Rolling the blue pen on the empty paper's smooth surface, she blew off a few hairs which had disturbed the view in front of her. Using her hand as support for her head, Donna figured it would have just been easier to kill herself right now, mostly because of the growing boredom she was experiencing rather than to continue and torture herself for more inspiration when there wasn't any.
Her thoughts drifted away temporarily to last night and how normal her interaction with Hyde had been, probably because neither of them had wanted to expose the previous oddness between them and by the look on Eric and Amber's faces they had done a good job.
After they'd dropped the couple off, Eric had gotten out of the car to explain some directions to Amber. Hyde must've wanted this moment to happen because as Donna was watching the other two people she suddenly felt the smell of cologne and a quiet "Psst!" Turning her head, she saw Hyde leaning forward before removing his sunglasses. "Can we talk later?" he asked her with a quiet voice.
"Why?" she pretended not to know.
"It's been a long time, Donna."
"Yeah..." she looked down and bit her lip before returning her gaze to him. "I'm feeling a bit tired." The excuse was made.
He watched her for a while longer before putting his sunglasses on. Even though they appeared to be empty of words, both of them had many things to say each other. "I'll call you," he told her before he distanced himself from the car and joined the others.
He was right, they did need the talk. She glanced at the phone and started tapping her fingers on the desk. Exhaling, Donna then lifted her hands. "Yeah, why not," she said and was about to pick up the phone when it rang, surprising her. "Nice to see someone's thinking about me," she smiled briefly and answered the call. "Yeah?"
"Busy?" the hoarse voice asked.
Moving her eyes franticly across the room, it took her almost 4 seconds to respond. "Err, me? No, no."
"Wanna meet up?"
"Well you do keep your word," she told him.
"I do, don't I. So?"
She sighed. "Sure. When?"
"How's 'now'?"
Donna nodded. "Sounds good." She cleared her throat. "Where?"
A brief chuckle was heard. "How does in front of 'The Swinging Tree' sound?"
"Oh, man. No."
"Yeah, too early. The Hub?"
"Ok." She agreed. "I'll see you there."
"Cool," he responded before the line was disconnected.
When she saw him standing almost statue-like with his hands stuffed in his woolen green coat, Donna slowed her pace. She walked as quickly as she could because she did not wish to be late. Although inside she thought of the idiocy of this rush, still, Donna wanted to arrive there as quickly as possible.
It had gotten unusually cold today and she wrapped her arms around herself, trying to warm her upper body.
She noticed a small line appear on his lips, presumably a smile which would eventually become a trademark of his, when he saw her. "The weather is sure lovely."
"It's fucking freezing," he snorted.
She looked around and was close to amazement at how only a few people could be seen here. "So should we talk here or..?"
He took the same turn in quickly examining their surroundings and then nodded behind her. "Since it's unbearable here we have two choices," Hyde began with his hands still hiding in his pockets. "One: we sit down somewhere for a drink or two: we can go back to my place."
Donna eyed him up. "Now I wish I was thirsty," she mumbled and unfortunately Hyde understood what she had said.
"Alright, my place then it is." There was that victorious smile on his face, growing to a grin.
"Fine," she shrugged and they began walking. There was nothing but disturbing silence between them. Silence partly because they both had wished to talk in a more intimate atmosphere, and the other reason was the pace which the wind was picking up so if any conversation had started they would end up shouting at each other just to hear what the other person was saying. Donna glanced at her friend. For some unknown reason she began feeling some tickling yet uneasy sensation and her consciousness did little to help with its continuous shouting: You should have picked another place!
"Oh lighten up, Donna," she told herself. "You're just gonna talk, what else could possibly happen? And besides, you gotta meet Eric later so you have an excuse to leave if things happen to drag on longer than they should."
Their walk had been short to Donna's and, if she only knew, Hyde's as well, relief, when after they found themselves standing in front Hyde's apartment. He dug inside the pocket of his pants which surprisingly did not appear to be jeans but rather tighter black pants.
"So did you change your underwear?" he looked over at her with a sneer while unlocking the door.
Donna pouted. She didn't reply verbally but punched him in the stomach before she entered inside when he opened the door. Her blue eyes traveled to every available piece of furniture that was in her sight, being oblivious to the sounds of the door closing behind her and its locking up. "Not much has changed," she said.
Hyde stood behind her when he said: "What can change?" He expected her to turn around and look at him but the redhead had only remained in her place. It had been the long single braid in which her hair had been fashioned that had momentarily held him back. Donna did not experiment with her hair as much as Jackie had done but changes like this, although not frequent, were nice to see. But her clothing remained simple: a red tee and white pants.
The apartment itself was simply decorated for a reason that he hadn't been the type to fuss over such details. All the basic pieces of furniture were there: a green couch beneath the windows where two white curtains were hung, two old fashioned chairs of the same color as the couch, one stool, and a TV set in front of them. Donna was pleasantly surprised to see that the living room had actually been clean. "Wow," she said. "It's clean." She took off her coat and placed it on the stool next to the door; there were no hangers just yet. "You actually did this?" Donna finally turned to look at him, or at least only her head.
Hyde nodded and walked past her. "Yeah, it was a total pig's sty before and I was lacking room to move so..."
"Oh," she nodded sideways and returned her eyes to the wall. One wall was painted red, while another white. He had told her that when he bought the apartment the walls had these colors but Donna had doubts about it. There were two hallways leading out of the living room: one towards the bedroom and bathroom and the other towards the kitchen. The living room was directly linked with the main entrance door. Pulling her tee down, she stood next to one of the chairs and looked at the TV. On the wall above it was a framed and autographed Led Zeppelin record. She smiled. Donna had lost that album to Hyde on a stupid bet and for one which she regretted not being drunk. But it had been six years before and by now she gave up her occasional mention about her regrets of that silly little bet.
When she turned around, Hyde had already sat on the couch with his feet placed on the table. Donna sat down as well. For the first few minutes they only stared blankly at each other, not saying anything. It did not appear to be as uncomfortable as the previous walk had been.
"So..."
"So we can start with what happened to you this past year?" he asked her.
"Like?"
"Like why did you act like I've stabbed you with a knife or something."
"Yes." She nodded and took a deep breath. "Well for one thing, a lot of changes happened... some good some bad."
"Anyone died?"
Donna threw him an angry look but she soon relaxed. "No, no, nothing of that sort thankfully," she replied while waving her hand in front of her.
"Then?" his voice was as calm as always.
Despite her reactions, she liked it when it was like this. Sometimes his calmness suited her so well that it would ease her own nerves; Donna never quite figured out the source of that much less the reason.
"Well, I don't know if Eric told you but we broke off the engagement."
"Really?" He seemed hardly affected by it to Donna's surprise.
"Yeah. Um, it was more my idea actually."
"Why?"
"I felt we were sort of rushing into it, you know? Even if it didn't mean we were married yet. We're still... young."
Hyde nodded. Her confession had wanted to draw a smile on his face but he decided to hold it serious for a while longer. Even though he had been fairly supportive on his friends' engagement, Hyde had kept his rejections further down. It made Eric and Donna happy at the time; there hadn't been a reason to spoil that.
"How did he react?"
"Surprised... disappointed. But in the end... well, not that day but later I think he realized the same thing as me. It was simply too early." She stopped. "Did he mention this to you?"
"No, man, he didn't."
"Ok."
"So you're both cool about it now?"
"Yep. It's not like we've you know, broken up or... anything," she sighed and slipped her head between her hands before running them down on her hair.
"What else happened?" he folded his arms while quickly asking.
She looked at him and then leaned back on her chair. "I also did some pretty stupid things of which I should be ashamed but I'm not," a sneer appeared.
"Like what?"
"Eric and I were at this party on a Saturday and I know I wasn't drunk but still I don't know what possessed me to do it. I flashed one guy, went up to two others who happened to be there with their girlfriends and nearly French-kissed them!" She shook her head, as it was growingly difficult for her to hide her rising embarrassment. "Actually, now when I think about it, it was pretty stupid!"
Hyde smirked. Could she be returning her wild, untamed side which, if he were to be honest with himself, had missed it... like he had missed her?