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CHAPTER 5

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Hyde sits in the middle of the couch, head in hand, nursing a beer like his life depends on it.

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He lifts his head, still able to smell her perfume hanging in the air and curses his greediness. He couldn't just be happy with forgiveness, he stupidly had to double down like a gambler with an itchy trigger finger and go for the whole jackpot. Jackie offered her forgiveness and friendship and he, like a drunk old lady at the slot machines, just didn't know when to pack up and go home.

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It's a miracle he had gotten Jackie to even look at him, much less talk to him after his treatment of her the previous year. All that progress has evaporated now. This is what happens when you take risks based on urges rather than careful calculation. Hard to calculate anything though when Jackie's skirt rides up her thighs as she sits on his bed.

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He may have ruined his chances, but at least he has a warm memory to keep him cozy in his isolation. When he closes his eyes, he can still taste her mouth, sweet from candy canes and red wine and smell her strawberry-scented hair tinged with Jackie's own intoxicating natural scent. He can feel her velvet skin brush past his face and her firm body pressed up against him in urgency, hands grappling for him like a drowning swimmer to a life raft. He runs his fingers over his lips where she had been not 15 minutes earlier and curses his stupidity. Jesus, he's missed her. It may have been a dumb move for the long-term, but he's sure that memory is worth whatever punishment he has coming his way.

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The door at the top of the internal staircase slams open with a bang and Hyde can hear one set of footsteps descend halfway and then stop suddenly. He can tell from the gait it's not Jackie, but he's really not in the mood to see anybody else, so he keeps his head down over his beer.

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"Smooth move, dillhole" a voice from the top of the stairs grunts in his direction.

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"I know I fucked up Donna. I don't need confirmation from you," he snarls, refusing to give her the courtesy of his attention.

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He can hear her jog down the rest of the stairs and then rustle through the shower to grab something. Out of nowhere, he can feel the weight of something being placed squarely on his head from behind.

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"I'm wearing the stupid helmet, right?" he asks, resigned to his fate.

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"Oh yeah. It's like, totally yours until the end of the year Hyde," she informs him. "Unanimous vote".

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Hyde finally turns to look at her. "What do you mean 'unanimous vote'? How many people did Jackie blab to?"

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"Just me. I'm the one who blabbed it to everybody else. You sure stepped in it this time, Cassanova" she reprimanded, snatching the beer from his hand to drink herself.

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"She was really upset, huh?" he asks sheepishly.

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"Atomic," Donna circles around and drops like a rag doll next to her friend on the couch.

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Hyde sulks quietly for a minute until a great epiphany overtakes him. He turns to Donna, rips the helmet off his head and hands it back to her. "Did you say she was atomic?" he asks, grinning like the village idiot.

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"Like acid rain for 50 years atomic. That level." she tells him. "Why are you smiling?"

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"Don't you get it?" he asks her excitedly? "Jackie hates me!" he announces with euphoria.

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"Don't tell me you're happy about this," she warns. "If this is some kind of elaborate burn, I'm gonna..."

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"If Jackie hates me, it means she still cares." he informs the blonde with a self-satisfied smirk as he crosses his arms over his chest. "I knew a kiss that mind-blowing couldn't be just a fluke".

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"Oh God, you're not thinking..." Donna says with disgust.

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"Oh, I most certainly am. And now that I know she still digs me, I'm not gonna stop until I do," he promises her smugly.

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"Here we go again," Donna snorts as she rolls her eyes.

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"Donna, do you know where she lives?" he asks.

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"I'm not telling you that just so you can torture her again," she snaps, coldly shutting him down.

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Hyde softens. "I don't want to torture her, Donna. I want her back." he says with sincerity. "Let's face it, even a moron like Kelso can see my life has gone down the crapper since Jackie and I broke up, and I'm just not that interested to find out how much lower I can go. Mainly because I know the bottom is still a far ways off."

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Donna looks at him fearfully. "The bottom is a far way off? After months of 24 hour drunkenness, countless slut-hookups, a failed marriage to a stripper and a year wearing a freaking porn-stache you still haven't hit bottom?" she cries in horror. "Jesus, Hyde!"

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"Yeah, see that's why I need her back. She's like, my pink-sequined, Blondie-loving, fine-assed rope ladder out of this hell-hole I call my life" he insists. "So can I have her address or what?"

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His blonde friend's mouth settles into a hard line as she looks at him with disappointment. "Well, as long as this is about what Jackie needs" she says sarcastically. "So far, you've given me a lot of compelling reasons why your life would be better with her in it, but not one reason why you would be good for her," she scolds. "In fact, I'm not quite sure you are, despite how great you look in a pair of jeans."

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Hyde's brow furrows as his grin gently falls from his face. "I didn't think about it that way," he says thoughtfully as he reaches for the stupid helmet on Donna's lap and puts it back on his head.

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"Look Hyde, you know I think you're great, but you can be pretty selfish when it comes to Jackie. You cheat and expect her forgiveness, yet when she doesn't cheat, she deserves none of yours. You're happy to take her declarations of love and her presents, but never willing to tell her you care about her or give her anything in return. I could go on..." she says, sparing no mercy.

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"Not necessary. I think I got it. You think I'm a raging asshole who doesn't deserve her, and you'd be right," he shrugs, giving up the fight.

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"No, I think you're an asshole who could deserve her IF you're willing to get up off of your lazy butt and change! Stop giving up on her all the time like a beta male! You want your life to be better? Jackie's not going to make it better for you—you are. Turn yourself into the guy Jackie deserves and I'll do whatever I can to help you," she proposes.

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"You mean that, Big Red?" he says, touched by her faith in him.

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"It's a promise" she says as she removes the helmet from his head and places it on the table.

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"The thing is, she knew who I was when she got involved with me. I am who I am and it's not like I didn't warn her," he says.

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"You can't act like a teenager for the rest of your life, and you don't stop being 'Hyde' just because you decide to grow up. Nobody stays the same, life is supposed to change you but you've been too stubborn to let it and now you're falling behind" she explains gently. "Maybe Jackie was happy to take you the way you were knowing that one day you'd grow into the kind of man she deserves? Ever thing about it that way? She was investing in you, dillhole, just like you were investing in her-even if you didn't realize it" Donna complains. "Think about how different she is from before she fell in love with you."

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"I guess she has changed a lot" he muses.

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"You started out dating a materialistic, spoiled girl who liked unicorns and demanded perfection and by the time you broke up, she had turned into a woman. A more grounded, realistic, more charitable and slightly-less abrasive woman whom you helped make," she says. "And don't feel bad, because you're not the only idiot who didn't take notice. I'm guilty of it as well," she complains bitterly. "We both failed".

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Hyde thinks long and hard about Donna's tirade. Deep down, once he muscles past his sizable pride, he knows she's right. Jackie did change for him, he demanded it from her, yet he did very little to change for her. "If I take your deal, will you give me her address?" he asks hopefully.

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Donna pounds the rest of Hyde's beer and stands. "Yeah, she's about 50 feet to your right" she says, pointing at the stairs. "You probably were too busy trying to hump her to notice, but we kind of got snowed in tonight. She's waiting it out at my house for a few days," she says as she sashays up the basement stairs that lead to the driveway.

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"Pinciotti!" Hyde calls out.

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Donna turns back to look at him.

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"Thanks" he says softly as she turns to walk out the door.

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Hyde walks back into his small room and sits in the chair facing his bed feeling dejected. The only evidence that Jackie was ever in his dark hovel is a small, heart-shaped indenture in his mattress from where her bottom had been.

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He traces the silhouette of her ass with two fingers, then places his hand in the middle, imagining he can still feel her residual warmth there.

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Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the note pad Jackie dropped on the floor as she was fleeing from his room. He flips it open and looks at the questions that are written within. As he rereads them, he suddenly realizes that they only number up to #15, and the back five questions were clearly made up on the fly. He was kind of hoping some of those rougher ones were dreamed up by somebody else.

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His finger hovers over question #10 and brushes gently over the words 'love of your life' as he ponders what exactly that means to him.

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Donna is right, he decides, He really isn't very good for Jackie, not as is, at least. A year ago he'd have called her a bitch and laughed at the notion that he needed improvement. One thing he can't dispute though are the facts. She didn't cheat, he did. She may have gone to Chicago, but she came straight back when she thought he still wanted her and then waited a month for him to return home from Vegas. She pushed him to be better and he just pushed her away.

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Shame starts to overtake Hyde's spirit, darkening his features. Maybe he was just too young or fucked up to realize what he had, but he sure as hell knows how he's felt since he lost it. Jackie was the one person who had the guts to pull back the curtain obscuring his dark soul and never once flinched when she saw what lurked there.

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He pinches the edge of the wide-ruled page, violently rips off the question sheet and wads it up into a tight ball that he tosses expertly into the trash can across the room. Hyde frees the pen from the spiral cage of the notebook, clicks the ball point down and puts the pen to the paper.

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"20 Questions" he writes at the top of the page, and then eagerly starts numbering the rows downward in left margin.

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Clad in only a towel, Jackie Burkhart walks into Donna's bedroom after taking a much needed hot shower. It feels strange to be back in this room again, after having lived here like a second daughter for those few years she spent in the wilderness. She hadn't realized how much she missed Bob until she saw his curly 'fro peeking out from behind the back of the couch tonight.

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As soon as he noticed her standing there, he gave her a much warmer welcome than she felt she deserved, having abandoned him after benefiting from his love and care when she most needed it. When she had nobody, he stepped-up and became her dad. He was there for her like he was for his own daughter and made little distinction between the two girls. When Jackie was sad, he cried with her, and when she achieved things, he beamed with a parent's pride. She suddenly felt extremely guilty for vanishing from his life after he had given her so much of his.

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Jackie plops down on the familiar cot and realizes she feels happy for the first time in a long while. Sure, her evening ended on a sour note, but she was here now and this felt like home. Funny how she complained so much when she lived there, never realizing it would turn out to be the one place she felt most comfortable. She's glad Bob changed his mind about moving, and not just because it spared Floridians the daily visual of Bob wearing a speedo.

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Just then Donna walks in carrying two mugs of cocoa. "Are you cold?" she asks. "I thought maybe you'd want one. It's still your favorite, right?" she says, extending one of the mugs in Jackie's direction.

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Jackie accepts the peace offering and lifts her glass in thanks before taking her first sip. "So good" she sighs, as she feels the warm liquid run down her throat and pool in her belly.

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"I try" Donna smiles as she sits Indian-style on the edge of her bed. "I figured you might need a little treat after the night you had".

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Jackie scrunches up her face in thought. "It wasn't such a bad night, actually" she claims. "Not overall".

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Donna is surprised. "You seemed so upset when you ran out of the basement, I thought for sure you'd be all the way to Kenosha by now," she jokes.

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"I was upset, but I'm not anymore. Besides, I actually had fun before all of that Steven business happened. It was nice being with everybody the way we used to, before...you know. Before Chicago," she says thoughtfully.

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"I agree. This was the first time in ages it felt normal down in the basement. Who knew that you were the glue that held the gang together?" she says, thinking out loud.

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"I did, of course" Jackie brags.

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Donna throws a pillow at her and then hops off her bed. "I'm going to get some more marshmallows," she says as she heads towards the door.

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As her hand reaches the handle, she notices something on the floor beneath her,a small white square.

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"What is that?" Jackie wonders aloud.

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Donna picks it up and looks at it strangely. "It's one of those origami-folded notes we used to pass in class," she smiles as she turns it over and reads Jackie's name printed on it. "Looks like this one is for you."

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Donna passes the note to the tiny brunette who receives it with a suspicious eye, leaving it sitting in the palm of her hand.

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"You're not going to open it?" Donna prods curiously.

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Jackie opens the intricately folded paper and spreads it out on the bed next to her. Instantly, she recognizes the handwriting and smirks at the text within:

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Like a big vacuum

My actions totally sucked

Forgive me again?

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Jackie concentrates on the note for a moment and then breaks out in hysterical laughter.

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"What?" Donna asks eagerly.

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Jackie leans forward and hands the paper to her friend. "Steven wrote me a haiku," she giggles. "It's much nicer than the last one though" she admits.

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"He's nothing if not creative" Donna smiles to herself, proud of Hyde for showing ingenuity. "So...are you going to forgive him?" she asks, handing it back.

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Jackie shrugs. "Probably. I always do, right?" she sighs as she imagines banging her head against the wall. "Besides, on the Steven scale of transgressions, this is only about a six," she surmises.

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Donna cocks her head to the side as she watches Jackie lovingly fold the note back up. "You sure that's the only reason?" she asks her friend directly.

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Jackie tries to hide a coy grin. "Well...as pissed as I am about it...I can't deny that kissing him felt kind of...not bad" she says, refusing to give it more credit than that.

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"Not bad, eh?" Donna says laughing. "Funny, he described it as mind-blowing".

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Jackie's head jerks up. "Did he?" she asks, unable to suppress the smile within. "That's...cool" she adds in Zen fashion as she places the note under her pillow.

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A/N - Sound off in the review section-anons and old-timers welcome!