Chapter 12: Bad decisions
Sam walks into Janet's house without knocking and immediately goes to the fridge to get a beer. She's halfway done with the beer when Janet walks into the kitchen and lets out a shriek, places her right hand over her heart and says, "Sam, my goodness, you scared me."
Sam smiles and says, "Sorry Janet, but I did tell you I was coming over."
Janet comes further into the kitchen and says, "Yes I know, I just wasn't expecting to walk in here and find you drinking my beer."
"I'll replace it." Sam offers.
Janet waves the offer off and says, "Help yourself. Should I be expecting your brother and the colonel as well?"
Sam shakes her head back and forth as she swallows another mouthful of beer, then says, "Nope, just me." She goes to take another swallow of beer only to find that it's empty. Sam glares at the offending bottle before throwing it in the trash and pulling another one out of the fridge.
Sam opens it and takes a nice gulp, when she turns around, she sees Janet staring at her and asks, "What?"
"Sam, what's going on?" Janet inquires.
Feigning confusion, Sam says, "What do you mean?"
Janet gives Sam a look that says 'don't be coy with me.'
"Janet, there is nothing going on." Sam defends.
Not believing it for an instant, Janet says, "Fine, you don't have to tell me. Though I do wonder why you chose to come here and not Jack's house."
"Maybe I just wanted to hang out with you and Cassie." Sam suggests.
"Right, and if I were dating someone who looked like Jack O'Neill, I wouldn't go to his house either." Janet replies sarcastically.
Sam lets out a long sigh and says, "Janet, I really don't want to talk about it."
Janet nods knowingly and says, "I understand, I just hope everything is alright with you and your brother, and with the colonel."
Sam smiles sadly and replies, "Me too Janet, me too."
Janet studies her friend, she's worried about her. Something is wrong and she should push for more information but Janet knows that Sam wouldn't appreciate that. She really hopes things are alright. Sam had told Janet that Mark wasn't happy about her relationship with the colonel, so she knew that Sam was worried about her brother visiting. Things had been going really well between her and the colonel though, so Janet can't imagine why Sam isn't at his house if she needed to get away for awhile. The fact that Sam is here would seem to indicate that there's some sort of problem. Hopefully not a big one. Janet is really curious though but figures Sam will tell her when she's ready to talk about it. In the meantime, she will gladly entertain her friend, besides Cassie will be thrilled to have Sam for a sleepover.
Onica is feeling restless, or guilty, probably both. This weekend has turned out so much messier than she had originally thought. She knew it would be difficult but she never expected Mark to physically attack Jack, she also didn't expect Mark to up and go to Denver and leave her here to travel home alone. She wasn't expecting Sam's reaction either, she figured Sam would be upset but now she's worried that she'll never speak to her again.
She starts pacing around the house and wanders into the kitchen, where she finds a bottle of red wine. She knows she shouldn't, but she gets a glass from the cabinet and pours some of the red liquid into it, swirls it around, sniffs it, then takes a long sip. It's good, she thinks, probably a bit pricey, not expensive but not cheap either, more than she would pay though. Onica figures she'll have to replace it, just one more thing for Mark and Sam to be mad at her over.
Onica has nearly finished the bottle of wine when she decides to call Mark. He's probably already halfway to Denver by now, or maybe he's already there, she's really not sure. She walks, or stumbles back into the living room to get her phone from her purse, she scans the room but doesn't see anything. She stands there for a moment longer trying to remember where she put her purse, though this fog in her brain is making it hard to think straight. Then like a sudden slap to the face, Onica realizes that she left her purse at Jack's house. In all the chaos, the confession, the fight, the fainting, Mark insisting that they leave right away, she completely forgot to go back in to get it.
She notices the necklace sitting on the coffee table and walks over and picks it up, holding the emerald in the palm of her hand while the silver chain threads her fingers. She looks at it for a long moment, closes her eyes, and with what she thinks is sudden clarity, she makes a decision. Onica unsteadily walks over and snatches the keys to Jack's truck off the table in the hallway and walks outside. She climbs into the truck, puts it in drive and hits the gas pedal as hard as she can. She is confused when the truck flies backwards and slams into the car parked behind it. Onica's head hits the headrest and she's dazed for a moment, and she knows she should get out and assess the damage. At this moment, though, she doesn't care, she's on a mission and nothing will stop her from seeing it through. She puts the truck in drive, the real drive this time, when the truck goes forward, she pulls away from the street and veers into her lane and continues on.
Onica takes a wide turn into Jack's driveway rolling over a good sized shrub in the process. She jerks the truck to a stop on top of the shrub, half in the driveway, half on the grass. She nearly falls out of the truck when she opens the door, then she rights herself and leaves the door wide open as she walks up the walkway to the front door of Jack's house.
Jack is sitting out on his back deck with a beer on the table beside his chair, though the beer was mostly abandoned as he started thinking about everything that had happened today. If anyone had asked him this morning how this day would end, he never would've answered with seeing his ex fiancé, getting punched in the face, and watching his girlfriend drive off mad. He had decided to give Sam some space and let her work things out, but he changed his mind and called her about 30 minutes ago, she didn't answer. Jack is staring at the trees in the yard and hoping he won't have to add an ex in front of girlfriend this time.
Jack is just about to go inside when he hears a loud commotion coming from the front yard. He gets up and walks around to the front to investigate what's going on. He cannot believe what he sees when he reaches the front yard. He sees his truck parked over a shrub and only halfway on the driveway. Jack wonders what Sam is doing and why she would plow through his yard like this, he pushes that aside and is just happy that she came back. He frowns when he watches her nearly fall out of the truck, then suddenly, he realizes that it's not Sam.
"Oh for cryin' out loud." Jack mutters as he watches Ronnie abandon his truck and stumble towards his house.
"Ronnie." Jack hollers, when she turns and looks at him, he asks, "Whatcha doin'?"
She takes a few more steps towards Jack when she answers with a huge smile and waves her hand back and forth, "Jack!"
Jack looks at her in disbelief and gestures to his truck and asks again, "Whatcha doin'?"
Ronnie laughs and says, "I brought your truck back."
Jack looks her up and down and asks, "Are you drunk?"
Ronnie shakes her head and says, "No, I just had some wine. But," She pauses for a moment, then puts up her index finger and says, "I didn't have the whole bottle."
"Well you've clearly had too much." Jack accuses.
"Maybe a little." She giggles.
"And you drove? Are you nuts?" Jack says, feeling irritated.
Ronnie rests a hand on his shoulder and says patiently, "It's ok, Jack, I didn't hit the car that hard."
Jack's eyes go big and he exclaims, "What? You hit a car?"
"It wasn't my fault, the truck got confused. I put it in drive and it went backwards." Ronnie says as though she can't figure out how that could have happened. Then as an afterthought adds, "You should really get that fixed."
Jack closes his eyes and shakes his head, then he walks around behind his truck and sees the tailgate bent inwards and the driver side tail light is busted. He says a few choice words to himself then walks back over to where Ronnie is still standing.
"Was anyone in the car when you backed into it?" He asks.
Ronnie shakes her head no.
"Okay, did you at least leave a note?" Jack asks, already knowing the answer.
Ronnie again shakes her head no and adds, "Like I said, it wasn't my fault."
Trying to stay calm, Jack asks, "Where exactly were you when this happened?"
"At Sam's house, some idiot parked on the street behind the truck." Ronnie replies, as though parking on the street is abnormal.
Jack takes a deep breath to try and control his temper, then very calmly orders, "Go inside, sit on the couch, and don't move until I get back. Got that?"
"Where are you going?" Ronnie asks.
"You were driving under the influence Ronnie, and you left the scene of an accident. I'm going to go and see if the owner of the car you hit is home and try to convince them to not call the cops." Jack tells her.
"Then I should come with you, I was driving after all." Ronnie reasons.
"And that's exactly why you're not going. Go inside and do what I told you." Jack retorts.
Ronnie mutters something under her breath, but she turns and goes towards the house. Jack watches her go inside before he walks over to his truck and figures he can just finish running over the shrub. He's about to get in the truck and do just that when he decides he should probably do a check to make sure there isn't any more damage. He walks around to the other side of the truck and sees a flat tire, the stupid shrub actully stabbed the tire. Jack is mad at this point, but he'll have to deal with this later, right now, he needs to get over there and hope the owner of that car hasn't already called the cops.
He walks back into his house to grab the keys to his motorcycle. When he enters, Ronnie is right there standing by the door and Jack says, "Geez Ronnie."
"That was quick, what did they say?" Ronnie asks.
"I haven't left yet, my truck has a flat tire." Jack says irritably.
Ronnie looks surprised and asks, 'How did that happen?"
"I don't know Ronnie, but it might have something to do with that little tree you ran over." Jack says angrily.
"Well it's not my fault the tree was there." Ronnie says defensively.
Jack closes his eyes and takes a breath and says, "Just go sit down, I'll be back."
Ronnie stands there a moment longer and Jack just looks at her. Finally she does as he requested and sits on the couch. Jack takes one more deep breath before he walks out the door, opens the garage, and starts his motorcycle up.
When he arrives at Sam's house, he sees the damaged car, it's an SUV, no wonder it did so much damage to his truck. He parks the motorcycle and walks over to inspect the SUV, the front grill is damaged and the hood is slightly bent, 'How fast was she going?' Jack asks himself. He continues his inspection and looks in the driver side window and sees that the airbags have deployed, he hangs his head and figures this car is probably totaled and his insurance premium is about to go up. He was hoping the damage would be minimal and hopefully the owner would agree to just let him pay for it, but that's not going to happen.
Jack walks up to the front door of the neighbor's house and knocks. He glances over at Sam's house, he had noticed that her car was gone as he pulled up. He figures she's not home, otherwise, she would have come out. Even if she didn't want to see him, she would've come out when she heard the crash.
He waits a little longer before knocking again, still no answer. Good thing he thought to grab a notepad and a pen just in case. He writes a brief note with his phone number, address, and insurance information and leaves it on the windshield of the SUV. 'Could this day get any worse?' he thinks to himself. Jack is really not sure what he's going to do with Ronnie, she can't stay at his house but he can't send her back, she's clearly not in her right mind. He decides he'll deal with that when he gets home, so he gets back on his Harley and heads back.