Chapter 11

Hyde pounded the door of Kelso's apartment as though warming his fist up for the coming confrontation. It was therefore a let-down when Fez answered the door.

"Where is he?" growled Hyde.

"His bedroom," Fez replied sadly. "Ai, he is packing his things and leaving me!"

"Running away, hey? Well, he'll find there's no zip code far enough to hide from me," Hyde said, stalking towards Kelso's room. "You'd better get an eye patch ready, Fez. And a full body cast."

He entered Kelso's room to find his former friend packing his belongings into sturdy cardboard boxes. He briefly looked up at Hyde and then looked away dismissively.

"What?"

"You backstabbing son of a bitch," Hyde spat out. He would have started beating Kelso up at this point but the floor was crowded with boxes and there was little room to move. "Come outside – when I get through with you you'll never brag about your good looks again!"

"What have you got to bellow about," Kelso said resentfully. "She chose you, didn't she? God knows why."

Hyde let fly a string of curse words which cast aspersions on Kelso's ancestry, his morals and sexual persuasion. In frustration he finished "What the ! are these boxes doing here?"

"I'm moving to Chicago," Kelso replied shortly.

"Really? I was under the impression you had just become a home-owner here in Point Place," Hyde responded sarcastically.

"I bought that house for Jackie." Kelso continued to empty the contents of his wardrobe as he spoke. "There's no point in me sticking around here if I can't be with her."

"You're really going? Well, at least there is a bright side to being betrayed by one of my oldest friends."

"Don't speak to me of betrayal, Hyde," Kelso snapped. "I only tried to do to you what you did to me the summer I went to California."

"Don't you dare try to say this is the same situation! You cold-bloodedly dumped Jackie. Of course she would move onto someone better. Someone like me."

"OK, I grant you I was a prize idiot for doing that," Kelso said. "That doesn't mean I didn't still love her, it just means I was too stupid to come up with a better solution to avoid marriage. You see, a long time ago a frizzy haired kid posing as my best friend introduced me to smoking what he liked to refer to as "film" and since that time, until recently, my ability to make intelligent choices was as baked as the thanksgiving turkey."

"You're putting the blame on me? I'm responsible for 10 years of stupidity?"

"Yes," Kelso said. "I mean, no. Well, partly. Jackie said the mistakes she couldn't forgive were the cheating ones, and I guess the brain is not really the organ that controls those urges," Kelso admitted reluctantly. "I just can't help thinking things might have turned out differently if…"

"…if I hadn't shared Edna's stash with you?"

"Yeah."

"That is the stupidest thing I ever heard! Man, you are dumber smart that you were as a dumbass. I never held you down and made you try it. You could have said no at any time over the years – there were enough grown-ups lecturing us on how drugs can ruin your life. You can't say you didn't know pot was bad for you."

"You always said those lectures were part of a government conspiracy to rob us of all joy in life," Kelso said.

"Like you can take anything I say about the government as gospel!" Hyde scoffed. "Don't you know me at all?"

"I know you well," Kelso replied. He closed the box he was packing and turned to Hyde, giving him his full attention. "That's why I say our Jackie-stealing situations are similar. You stole her from a guy who was no good for her and would only wind up disappointing her. I tried to do the same thing. Just like you, I thought she deserved better."

Hyde felt the force of these words like a blow to the solar plexus. "You, better than me?" he snarled. "In what bizarro world would that ever happen?"

"Think about it, Hyde. I've worked my ass off these last few months dreaming up schemes to win Jackie back, reading book after book on the stock market so I could afford to give her all the things she wants, working at changing into a man she can respect. And what have you done? You let her break up with you because you're too chicken-shit to take a chance on having a future with her, and then when you luck out and she comes back to you, you still don't offer her anything more than you did from the beginning when it was all about hot sex and your convenience."

"Shut your damn mouth, you Judas," Hyde yelled, moving threateningly towards Kelso. However, the boxes were still in the way. "You don't know jack about our relationship."

"The hell I don't. I know that girl inside and out. Didn't you notice she hasn't mentioned weddings, marriage or long term future to you since you two hooked up again?"

"Ha! That's what you know! She was going on about that sort of crap just this morning," Hyde replied. He did not add it was the first time in months she had brought up the subject.

"So I hear," Kelso answered. "I also heard about the way you shut her down. I'd never seen her more heartbroken as I did this morning."

Hyde felt a shaft of guilt at the memory of Jackie's angry, sorrowful face from that morning. "It was just a misunderstanding. Jackie is always trying to trick me into proposing to her. It's just a game with her."

"OK, that statement right there just shows you don't know the first thing about Jackie. Haven't you figured out that when she asks for the moon she is really hoping to get something else? When she asks you if you want to marry her she's really asking if you love her and won't leave her. I would have thought that someone who had been abandoned by loved ones as much as you would at least get that!"

Like the last blow of the axe on a mighty redwood, this last insight felled Hyde's righteous anger. Suddenly he remembered back to when he was 9; his Dad had just walked out, his Mom was drinking and bringing strange men back to the house. He remembered how much he had needed the security offered by the Forman home and from his friends, the sense of safety he had felt every time he had walked into the basement. Looking back, he realised Jackie's marriage chatter had begun as her parents started dropping out of her life. She was not as tough as he was and needed reassurance that she was not alone.

"Damn," he said softly, sitting down abruptly onto the bed. "How did I get to this place? Used to be the only person I could hurt was myself and now I've got this crazy beautiful girl who gets hurt not only by the things I say but even the stuff I don't say." Kelso abandoned his packing and sat opposite to Hyde on one of the boxes. Hyde narrowed his eyes. "What you did was still one of the slimiest acts known to mankind and I don't know if I'll ever forgive you for it."

"Look on the bright side," Kelso replied. "I offered Jackie everything she ever said she wanted and you offered her bupkes. And she still chose you."

"Yeah, she did, didn't she?" Hyde said, a smirk growing on his face. "Not a bad burn to go out on."

Kelso hung his head, letting out a gusty sigh. "Look, I'm sorry for going behind your back. You just have to know – it wasn't personal. I mean, it wasn't exactly friendly, I know, but it wasn't about screwing you over. I just… I really love her, man. When you love someone like that and you see someone else screwing up what you would give your eyeteeth to have, you kind of lose your moral perspective, you know?"

Hyde saw the pain in his friend's eyes and knew he was telling the truth. A lifetime of friendship prompted him to say grudgingly "Well, I guess if the positions were reversed I'd have done the same thing." Kelso gave him a look. "No, I'm not gonna admit that I did the same thing to you 2 years ago. I mean, you and Jackie? You treated her like crap with all your cheating. I haven't done anything to be put in the same category as you."

"For the record, I never cheated on her from the last time we got back together. But that aside, take it from someone who's been there – unless you start working on the problems you guys have, you're going to lose her. I ran away from our problems by driving to California, but you run away just by putting on your sunglasses and clamming up." Kelso stood up and opened the bedroom door as a signal for Hyde that the interview was over.

"So you're really moving away?" Hyde asked, following Kelso to the door.

"Yeah. Had a promotion offered to me in Chicago. I was going to pass on it, but I guess this is for the best. At least I can be closer to my daughter this way."

"Well, good luck with that, I guess. It's important for a dad to be around his kid."

"Yeah."

"Of course, you know I have to hit you now? You've left me no choice."

"Yeah, I know. One favour, though - do you think you could avoid my eye? My optometrist says I'm his only patient who gets frequent customer discounts."

Hyde laughed. "Sure." He then frogged Kelso hard in the arm.

"Owwww," Kelso moaned, reverting to his natural doofus state. He then smiled at Hyde and said, "One more favour, Hyde. Take care of Jackie."

"I will," Hyde promised.