planning.
"Oh you should see the flowers, all the beautiful flowers" he would exclaim cheerfully, his accent thickening as a result.
Hyde and Donna would endure this every day. Donna did not hide her annoyance. After turning Jackie down to be her maid of honor, Jackie has avoided speaking to Donna or even being in the same room as her. Despite Donna's attempt to try to mend fences, the younger girl wanted nothing more than to plan her wedding without the negative energy she says Donna brings.
Things between Sam and Hyde have not gotten much better and she is now watching him closely, probably trying to catch any slip up he might make pertaining to Jackie, Kelso or their wedding. Whenever these were brought up with her in the room, Sam would look directly at Hyde and see if he was affected at all by the conversation. He, of course, was able to mask his own annoyance thanks to years of zen. Through his lenses, he would see her eyes shift to him whenever the basement door opened. Perhaps she thought he would be hopeful that it was Jackie and then catch his disappointment when it wasn't. He had hoped that not having Jackie around would also ease their arguments, but had no such luck.
Every night, something would elicit a discussion that would lead her to ask something Jackie related. On one particular night, she had been ruffling through the drawers in the room when she found a tiny box he had stashed away and forgotten about. In the box was, to his misfortune, a ring he bought for Jackie when they had been together, right before she left for Chicago and everything had gone to hell.
"What is this?" she had asked.
His silence confirmed the answer she already knew and for the next forty or so minutes, he sat quietly as she berated him and spewed all kinds of curses his way.
When she finally went out for work, he grabbed the box from the spot on the floor where she had thrown it, opened it and stared at the ring inside. He'd purchase this almost a year ago in a post-drunken moment. He remembers being hopeful that night, nervous as hell but hopeful that his future with Jackie would be a good one. He had let himself envision a life in which they would one day sit at their home, staring down at a baby, their baby, who would have wild curls and deep brown eyes. A life in which he would come from work and hear tiny footsteps running to greet him at the door. Hell, he let himself envision a life where he stared at her as she slept in the bed they share, a calm rushing through him as he realized how great his life was because of her. As quickly as he had driven to Chicago to tell her all that his visions, they had been replaced by Kelso in a towel.
He closed the box and looked around the room for a better hiding spot. When Sam returned a few hours later, he thought it would be a good idea to give her space and sleep on the couch instead. That decision only led to another argument about how sleeping separately was the beginning of the end for a married couple. Reluctantly he dragged himself into the bedroom and laid on the cot next to her until she fell asleep. Then, he made his way back to the couch.
Seeing that ring after so long made him go through a string of memories of his relationship with Jackie. From watching her playing dress up in a wedding dress at the mall to quiet nights spent in the shabby room in the back of the basement, he begins to realize it wasn't as bad as he thought it was back then. He chuckles quietly when he remembers the first time he allowed her to enter his room, shortly after their summer affair began. She walked in cautiously and immediately complained about the poor lighting and how it was not flattering to her beauty. Then when he started leading her towards the cot to start fooling around, she went on a very Jackie-like tirade about cleanliness and dust which he stopped by pressing his lips against hers. As annoying as Jackie had been in the beginning of their relationship, he has to admit that she grew up and grew on him. Whenever something happened with him, she was the first one he wanted to tell. She really became his best friend and now, as she's getting ready to marry one of his best friends and he's having problems with his own wife, he's realizing why the engagement truly bothers him.
It isn't about her not loving Kelso or Kelso being a cheater. It isn't about him being unhappy with Sam. His real problem with the engagement is that it would mean he no longer had a chance of being with her. Despite him being married, everyone knew his marriage with Sam was temporary. They would eventually reach their expiration date and both would move on with their lives as they had before meeting each other. Sam surely knew it as well and seeing him invested in his ex's engagement probably threatened her and made their own demise appear closer than ever. However, if Jackie married Kelso, he would have no choice but to accept that they would never be together again and he would have to forget all about the life he had imagined with her.
He wasn't ready to do that. Not yet.
