Disclaimer: That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC. Degenerate Matter, their albums Vagabondage, Ultrarelativistic, WIMPs and MACHOs, Frozen Stars, the songs "Singularity," "Spark," and all the lyrics contained therein copyright to the author of this story (username: MistyMountainHop, maker of Those '70s Comics).

CHAPTER 25
STRANGE QUARK

October 8, 1994

Oshkosh, Wisconsin

Eric and Donna's House
...

Rain pounded against the basement's back door. The drizzle had returned with reinforcements, and each drop seemed to be calling for Jackie. Being wet and cold would be a luxury compared to how she felt now. Steven's face was full of an agony she had no reference for. Too many years had passed between them that she couldn't interpret it.

"You pity me," she said and grasped the thick arms of her chair. "You're mistaking love for pity."

"I'm not in love with you," he said, putting Eric's acoustic guitar into its case, "but I do love you, Jackie." He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a piece of gum. He popped it into his mouth. "Doesn't mean I expect anything, that you love me back or shit like it—"

"You don't know me to love me!" Her grip tightened on the armchair, but she wanted to run to Outagamie County Regional Airport and get on the first flight back home.

"'Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.'"

Her eyes widened. He'd quoted Shakespeare's 116th sonnet. "Further proof of how little I know you."

"You know me well enough to guess in a few months what MTV and the tabloids have been tryin' to figure out the last few years."

"A fluke," she said. "Betsy was making anagrams, and she stumbled onto the O. MacNeil and El Camino connection."

He scooted forward on the bed. His butt was on the edge of it, but he remained seated. "Bottom line is, man, I see you hurtin'—"

"You have no idea what you're seeing."

She stood up, at last finding the strength to leave. He'd said love, insisted on love, but it processed through her malfunctioning heart as nothing personal. Maybe that was unfair, and it certainly contradicted her experience with his lyrics. Those songs felt extremely personal and intimate, but they had nothing to do with her.

"You're the one loss I can't lose," he said as she passed by him. The back door was in the laundry alcove, beyond the bed. "'Singularity'. I wrote that about you—mostly about you."

She halted beside the washer and dryer. "You're bullshitting me."

"No bullshit." He ran his hand through his hair, pushing the thick waves over his head. "Doesn't matter where I go, what I do, you're with me."

"'She is never too far gone,'" she said, quoting the song, "'no matter how far I've gone.'" She leaned against the washer. Her legs could no longer support her on their own, but she mentally went through "Singularity's" lyrics at high-speed, analyzing them, applying them to herself. "I didn't escape."

He blew out a heavy breath and approached the laundry alcove. "Let me help, okay? Just..." He extended his hand toward her. "Let's figure this out."

She shied away from him. Her back hit the basement door, forcing the air from her lungs.

"Crap." He withdrew his hand, like he had at the Hotel Elysée's Club Room. "Touching is out of bounds. I get it. I'll—"

A frantic knock on the door silenced him. The wood rattled against her back, and she turned around. A drenched Eric was gesturing at her through the door window. A sopped Donna was beside him, carrying an equally sopped Izzy. Jackie opened the door, and the three of them rushed inside.

"Thank you," Donna said, putting Izzy down. "And sorry for being gone so long. Izzy's friend Megan was out with her parents, and we—"

"Say no more," Jackie said. "Where do you keep your umbrellas?"

"You want to go out in that?" Eric hiked his thumb at the door. Water was dripping from his hair, and he grabbed a towel from the pile on the dryer.

"I need some air."

"All you'll get is water, unless..." He tilted his head as he toweled off his hair, but he stared at her as if she were an alien. "Did you sprout gills? 'Cause you'll need them to breathe out there."

Izzy laughed at his comment, but Steven said, "You keep 'brellas in the living room closet, right?"

"Right," Donna said. She'd wrapped Izzy in a beach towel and did her best to dry off Izzy's long hair.

Steven started up the basement stairs. Jackie tried to follow, but fingers grasped her shoulder. Terror shot through her body. She rammed her elbow backward, and Eric grunted.

"Jackie!" Donna shouted, and Izzy made a sound halfway between a giggle and whimper.

"H-he shouldn't have grabbed me like that." Jackie faced them but inched toward the stairs. "I didn't see it coming. You know my rules."

Eric rubbed his stomach, scowling. "I barely touched you."

"Doesn't matter. To a burn victim, the slightest contact hurts." She was sharing what her therapist had told her once, and she inhaled and exhaled slowly. "I'm sorry for elbowing you, but the response was involuntary. I thought..." that Eric was someone else, a man twice his size. The perception had flashed through her senses as soon as he touched her shoulder.

"Donna, bring Izzy upstairs," Eric said.

Donna lifted Izzy into her arms. Their damp red hair mingled together on Donna's shoulder. "Eric, don't do this."

He gestured toward the stairs. "Izzy needs a change of clothes."

"All right, fine. But be nice."

She walked past Jackie with Izzy and disappeared up the staircase. Jackie, though, had no intention of staying alone with Eric. She climbed the first two steps, but Eric said behind her, "Jackie, you're not the only one with rules." He'd come to the foot of the staircase. He was standing too close.

"Back off," she said, waving him away. "We can have this discussion, but you need to give me space."

He moved to the bed, and his sneakers squeaked on the hardwood floor. A small puddle of water had accumulated where Donna had dried off Izzy. "Damn." He went into the laundry alcove, presumably for a towel, but the tile floor inside was even more wet. "Damn!"

Jackie remained on the staircase while he mopped up the water. Out of all the people she knew, he used to frighten her the least. His habitual disrespect had never fazed her, but that was before it bore any real consequences. Now, any act of hers he deemed wrong could deny her access to Izzy and influence Donna to cut her off, too.

"Eric," she said, a quaver in her voice, "all I felt was a hand on me, and my body reacted."

He'd finished wiping water from the tiles and stood up. "I don't care what excuses you give, involuntary responses and what-not." He tossed two soaked towels into a laundry basket. "There's a no-hitting rule in this house. If Izzy can use her words when she's upset, so can you."

"You're a dumbass. How's that for words?" Steven said, and Jackie shrieked. He'd come down the stairs behind her, but the vibration of his footsteps hadn't registered. She'd been entirely focused on Eric, making sure he made no sudden moves.

"Sorry. I'm sorry." She descended the two stairs into the basement. Adrenaline was coursing through her, and she pressed herself against the wall. "Startle response," she said, hoping the explanation would suffice. She shouldn't have come here today. Steven had ruptured her assumptions about him. Their interactions had drawn out her vulnerabilities. She'd fooled herself into thinking she had the strength to deal with it, but she didn't.

"Great. Izzy's gonna think something's wrong," Eric said. "And she'd be right."

Jackie shut her eyes and pushed herself harder against the wall. Eric had seen her like this a few times, mostly during her first visits seven years ago. She'd managed to control herself since then, and he usually respected her boundaries, but his attitude was worse than usual.

"Izzy's in her room with Donna," Steven said. "Don't think she heard anything."

"Good," Eric said, "'cause this … isn't good. What was going on here before we got back? What set her off?"

"What sets anyone off?" Steven said, and Jackie opened her eyes. He and Eric were talking several feet away from her, past a round, cherry accent table. On it was a doily Mrs. Forman had crocheted. It smelled like flowers, thanks to the potpourri Donna often left on the table. Jackie liked to sniff it during her visits, to feel at home, but after today she might not be welcome anymore. "I got a feeling about what happened before I got back," Steven said.

"Yeah, okay." Eric looked over at Jackie." I'm sorry. I should've used my words, too. I'll do my best not to sneak-attack you with my middle-class hands."

"Thank you." Her muscles relaxed a bit, but she stayed against the wall.

"Forman, go upstairs," Steven said.

"And leave you two alone?"

Yes, leave me alone, she said inside her mind. Everyone, leave me alone.

"We're not gonna torch your basement," Steven said. "Just go."

Eric bounded up the stairs. Steven walked closer to her, but not too close, and presented her with an umbrella, her jacket, and her shoes.

She accepted all of it with thanks. She put on her shoes and jacket, but he was being too kind. Suspiciously kind. "You have no responsibility for me or my life," she said by the laundry alcove. "So you can let go whatever obligation you feel toward me."

She exited through the back door. The rain was coming down hard, transforming Donna and Eric's backyard into mud, and she opened the umbrella.

The sidewalk leading from the house was soaked charcoal gray. Raindrops resembled tiny, winking stars as they splashed the pavement. Their existence lasted a fraction of a second before others took their place, but they had no awareness of their impermanence. No sentience. They were lucky.

"Forman, you've got to ease up on Jackie," Hyde said. He and Forman were snacking on some tasteless sugar-free wafers in the kitchen. Donna had gone upstairs to put Izzy down for a nap, and her absence was useful. This conversation needed to be private. "I don't want to kick your ass."

"You won't have to," Forman said. "I just wasn't prepared to see you two together." He sniffed a wafer, nibbled the end of it, and tossed the rest in the trash. "Wow, Donna's got to buy some actual cookies. Whatever they are—" he pointed to the wafer package on the counter—"I know you think you and Jackie can be as bland, but it's never happened."

"I'm not after bland."

"Then what are you after?"

Hyde drummed his fingers on the small breakfast table. It was covered in random kitchen crap Forman and Donna never put away. Hyde's mind was the same. He'd tried to clean up his psyche, but the debris kept piling up.

"Was her ex-husband an asshole?" he said.

Forman shrugged. ""Never met him, so I couldn't tell you. Of course, that's not saying much since I've barely met your wife-to-be. All I do know is he was some kind of musician..." His eyebrows rose. "Funny."

"What is?"

"You and Jackie both ended up with people in music."

Hyde snatched a wafer from the counter and bit off half of it. "Ro wouldn't take well to being compared with a stuffy cellist."

"He wasn't a cellist," Forman said. "Jackie's mom married this Swedish or Danish guy in the rock biz. Actually, I think he does the same thing you do—"

"A&R or roadie?"

"A&R."

"What record label?"

Forman shook his head. "You'd have to ask Donna. I don't pay much attention to what Jackie talks about. But she was introduced to her ex by her stepfather at a rock party, I think. Maybe it was a concert."

Hyde stuffed the other half of the wafer into his mouth. Images of Jackie dying rose in his mind like vapor. They were from the nightmares that used to plague him, ones that had crept into his sleep again. "You remember what I was like after Edna, or one of her boyfriends, beat the crap out of me?"

"How could I forget? You were so jumpy."

"Saw danger in every damn corner. That never really went away until..." Hyde tapped his socked feet on the floor, felt the impact in his toes, listened to the soft thuds. It was a grounding technique. Helped keep him in the present. "Until I became the danger myself."

"You think Jackie used to get beaten up?"

"I really don't know, man. But somethin' happened after Chicago, after Kelso. You've been mistaking her survival instinct for haughtiness."

Forman dug his fingers through his hair. He walked a few paces away and whispered, "Fuck."

Hyde's biceps flexed. Tension was growing in his arms, and he hooked his thumbs into his belt loops. If Forman couldn't see what was right in front of him, if his resentment of Jackie was that strong, Hyde had no clue what to do next.

But Forman stopped pacing at the fridge and said, "I've been such a jackass!" He pried a pink magnetic B off the fridge door. "Izzy—there was this bully terrorizing her at the playground. He was only six, but he looked like he was ten. I'm telling you, Hyde, this kid was a bruiser." He slammed the B back onto the fridge, to its place in Izzy's full first name. "He chased her off the swings and the slide, and he even knocked her down in the sandbox."

"When the hell did this happen?"

"A few months ago. She was so scared afterward she refused to go to the playground. That's why her separation anxiety's been acting up. Donna and I like to encourage her independence, let her play with the local kids without us hovering, but that's out for now."

"Where does this bully live?" Hyde shoved his back into the kitchen counter, causing himself pain. It wasn't the best coping technique, but his anger had to go somewhere. "You know his folks?"

"The bully's not a problem anymore," Forman said. "We did manage to speak to his parents, but that was useless, so we enlisted Red."

Hyde stood away from the counter. "Red?"

"Oh, yeah. We brought in the big guns. During one of my parents' visits, Donna and I told them what was going on. Red assigned himself as Izzy's bodyguard, and at the playground, he scared the daylights out of that little bruiser ... and his babysitter. They switched playgrounds. Then—" he laughed—"one time Izzy saw the kid on his porch and shouted, 'Foot!' and he ran into his house."

Hyde laughed, too, as the tension left his body. "Good goin'."

"But Izzy's still coming out of that trauma," Forman said and opened the fridge. "I've got to be kinder to Jackie."

"Hallelujah, he sees the light!" Donna whispered. She was standing in one of the kitchen's archways, and her hair was a bit messy. She must have taken a partial nap with Izzy. "Hyde, what'd you say to him?"

"He figured it out all by himself," Hyde said and accepted a root beer from Forman. They kept his favorite pop stocked just for him.

Forman nodded and sipped from his Coke. "Donna, don't you think it's weird we never met Ralph?"

"Who's Ralph?" Hyde said.

"Jackie's ex-husband," Donna said. "We saw a picture of them once, though."

Forman squinted, like he didn't remember.

"In some tabloid. They listed him under his stage name." Donna pulled out a chair from the breakfast table and sat on it. "Damn. It wasn't Slither."

Hyde choked on his swallow of root beer. "She was hitched to a hair-metal bozo?"

"Not sure," she said. "Could be someone more heavy metal. Maybe a producer. She's so secretive, but Ralph's not the reason she's … well, the way she is." She slid her palm along the table, and her finger nail scratched at the wood grain. "She was like this before she met him. She came out of her 'lost week' like a frightened kitten."

Forman smiled peacefully. "This is nice."

Hyde and Donna both glared at him, and Donna said, "Excuse me?"

"No, not that Jackie might've been hurt—no. I mean, that the three of us can talk openly about her."

"She ain't a science project." Hyde glanced at his watch. Jackie had been out in the rain for a half-hour now. "And she's not made of glass or missing half her brain. So don't make her feel like an invalid while tryin' to show her respect."

"Oh, he will," Donna said, "at first."

Forman raised his can of Coke to her. "Thanks for your vote of confidence."

"And that's where the Jackie conversation ends," Hyde said. She wouldn't appreciate being discussed like an episode of Seinfeld. Her life wasn't a Mystery of the Week to unravel. It was her life, and he hoped his presence in it would do her more good than harm. Because leaving her be, like he'd planned, would do himself more harm than good.

Jackie had walked a wet circle around the neighborhood. Her jeans were soaked to the calves, and her hair was a stringy mop. She'd lowered the umbrella twenty minutes ago, letting the rain take her. The Blonde Brigade would've ridiculed her drenched appearance, but none of its members were here. Ann-Marie, Deborah, June, and Brie didn't know she had friends in Wisconsin. Half the time they thought she went to Washington. The other half they thought she'd said Wyoming.

Oshkosh would be too quaint for them, too. Her mini-tour of it had consisted mostly of houses, but she'd passed by a church and a few restaurants on Main Street.

People were starting to leave their homes. The rain had lightened, but it should've become a torrential storm. It would give her an excuse to go missing.

"Damn, open your eyes," Steven sang inside her head. "You're not alone."

"No," she said back. Usually, she brought her Walkman or Discman everywhere, but she couldn't bare listening to Degenerate Matter anymore. Not after learning Steven was largely responsible for it.

She sped her pace back to Donna and Eric's house, keeping her gaze on the puddled sidewalk, but the song continued playing in mind: "Such degenerate matter, you matter to me."

"Stop it," she said. "Stop it, stop it, stop it." She had to drown the song out, so she sang another one. "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream," as she reached Irving Avenue. "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."

She sang it past Division Street and Central Street. The smell of cigarettes irritated her nose at Franklin, but she went on singing until Steven's voice transitioned from inside her mind to her ears. "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily," he sang perfectly on-key. "life is but a dream."

She glanced up from the sidewalk. Steven was a house away from her. He'd come outside for a smoke. A cigarette was in one hand, and an umbrella was in the other.

"You really do have a beautiful voice," Jackie called out to him. "It's a shame you'll lose it because of that." She pointed at his cigarette, but her boldness alarmed her. It had to be reflexive, a remnant of trust from fifteen years ago.

He walked closer but stopped between houses, giving her plenty of space. "Enjoy your splash through the rain?" he said and dropped his cigarette into a puddle. Then he lowered his umbrella. "Only brought this to keep the cig from getting wet."

Rain landed in his hair, and some drops held their form. They were tiny suns, frozen in orbit around his face, and she looked down at her dripping umbrella.

"If you're worried I'll blab about your identity," she said, "the letter I wrote O. MacNeil is plenty of leverage to keep me quiet."

"Letter's gone, destroyed. No one read it, and no one ever will."

Relief clashed with disappointment at that news, but relief won out. "Then have your lawyer draw up a confidentiality agreement. I'll pay you punitive damages if I let slip your secret."

"You don't have to do that … or lower your head around me either."

Her shoulders hunched, and her gaze stayed on her umbrella. If she could've evaporated into a cloud, she would have. "I must seem so pathetic to you."

"I have a DUI on my record," he said. "Crippled a woman—"

Her posture straightened. "What?" She stared into his eyes and found she couldn't pull away. "You did not."

"Back in '84. Thought I'd drunk less than I did. Got behind the wheel. Woman came out of nowhere, and I crashed the Camino into her. Paralyzed her from the waist down—"

"You're making this up."

He gestured in the air. "Want to see my record, I'll get you a copy. Hell, just ask Donna. She spread the story far and wide. I'm surprised it never got to you."

"I wasn't talking to her in '84." Jackie had dropped out of sight in 1983, dropped out of college, dropped out of life. "Did you—did you go to prison?"

"Jail and not for long. Evidence proved the woman was drunk herself. My lawyers argued the accident would've happened had I been sober, too." His voice had little affect, like he'd recited this story dozens of times before. "Judge believed it, and I got charged with a misdemeanor."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"So you understand what pathetic really is." He pulled a stick of gum from his denim jacket and pushed it into his mouth. He must've had an endless supply. "I've made choices that screwed other people over, too many of 'em."

She backed away from him. "You're on Step Nine, aren't you? Making amends?" She'd gone through that with Michael when he joined AA. "Consider your amends made with me."

"Nothing like that," he said. "Been sober ten years. Didn't go to AA. Paralyzing that woman … law of human gravity, man. Finally found—or realized—what was more important to me than drinkin'."

She walked a little further backward. "If this is some kind of outreach because you think I'm an alcoholic—" Her foot plunged deep into a puddle. The rainwater resoaked her jeans and got inside her shoe. It was freezing, and she hopped forward to a dryer part of the sidewalk. "The only thing I'm addicted to is sugar and fatty foods, and I got over that—"

"Shit." He scrubbed his hand over his face. "You keep assuming so much. Makes it hard to get through to you."

She swallowed her next response, another accusatory defense. He wasn't wrong. Assumptions without facts, it was a behavior she despised others doing to her. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. Just listen for more than a few damn seconds."

"Okay."

Rain sprinkled the sidewalk, and his voice became more gentle. "You must have survived hell to be so spooked. Back when we did know each other—man, you were the bravest chick. What you got yourself through—" She started to interrupt him, but he put up a hand. "What I'm saying is, I'm seein' strength here. You're not under your bed, crumpled in a ball, waitin' for death to come. You're fighting. You're fighting for your life."

"No," she said, though her insides were shouting yes! She disagreed about the strength he claimed to see, but otherwise he'd read her accurately. "I've simply learned life isn't a dream, and there are days I am crumpled in a ball. Not under my bed but on top of it. Sometimes on the floor..."

"But you don't stay there."

"I go back."

"And you get up every time." He shoved his hair from his face, a habit of his that was becoming familiar. In the process, the silver chain beneath his shirt pulled out of the shirt collar. Dangling from it was a pewter guitar charm. "I want you in my life, all right? Some connections never die..." His chest rose and fell with a few breaths. "But maybe ours goes only one way. If me leavin' you alone for the rest of your life'll make you happy, I'll do it."

"It won't," she said, but a lie would've been kinder. "I want to learn who you are."

A smile lifted his lips. "Cool."

"But you'll be happier if we end whatever this is here. Eric's right: I'm not good."

"You ever put someone in a wheelchair?"

"No, but my crimes are more subtle. You paid that woman's medical bills, didn't you?"

"Half of 'em." His cheeks and forehead were wet from rain. He wiped them with his damp denim sleeve. "If you're tryin' to scare me off, you're doing a lousy job."

"Kimberly Kelso's funeral," she said. "When I looked at her corpse, all I felt was envy over her death. I didn't grieve for Michael and his family. If I grieved for anyone, it was me. And after Michael got mugged..."

Her throat tightened. Her voice was growing shrill, but she couldn't change it. "At the hospital, while he was in that coma, I studied his broken face—and in my mind I thanked the mugger for hurting him! I also thanked God for doing to Michael what I couldn't do. For punishing him for all he'd done to me."

She patted her chest. Her jacket was wetter than she anticipated, and water droplets splashed off it. "I've got a black hole where my heart should be, Steven.. It sucks in all light … and you're so full of light. I hear it in the music you've written, see it in the way you are with Betsy—the way you're being with me." She shook water from her hand. "I won't take and take and take from you until you have no light left."

"You may be a lot of things I've got to learn about," he said, "but selfish ain't one of them."

"And I've just learned you're delusional."

He tilted his head, giving her that benign, mildly chastising expression she'd ever only received from him, one she he hadn't gotten since they were in high school. "You're mistakin' thoughts and feelings for actions," he said. "Whatever you felt at the hospital, at the funeral, you still supported Kelso. Saw you talking to him in the cemetery, and you didn't have to."

"No, but—"

"And you've got to feel like kicking my ass for taking your letter to O. MacNeil, considering I am him. But you were gonna drop it. Then you let me tell you the deal in private, even when you were afraid of being alone in the basement with me."

"I-I wasn't..." She leaned her head back and gazed into the gray sky. Rain drops struck her nose, fell into her eyes. Steven had become inconveniently observant. Usually, she protected herself by hiding, but she couldn't hide from him, not without cutting off all contact. "I won't be someone you 'fix,'" she said, flinching when more rain hit her eyes. "A person can be either a therapist or a friend, not both—"

"I'm no shrink. "

"And I already have a therapist. If I won't have a positive impact on your life, then we'll say our goodbyes now." She lowered her gaze from the clouds and found him looking at her—really looking, as if he could see inside her thoughts. "I have enough one-way friendships. I don't want another."

"I don't want that either."

A gust of wind blew through the air, and she shuddered with the chill. A dog barked from behind a house somewhere as a car drove down Lincoln Avenue. The roar of its engine rose then faded, and the neighborhood began to seem empty.

Donna and Eric were likely cuddled in their house with Izzy. Michael was in Chicago with Brooke and Betsy, though Betsy wasn't too happy about it. And after this weekend, Steven would go back to wherever he lived—and to whoever he lived with.

"I've got no expectations, man," he said.

"You're in a relationship," she said and indicated the guitar pendant resting at his chest.

He tucked the pendant back inside his shirt. "Yeah, I am."

"With Ro Skirving."

He laughed quietly and spat his gum into its wrapper. "How'd you figure out that one?"

"She has Scottish ancestry, and your nom de plume is Scottish. That interview between you two in the fan club newsletter is more than friendly. You roadie for her band when all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the show, and you fetch her water during concerts. Only a man in love would do that."

"Holy hell." He scratched his cheek. "Been with her over four years, and you're the first person to pick up on..." His laughter came out scratchily this time, his smoker's laugh.

"Wait." She thrust her umbrella toward him, using it as a wet, dripping pointer. "You're not telling me Eric and Donna don't know."

"They know … only 'cause I told them a month ago. But most people don't, and that's how it's got to stay."

"Why?"

"If me and Ro bein' engaged gets out into the wider world—"

Jackie lost her grip on the umbrella, and it crashed to the sidewalk. "You're engaged?" But she shouldn't have been shocked. She'd expected him to be married with three children by now.

"Can't have our lives becoming tabloid fodder," he said and picked up her umbrella. He handed it to her. "It would be bad for the band, bad for Ro and me. Only other people who know are the band, my dad, and Brooke."

"Oh, God—you have to tell Betsy."

He stuck a new piece of gum into his mouth. "Not gonna happen. The pressure on her to keep that a secret would give her a complex."

"She's already got a complex. Trust me on this: you have to tell her. Sooner rather than later."

"Did she say something to you?" He waved dismissively at his own question. "Never mind. I'll take your word for it."

"So you'll tell her?"

"Eventually."

"'Eventually,'" she repeated but didn't push it. He was closer to Betsy than she was, and Jackie had no right to interfere in their relationship. "Handle the situation the way you think is best."

"Thanks." His umbrella hung from his wrist by the strap. He struck his leg with it, scattering waterdrops. "And I'm sorry I've got to put this on you, but—until I say different—as far as Betsy's concerned, I'm not O. MacNeil, and I'm not engaged to Ro."

"I understand … although you have no actual way of knowing if I'll preempt you or not."

He swung his umbrella up, caught it with his other hand, and water squeezed between his fingers. "You're right. I don't. But in our past, I owed you more trust than I gave you."

He meant when they were together, as a couple. She was sure of it, and she pressed her own umbrella into her leg.

"I'm trying to do things differently this time around," he said.

"I could repay your trust with betrayal."

"Then you'll give me something to write about for Degenerate Matter's fourth album."

She laughed, and the sound reverberated in her skull. "Have your lawyer draw up that confidentiality agreement."

"Have yours draw up an equality-in-friendship contract."

"No such thing exists," she said, still laughing, and warmth spread through her body. It was a sensation she was unaccustomed to, one she'd missed. "We've been standing out in the rain a long time."

"Never bothered us before."

It hadn't. They used to chase each other through downpours and shove each other into puddles, back when her laughter came easily.

"See that over there?" she said, gesturing at the deep puddle behind her. "If we don't get back to the house, Eric might think I held your face underwater and drowned you."

"He's probably taking a snooze. But, yeah, we better get back. I've got dinner to cook."

"You're cooking?"

"My small way of helping out when I visit."

Her stomach growled at the memory of his cooking. Donna's lunch had been less than satisfying. "That'll be nice," she said. "Donna's gotten better in the kitchen, but—" She covered her mouth. A burn was about to escape. "She's no Kitty Forman."

"No one is. So … is this goodbye?"

She surveyed the surrounding houses. Each one was home to a couple or a family, and that lonely feeling returned. Isolation was the norm for her, even among crowds of people or her group of socialite friends. But listening to Degenerate Matter's music—Steven's music—had reconnected her to herself. And she was tired, so damn tired, of disconnection. "Will you sing for me again?"

"Any time you want."

"Then I guess we'll keep seeing how this goes, us being friends."

He nodded and said nothing else. They walked back Donna and Eric's house together, not close enough to touch each other, but with less space between them than before.