Disclaimer: Three years later and I still own nothing!
Author's Note: Hello everyone! How are you all doing? Hope you're doing well and having a good week. Now to some of you this update may come as a big surprise others may have already known it was coming, but either way I just hope that you all excited for some new chapters for this thanksgiving story! It is after all that time of year again and I don't know about you all but I'm excited! I really do feel so bad for not updating this story since last year, like I said I really like to write and update holiday stories during the holiday season (which reminds me readers who are reading my Halloween story, Things That Go Bump don't fret the last chapter is coming soon!) but depending on how things go I may continue this story through the Christmas season. We'll see :D Okay, it's been a year so I'm sure you all are eager to get to this new chapter so I'll let you get to but before I do I just wanted to say thank you again for all of the amazing support you wonderful readers have given me throughout the years of writing this story, and whether you're a reader who was here from the beginning or just clicked on it this week, I welcome you and thank you so much for not giving up on this story. Please review if you can, I'd love to hear your thoughts and it'll help me determine how my posting schedule will work. I hope you like it! And as always, please, Enjoy!
While Fez and Kelso kept on their search of the Thanksgiving stripper that they believed was still hidden somewhere in the basement, Eric continued to sit on the old beat up sofa in his parent's basement, his head still in his hands and regret filling his mind. Why had invite Sam to dinner? He barely even knew her now that he knew she was exactly which only meant he knew her even less when they spoke on the phone, He pretty much had invited a stranger to Thanksgiving dinner! Who did that? No, no what he did was much, much worse, he wasn't the guy who invited a stranger to Thanksgiving dinner he was the guys who invited a stripper to Thanksgiving dinner!
His father was right, he was a dumbass. And now his dumbassary was going to be the thing that sent him to an early grave. Hyde was right, Jackie would surely kill him when she found out that he had been the one to invite Sam to this family celebration; the only question was how would she do it? Eric hoped it would be painless but after what he'd done and just knowing Jackie it would be slow and painful something like death by kicks delivered to the shins.
At last Eric uncovered his somber looking face and raised his head, "Well, I guess I better get started on my will then."
Donna watched her husband reach for the pen and sheets of paper left by Kelso and Fez on the spool table; even though she was upset at him for inviting a person that they all thought was out of their lives for good, she knew his heart had been in the right place and she couldn't help but feel bad for him.
"Eric, Jackie's not gonna…" she tried to put his fear about Jackie to rest but given the situation she didn't know what she could expect from her tiny sized friend, "She's…not…she would only….Look, I'm sure we can figure out a way to make this all seem like you're really not the one to blame here."
A hopeful look crossed Eric face as he looked at his wife, "Really?"
"Sure." The redhead nodded her head before starting to think of a way to get him out of this whole, "Okay, you never met Sam right? You never saw her?"
"You mean you're asking me if I ever got to see a stripper walking around in my Batcave Basement?" Eric rephrased the question to his liking, "Unfortunately I did not."
The rewording was not something Donna was a fan of and you could see it in her eyes, "Do you want me to help you or not?"
"Yes, please." He managed to squeak back in reply.
Pleased with his response Donna went back to her train of thought, "Okay so if you never met Sam or saw her it means you never heard her either. There's no way you would have recognized her voice over the phone. You have no idea what she sounds like. So Jackie can be mad at you enough to kill you, there's nothing to blame you for."
Hearing this Eric's face lit up and he felt a millions time better until his adopted brother on his right spoke up with his own two cents while Fez and Kelso searched the washer dyer combo and the deepfreeze in the background.
"He's still the one who invited her over and answered the phone to begin with." Hyde pointed out, his smirk still on his lips—he really was relieved he wouldn't be in trouble for this mess concerning his ex…Sam. "Face it Donna, he's a dead man walking."
Eric's face crumbled into distress once again and because Donna knew he was the one behind it she scowled over at her childhood friend.
"Knock it off Hyde, if it wasn't for you marrying Sam in the first place all those years ago we wouldn't be in this situation." She threw at him.
Hyde's smirk faded into a complete look of Zen as he reminded, "We were never really married."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that only makes things worse since you stayed with her for almost half a year."
Not liking the way Donna was suddenly putting all the blame on him, dragging up history they all had buried years ago and making him seem like the only bad guy, Hyde stood up from his seat and grabbed a shovel to do some of his own digging.
He stared back at the tall woman standing across from him, "I'm pretty sure what made things worse was you becoming fast friends with Sam when you should've been there for Jackie."
Donna wanted to ask him how he knew about how she should have been with Jackie, but instead kept her focus on something else but it wasn't Kelso and Fez searching behind the old shower curtain behind her, "You didn't have to stay married to Sam.'
"We were never really married." Hyde repeated again.
"Fine, when she first got here and you thought you guys were really married." Donna corrected herself not to make Hyde happy but so she could hopefully get a straight answer, "You didn't have to stay with her."
"You didn't have to become friends with her." He threw right back at her.
The point startled Donna a bit and she struggled some before getting a clear answer out, "We weren't really…I mean…there was a Trans-Am."
"What is with you and Trans-Ams?" her husband couldn't help but ask, remembering the infamous Casey Kelso incident years ago.
A sharp glare was sent to Eric before Donna moved her attention back to Hyde, "You were the one that paraded your fake marriage life in front of Jackie everyday when Sam was here and that hurt her."
Hyde hated being reminded about this part of his life. He'd rather relive unhappy days of his childhood with Bud and Edna than talk about 1979. Still despite his hatred for the topic and the mistakes that were being thrown back in his face, he kept his Zen in place the whole time.
"You don't think it hurt her to see her best friend becoming friends with the woman she hated?"
Before Donna could come up with a response to that there was another voice that spoke up from their spot on the sofa—the same area that Fez and Kelso were snooping around, even looking at the gap between the concrete floor and the bottom of the couch
"Well it sounds to me like I'm in the clear after all." Eric said with a growing smile on his lips as he started to relax in his seat, even moving his folded arms behind his head.
Together Hyde and Donna turned their attention from each other to look in the middle of where they stood finding the worry free Eric. Hyde's Zen started to crack with a faint frown and while Donna still looked very upset her anger was no longer directed at Hyde so much but rather her husband.
Looking down at Eric, Hyde made sure to make this reminder, "Forman, man, you were the one who actually invited her."
"Yeah, you dillhole." Donna agreed, no longer having much interest in easing Eric's worries, "And I bet if you never even went to Africa, Hyde never would've run off to Vegas and 'married' Sam in the first place." She made sure to use air quotes around the word 'married' after all she was no longer arguing with Hyde.
Meanwhile Hyde took in the statement Donna had made. He had never really thought of things that way but it made sense. 1979 had been an odd and not so great year and you could trace the beginning of the weird stuff back to when Forman had left to Africa. Which had been pretty weird on it's own. Hyde soon found himself nodding his head in approval of the redhead's words.
The laidback appearance of Eric started to erase itself as Eric moved his arms from behind him and sat up straighter, his smile now wiped off his face; he looked from his wife to his best friend and then back again.
"So the blame's back on me again?" he asked and then gave an understanding nod, "Yeah, that makes sense." he then grabbed his paper from before and started writing again, "So I'll leave my entire Star Wars collection to Luke. May the force always be with you, my dear son…"
As Eric went back to dividing his belongs to his loved ones there were two friends who were getting quite impatient at being ignored.
"Hey, so I know you guys are busy with…whatever you're busy with." Kelso started to say to the other three in the room, "But um…Where's the Thanksgiving stripper?!"
Fez nodded beside his loud speaking friend, "Yes. We have looked all over for her but have found nothing! She better have good yams!"
Donna's brows furrowed, "Don't you mean gams?"
"Yes, those too." The foreigner gave another nod.
Hyde dropped himself into his seat, deciding he'd be the one to break the news to these two and hope they'd be able to keep their mouths shut about it and not tell Jackie, "It's not a Thanksgiving stripper that's coming man, it's Sam."
"Aw man!" Kelso whined as his face turned with his disgust, "You got a thanksgiving guy stripper?"
"Will…will there still be yams?" Fez asked nervously.
Again Donna's forehead wrinkled with confusion thanks to Fez's words, so she decided to clear up this confusion once and for all, "There's no thanksgiving stripper coming you morons. There's no male stripper coming either. It's Sam as in Hyde's ex-wife."
"We were never really married." Hyde said once more.
A look of concern filled Fez's big brown eyes, "Aye no. You…you do not mean the same busty, blubbly, blonde Sam that Hyde thought he was married to and stayed married to even though just weeks before he could not make the true love of his life happy by just telling her that they could have a future together making Jackie's beautiful heart be crushed into little tiny heartbroken pieces and…"
"Yeah, Fez, that Sam." Interrupted Hyde, not wanting to hear any more.
"Aye no." Fez repeated looking more brokenhearted than before, "That woman is the one caused my poor Jackie to fall into a downward spiral and she fell so far down that she even dated me!"
Hyde frowned, his arms now crossed over his chest, "Don't remind me."
Fez slowly shook his head, "Jackie is going to be crushed when she sees Sam….and I am married to Laurie now so she cannot run to me for some foreign lovin'." Suddenly a look of deep thought made its way onto Fez's face, "Unless…"
"Fez, don't me make me frog you on Thanksgiving, man." Hyde said, stopping Fez's mind from thinking anything weirder than the thoughts that were probably already permanently stored in that brain of his.
While Fez quickly zipped his lips up with an imaginary zipper, something finally clicked inside Kelso's head.
"Oh Sam! Yeah I remember her." he nodded his head as a large Kelso grin started to break out onto his face, "Yeah, I remember I was really bummed out that I was moving to Chicago just when we finally added a stripper to the basement, cuz you know it was the only thing missing from here." He added on as he settled himself into the old lawn chair, "But I had to do what was right for my little family."
Donna turned to the kettlehead, "You mean work as a security guard at the Playboy Mansion?"
"Sometimes you gotta make sacrifices for your kids." Kelso replied as if the 'sacrifice' he'd made had been so profound and difficult, "Man I miss that job. Now all I do is walk around the mall with a water gun and kick pimply face kids out of stores for shoplifting. I don't even get to really kick 'em out! I 'escort' them!" his upset tone of voice switched to a softer one, "But I do get all the free pretzels I want. That's still good, right?"
Kelso looked up at Fez for reassurance and got just that when his friend clasped his hand over his shoulder and nodded his head.
"I think you traded up my friend." Fez commented.
A shy smile appeared on Kelso's lips as he continued to hold his gaze with Fez's—he knew he could always count on his best buddy to help him feel better.
Ignoring the two men who seemed to be giving each other some weird googly eyes that crossed the line of a normal friendship between two guys or anyone fo that matter, Hyde turned his attention over to the sofa where the married couple sat together,
"Look Forman, I think I figured out a way to save all of our asses." Hyde began to explain, "Just call up Sam and uninvite her. Make up some story about us having to cancel dinner altogether."
Eric's frown deepened at the outrageous suggestion Hyde had made, "What? No! You can't just uninvite someone to Thanksgiving dinner, Hyde. It's Thanksgiving dinner." he said putting more than enough empathies on the last two words, "No one should be alone on Thanksgiving. No one deserves that, not even a stripper."
"That's it!" Kelso exclaimed as his popped out of his seat earning him some odd looks form his friends, but he only ignored them and looked at his partner in crime, an excited expression on his face, "That's what our thanksgiving children's book should be! The Stripper That Came to Thanksgiving Dinner!"
"You brilliant beautiful bastard!" came Fez's awestruck reply.
Pointing a finger straight in the air, Kelso declared, "To the…" he suddenly stopped not knowing what cool name to give their new workstation; it wasn't a laboratory and it couldn't be the Batcave…but he just wanted to get to work on the idea before he lost it so he finished his sentence with the first thing he could think of, "Hyde's old room!"
Fez and Kelso then dashed off to the smaller room with Kelso in the far lead. The remaining three sat in their spots, scowls marked on their foreheads at their friends' words and exit, that would not be a children's book they could be letting their children read. However, instead of stopping the two and telling them how inappropriate the idea was for a children's story they focused their attention back on their own problem.
Donna watched her twitching husband and a realization hit her, "You don't have a phone number for Sam do you?"
"If I did I would!" he answered back, referring to Hyde previous idea, "She didn't give me any information!"
With that said Eric dropped his upper body onto Donna's lap; his fears and worry now gone after being replaced with a feeling of defeat. But while Eric was already ready to say goodbye to the cruel world, Donna and Hyde looked at each other each wearing expression that told they other that they needed to come up with another solution to protect themselves, Eric, and most of all Jackie.
0o0o0o
He'd had to drive all around town, which had grown quite a bit since the seventies, and he'd gotten stuck in traffic for a good twenty minutes thanks to the local Thanksgiving youth parade but at last Red Forman had found the Holy Grail!
Or in this case an open supermarket.
It wasn't one of the major chain supermarkets and instead was one of those Mom and Pop kind of supermarkets that time seemed to have forgotten. And today that was a good thing since by the looks of the not so full parking lot, the store was still forgotten about! If the store was really as empty and forgotten about, Red thought he might consider doing his all grocery shopping here from now on if only to get away from the dumbasses that filled up stores like The Piggly Wiggly and PriceMart—plus, he'd be helping out the little man.
Relieved not to have to go through another parking spot hunt, Red pulled into an empty space without giving it another thought.
Climbing out of the car and heading over to the store's entrance, Red went over the mental list of items that he needed to get. Bread, sour cream, and….eggs…and there was something else…ground cloves! Four items, that was it and as long as the store carried all four of these items Red would be in and out of there in fifteen minutes tops and could very well make it back to catch the end of the game he'd been watching before being sent out on this 'adventure.'
Wearing a small smirk, Red couldn't help but think about how he should've started here in the beginning.
Red pulled open the glass door but the ringing of the little golden bell above the door was barely audible thanks to the loud chatter coming from the crowds of people that filled up the inside of the small store.
Frozen in his tracks, Red scowled at the scene in front of him. People filling up the aisles, long lines at the registers, and you didn't have to listen too closely to hear the sounds of women fighting over the last can of pumpkin filling. Red didn't understand it, how could there be this many people in this little store…wasn't it come kind of fire hazard? There weren't even that many cars in the parking lot, had they all come over here in damn clown cars?
However Red didn't try to understand it and instead he let out the first four words that came into his mind.
"Son of a bitch." He grumbled looking up skywards and away from the chaotic mess in front of him.
This Thanksgiving kept getting longer and longer, Red was beginning to think that it would never come to an end.
Author's Note: So what did you think? Yay? Nay? Want to read more or should I just move on? Let me know in a review!
Like I said, I'm still in the process of coming up with a posting schedule but hearing from readers and letting me know you all are there will help me out a great deal. I may post two shorter chapters each week or one long chapter once a week…maybe a mix of both for the month of November. I don't know yet but that's what I'm looking at right now :D
Until next time, thanks for reading, hope you liked, please review and lemme know what you think, stay tuned, take care, have a nice day, and remember only 23 more days till Thanksgiving 2013!