"You guys, I have to tell you about this weird dream I had."

Eric had rushed into the basement that morning, a wild look in his eyes. Upon seeing Izzy, Fez, Kelso, and Hyde in the basement, he had clearly been expecting to receive a positive response--maybe a listening ear, or a hearty conversation about said dream. Instead, though, he got-

"No. Eric, I can't hear another one of your lame dreams."

Izzy laughed. "Kelso, you're absolutely correct. They always go like:" she lifted her hands to mimic her brother's gestures. "Guys, I dreamt that I was purple and I could fly! Luke Skywalker was my lab partner!"

Eric shook his head and sat down. "No. It was about Donna. Okay, it was five years in the future-"

"Five years in the future?" Hyde asked, taking his feet off the table and turning to face Eric. "Did you see me and Izzy? Are we still hot as hell?"

"In my dream," Eric continued, ignoring Hyde. "Donna gave up her life plans to be with me. And she was so miserable... she left me."

There was a pause.

"That's it?" Izzy asked.

Hyde scowled. "I took my feet off the table and turned slightly to the left for that?"

"You guys... what if I really am holding Donna back? And she just doesn't realize it yet? I mean, I feel like I could be ruining both of our lives."

"Eric, relax," Kelso said. "It's just a stress dream, cause you're gettin' married tomorrow. Now, I had a dream last night that's actually worth telling. Okay Donna and Izzy were in a wet t-shirt contest-" he paused. "No. I can't. Forget it, it's too dirty."

Izzy turned to Eric. "So, speaking of wedding stuff, which of these boneheads is gonna be your best man?"

"Oh. Uh... you know what," he turned to look at the three boys. "I'll let you guys decide who the best man is."

Hyde knit his brow. "Whoa, you want us to choose? Well, if that's not an invitation to dress a dog up in a tuxedo, I dunno what is."

"Alright," Kelso said, "if anyone should be the best man, it's me. I'm gonna be a father, so I really need the money."

Izzy giggled. "Kelso, you don't get paid to be the best man. You do it for the satisfaction of nailing the hottest bridesmaid. Which, we all know will be me. In that case, I put forth my vote for Steven to be the best man."

Hyde grinned. "That's my girl."

-

"Isabelle, Jackie, it's bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her wedding dress. Make sure Eric doesn't come in."

Izzy and Jackie got up from the kitchen table and went to each of the kitchen doors. Donna was standing in the middle of the room, her arms awkwardly at her sides as Kitty hemmed the dress.

"So, Donna," Kitty continued. "Rehearsal dinner tonight, wedding tomorrow, you excited?"

Donna smiled nervously. "Er- Actually, um... I'm a little nervous."

"Oh, that's just cold feet."

"Yeah, but here's the thing: whenever anyone's nervous about marriage, everyone says it's just cold feet. But half of all marriages end in divorce. So half those people getting married should have cold feet!" She held up a finger. "But, by the time they realize they're right, it's too late! Too late! How will I know what to do? There's no answer!" She set a hand on the counter, steadying herself. "I can't breathe."

Izzy chuckled. "Donna, how you feel is totally normal. I mean, half the guys Laurie's dating were nervous on their wedding days, but now they're all super happy."

Kitty rolled her eyes. "She does make a mother proud."

"Do you think Eric and I are making a mistake?" Donna asked, sitting on her bed with Jackie and Izzy.

"You are." Jackie said simply.

Izzy shook her head. "You're not, Donna. You two love each other. A- And you've withstood so much in your relationship-"

"Yeah, yeah. Eric's just praying this whole thing goes through before you notice."

"Jackie!"

"What?"

Donna sighed. "You guys, I'm serious-"

"I am too!" Izzy protested.

"I mean," Donna continued. "Up until now, everything in our relationship has been really great. Our first date, our first kiss, even getting engaged. But now, in the pit of my stomach... I feel really sick."

Jackie shook her head. "Come on, Donna. You and Eric are meant to be together! You're like a fat girl and a cat. It just works, y'know?"

Izzy nodded. "She has a point. Okay, look. Jackie and I are gonna go pick up our dresses-"

"I'll try not to look prettier than you, but I can't promise-"

"Jackie, shut up. We'll be back soon."

-

That afternoon, everyone was standing in the church. Kitty had her camera, Hyde actually had a dress shirt on, and Jackie had Nick following her around. The only things missing, really, were the bride and groom.

"Okay!" Kitty said, ushering everyone closer. "Let's get a picture of the wedding party!" Hyde put his arm around Izzy's waist, and everyone forced a smile as Kitty snapped the photo.

Red scowled. "Kitty--correct me if I'm wrong--at a wedding rehearsal, isn't it tradition for the bride and groom to, well, y'know... show up?"

"Red, they'll show up. Everything is just fine."

Bob sighed. "Eric better have a good reason for being late. There's only two acceptable excuses for tardiness in the Pinciotti household. One: Traffic was terrible. Two: I should'a left earlier, but I was doin' something."

"Yeah, well Donna's not here either," Izzy sighed, "so don't go blaming the twink."

Right then, Donna came rushing into the church. "Sorry I'm late!" She said hastily.

"Oh, thank god, they're here!" Kitty said, pulling Donna into a hug. "I told you everything would be fine! Eric and Donna are here."

"What?" Donna asked. "No, Eric's not with me. He's not here?"

There was a pause, where everyone seemed to realize the same thing.

"Maybe he's stuck in traffic?" Nick offered.

Hyde scowled. "What traffic? Ninety-percent of this town's population is in this room."

-

"Kitty, Eric is over two hours late," Red said, later that evening. "Let's go home."

Donna shook her head. "He's not late, Mr. Forman. He didn't show up because... because he didn't want to marry me."

"Hey, you don't know that," Fez said, setting a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe he's just, uh, playing hard to get."

"I'm gonna make him pay for this," Izzy mumbled. "I've got eighteen years of blackmail stocked up, and I'm ready to use it all."

Kitty clapped her hands together, trying to lighten the mood. "Okay! Let's just- Let's turn those frowns upside down! I know, we'll all go back to my house and enjoy the Mexican fiesta I prepared. I probably won't serve the tiny wedding cakes, since nobody's getting married, but there are three kinds of burritos!"

"Donna," Jackie said. "In troubling times like this, I have a friend I like to turn to," she pulled something out of her purse. "Gooseberry Gloss lipstick! Nobody can feel sad with full, juicy red lips!"

Donna made a face. "No offense, but I don't think your lipstick is gonna help me, because I am not a superficial jerk!" She stood up and stormed out of the room, leaving everyone standing there awkwardly.

Jackie quickly applied the gloss and took a breath, calming herself.

-

"How could Eric do this to me?!" Donna asked, getting into her car with Jackie and Izzy. "I mean, what kind of horrible person skips out on someone they've known their whole life? I mean... someone they're supposed to love."

Jackie, who was sitting in the front seat, nodded understandingly, but Izzy, in the backseat, had her eyes trained on what was sitting next to her. "Donna?" She asked timidly. "Why is your suitcase all packed?"

Donna tapped on her steering wheel. "Oh, I was just- I dunno- I just thought maybe- Hey, I showed up, okay?!"

-

"The hell are we gonna do with all these bride and groom cookies?" Red asked, holding one up.

Jackie held out her hand. "Give me the groom." When he did, she threw it onto the ground and stomped on it, mashing the groom's face into nothing remotely recognizable.

Izzy, Hyde, and Fez came back into the room from the kitchen, and everyone perked up.

"Did you find Eric?" Red asked.

Izzy shook her head. "No. And the Cruiser's gone."

"I also noticed that he took his retainer," Hyde said. "So it's probably gonna be an overnighter."

"I could not find him either," Fez said. "I followed a trail of candy wrappers, but it just circled back around to me."

Nick walked up to Donna, hands in his pockets. "Donna, look. I've worked as a bartender for a lot of engagement parties. Good pay, but shit gig. I mean, no one wants to deal with whiny bridesmaids crying over their vodka cranberries about how this is their fourth time being a bridesmaid, and- anyway," he took a breath. "None of those couples loved each other like I know Eric loves you."

"Well, thanks Nick. But if Eric loved me, he'd be here right now-"

"Bob's got a speech, everyone!" Kitty exclaimed suddenly. "Everyone, listen to Bob's speech!"

Bob cleared his throat and stood up in front of everyone, unfolding his paper awkwardly. "I guess I could, uh, change a few things as I go along." He lifted his glass and began his toast. "To the lovely bride and the handsome... bride. I know that one of you will make, um- yourself very happy. Your life will surely be enriched by all the time you spend with... alone. You are truly, er- one soul becoming one joined... alone forever. So, I don't look at this the day I lose a daughter, I look at this the day I gain... nobody. Salut!"

As everyone clapped, the phone rang. The room quickly fell silent.

It rang a few more times, and everyone's eyes seemed to be glued to it.

Finally, Hyde picked it up. "Hello? Yeah, we kinda figured. Uh-huh. Well, do you wanna talk to her? She's sitting right here. Okay," and he hung up. He took a sip from his beer, and looked around at all the expectant eyes in the room. "Wrong number."

"Hyde, what did he say?" Donna asked.

He paused. "He said he's really sorry."

"He's sorry? He left me the day before the wedding and he's sorry? What does that mean?"

Hyde took a breath. "It means he's not coming. Not tonight, not to the wedding. He's gone."

-

"Okay, uh... guys, Donna's on her way over," Jackie said, hanging up the phone. It was the next afternoon, and Donna had barely left her room all day. "Yeah, she knows that we know why Eric left, and she wants some answers."

"I don't wanna be the one to tell her," Izzy said quietly.

Hyde crossed his arms. "Well, it sure as hell ain't gonna be me either. Give Donna bad news and she hits. She wasn't on the boys' JV wrestling team for nothing."

Jackie sighed and sat on the couch next to Kelso. "Well, I can't do it! The last place a girl wants to hear bad news from is a woman who has it all!"

"Well, you can count me out," Kelso said. "I don't wanna face a girl when I ditch her, so I sure don't wanna do it when somebody else does."

"Well I'm not telling her either!" Fez huffed. "I don't want my personal parts damaged. I mean, they're practically brand new!"

Hyde leaned forward and surveyed the room. "Well, in deadlocks such as this, we're forced to turn to our judicial code, which clearly states that in the event of bad news being delivered in reference to a cancelled wedding... the foreigner does it."

Kelso nodded and held up a finger. "Ah, yes! The, uh... immigration conversation act."

The basement door flew open, and everyone jumped. "Where the hell is Eric and why did he do this to me?!" Donna yelled. She looked around at everyone expectantly, and was just met with silence.

Fez looked back at her with wide eyes. "Um, okay..." He looked up at Izzy helplessly. "Um..."

Izzy sighed and said in a calm voice, "Eric was afraid that getting married here would be a mistake, and that you were sacrificing too much--IE, your lifelong dream of travelling the world and being a badass feminist journalist--for little more than a trailer park life in the middle of nowhere."

There was a pause.

"I just wanna say that we're all really sorry," Hyde said slowly.

Donna swallowed thickly. "How could Eric ditch me the night before our wedding without saying one word?"

"Well," Kelso said, standing up, "would it make you feel better if I told you that Eric left a note?"

"He left a note?!"

"No. But you should hold onto that feeling."

-

That evening, Hyde and Donna made a trip up the water tower to vent about life and drink beer. Well, it was more like Donna vented about life and Hyde drank the beer. Of course, though, it ended the same way nearly all water tower trips seemed to end:

In the hospital.

"You look dorky!" Fez said gleefully, pointing at Hyde's neck brace and eliciting a glare from him.

Donna walked up to the hospital bed sheepishly. "Hyde, I am so sorry. I don't know my own strength! I mean, I guess I'm still a little bulked up from JV wrestling," she paused, then shook her head. "You know what? This isn't my fault. This is Eric's fault for taking off!"

"Hey, look on the bright side, Donna," Fez said. "Now I can spy on you from Eric's empty bedroom! You know, instead of climbing up a tree, where there's no place to put my juice box."

Kelso threw his bag of chips onto the ground. "Man! I can't believe I missed you fallin' outta the water tower. So I'm at home, and I'm watching Scooby Doo, and I think to myself, You know what? You should go hang out with Hyde and Donna. Then I think, No, maybe Scooby and Shaggy found a real ghost this time. But it wasn't, it was just another crazy old guy."

Just then, Izzy and Jackie came rushing into the room. Jackie was holding flowers, and Izzy looked as though she had just gotten out of the shower and thrown on the first clothes she saw. Hyde chuckled at the sight of her shockingly pink shorts and her shirt that looked like a full-on candy cane.

"Oh, Steven," Izzy mumbled, throwing her arms around him. "I heard what happened, are you okay?"

He nodded and held her close for a moment, before remembering how many other people were in the room. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," he looked over her shoulder. "And Jackie brought me flowers?"

Jackie looked shocked. "No, these are for Izzy! Her boyfriend fell off the water tower!" She turned to Donna. "So, what now? You're alone, and you want her to be alone too? Am I next?"

"Steven," Kitty said, coming into the hospital room with her official-looking nurse's clipboard. "Get on home, I'll take care of you later."

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief that they could go back home, and they began to file out of the room. Kitty stopped them all before they could leave and pulled out a lollipop, gesturing with it to Hyde. "Trade you a kiss for a lollipop!"

He chuckled. "I don't need any of that baby crap."

They all continued to leave the room, but when Izzy looked back to her side, Hyde seemed to have gone back for the sweets.

-

The next morning, Kitty called Hyde and Izzy into the kitchen the next morning for something, in her words, "so, so, so important." Of course, the two complied, although they knew Kitty's tendency to exaggerate big news. "Now, Steven," she said softly, "we need to talk to you."

"Whatever you found in my room was planted there!" He rushed to say.

Kitty shook her head. "No, we just-"

"What's in your room?" Red asked.

Kitty elbowed her husband. "Red, stay focused."

"Yeah, stay focused!" Hyde said.

"Alright, Steven," Red said, "just for the record, I told her to mind her own business. And then she said 'Fine, you can make your own dinner.' So here we are."

Kitty took a breath. "Steven, we found out that the man you think is your father really isn't your father. Your real father's name is William Barnett and he lives in Milwaukee."

Izzy's jaw was dropped slightly in surprise. "Oh my god. Steven," she said, turning to him and taking one of his hands in hers. "This is so exciting! You have a whole new family, which is great because I know how much you hate your family!"

"Now," Kitty continued. "I know you have a lot of feelings and emotions- maybe you want to cry! We won't tell if you cry!"

"I'll tell." Red said.

Izzy nudged Hyde. "Hey. Steven, you okay?"

He paused. "Well... I don't really know the guy who's supposed to be my dad. And, obviously, I don't know this new guy. So... I don't really care."

Hyde stood up and started to leave the living room, and Izzy quickly followed. "Oh, but Steven, you have to care! What if your new dad is something amazing? Like a doctor?" Izzy gasped. "Or the guy who owns the Love Boat!"

-

"So then he said he didn't want to talk about it, so I continued to talk about it. Then he changed the subject and asked me to rank the Brady kids from least to most punchable, so that got me off the topic for a while," Izzy said, back at the kitchen table with her parents that afternoon.

"Well, I don't like the way he just walked out after we told him the news," Kitty said. "I mean, why would he do that?"

Red popped open a beer can. "Because he's a man, Kitty. And he knows you want him to cry, but he won't. Because crying is for babies and Italians. And I think we all just need to stay out of his business!"

Right then, Hyde came through the kitchen door. He was dressed nicely--nicer, even, than he was dressed for Donna and Eric's rehearsal dinner. He looked back at all the wide eyes from behind his sunglasses, and there was an awkward pause as he stood there.

"Steven, you're all dressed up," Izzy finally said. "Any particular reason?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "I, uh, I thought I'd head out to Milwaukee-"

"By yourself?" Kitty asked.

He paused, then nodded. "Yeah, I guess. So, um, I'll see you guys later, then."

He stood there for another moment, and Red looked at the girls, as though trying to get them to read his thoughts. After a beat, he set down his beer can. "Well, we were just, uh, talking about going to Milwaukee," he thought for a moment. "For their famous... honey buns."

Hyde nodded. "Well, you guys could, uh, come along. I guess."

"Well, I'm sure in the mood for a... honey bun," Izzy said.

"And to see baby go home to his daddy!" Kitty cried, jumping to her feet.

-

Only about an hour later, the four of them were sitting in a (rather nice) office lobby. Hyde was shaking his leg nervously and had Izzy's hand held in his own. Red was sitting in a comfortable-looking armchair and reading a newspaper, and Kitty was on Hyde's other side on the couch, nearly shaking with excitement.

"Big day, meeting your father for the first time!" Kitty said.

Hyde nodded apathetically. "You bet."

"Mom, you're smothering him," Izzy mumbled. "Steven, d'you want me to get you some coffee? Or water? Or jäger?"

He shook his head. "Nah."

"So," Kitty said. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine."