The door to Grooves jingled as it opened and Randy looked up from where he was behind the counter. He glanced at her, then did a double take.
"Donna?"
"Randy. Hey."
He put aside the pile of records he had been trying to sort on the counter and took in his girlfriend's new look.
"I, just— Wow," he said, blinking at her.
She pushed a curl of bright red hair behind her ear, and smiled self-consciously. "It's my natural color," she said needlessly.
He nodded, a little dazedly. "Yeah, I know. Just… never seen it on your head before." Smiling, he added, "I really like it. Why'd you change it back?"
"Uh, um, I—," she swallowed and looked into his earnest eyes. Thoughts of Eric came to her mind and her feet took her determinedly forward.
"Randy, we need to talk."
Donna spent about ten minutes outside Fez and Eric's apartment fussing with her hair and adjusting her outfit. Her skirt was short, and she debated pulling it up an extra inch. She looked down at her top and wondered if it was too low. She practiced and re-practiced her speech in her head, and when she was confident that she had gotten it right, she squared her shoulders and shook her old/new hair back, striding into the apartment.
"Hey, Fez," she said, spying him on the couch with marshmallows, M&Ms, and some other unidentified candy laid out in rows and rows before him on the coffee table. She frowned as she saw him push some in place and take out others, opened her mouth to ask, but then decided she didn't want to know.
He turned around and brightened when he saw her. "Ooooh, love your hair." He took a second look as his eyes raked down her outfit. "Oooooh. Sexy."
Then he frowned, "Why're you here? Didn't Eric say we were all to meet at the basement later?" He answered himself before she could, and smirked knowingly. "Ahhhh. This must be about that something important he was gonna tell us."
She nodded absently, and fidgeted with her skirt. "Yeah, um, I needed to see him before that. Is he around?"
Fez nodded lasciviously. "He just got out of the shower. He's in his room. Walk right in," he sang.
Donna shot him an exasperated look and headed towards Eric's room. The door was closed, but she didn't think twice, and walked right in without even a knock with regard to his privacy.
He was towelling his hair dry with his back to her, and whatever she was thinking to say and planning to do when she saw him died on her lips as her eyes landed on the massive scarring across his back.
The skin on his back had healed over as best as it could, and it didn't hinder his motion and mobility as much as it should. But even with Ebele's best efforts, the scars were knotted and raised across the upper half, with the worst of it concentrated between his shoulder blades, a crisscross of pink, red and white; stark on the warm gold of the rest of his body.
A half-sob rose to her throat and Eric whirled around sharply as she shuddered a cry.
Ice entered his eyes as he saw her standing there with her hand still on the doorknob. "Donna," he said, but it came out as more of a growl. "What the hell are you doing here."
He grabbed his shirt off the bed and pulled it over his head roughly. It stuck in patches to where his body was still wet from the shower.
Her mouth worked as she struggled to find words. "I— sorry, I just, I wanted to see you." Her eyes registered distress, and her hands were fisted tightly at her sides. She came a half-step forward, closing the door. "Eri—."
He stopped her with a short wave of his fingers, jaw tight. "Knock next time, please."
Hurt flashed across her face, and her lip trembled.
He noticed and closed his eyes briefly. He exhaled heavily, tension still in the line of his shoulders. "What do you want?"
"I— I…" Her gaze fell from his face to his body and in a sudden move she crossed the space between them, her fingers closing around the hem of his shirt. She tried to yank it upwards and his hand closed around her wrist tightly.
She looked at him, startled, and his eyes bored into hers.
"What are you doing."
"Let me see," she told him, insistent, almost surprised that she was meeting resistance from him.
"No."
He stepped away from her, but she held on tight. The cotton of his shirt fisted in her hand.
"Eric." Her eyes flashed fire.
He didn't react. "Let go of my shirt," he told her quietly.
She ignored him and bodily stepped around him, tugging his shirt upwards. She didn't get very far before his hand tightened around her wrist with almost bruising force.
"Donna. Stop it." His eyes were hard. "It's not your place."
Shock played across her features. Indignation and outrage soon followed.
"It's always my place." The look on her face dared him to disagree.
"Not anymore," he said, a finality in his tone that brook no argument. He jerked his shirt out of her hand and stepped back, putting three feet of space between them.
She took a half step towards him, almost in disbelief. He stopped whatever she was going to say with his next words.
"I think it's best if you leave. Jackie gets off work early today, and I don't want to give her any wrong ideas if she were to walk in on you in my room."
For a brief moment there was silence so thick, one could hear a pin drop. Then, a truly ugly look made its way across Donna's face.
"What are you saying," she asked, gritting each word slowly and carefully out through twisted lips.
Her expression was forbidding, and warned him to choose his words carefully. But Eric was unfazed.
"Every man that Jackie has ever known has cheated on her or lied to her in some way." He paused, and met her eyes steadily, "Now that she's mine, there is no way in hell I will ever give her a reason to doubt the depth of my feelings for her."
Donna reeled back, her eyebrows drawn straight down in shocked disbelief. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish. "You're saying—," she started, then swallowed, almost as if it physically hurt her to acknowledge what Eric had so plainly stated. "You're saying that you have feelings for her. For Jackie."
"Yes," he replied. His voice fell an octave lower and then, simply, clearly, "I love her."
A choked sound worked its way out of Donna's throat. Her eyes glassed over and a trembling started around her shoulders. It took her several seconds to process his words amidst the roaring in her ears and the tearing in her heart.
"That's a lie," she finally hissed, lunging suddenly towards him, arms raised, and in that moment she didn't know if she wanted to hit him or claw his eyes out.
He caught her forearms before she could rake her nails down his cheek.
"Stop it, Donna. This is not you."
A hoarse kind of growl made it past her lips, and sparks shot out from her eyes. She hurled herself at him with renewed vigor, her hands balling into tight fists, and if Eric had been the boy he was before he left for Africa, Donna might very well have shoved him out the open window.
But he wasn't, and being heftier now he barely moved an inch.
She gave up after several minutes, and her chest heaved and her body sagged, but he supported her weight by her forearms and just allowed her to rail against him. "I don't believe you, this is impossible," she cried and he could feel the heat of her breath against his cheek.
He shook his head, but she was too blinded by tears and emotion to see it. "I love her," he repeated quietly.
"No," she said, with a sharp shake of her head. Then again, more emphatically, "No. That's ridiculous. You love me."
He kept quiet, and simply looked at her.
"I don't believe you. There's no way that you and her could ever— I mean. She's—," she broke off with a derisive expression of scorn on her face. "You love me. Me." She stepped forward to get as close to him as he would allow. "It's me, Donna. Look at me!"
Her eyes were wide and pleading and desperate. But she looked just like the red-headed girl next door that he had fallen in love with at five.
"I am," he said.
It was as if she couldn't understand, or wouldn't. She didn't think that the day would come when he would be the one telling her no.
"No," she said again, wild-eyed and her breath started coming out in spurts. "I won't accept this. You can't possibly just stop loving me."
He didn't answer, releasing her arms and choosing instead to step past her towards his room door. He pulled it open and stood calmly by it with one hand on its edge.
She stared at him dumbly, and then sobs shook her frame and a cry tore out of her. "Eric."
His eyes found hers and what he told her next, he meant with all his heart. "Our time has passed, but I'll always have a special place in my heart for you, Donna."
Her face was wet with tears, but her pride demanded that she held her head high. "No," she insisted, nearly blinded by her tears as she stumbled towards the door he held open for her. "You're wrong. I won't believe this. You just need time."
She ignored Fez's look of confusion as she blustered her way out of their apartment; thoroughly convinced that this was some mistake and a nightmare she had somehow awoken to find herself in.