Donna found herself returning home to Marie Drive to visit her dad without Randy in tow more often than usual. She even invited herself over for dinner on Meatball Mondays and found all kinds of excuses to walk past the Forman driveway or take out the trash.
"Y'know Pumpkin, if you wanna see Eric so bad, you could kinda just walk in and talk to him," commented Bob after what seemed like the hundredth time that she had gone to 'casually' pace the row of hedges between the two properties.
She gave him an irritated glare.
"I don't wanna see Eric so bad, I'm just, y'know - I feel like a walk." She gestured forcefully to the ground in front of her and shoved her hands in her pockets, shooting another quick glance around the hedge at the Formans'.
Bob shrugged and continued reading a magazine at the outdoor patio where he had parked himself.
"Suit yourself. I just think it would save you a whole lotta pacin' if you would just walk over and talk to him."
Donna gritted her teeth. "Fine," she muttered.
She squared her shoulders and flipped her hair back, and marched past the hedge into the Forman driveway. Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the slider as the familiar cheery atmosphere of Kitty's kitchen greeted her.
There wasn't anyone around, so she made her way to the basement. It was a route she had taken hundreds, if not thousands of times before, but this time for some reason she found that her heart was racing and her hands were clammy.
She got down to the basement and to her great disappointment, found that it was empty.
She flopped down on the couch. She would have found if funny if she wasn't so wound up, and only to find that getting herself that way was for a whole lot of nothing.
Eric was back at his parents' house for dinner on Friday evening when Sam cornered him as he was coming down the stairs after having used the upstairs bathroom.
He gave her a nod and was about to ask her to let him pass when she leaned forward and placed her hand on his bare arm.
He grimaced and politely tried to pull his arm back, to which she ignored and held on tighter.
"So," she cooed, "we really should start getting to know each other better, since you're Hyde's best friend and all."
"Uh, no we don't," Eric muttered.
"I've heard so much about you," she went on, "I feel like we're practically best friends too!"
Eric tried to pry her fingers off his arm.
She noticed what he was doing and latched on to his other hand. Turning it around she ran a finger over the calluses on his palm. Eric stared at her, half in disbelief.
"Ooooh, I like a man with work-roughened hands."
"You're insane," he stated flatly. The gentleman in him remembered that she was a woman and pregnant at that, so instead of pushing past her or shoving her aside, he picked her up with her arms flat at her sides and deposited her to the side and out of his way.
Sam tittered as she watched his retreating back, and nearly swooned.
The door to the kitchen swung violently forward as Eric tried to put as much distance between himself and Hyde's knocked-up live-in girlfriend(?), and nearly slammed into Donna who was heading through the same door he was coming out of.
"Eric!" she exclaimed in surprise, not really expecting to run into him like that.
"Donna, hi." He looked back into the living room distractedly and then focused on her face. "What's up? You're here for dinner too?"
"Uh, no, not really, but your mom saw me across the driveway and invited me and my dad over." She gestured to the kitchen table which was already groaning under the weight of food.
Eric looked over and nodded, "Yeah, best that you and Bob come eat with us."
The door swung open again and Sam walked in. Her expression brightened as her gaze locked on Eric and he moved around Donna to the basement stairs, thinking to look for Hyde. "Excuse me," he muttered to Donna.
Donna frowned slightly as she looked from Sam to him. Before she could formulate a reply though, a heavy booted tread sounded from the stairs heading their way. Before long, Hyde himself appeared in the kitchen. He looked well-slept, and his breath was alcohol-free.
"Forman," he greeted Eric happily.
"Hey, man."
Hyde looked past him at Sam and he scowled slightly. "Go put something on, it's freezin'. If you get sick the baby gets sick."
Sam pouted. "No, he won't. It doesn't work that way."
"It's a boy?" Donna asked, interested.
"No, we don't know yet. So depending on Sam's mood, the baby's either 'he', 'she' or 'it'." Hyde turned back to Sam, "I'm serious, go put on a jacket or somethin'."
Sam sighed in frustration but disappeared down the basement stairs to do as he asked.
The three of them settled down at the kitchen table just as Kitty and Red walked in through the slider with Bob in tow. She spotted them already at the table and warned them to keep their hands off the food until the roast was done.
"What, you mean there's more?" Red asked with a touch of sarcasm that Kitty picked up in a flash.
She turned to face him and her eyes narrowed dangerously into slits. He got the message and backed off with his hands in the air, clearing his throat and hastily mumbling, "I mean, that's great!" with such false cheer that nobody was fooled.
Eric hid a smile at the exchange. He had missed this: his mother's warm kitchen, her food, her exchanges with his father, and his friends around the family dinner table.
He looked around and realized that it was exactly like how they used to have dinners. The company was the same, only before, he was head-over-heels in love with Donna who had been there as his girlfriend, and Hyde had been more like a brother to him instead of a rival for the love of his life. He shook his head, wondering at the irony of it all, and how much could change in just a couple of years.
"Jackie not joining us tonight, honey?" Kitty asked as she deposited the roast in the middle of the table.
"No," Eric answered absently, "she's working late, she really wants that spot at Global."
"Well, I'm sure she'll get it — the amount of hours she puts in at work," Kitty said. "Red," she called over her shoulder, "get me the carving knife will you?"
Donna was disturbed by the very natural way that Jackie was mentioned in the conversation and if she hadn't been so intent on figuring out why she didn't quite like what she was hearing, she would have noticed that Hyde, too, was similarly thrown by it.
Hyde on the other hand, knew exactly why he didn't like anything that Kitty and Eric had both said. But unlike Donna, the idea that Eric would ever be interested in someone like Jackie was so far-fetched that it didn't even register. He was just upset that he wasn't privy to this little bit of information about the girl that he was desperately trying to keep in his life.
"How'd you know so much about Jackie?" he asked loudly.
"Because she talks to me about it, Steven, dear," Kitty told him patiently before Eric could even open his mouth.
Kitty had a soft spot, a very soft spot for Steven, she always did, so this was a difficult situation for her too. And now that she knew how deep her son's feelings were for the same girl that her other boy had so carelessly tossed aside, she couldn't help but try to play peacemaker. She knew with a mother's intuition and the wisdom of experience that 'shit will hit the fan' so to speak, once the truth came out, but right now, she just wanted her baby boy to be happy for as long as he could.
"She talks to me, and she visits, often. The poor girl has no mother to talk to about these things, I'm sure you can't begrudge her a maternal presence," she admonished, and set a few cuts of roast pork on Hyde's plate. "Eat up, honey," she told him.
Sufficiently distracted, Hyde gave her a big smile and dug in.
Dinner went by with no other mention of Jackie. Sam made a brief appearance more warmly dressed for winter temperatures and even swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of food that Hyde insisted she eat for the baby. Then with a wave and a sultry look in Eric's direction, she sashayed off to work.
"Steven, are you sure that girl should be working in her condition?" Kitty asked as the sliding door banged shut.
Hyde shrugged. "She's gotta earn her keep somehow. It's my kid, but she's not my wife."
"But still—" Kitty protested as he waved a hand and interrupted her.
"She won't be able to once she starts to show anyways — Club policy."
Kitty frowned. "Well at least she's not showing yet. Young bodies, hmph. When I was pregnant with your sister" —she turned to Eric— "I didn't start to show till I was at least five months along."
"Really?" Donna asked her, interested.
"Yes," Kitty confirmed. "But with Eric, you could tell when I was at three months. Your body never goes back the same way after your first pregnancy," she said ruefully. She nodded sagely towards Hyde. "She's got time yet. At least a month and a half before it gets really obvious and people won't think she's just getting fat. Ahahaha!"
Hyde looked uninterested at Sam's soon-to-be-obvious bump. Eric sympathized, and gave him credit that he was at least caring about the baby's nutritional well-being. He reached over and and gave Hyde's shoulder a manly squeeze.
Bob, who had been engaging Red in a one-sided conversation so far, looked across the table at Donna. "Y'know Pumpkin, when your mother was pregnant with you she had a glow about her." He smiled proudly. "Yep, she glowed for nine months."
"She did?" Donna replied.
Bob nodded with a mouth full of food. He swallowed and said, "You might too. There's a lot of her in you."
Donna nearly spat out her mouthful. She did not appreciate being compared to Midge Pinciotti. Eric, who was next to her, gave her a sympathetic glance. He seemed to be dishing out a lot of sympathy this evening.
"No, there isn't," Donna muttered.
Bob didn't hear her and went on. "Y'know, I bet you'll have beautiful kids." He nudged Red in the side. "She's gonna have beautiful kids, ain't she, Red? I mean, she's good-lookin'. And Randy's a fine looking piece of man." He winked at Donna.
Donna's mouth dropped open and she glanced quickly at Eric. "Dad," she said in a strained tone and through gritted teeth.
Bob looked surprised. "What Honeybun? He is," he insisted, turning to Kitty, "ain't he?"
Kitty nodded enthusiastically and a laugh trilled out. "Ahahaha! He is indeed!" She waggled her eyebrows at Donna.
Donna looked horrified. Her eyes kept flicking to Eric as she protested loudly. "We're not there yet, alright! Stop talking about us having kids!"
"Yeah, whatever. Sometimes a baby just happens. Don't matter if you're there or not," Hyde uttered grimly. He stabbed at his plate. "I'm definitely not there, man."
Eric reached out and gave him a sympathetic thump on the back.
After dinner and the dishes had been cleared, Eric found his way to the hood of the Vista Cruiser absently spinning a basketball in his hands. It was cold, but he welcomed it. Enjoyed it, even, for it was a biting, clean sort of a cold. He had grown up with this cold, and it had been missing in Africa. It was hard to explain, but he felt as if it had restored a piece of him from before that had been lost during his time in Africa.
He heard the slider open but didn't bother to turn his head towards the newcomer who was interrupting his peace. Heavy footsteps announced that it was Hyde.
"Hey," Hyde said, and clambered up the Cruiser next to him. He shook out a cigarette and raised an eyebrow when Eric reached for the box in his hand too. They lit up and inhaled.
"Somethin' else that's different," Hyde commented off-handedly.
The corners of Eric's lips lifted, and he blew out smoke.
Hyde grinned. "I like this one though."
Eric chuckled. "You would."
They sat in companionable silence with the muffled sounds of the others in the Forman kitchen coming through the closed slider. Hyde ventured a question that had been hovering ever since his best friend came back.
"What happened over there, man?"
Eric stiffened so imperceptibly that no one except for Jackie would have noticed. Hyde remained oblivious that he had touched a rare nerve and looked at Eric expectantly.
Eric blew out more smoke. "Nothing," he said impassively, lifting his shoulder in a shrug.
Hyde looked unconvinced, but accepted Eric's answer at face-value. "Right," he said. A man had a right to his own privacy. "Someday then," he offered.
"Yeah, maybe."
They had gotten to the end of their sticks when Eric flicked his into the slushy ground and sighed heavily. "Look, man," he started evenly, "about Jackie-"
Hyde interrupted him and extinguished his own cigarette. "Naw it's cool. I get it. Sorta, anyways. S'pose it was really the only place left for her to go - Africa." He let out a sigh of his own. "You were her only friend left of all of us."
He turned to Eric. "Thanks for lookin' out for her, man."
Eric shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Hyde," he tried again, "it's not that. Jackie and I-"
The slider door opened loudly and Donna stuck her head out.
"Hyde!" she called. "Phone. It's Sam."
Hyde rolled his eyes skyward. "Woman can't leave me alone," he muttered and jumped off the car. "Later, Forman," he said to Eric and stalked off.
Eric watched him enter the house and bit back a curse. He wanted Jackie and him out in the open and he would rather he bore the brunt of the backlash that was sure in coming.
Donna made her way over to him, huddling against the cold. She took Hyde's place on the Cruiser next to him and took the ball from Eric's hands. She spun it around in hers, mimicking his earlier actions and mulled over matters in her mind and heart as Eric sat silently next to her.
"I miss you," she blurted out, then looked terrified at what she had said. She weighed the impact of her words in the night air and took a deep breath as she bravely pushed on. "I miss you and... And I want 'us' back again."
She looked at him with bated breath and waited for his answer. His face was set in stone and she couldn't read anything off him. She was beginning to suspect that this was part of this older, unfamiliar version of him now.
The basketball started spinning crazily in her hands. She wasn't used to this. It used to be the other way around, where he would be the nervous one with no idea what to do with his hands. Her knee started bouncing and she looked hard at him, willing him to say something.
Eric continued to sit stonily beside her. God, what a mess. Things had just gotten a lot more complicated and he was sick of complicated. He heaved an inward sigh.
"It's late, Donna, you should get some sleep," he said finally.
Donna was crushed. She had not expected this as a reply. Not at all. They always came back to each other. They always did. They were Donna and Eric, Eric and Donna, after all.
She opened her mouth to protest. But Eric had anticipated her move and patted her knee chastely as he slid nimbly off the hood of his Cruiser. Unthinkingly, she copied his movements, and slid off the car too, reluctant to let him leave. The friendly touch to her knee had sparked an entirely different reaction in Donna. Her pulse had leapt at his touch.
He shoved a hand in his pocket and pulled out his car keys, giving her a tired sort of smile. "Goodnight, Donna."
She stepped to the side of the driveway as he pulled out, her heart thumping wildly at her confession, what it meant to her and Randy, and the heat of his fingers where they had innocently been on her knee.