Two weeks later

Standing by the basement door, Jackie tried to ignore the blonde girl on Hyde's lap.

There it was again, the familiar sharp pain that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the region of her heart. They weren't even making out, just watching TV, and somehow that made it worse, as she forced herself to try and forget that she was the only girl he ever wanted to keep that close to him before.

Instead, she told herself that Steven looked really uncomfortable with the skank perched there. Sam just wasn't of the right physical stature. She was too tall, too long, too thin, too…. Giraffe-like. That's it. She looked like a freaking giraffe. No offence to giraffes, she thought snidely.

Her gaze landed on Fez on the couch, and she willed him to stand up for her this time. He was oblivious to her look, his attention full on a bra-less Sam wriggling and jiggling on Hyde's lap.

"Jackie..."

Jackie turned back to the argument that she was having with Donna who was fiddling with the dials on the TV, and fixed a look of incredulity on her face.

"Really, Donna? Not one single thing? I was your best friend for years and you couldn't think of a single reason why we are friends?"

"God Jackie. Stop over-reacting okay!" Donna finally snapped. She rolled her eyes. "It's no frickin' big deal. I was high. Jeeze!" She crossed the room and flopped down on the couch. "Hyde, tell her she's over-reacting."

Jackie's heart sank. She looked over at him, hoping that Steven would at least say something in her defence, but knowing that he probably wouldn't.

The past two weeks had been brutal. He had burned her every chance he got. Cruel, malicious taunts designed to inflict maximum pain and humiliation. It was as if he hated her and to make matters worse, it seemed that everywhere she turned, his floozy of a wife was strutting around in see-through tops and barely-there shorts.

It had gotten so bad that she found herself on edge every time she walked into a room and saw him in it. She avoided Grooves, she avoided The Hub, and the only reason she was in the basement now was because of the joke of a slumber party that Donna had insisted they have last night.

And invited Sam to.

He barely spared her a glance. "Shut it, Jackie." He took a sip of his beer. "So Donna drew a blank - no surprise there. Now go away 'cos I can't watch TV with you squawkin'."

Sam laughed. Donna looked at Jackie and crossed her arms.

There was a rushing in her ears. She stood there, numb. This wasn't her friend of so many years. Her eyes went to Steven. And this wasn't the man that she had loved, still love —God help her—, with all her young heart. This wasn't the man who took her in, held her in arms when no one else was around to. No. This wasn't him at all.

She fought the urge to turn and flee. Where could she go? What other friends did she have? Eric was gone. Michael was gone. And though she hated to admit it, even if Michael hadn't moved to Chicago she still wouldn't have sought him out because of some misguided loyalty to Steven. So she sucked it up and threw them both a vicious glare, pointedly ignoring Sam and sank down gracefully on the lawn chair nearest the door.

Five minutes later, she decided she couldn't have picked a worse spot. For the lawn chair was directly across Sam and Steven. And if she had wanted a first class ticket to hell she couldn't have picked a better seat. For although she was pretending with all her might to watch television, she could see where Sam's fingers were entangled in Steven's hair at the nape of his neck.

As Sam reached to pull his face up in a open-mouthed kiss, Jackie wanted to rip her whorish hair out by the roots. When she saw Steven's fingers flutter across Sam's bare hip she fought the urge to throw up.

She glanced at Donna who was staring at the TV, looking bored. She forced herself to appear similarly unaffected. But she was dying inside. When she saw Sam's stripper-red nails slide up under Steven's shirt something snapped and she grabbed a cushion from the couch and hurled it at them.

They broke apart, shocked.

"What the hell!" (Steven)

"Bitch!" (Sam)

She glared at Sam and dove for the other cushion. Putting in all the force she had in her small frame, she threw it at her smug, fake, skanky face.

Sam shrieked.

Hyde rose angrily to his feet, and Sam fell off his lap in the process.

"Baby!" she squawked.

Jackie swallowed a smirk.

"What in freakin' hell is wrong with you?" he yelled at her. "Of all the goddamn childish things to do!"

Jackie saw red. Goddamn Steven Hyde. She reached down and pulled off a beautiful designer clog and threw it at his stupid curly head. It bounced off his forehead with a most satisfying clunk. Then she turned and fled up the basement stairs, hearing a loud bang against the basement door as he flung the offending shoe in her wake.

Jackie limped back to the Pinciotti's, adding the loss of her clog to the escalating number of things she had already lost as tears of rage and impotence coursed down her cheeks. She had gone straight back to bed, praying that somehow Steven would burst in and tell her it was a bad dream. Praying that Donna would come through the door and tell her that everything would be alright. But no one came. And she had never felt more alone.

The thing was, Steven's marriage didn't matter to her. Yes, she was betrayed. Yes, she was hurt, but if he had asked or even hinted that he wanted her to wait for him, to stay, she would have.

She would waited out the duration of his farce of a marriage, waited for him to sort it out, because she loved him. She would have forgiven him anything. Anything at all, if only he would come back to her. But this was something else entirely. She realized that she was shaking and wrapped her arms around her middle, desperately fighting to keep her emotions in control.

That night, after raining more tears all over the pages of her diary, she decided that it was best to move out of Donna's. She wanted to put as much distance between herself and her former best friend, her former boyfriend and his stripper wife, as possible.