Chapter 17

"Steven?" Jackie walked into the basement. Steven was sitting on the couch watching TV. He didn't even glance at her when she walked in. He was mad and she could understand that but a part of her felt that it was only fair that he know what it felt like. To be disappointed by the one you love, to feel abandoned. But she stopped herself because Steven did know all of that, more so, then the rest of them. Everyone had left him. "Hey, can we talk?"

Silence.

"Steven, c'mon. What you heard wasn't true I was just trying to make Michael see that we aren't meant to be together. That we aren't in love." Jackie walked over to the couch and sat down besides him but he still wouldn't look at her.

"Whatever."

"Steven, you know I would never choose Michael over you. You know that. Remember what you told me, you were going to convince me to trust you? You have to trust me too."

"Jackie you just told Kelso you chose him. Not me but him." Steven glanced at her from behind his glasses. His world had felt like it was collapsing when she had said that. How it could even come out of her mouth amazed him. He had so firmly believed that Jackie loved him and not Kelso, he had accepted that Kelso would always have a special place in her heart but that was it. He was the one she was supposed to be with now.

"Steven, I don't want Michael and you know that. How could you even think that? After everything we have been through in the past year plus last weekend . . ."

"You know, Jackie, right now I don't care." With that left the basement and walked towards his truck with Jackie staring after him. She stood there while she listened to his car start and drive off.

"But I choose you," she whispered into the air with no one to hear her but the walls of the basement.