A/N I think for Steven to come to terms with who he is he needs to know more about his parents and their relationship, just as Jackie doesn't want to become her parents, Steven doesn't want to be his. Other stories have addressed both Jackie and Steven afraid of becoming Jack and Pam or Bud and Edna, but never getting into the roots of WB and Edna. I know even watching the show, some might find it hard to think of there ever being a relationship between the two, but drawing from real life I could never see one set of grandparents ever being together, they had divorced when my mom was a teenager, so I never saw them together. But to the story I have had several different ideas of where to go, and still working details out in my head, so updates may get slower. The first 8 chapters flowed out pretty easy but I am still going to keep writing, almost like those following I too want to see what happens, lol.

Chapter 13

"Steven I want you to understand I can't change how you grew up, but I'll be damned if my grandchild goes through that. The day I came to see you after you got back you was high as a kite, and Jackie had just left in tears. I found out later she never saw you, but knew what you was doing and wasn't going to tell you when you was high"

Steven wondered if it would ever stop the lists of the missed opportunities.

"To find out you gotten so drunk that you got married with no remembrance of the event, I have had a lot of about everything. I was the one that kept Red from kicking you both out, I wanted to keep her close as I had the PI investigate everything. Red knew it was a sham when he kicked her out."

"So you purposely kept me away from Jackie because I was a drunken stoned bastard that doesn't deserve her?"

"No like I told you before, you need to get your life in order, you need to live up to your responsibilities, the real ones not some drunken mistake you make. You need to realize your own mistakes and fix them. You have to learn to let people in, even in two years with Jackie you still had walls up with her. You know this is the first time I have seen you not wear your glasses."

"I don't even know where they are, I think I might have lost them in that pond"

"Maybe it's a good thing, maybe it's time to stop hiding behind them all the time"

Steven sat back having finished his sandwiches and juice and started to let WB's words sink in. He owed it to Jackie and their unborn baby to become a better man, getting his life together. He didn't want to like the adults he grew up with always drinking and smoking up. He hated them so why was he letting himself go down that same road.

"The summer I met Edna I was working in the Wisconsin Dells, back then I was the announcer slash DJ for the water ski show. Angie's mom and I had gotten into a huge fight and she took Angie to stay with her parents in St Paul and I stayed here. I won't go into details, because that should be too much for a child to know but we had a 3 month long affair, I wasn't successful like now. I had been working trying to raise the money to start Grooves, that is what Sherry and I had fought about, money. I'll let you in on a secret, most fights are about money. Edna had helped me forget for a time that my wife left me with my little girl. But when Sherry came back with Angie ready to talk we would either work it out or get a divorce I knew I wanted to fix my marriage. I went and ended things with Edna and we moved to Milwaukee, I had told Edna that it would be an uphill battle for our relationship being of mixed race and sorry to say I never thought of her again. Until Kitty called me. I was shocked she had given you Bud's last name but put my name on the birth certificate."

"I guess if I ever talk to her again that is something I want to ask her"

WB took a deep breath, he had been keeping this secret for almost as long as they met "I hire the PI the first time after I found out about you, I wanted to track down Edna, I had questions too. I had just met you and I wasn't sure how to ever tell you, I haven't told anyone, but they were in a DUI crash in Arizona right after Bud left you the last time. They had ID's but no next of kin information and nothing to connect them with Point Place. Bud's ID was issued out of Illinois and Edna's was from Florida."

Steven sat back he wasn't sure what he was feeling right then, what should he feel, neither one was ever a parent to him. Was he sad? Relived? He had questions that would never get answered. "How?"

"Bud was driving, flipped the car into a ditch, both had pretty high levels of alcohol and other drugs in their system, I have kept this from you long enough. Steven sometimes we need to learn from our own mistakes, but there are times we need to learn from mistakes of the people around us."

"I guess I am surrounded by a lot of mistakes?"

"One advice I need to give you, never put money first, never let power get to your head. In the end my drive to build Grooves which I kept saying was to be able to provide for my family ultimately cost me my family. I lost my wife and child because I was never there for them and Sherry left me, this time for someone that had the time for her. I lost contact with Angie for over a year, and then Sherry was killed in accident and I had my daughter back, only she was a bitter preteen. It took a lot of counseling and finding common ground for us to connect. I guess that is why I had my guard up when I found out about you, I was afraid that when Angie found out bitter memories would resurface, Sherry knew about Edna but you don't tell your daughter you had an affair. You know it was actually Jackie that helped me see that I could let my guard down. She is a lot like your sister."

At the mention of Jackie Steven felt his chest tighten, "How has she been?"

"She's been a combination of a spitfire of energy and a broken girl all at the same time, but you have to take into account not just what you did to her, but her friends and her parents, add pregnancy hormones, let's just say it has been interesting. Angie stayed with Jackie in the mansion the week she was here, Jackie helped her with your mess of books for Grooves and Angie went with her to her doctor appointments. They stay up late talking on nights they don't work, it has been like I now have 2 daughters in the house. Angie has never really had close friends you, she grew up rich like Jackie did, but where Jackie was a cheerleader and social, Angie was withdrawn and a bookworm yet they click. Jackie and I was talking one night and she said she had never really had a friend like Angie, one that would listen to her sympathize with her and not burn or throw in their 2 cents about her life. She said the closest that she had to that was when you two were together before everything seemed to blow up."

"There is a lot more to Jackie than what most people see on the surface, I had that and I screwed it up. Now I can't help but wonder if I will ever get it back. If I have a chance to fix this with Jackie"

"I'm not going to lie to you, it's not going to be easy, but that girl still loves you even if she tries to tell herself she doesn't."

There was the glimmer of hope he wanted, now for the first time he knew it was time to grow up. If he had a chance of getting Jackie back it was time he grew up and was the man she saw in him.

"You need to get to bed, you have a morning meeting to see my grandchild for the first time." WB stood up patted his back and walked out of the kitchen.

Steven got up and took his dishes to the sink cleaned up and headed to his room. Once he got there he sat down on his cot, he went to take off his boots and realized that Fez brought him the boots Jackie had bought him years ago before they were even together. He was in such a hurry getting dressed at the hospital he hadn't really thought about it. He hadn't wore them since Vegas, one of his last memories before everything went fuzzy he remembered waking up to get dressed and when he went to put his boots on his mind swarmed with memories of that day with Jackie, going to Sizzler, going to the mall, buying the boots, sitting in her Lincoln and telling her she would find someone better than Kelso. She had tried to kiss him and he pushed her off, when he really wanted to kiss her back. He looked at the boots and wanted to throw them away, but he had to wear them till he had something else to wear. He got dressed and went and bought 2 pairs of jeans a few t-shirts and a new pair of boots, black to keep from looking like the brown ones Jackie gave him. He started to throw them away, but ended up putting them in the El Camino to hide them under the seat. That is where they had stayed till a few weeks ago when he went to clean out his beloved car, he took them and though he couldn't bring himself to wear them again he put them under his cot for Fez to find yesterday. He had gone through a lot in those brown boots and they still had wear on them. He didn't know if this time he could take them off, he liked having them on. Despite how he felt when he saw them in Vegas, they held great memories. He laid back wondering if he was even going to get to sleep. He reached down and pulled his boot box that he kept everything from Jackie over the years, when he came back from Vegas he had rushed in his room and took all things Jackie that was laying around his room and crammed them in the box. Pictures of her or them together, the candles and a few other things of hers that she had kept in his room and shoved the box under the bed to keep Sam from finding it. He hadn't pulled the box out again until he got her last note and his t-shirt back, he had put those in their as well. He pulled out the shirt, he had told her she didn't have to wear it when he gave it to her, but he found that she wore it at night when she was alone in that house after her dad was arrested. That was what helped her sleep, she said she had him to help her sleep when he was sneaking in his room till they were caught. She wouldn't wear it where others would see it, even Donna that is why she was blasting Abba that first night. He pulled out something else that he had hid in that box, the ring he took with him to Chicago. He was lucky he didn't lose it in his drunken stupor in Vegas or even worse given it to Sam. He knew he would ask her, but he knew there was a long way to get to that point, how long it would take he didn't now but he hoped that she would be ready and say yes. He put the ring back, the first thing he was giving her was the shirt back, she was still his girl and no one else would ever be worthy of this shirt. He looked around the room and saw the bottles, some empty others half way there. He thought back to living with Edna and the same type of bottles laying all around NO he was not going to become them. He picked up his trash can and started to clean his room, when he came across his stash he remembered that the first circle he, Foreman and Kelso had was from the stuff he had stolen from Edna, he had already started following her way back then, smoking it up in a circle just like she did with her friends. That was stopping right then and now. He knew he wasn't going to get any sleep anytime soon so taking the trash out to the cans outside he grabbed his keys. After closing the lid he walked over to his car, hoping that no one would wake up to him starting it. He thought he was alone till a blond poked her head from next door.

"Hey Hyde where are you going?"

"Out, have some things I need to take care of"

"Well Randy is over and dad is dead asleep if you want to bring your stash for a circle, since I am apparently banned from the Foreman's"

He hadn't heard that, but knew she was ticking Red off that morning on the way to the festival. "If you said something to tick Red off to ban you from the house I probably don't want to hear it, cause it will probably tick me off as well."

"Geeze he was worked up over Jackie falling in the pond"

He cut her off right there, "Really worked up over Jackie falling into a freezing pond? Jackie was unconscious, it took a while for her to wake up. That water was freezing, does dying your hair change your personality or something?"

"That water couldn't have been that cold the temps just really dropped a few days ago below freezing and that is at night" she scoffed

"Really? I was only in that water for a few minutes to get Jackie out and it brought down my body temp and took a while to warm me back to normal"

"You went in after Jackie?"

"Yea, why would that be hard to believe, I would go in for a stranger too probably, but I would die before I let something happen to Jackie"

He could tell she was going to go all school girl on him like right before he left for Chicago, and he was tired of it. "Drop it Donna OK. I am done with this burnout bit, it really isn't leading anywhere but an early grave and I am just not going down that road. It might be best if you just stay the hell away from me and go to your mom. Maybe you'll find a better personality in California" Before she could respond he was in his car.

He drove first to Grooves went in his office and cleared it out of everything like he had his room locked up and took the trash to the nearby dumpster. He then decided he just wanted to drive for a bit, and before he knew it he found himself parked in front of his old house. It was still in rough shape, no one had done anything with it since he moved in with the Foreman's. He got out and leaned on the side of the El Camino. He knew he would never bother with finding Bud and Edna's graves, so this was going to be the closest thing to closer he would ever get as he looked at the house that he grew up in. Unlike the Jackie box, no good memories came to mind. Everything that turned him into a bitter man and the walls he built around him started here he never felt any love, at best his parents could be drinking buddy's like that career day right before Edna left. She never was a parent, and that is what he needed not a mom that would take her 17 year old to a bar with his fake ID. Though thinking about career day reminded him of the conversation with Red about trying to give his mom a chance. Burned into his mind was Jackie rolling out from under the car covered in oil and wearing goggles, it was one of his favorite memories of her. He looked up at the house and decided it was time to get some things off his chest, he could never say to them now, and maybe if he just said it all out loud even if no one could hear him it would help. "You both were shit as parents, no kid ever deserves parents like you. You never showed that you cared for me, I was nothing but an obligation to you. I don't know why you didn't give me up to begin with. I don't know if Bud knew the truth or not, but even if he wasn't blood he could have been a father to me. Red has been more of a father to me growing up than you ever was. He was the one that taught me to play baseball when he tried to teach Eric. He was there to take me in when you both left me. Kitty was my mother she treated my scrapes and cuts, some of those you guys gave me, but I would lie to her where they came from" She fed me when there was no food in our house. She even encouraged me to meet my real dad. So thank you for putting his name on my birth certificate, and thank you for both of you showing me how not to live. I am tired of living the same mistakes. I took Sam in because she was nothing but an obligation while I pushed the girl I love away. I am done with the drugs and booze, I am going to learn from my mistakes and yours and I am not going to repeat them." He stood up and went and got in his car and drove some more.

The sun was just starting to come up when he found himself at their spot in the woods, the spot of their first date and where they had come many other times over the past 2 years. He realized thinking back that it could be a good chance that their baby was conceived at this spot the last time they were here. They had never been here at sunrise, but Jackie had loved to see the sunset when they would come up here. There was something about the sunrise that got Steven to thinking that morning, the sun coming up and a new day starting, he felt like he was himself a new person. He looked down at his watch and knew he needed to get back, he needed a shower and maybe get something to eat before he went to see the small screen debut of his child.