Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

And I fell from the pedestal

Right down the rabbit hole

long story short, it was a bad time

Pushed from the precipice

Clung to the nearest lips

long story short, it was the wrong guy

Now I'm all about you

I'm all about you, ah

Yeah, yeah

I'm all about you, ah

              She’d been nineteen when she’d married. Nineteen and young and optimistic and in love and…dumb as a freaking post.

              He’d been her next-door neighbor, high school sweetheart, and captain of the football team. She’d been the perky blonde cheerleader, editor of the school paper AND yearbook, and the doe-eyed homecoming queen. Their coupling had seemed like destiny and fate wrapped in bubblegum, dipped in sugar with a cherry on top.

              He had been her first and only…everything. First kiss. First crush. First boyfriend. First love. First heartbreak. First second chance. First time.

              Everything that she had experienced, she’d experienced with him.

              In her mind, that was idyllic. In her mind, that was the ultimate fairytale.

              Dumb. As. A. Post. 

              The wedding itself had been a dream; every little girl’s fantasy. There had been blood red roses and baby’s breath, a four-tiered cake slathered in decorous buttercream, miles upon miles of white silk and chiffon. Her mother and sister had cried, her father had walked her down the aisle, her brother had flown in from Virginia. There was laughter, dancing, and free flowing champagne. It was like the climactic final scene from some romantic comedy.

              However, unlike the rom-com, the credits didn’t roll after the ceremony. That happy day had not been the end of the story – not even remotely.

              Unbeknownst to the wedding guests that numbered almost one-hundred and fifty that day, the day Elizabeth Cooper married her childhood sweetheart, Archibald Andrews, had been the last truly happy day that she could remember.

              It had started small, but big if that made sense.

              He’d asked for a favor.

              Defer her collegiate studies for a year. It really wasn’t much to ask in the grand scheme of things. His father, the best man that Betty had ever known, including her own father whom she loved dearly, had passed away the previous year – their senior year of high school. Archie had been devastated. Everyone had been. Fred Andrews had been a bright light in the dark, a saint amongst men. His death, a random tragic car accident, had shaken the entire town of Riverdale to its core. He’d left behind a struggling construction company that Archie’s mother, Mary had entrusted to her brother-in-law, Frank to run until Archie graduated and decided what he wanted to do with it.

              When the time came, Archie had decided not to sell the company. Instead, he had grand visions of himself stepping into his father’s shoes, returning the company to its former splendor, and becoming the new beloved Andrews of Riverdale.

              The problem with this particular daydream was that while Fred Andrews had been a kind, generous, and giving soul – Archie Andrews was inherently a selfish creature.

              He asked Betty to put off school for one year to help his reestablish Andrews Construction. He needed her. He asked if she would come and keep the books for him. After all, she had such a better head for numbers than he did.

              Of course, Betty said yes. He was he husband. It was their duty to support each other. She could delay her own ambitions for one short year in order to assist him in realizing his.

              Love required a little bit of compromise; sacrifice.

              And so, she became the accounting department for Andrews Construction. She balanced the books, made sure money came in, made sure bills and employees were paid up, ensured regulations were followed and everything was up to code, monitored contract deadlines, and handled the new hire paperwork. To top all of this off, she was Archie’s trick pony. He wheeled her out anytime he had difficulty landing a contract – which was often – and her innate charisma, charm, and intelligence more often than not won over the prospective client.

              One year became two, then three, then six.

              And over the course of those years, Archie came to resent the fact that his wife was better and more adept at running his company than he would ever be.

              So it was, that at twenty-five years old, rather than the journalist trekking through foreign countries in khaki shorts and a camera draped around her neck that she had dreamt of being since she was a young girl, Betty found herself clad in snug pencil skirt, a too tight bun at the back of her head, and a pair of sleek reading glasses perched on her nose holed up in a dirty office trailer while she read over quarterly profit and loss reports.

              “You know,” a warm, breathy voice cooed from the doorway and drew a smile to Betty’s lips, “those glasses make you look like the sexy librarian from a few of my naughtier fantasies.”

              “Better not let your fiancé hear you say that.”

              “Are you kidding?” Veronica laughed as she stepped in and let the door close behind her, “Reg would think he’d won the lottery!”

              The elegant brunette teetered over to Betty’s desk on her five inch stilettos and offered a paper bag and go cup of coffee, “Skinny vanilla soy latte and a delectable chocolate croissant. You’re welcome.”

              “I really shouldn’t,” Betty pretended to protest but she was already ripping into the flaky, buttery pastry and cramming pieces into her mouth.

              Veronica laughed, “Yes, you should.”

              “If you insist,” Betty laughed around a full mouth, shoved another bite in, and licked a smudge of melted chocolate from her fingertip.

              With an enviable grace that Betty did not think she’d ever possessed, Veronica folded herself into one of the godawful green clothed chairs that sat opposite Betty’s desk. She plucked at non-existent lint from her skirt and checked her fingernails. Betty waited patiently. She knew her friend better than she knew her own self.

              “Sooo…” Veronica started slowly as Betty had known she would, “as you know, my engagement party is this Friday…and I need to know how early you can get there to start drinking champagne with me.”

              Betty chuckled and washed a bit of croissant down with a swig of the delicious coffee that Veronica purchased from the gourmet bakery. Veronica spoiled her. There was no ifs, ands, or buts about it. From the moment they had met in the seventh grade, Veronica had decided that Betty was going to be her best friend. From that day forward, she wouldn’t hear a bad word spoken against her. In the eighth grade, when Chuck Clayton had lifted Betty’s skirt during a break to show her wholesome white cotton panties to half of the football team, including Archie, it had been Veronica and not Betty’s own boyfriend, who had stormed over to the brute and belted him in the mouth with a balled-up fist. She loved fiercely and her loyalty knew no bounds. Betty wasn’t sure what she had done to deserve such a friend, but she was thankful and tried to never take it for granted.

              Lord help anyone who tried to come between B and V.

              “Won’t we be drinking enough at the party itself?” Betty asked her friend, “Do we really need to pregame?”

              Veronica took a deep breath, averted her gaze to the side, uncrossed and recrossed her shapely legs, fidgeted with her hands, and picked at her nails again – all very un-Veronica-like actions.

              “V?” Betty said, her concern bubbling up, “What’s up?”

              Another deep breath and then her large, dark, almond shaped eyes rose to meet Betty’s, “Reggie’s dad will be there.”

              “Ah,” Betty said, everything made sense immediately.

              “I’m going to need to be sufficiently in my cups if I want to avoid jailtime for stabbing him in his stupid head with my favorite gold-plated ice pick.”

              Reggie Mantle’s father, Marty and Veronica did not get along. She’d disliked him ever since senior year when Reggie had shown up to school with bruises that he refused to explain. Then, apparently, the creep had tried to cop a feel on Veronica at a family holiday dinner…to which Veronica with all the subtlety of a jackhammer had called him out for in front of everyone and then tossed her drink in his face. Reggie had then slugged him for touching her…again in front of everyone. The man and Veronica had openly hated each other ever since.

              In direct contrast, Reggie’s mother Vicky loved Veronica; thought she hung the goddam moon.

              The elder Mantle marriage was a strange kind of thing from a by-gone era. They seemed to tolerate each other’s existence while simultaneously enduring a mutual loathing. They had also never even considered divorce.

              Betty didn’t like to ponder on it too much lest she start to see the similarities to her own unhappy relationship.

              “Ok, V, calm down. What time does it officially start? Seven, right?”

              Veronica nodded, her chin quivered and Betty thought for one terrible moment that she might cry. A crying Veronica was a heartbreaking sight to behold and Betty had made it her life’s mission to make sure that it happened as little as possible.

              “I’ll be there by five-thirty.”

              She was rewarded by a white grin, “You know you’re a goddess, right? Too precious even for this world and far too good for you troglodyte husband.”

              “Don’t start.”

              “That’s all I’ll say on the matter,” Veronica surrendered, then added, “for now.”

              Betty chuckled and shook her head. Some things would never change. In Veronica’s opinion, Archie did not deserve Betty. In Veronica’s opinion, no body deserved Betty. She had once stated that if she could only convince Betty to try a woman, she’d happily leave Reggie and the two of them would have been quite happy together.

              “Don’t leave, yet,” Betty said, “Keep me company while I finish my coffee.”

              “Of course, my love.”

              “So,” Betty said and leaned back in her chair, eliciting a loud squeak as she did so, “how are things otherwise?”

              “Oh, they’re fine. They’re good. A bunch of Reggie’s groomsmen got into town last night for the party and pre-wedding festivities. A bunch of jocks from his college days.”

              Betty scrunched up her nose, “How’s that going?”

              Veronica’s laughter was musical, “Honestly, not as bad as I was expecting. They’re all super sweet and keep asking what they can do to help out around the house.”

              That aroused more than a little of Betty’s mirth, “That sounds a little like your longtime fantasy, Ronnie. A group of big, strong guys completely at your beck and call, ready and willing to do your bidding, to bow to your every whim.”

              Veronica grinned like a shark, “I mean, I don’t hate it.”

              “Of course, you don’t!”

              “You should come over before Saturday and enjoy some of the perks! A small arm of gorgeous men at your disposal! It’s a power trip. There’s something very invigorating about it.”

              “Maybe it’s invigorating because you have slight tendencies toward control issues,” Betty said with an apologetic smile to soften the blow of her words.

              The blow did not require any softening. Veronica Lodge knew exactly who Veronica Lodge was deep down. Her Cheshire grin only grew. “Don’t insult me, B!” she chimed, “Tendencies? Please! I’m a total control freak!”

              “Betty’s laughter at the very Veronica response was full bodied and warm. It was something that Veronica heard far too seldom.

              “Well,” Betty went on, “at least you’re self-aware.”

              “Oh, entirely.”

              “And as much as I would love to come lounge at yours and play handmaiden to your Cleopatra, accounts receivables must wait for no man…or woman.”

              “Here’s a revolutionary idea!” Veronica exclaimed, “Hire a fucking accountant!”

              Betty started to open her mouth to response but Veronica silenced her with a raised finger.

              “I know you’re in the black now. There is no reason for you to still be handling all of this.”

              Betty pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, “Veronica…can we not?”

              “No!” Veronica stated, “you have put your own life on hold for six goddam years and-”

              She was cut off by the abrupt bang of the trailer door as it slammed open and Archie exploded into the office, “Betty, I need copies of the contacts for – oh, hey, Veronica.”

              On a world-weary sigh, Veronica stood from her chair, cast a death glare at her friend’s husband whom she had long ago declared her open disapproval of, “Hello, Archibald. I was just leaving. Goodbye, sweet B. I’ll see you both on Friday.”

              And with that, she swept from the trailer; left only the scent of Chanel #5 in her wake.

              “Friday?” Archie asked a moment after her departure.

              Betty had only given him this information a dozen and half times, “Her engagement party.”

              “Oh, right,” he muttered, “I have to go to that, too?”

              It was in those moments, moments of his blatant disregard for anything that was important specifically to her, that Betty truly felt dislike for her husband. Veronica had been Betty’s best friend since middle school. Archie had been friends with her as well to an extent. Even if they hadn’t been, she had been a part of his life – if only through Betty – for more than a decade. He’d known Veronica just as long as Betty if not just as well and he was trying to get out of attending her engagement party.

              “You know what, Archie,” Betty snapped, her tone leaked with bitchery and she couldn’t bring herself to give a damn, “we’re not going to have this discussion here. We’ll talk about it at home. What contracts did you come barging in her for?”

              The rest of the week had been riddled with unresolved tension to put it mildly. When Archie had arrived home that night, their ‘discussion’ of Veronica’s party had rapidly devolved into a screaming match and Betty had sequestered herself in the guest bedroom rather than share a bed with the man she’d married. The situation had not improved as the week had progressed.

              They drove to work separately, ate dinner together in uncomfortable silence, and only spoke to each other in terse sentences that consisted of as few words as they could possibly manage.

              Betty couldn’t pinpoint an exact moment in time where Archie had stopped being her companion and become a person whose presence she tolerated because she had to. Perhaps it had been a slow boil that had begun with his father’s death and had been steadily and increasingly destroying any affection that they’d once had for each other over the years.

              She’d heard divorcees say that over the years, their significant others had become like strangers to them. That wasn’t how Betty felt about Archie. He wasn’t a stranger to her. He was all too familiar.

              Maybe it would have been better had she felt she didn’t know him anymore. Maybe there could be a mystery there. New information to salvage and bring them back together.

              As it were, she could predict what he would say before he said it, understood how his thought process would flow, knew that his selfishness went deep into the core of his being.

              So, when Friday rolled around and she watched through the window as he loaded a cooler filled with beer and his fishing gear into his truck, it wasn’t anger that she felt, but an all-encompassing indifference. She honestly could not bring herself to care.

              Instead, she let the emotional numbness that had become her life settle over her and went about the house to do her weekend chores. She’d taken the day off specifically for that purpose, upon hearing of which, Archie had decided he’d take Friday off as well. Betty had errands to run for Veronica the following day and wouldn’t be ablet to attend to her usual weekend routine. Archie just wanted an excuse to not go to work. She vacuumed and put a load of dirty laundry into the wash. She pulled over wedding rings, dropped them in the soap dish by the sink, donned her yellow cleaning gloves and did the dishes from breakfast, and wiped down the countered with disinfectant. She feather dusted the decorative shelves and ceiling fan in the living room and fluffed the sofa cushions. Weekend days were the days that she felt the most like her mother. All she needed was strand of pearls and an apron.

              And she hated it.

              On a frustrated huff of air, she snatched up her cell-phone and dialed.

              “Hey V!” she greeted, “I know I said I’d be over at five thirty, but can I come over now?”

              A delighted squeal was her answer.

              When Betty walked into Veronica’s apartment without knocking because after some fifteen years of friendship, knocking was a superfluous gesture that had been rendered unnecessary, she discovered her dearest friend in true Veronica Lodge form.

              Veronica stood in the center of her decadent living room, hip jutted out with one hand perched atop it while the other pointed a delicate finger toward a corner of the room. Two rather well-muscled fellows that Betty had never before seen struggled beneath the weight of a heavy looking wooden bar and maneuvered their way in the direction that Veronica was pointing. When her gaze landed on Betty, her face lit up.

              Betty felt instantly better. Veronica Lodge love was a fierce love. Betty never once doubted that Veronica was genuinely delighted at her presence. She’d move Betty into her apartment with her if should could get away with it.

              “Betty, my love,” Veronica exclaimed, walked over, grabbed Betty by the hand, and dragged her back with her to the center of the room, “thank Gog you’re here! Do you think the far corner is the appropriate placement for the bar top? Is it accessible enough? It needs to be easy to get to, but it can’t obstruct the flow of the room in any way? What do you think?”              

              The two men paused their movements and looked to the two women, waited for instruction. Betty could see the beads of sweat that ran down their faces. She realized this was likely not the first time that they had relocated this particular piece of furniture. Lord knew how many difference parts of the room Veronica had had them lug that awkward, heavy monstrosity to. She offered them a sympathetic smile and turned to her best friend, “I think that corner is perfect, V.”

              Veronica clapped her hands and bounced up and down with the childlike glee that only she was capable of, “I know, right!”

              Once the young men, their shoulders sagged in relief, had set the bar down in the designated corner, Veronica looped her arm through Betty’s and drew her a few steps nearer to them.

              “Boys, this is my very dearest friend in all the world, Betty. Betty, lovely, this is Moose Mason and Munroe Moore.”

              “Mad Dog,” the dark eyes, coffee skinned Adonis corrected as he offered his hand to Betty.

              To which Veronica immediately countered, “Munroe.”

              Munroe let out a long-suffering sigh, “Miss Veronica, you call Moose, Moose. You call Jug, Jug. You have no problem calling anyone else by their chose moniker.”

              “Jughead doesn’t have your lovely manners,” Veronica soothed.

              The compliment caused the ferocious looking Munroe to smile a bashful, boyish smile and shuffle back and forth on his feet like an adolescent with a crush. It was one of the most endearing sights Betty had ever seen.

              Then Veronica turned her attentions to the other male, “And your manners are delightful as well, Moose, but I refuse to call anyone by the name Marmaduke. No offense.”

              “No, I get it,” he replied with a nod, “what else can we do for you, Miss Veronica?”

              Betty felt slightly in awe of the phrasing of the question. What a precious pair of creatures! No “do you need,” not “is there anything else,” but “what else.” As though helping Veronica get the apartment ready wasn’t an inconvenience to them. Even after they had moved that huge bar around the room for what Betty assumed was several times, they were both ready to do more, anything she needed, without complaint.

              Betty didn’t know men like that really existed in the world.

              “No, boys, thank you! I’m going to get my sweet B here a beverage and have some much needed girl time. When are Reggie and Jug due back?”

              Moose and Munroe shared a look, communicated silently, came a conclusion, and Munroe answered for the pair. It was adorable. “I think another hour or so.”

              “Perfecto!” Veronica chirped, “We’ll be out by the pool. Let Smithers know it you need anything!” 

              As it was with the unexplainable magic that was Veronica Lodge, she knew exactly what Betty needed in that moment. The two women spent a good portion of the day by the rooftop pool of The Pembrooke. They drank mimosas, they stretched out under the warm sun like lazy cats, and Betty pretended that none of her real-life problems existed – if only for the afternoon. They finally wandered back to the apartment a little before 5pm, slightly tipsy, to shower and get dressed for evening’s party.

              There was a light tap at Veronica’s bedroom door as the two giggled like high school girls getting ready for the homecoming dance. This – this was something that Betty knew that Veronica needed. The wedding plans stressed her more than she would ever admit to anyone, but Betty knew how to read the signs. Veronica needed a little carefree immature frivolity in the same way that Betty needed to step away from the mundane drudgery of her own life. They found that together. They were one another’s outlet.

              Betty stumbled to the door swathed in one of Veronica’s plush terrycloth robes. Smithers waited on the other side with a warm smile at the ready.    

              “Hello, Miss Betty, so lovely to see you,” he said as he entered the room to set down a silver tray laden with tea sandwiches and a fresh pitcher of mimosa, “Miss Veronica, Mr. Reginald has returned.”

              “Wonderful! Is he dressing in the guest room?” Veronica asked and poured Betty a new glass.

              Smithers nodded, “Yes, ma’am. He asked that I assure you that he will make certain that Mr. Forsythe is properly attired and on his best behavior.”  It was said with a twinkle of mirth in the older man’s eye and Veronica laughed loudly from deep in her belly.

              “I’m sure Jughead loved hearing that!”

              Smithers grinned, “I believe his exact response was a crude hand gesture that I will not replicated for you, madam.”

              Veronica smiled around a sip of her bubbly drink, “Sounds about right.”

              Once Smithers had departed, curiosity got the better of Betty and she turned to her friend, “Okay, who if this Jughead you keep bringing up?”

              “He’s Reggie’s best man. A pair of unlikelier friends never existed but they would literally kill for each other. It’s very sweet.”

              Party guests started to arrive promptly at seven that evening. At about fifteen past the hour, Betty slipped from the bedroom to merge and mingle amongst the guests so that Veronica could make a glorious solo entrance. Sure enough, less that five minutes after Betty had positioned herself near the hors d’oeuvres for the best possible view (for a Veronica Lodge entrance was truly a sight to behold) the double doors to Veronica’s room swung open with gusto and the petite brunette sauntered into the room clad in a dark purple, skin tight, strapless number and sky-high heels. She flung her arms out wide as though she would hug every single one of the two-hundred odd guests, her smile wide and bright, “Welcome to our home everyone!”

              Betty chuckled into her glass of champagne at the same time she heard a deep, appealing voice beside her mutter, “Oh, dear God.”

              Like a magnet drawn north, she turned toward the voice. At her side in a well-tailored black on black suit stood a dark haired, green eyed man she’d never laid eyes on before – and what a pity that was. He was beautiful. A smattering a beauty marks adorned his cheeks, his dark hair was unruly and tasseled as thought he’d been running his hands through it for a while, and his body was long and lean beneath that well-cut suit. He caught her looking at him and Betty arched a single eyebrow at his ‘dear god’ comment. He immediately looked down at the amber liquid in his rocks glass, scotch if Betty were to hazard a guess, and a light blush painted his cheeks.

              “Sorry,” he whispered, “it’s just – well, there is no one else in the world quite like Veronica Lodge.”

              Betty smiled at that, waited for him to look at her again, held his gaze over the rim of her champagne saucer, “Do you really think the world could handle more than one?”

              His shy little smile turned into a full-fledged grin and he angled his entire body to face hers, fully engaged. Betty had to stamp down the squeal of joy that threatened to bubble up at the fact that she had this attractive stranger’s full attention.

              “Touche’,” he said simply, then leaned a little toward her, a conspiratorial glint in his pretty green eyes, “I’ll tell you a secret, but you can’t repeat it.”

              “Oh, my lips are sealed,” she whispered back and leaned in as well.

              His smile lit his entire face and Betty’s breath hitched in her suddenly tight chest at the wonderous beauty of him.

              “I fuckin’ adore her,” he confided, “she’s funny and smart and loyal. I fully believe she could kick my ass. I’ve seen her kick Reggie’s ass and he needs that every one in a while, you know.”

              Betty leaned back and let her laughter roll out of her entire body, enjoyed the wave of it, enjoyed the way that this man looked at her when she did so.

              “Yeah,” she said through the laugh, “she has that effect on people.”

              She took another sip of her champagne, basked in the warm, fuzzy feeling in her stomach. She felt bubbly and light, much like the drink itself. She looked up at her companion from beneath her lashes, “So, how do you know Reggie?”

              “I’m actually his best man,” he offered her his hand to shake and she became oh-so-slightly distracted by his long, slender, lovely fingers, “Jughead Jones at your service.”    

              Betty giggled again and before her brain could catch up to her mouth, she blurted, “Oh, I’m your date!”

              His eyes widened and his smile only grew, “Sorry?”

              “I mean, for the wedding,” she corrected, “I’m the maid of honor! Betty Cooper!”

              Another slip. She was Betty Andrews. She hadn’t been Betty Cooper for six years. Where had that come from?

              His large, warm hand engulfed hers, scattered her wayward thoughts, and he smiled yet again…and she was lost.

              “Can’t say I’m mad about that,” he said almost under his breath like he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted her to hear him.

              But she did hear him and it caused a light fluttering in her belly. Betty wondered just how long it had truly been since she’d had someone give her a case of butterflies. It was not an unpleasant sensation. She stepped a little bit closer to him, just a little, just enough. “Oh,” she said, all innocence, “why is that?”

              She watched his green gaze dart between her eyes and her lips over and over and over again as though her were fighting the impulse to stare at her mouth.

              Instead of answering the question, he countered with one of his own, “Can I get you another?”

              Betty nodded and handed him her empty glass. He disappeared with a promise to ‘be right back’ and as soon as he was swallowed up by the throng of people, Betty spun on her heel to check her appearance in the circular mirror that hung decorously behind the buffet table. Her French chignon was good. One gold strand of hair had come loose by her ear, but the effect was desirable rather than sloppy so she was good with it. Her skin was flushed and glowy from her day out in the sun. All in all, she felt good about her appearance; she felt pretty. She turned back right as Jughead reappeared with her champagne and a fresh drink for himself, as well.

              “Your champagne, milady,” he said with an air of drama – and Betty was unashamed to admire that she loved it!

              So, she played right along, offered him a little curtsy, “Why, thank you, kind sir!”

              He opened his mouth to reply to her when someone bumped into his shoulder from behind. He stumbled forward into Betty, raised his glass to the side to avoid sloshing his drink all over her. Betty touched her available hand to his side to steady him. It was innocent, the touch. But she’d inadvertently slid her hand beneath the jacket of his suit and the thin material of his dress shirt did nothing to mask the firmness of his abdomen or the heat that radiated from his body. Even after he’d regained his full balance and stabilized, Betty was reluctant to remove her hand from him. In seeming reciprocity, he reached out and clasped her by the elbow, held her close to him.

              “It’s freaking crowded in here,” he said in her ear, “do you wanna duck out to the balcony.”

              The speed with which she nodded to this made her feel like a bobblehead doll. Jughead blessed her with another smirk and cocked out his elbow. Betty threaded her hand through the crook and let him escort her through the hoard of partygoers and out to the much quieter outdoor stone balcony.  

              Jughead could hardly catch his breath as he guided the most gorgeous creature that he’d ever laid eyes on through the French doors to the balcony. He hoped her didn’t come off as a creeper, but at the same time he unabashedly led her directly to the darkest, most secluded corner of the balcony and tucked her into it. He placed himself between her and the rest of the party. He wanted her all to himself.

              She twisted around, leaned back against the railing, sipped from her drink, and blinked those amazing eyes at him. She was coy, a femme fatale, a coquette, and was pretty sure that he was halfway hard just from looking at her.

              “So…” she practically fucking purred at him, a mischievous little twinkle in those green ocean eyes, “you know Reggie from college?”

              “Mmhmm,” he nodded.

              She set her glass down on the rail to free up her hands so that she could talk with them and Jughead found that he was completely and utterly charmed.

              “You’re gonna have to elaborate on that,” she said and gestured to his body, “because while all of this is very nice, and it is, believe me, it doesn’t exactly scream ‘I spend every waking hour in the gym’ like Reggie’s other ‘bros’.”

              The laugh that burst forth from Jughead’s throat caught even him by surprise.

              Betty’s face crumpled, “That came out wrong, didn’t it?”

              “No, it didn’t, you’re fine. And you’re right. I’m quite obviously not a jock,” he pulled his Marlboros from his inner jacket pocket, “will it bother you if a smoke?”

              She shook her pretty head, “Not at all.”

              He lit up and took a deep drag. The nicotine filled his lungs, steadied his hands, and calmed his nerves. He’d needed that. He’d been hiding his shaking hands since the moment she’d smiled at him the first time when he’d made his ill-timed comment about Veronica. He really didn’t want to fuck up and say something stupid that would send her running away screaming.

              “So,” he said on a stream of smoke that he made sure to blow away from her, “the sordid story of Jug and Reg, huh?”

              “Ooh,” she cooed and took another quick sip of her drink, “I love story time!”

              Smitten as he was, he couldn’t have stopped the grin if he’d tried, “Story time, indeed. Reggie, brace yourself, was my randomly assigned roommate freshman year at Iowa State.”

              Betty choked on her champagne from laughter at that, so much so that she spit just a little over the balcony. “How? What kind of algorithm did they use to get that combination?” she snickered.

              “You don’t know the half of it,” Jughead agreed, delighted that he was so easily keeping her entertained, “there I was, this scrawny, pale, emo loner with my Tarantino movie posters and vintage underwood typewriter and into my world storm Reginal Mantle with his high school letterman jacket, J-Crew cheekbones, and nerf basketball hoop.”

              “Oh, dear,” Betty commiserated kindly.

              “Yes,” he continued, “I wanted to move out immediately. The very helpful RA informed me that the dorms were at full capacity and I’d just have to suck it up and deal. So, I decided I had dealt with his type pretty much all my life, all through high school definitely. I knew how to keep my head down, slip under the radar, if you will. I could survivor one semester with a total bro. Then, I could switch up the following semester when the inevitable rooms opened up from drop-outs and transfers. So, we’re three whole days into the semester, I’m sitting by myself in the student cafeteria eating my weight in chicken tenders and reading my battered old copy of The Bell Jar – ”

              “Of course, you were reading The Bell Jar.”

              “-when Reggie thunks his tray down in front of me, says ‘hey, man’ and starts eating as if it were the most natural thing in the world.”

              Betty narrowed her eyes and shook her head a little, “The nerve.”

              “I know!” Jughead exclaimed, “Did he not understand that we were meant to be arch nemeses?”

              “I mean, that was just plain inconsiderate of him.”

              “Then, he put the final nail into the coffin.”

              “Oh, do tell!”

              “He invited me to a Kill Bill double feature.”

              “He went right for the jugular!”

              “How was I to resist? I didn’t stand a chance.”

              “Seems not.”

              He smiled as he remembered the beginnings of friendship with a person who had turned out to be one of the best men he’d ever known, “Turned out we were both scholarship students. Him – football. Me – creative writing. Of course, my scholarship was by necessity whereas he was because his father is a major douche.”

              She nodded her head as though she knew the douchedom of which he spoke, but her attention seemed to zero in on a completely separate detail.

              “Creative writing, huh?” Betty said, and sank those straight white teeth into her plump bottom lip which tempted him to do the same – God, did he want to! “So, what do you do with that degree?”

              He felt the tips of his ears grow hot but he didn’t let himself look away. Instead, he maintained eye contact and faked a confidence that he didn’t actually feel. His books had done well, both in sales and with the critics. Very well, actually. But it never stopped the feeling of vulnerability that always came to the surface when he admitted that they were out there.

              “I’m an author,” he said finally.

              “Really?” she exclaimed. Was it his imagination or had her already vibrant eyes brightened even more? “Have I read you?”

              He shrugged and took another pull from his cigarette more to have something to do with his hands than because he wanted to, “Maybe. Um… The Fall of Stonewall. American Backwards. The most recent is T – ”

              “The Killing Tapes!” she cut him off and grabbed his forearm which gave him a minor embolism, “You’re F P Jones, III! I love you!!”

              Jughead sputtered on his cigarette smoke.

              “I mean – your books,” she hastened, flushed from head to toe, “I – I love your books. I have them all.”

              Even in the dark, he could see how pink her cheeks had turned and dear lord did he adore her. How was she real? How was this actually happening to him? In a move that was so much bolder that he typically was, he twisted the arm that she had rested her hand on to brush his fingertips along the soft bare skin of her forearm.

              “It’s okay,” he said, “I knew what you meant.”

              Maybe he hallucinated it, but he’d swear that he saw the pulse jump in the vein of her lovely throat. He allowed himself for a moment, just a moment, to think that maybe she felt the smallest bit of the same desire that he felt for her. He moved in even closer to her body, and she didn’t move away.

              Could he hear her heart? He had to be able to hear her heart. She could barely hear anything else. He dragged his warm fingers along the sensitive skin of the underside of her forearm and she thought that if he kept doing that, she was going to lose what was left of her mind and jump him.

              And that would be bad.

              So, so bad.

              But God, he was beautiful. And the way that he looked at her! She wanted to drown in him; sink into him; become part of him.

              It was okay to pretend, right? Just for one night, it was okay to pretend that she wasn’t tied forever to a life that she hated and a man who made her miserable. She could enjoy a light flirtation with an interesting man who wouldn’t even be in town for that long. She knew from the blurb on his book covers that he was based out of New York City, though suddenly that thought hurt. The idea of him leaving town and her never seeing him again made her unbearable sad.

              She shook the sadness off with a ruthless determination. This was a light, meaningless liaison between strangers with mutual friends in common. It couldn’t be any more than that, it could go no further.

              She couldn’t allow it to go any further.

              She cleared her throat and along with it, she cleared morose direction of her thoughts. “So, you, uh, you don’t really look like the picture on your book covers.”

              He tossed his head back and laughed like a kid. Betty found herself momentarily mesmerized by the movement of his Adam’s apple.

              “Oh, lord,” he said and flicked his spent cigarette out into the darkness, “that picture.”

              “Yeah…” Betty added with a stupid grin. The picture was really about as far from the man before her as possible. He’d worn a brown tweed jacket and hunter green sweater vest, neither of which had fit him appropriately. He had a thin mustache and goatee, worn horn rimmed glasses, and his hair had been heavily oiled and slicked straight back. It was no wonder she hadn’t recognized him as one of her favorite authors.

              “Let’s see, yeah, I published my first novel when I was…twenty? The picture was my agent’s doing. He wanted me to look more professional that my ripped jeans and hipster flannel projected, so he dressed me in that ridiculous getup. Reg was there and kept telling me that I looked like a tool, but I didn’t agree. I trusted my agent implicitly. Now, it’s kind of a running joke amongst us all.”

              “It is a pretty awful picture,” she agreed.

              He eased even a little closer, rested his hand on the rail by her hip so that she was essentially more or less tucked beneath his arm, “Well, I was a dumb twenty-year-old kid.”

              “And you’re not that anymore?” she teased, batted her eyes as her hand, of its own damn volition, rose and traced along the lapel of his dinner jacket, tugged him just one more step closer.

              He hummed from deep in his throat and looked down at her, his heavy-lidded eyes slumberous and half-closed. The very definition of “bedroom eyes.” He blatantly stared at her mouth. “Now, I like to think of myself as a dumb twenty-seven-year-old man.”

              “You’re from New York?” she asked.

              Jughead shrugged, “Well, I am, now. Grew up in Toledo, the scholarship to Iowa. Kind of a nomad, I guess.”

              “But you’ve put down roots in New York City?”

              “I have, yeah,” he nodded with an impish little upturn of those plush looking lips, “I like New York. I like the bustle, the controlled chaos of it all. My apartment would fit into Veronica’s living room, but it suits me and Hot Dog just fine.”

              Betty felt her grin widen. Her cheeks had started to hurt from smiling so much, “Hot Dog?”

              “He’s a big, oafish, sheepdog mixed mutt,” Jughead said with a fondness that Betty found beyond endearing, “but I love him.”

              “Where is he now?” she asked, “Not in a kennel?”

              “Oh, God no!” he exclaimed, “I couldn’t do that to him. His social anxiety is worse than mine! No, he had a regular dog walker that comes over three times a day for an hour each time. She walks him, feeds him, plays with him. Gives him some affection. I use her a lot when I have to travel for book tours, when I can’t take him with me anyway.”

              “You’re just a big softie, aren’t you?” she giggled.

              “When it comes to Hot Dog, yeah, I guess I am.”  

              She bit down on her bottom lip and let herself relish in the way that his already dark eyes darkened even more at the action. “You mentioned book tours. So…are you…working on anything new?”

              He lifted his hand from the balcony rail to twirl the strand of her hair that had escaped her chignon between his fingers, “I’ve been searching for my muse.”

              Betty felt breathless, weak, and she was pretty sure that she was having a cardiac event, “And – do you think you’ve found it?”

              He touched his fingers to her jaw, “I think – maybe I have.”

              Oh, fuck! He was leaning in. He was going to kiss her! And she didn’t know if she had the strength to stop him. To tell him that he shouldn’t. That he couldn’t! And – dammit she didn’t want to stop him. When he was little more than a breath away – ”

              “Betty?”

              She gasped at the sound of the all too familiar voice and shoved Jughead away from her with a hand to his chest, winced at the look of confusion on his face.

              “There you are,” Archie said as he walked over to join them, oblivious to what he interrupted. He wore his Sunday church suit. Light tan wholesomeness to Jughead’s dark mystery.

              “Archie,” Betty squeaked, “I, uh, I didn’t think you were coming.”

              “Eh, I got back from fishing and thought I’d swing by,” he looked at Jughead, “hey, man.”

              “Hi?” Jughead responded, unsure of exactly what was going on.

              Betty’s engrained Cooper manners kicked in, “Archie, this is Jughead Jones. He’s the author that I’m always reading.”           

              “Cool!”

              “Jughead, this is Archie. He’s – ” there was no sugar-coated way to soften this one, “my husband.”

              Jughead’s gaze darted to her even as he shook Archie’s hand. He laughed to himself but the sound was noticeably devoid of the humor that had been present just a few moments before. “Of course, you,” he said, “nice to meet you.”

              “Oh!” Archie exclaimed and dug a hand into his pants’ pocket, “before I forget, you left these in the soap dish again.”

              He placed something in her palm.

              Her wedding rings.

              “You gotta stop doing that,” Archie chided, then glanced over his shoulder, “I’m gonna go get a drink.”

              Then he left them. He didn’t offer to get Betty a drink, didn’t ask her if she needed anything, didn’t tell her that she looked nice. He just left.

              Jughead’s gaze followed the movement of her hands as she slipped her rings back onto the significant fourth finger, “So, I’m married.”

              “I gathered,” he replied dryly.

              His voice had changed. It was harder. When finally brought herself to look up at him, his eyes had gone cold and part of her wanted to throw herself off of the balcony.

              “Leave those at home often, do you?” he asked, his tone harsh and sharp.

              Betty furrowed her brow in confusion at the question, “What?”

              Then Archie’s comment about needing to remember her rings replayed in her head and she realized how this must all have looked to Jughead. The eagerness with which she’d gone off alone with him, the ease with which she’d flirted with him, toucher him, and the knowledge that she often went out without her rings. He thought she’d been trolling for a lover – and that she’d done so before.

              She didn’t fully understand why, but she couldn’t bear that thought of him thinking so poorly of her for the rest of their lives.

              “Please,” she pleaded, her voice soft, “it’s really not what you’re thinking.”

              “And what, pray tell, am I thinking?” he demanded as he took a step back to put even more distance between their bodies.

              She felt the building sting of tears in her eyes, blinked them away, “You’re thinking that I’m a woman who cheats on her husband – and I’m not. I swear, I’m not. I’ve never…” She struggled to find the words and gestured back and forth between the two of them, “This has never happened to me before tonight.”

              Jughead wanted to believe, God, he really wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that the connection he’d felt hadn’t been one-sided; that he wasn’t just some pawn in a game that she played on a regular basis. But, even it he did believe that, even if she had just been caught up in the same pull of attraction that he himself had been, what did it change? It didn’t change anything. It didn’t change the fact that she had a husband inside of the party. One who happened to bear a psychologically damaging resemblance to the jocks that had made his life a living hell in high school. It was true that Reggie and the group of friends he’d made at Iowa had taught him that not all jocks were assholes, but he was inclined by a new prejudice to be judgmental and dislike Betty’s husband…because he was Betty’s husband.

              There was a desperation in her gaze, her wide green eyes seemed to beg him for something but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

              What he really hated though was the fact that he had met this woman maybe an hour before and he wanted so badly to give her whatever it was that she was asking for. He’d give her all the pieces of himself if that was what she wanted – and that was dangerous thinking.

              So, he needed to remove himself from the situation.

              “Look, Betty,” he said as his entire being kicking into self-preservation mode, “you’re beautiful – and you seem funny and smart and interesting – but I don’t know what it is that you want from me here.”

              She sucked her lips into her mouth, pressed them into a tight line. Her eyes darted around the balcony as though she searched for an answer out in the distance.

              “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. She wrapped her arms around her torso as in defense from the cold despite the humid warmth of the night, “All I know if that I don’t want you to walk away thinking the absolute worst of me.”

              He licked at his own lips. They felt dry and parched. He was stressed out and anxious. He shoved his hands deep into his pants’ pockets and shrugged his shoulders, forced nonchalance.

              “We don’t even know each other, Betty.”              

              The honest truth had never felt so much a lie. Their brief interaction had felt like coming home after being away for his entire life.

              More dangerous thoughts.

              Please, Jughead,” she stepped toward him.

              He stepped back.

              He couldn’t let her touch him. He’d be even more lost that he already was.

              He pushed the breath from his lungs, “Alright, listen, I don’t think badly of you. You gave me no reason to. The only thing you did was agree to come outside and keep me company. Any assumptions that were made were mine. I take full responsibility for that.”

              “J – ”

              “It was very nice to meet you,” he cut her off before she could finish the sentence, before she could wound him even deeper, “I look forward to seeing you at the wedding.”

              He left her standing there on the balcony as he rejoined the crush inside. She’d looked somber and beautiful and just slightly broken and he’d cursed whatever deity was out there that loved to torment him with things that he could never have.

              The rest of the night, he’d felt like some deranged, obsessed stalker as his stare tracked Betty’s movements throughout the party. She’d spent some time with her husband but not nearly as much as he’d expected. Every so often, she’d catch his gaze and offer him a small, sad smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes and he’d look away.

              But that night, once the guests had departed, including Betty, and Jughead had retreated to the guestroom that was almost as big as his New York City loft apartment, he sat down at his computer and began to flesh out a new heroine.

              She would be a wild-eyed blonde temptress with laughter in her voice and mischief in her nature. She would seduce the young hero away from his home, his family, and his safety. What would he be willing to do in order to possess her? Would he lie? Steal? Cheat? Would he be willing to kill for her?

              It seemed he had discovered his muse. He hadn’t lied about that.

              When the Saturday morning sunlight poured through her bedroom window and woke Betty from her restless sleep, she found herself in a cold empty bed. She didn’t know where Archie had disappeared to and if she was honest with herself, she didn’t particularly care. She crawled out of the bed, she was groggy and had a pounding headache from the amount of alcohol she’d consumed at Veronica’s. When she looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she found her eyes bloodshot and swollen. She may have gotten drunk and cried herself to sleep the night before as she’d ruminated on her wasted life and neglected dreams.

              She’d wanted to go to school for investigative journalism. She’d wanted to make a difference in the world by uncovering corruption and scandal and informing the populace of the truth.

              And what had she done instead?

              She’d become a paper pushed for a family run construction company in a small town where she was trapped in a dead-end marriage.

              She shook off her melancholy and got into the shower. If there was one thing that Betty Cooper Andrews had mastered in her lifetime, it was the ability to suppress her feelings and to soldier through with the trade mark Cooper smile on her face.

              When she exited her front door, dressed and made up for the day, she noticed how overgrown her front yard had started to look. She’d have to pay the high school kid down the block to take care of it soon. God knew she couldn’t ask Archie. He’d just complain about how he did manual labor all day and he didn’t have the “time or energy to mow the damn lawn. Just take care of it, Betty.”

              She guided her car down main street and pulled into Pop’s parking lot to grab herself a coffee – the best part of her day usually. She pushed into the diner, took a moment to appreciate the familiar smells of brewed coffee, fried eggs and bacon, and sweet maple syrup. They were the smells from her childhood and they offered a comfort that she didn’t necessarily find in other places. Out of habit, she swept her gaze around the inhabitants of her favorite establishment – and they landed on Jughead Jones tucked in the far corner booth. He wore the horn-rimmed glasses from his awful book picture and gazed intently at his table. Betty rose to her tiptoes and peered over the seat tops. A laptop. He was focused on a lap top.

              “Hey, Betty,” Pop greeted her when he emerged from the kitchen, “usual coffee to go?”

              Betty smiled at the older man and pointed toward Jughead, “Actually, Pop, the guy in the back booth? What’s he drinking?”

              Pop shrugged, “Black coffee.”

              Betty nodded, chewed on her lip, then asked a favor, “Can I – can I get a coffee cup for here and borrow the pot?”

              “Of course, sweetheart,” Pop said and handed her an empty mug and set the coffee pot on the counter for her.

              She grabbed the pot, took a breath, mustered up her courage, screwed it to the sticking place, and made her way over to Jughead’s booth. He was so intent on the screen in front of him that he did not notice her approach. Another steadying breath of air into her lungs and, “Refill?”

              Jughead started at the sound of her, actually jumped where he sat. When he finally looked up at her, he blinked several times in rapid succession, “Betty?”

              “Hi, Jughead,” she said as she topped off his half empty coffee cup, “may I sit?”

              “Uh, sure, I guess.”

              She slid into the booth across from him and filled her own mug, “So, the glasses at least weren’t your agent’s doing?”

              He just stared at her for a moment in some kind of confused daze before he came back to himself. “Uh, no,” he said and removed the eyewear, pressed his thumb and index finger into his eyes and blinked a few times as though his vision were strained, “these are all me. They help with the staring at tiny words all day.”

              Betty could imagine it so clearly; a messy desk, he’d need organized chaos to get his creative juices flowing. Cup after cup of coffee to stimulate his nerves and the occasional cigarette break to bring them back down. In her split-second fantasy, she inserted herself into his life. She’d have dinner for him when he finally emerged from his office. She’d have just arrived home herself from whatever paper she’d been working for. She’d pour them each a drink; a glass of red her and a scotch neat for him. She realized he’d just been staring at her in silence for the moment she spent in her fantasy land and shook it away.

              “Sorry,” she said, “um, the reason I came over – I have a proposition for you.”

              He looked more than a little skeptical, “Okay?”

              “You’re here for the duration of this wedding, right?”

              “I am.”

              “Well, if I know Veronica Lodge, and I do, there is going to be no shortage of events, dinners, parties, et cetera that we are going to be required to attend and interact with each other at.”

              “You’re not wrong.”

              Betty nodded, like that he was still with her so far, “So, if we leave things the way we left things, I’m going to spend every single one of those events tense and stressed and thinking that you hate me.”

              “Bett – ” he started but she didn’t let him finish.

              “No, I will. I know myself. So, I need you to let me explain myself. I need you to let us start over – so we can be friends and enjoy each other’s company as we’re thrust together again and again for this thing.”

              “So, you need to appease your own conscience?” he said, but it was said with a little half smirk the bespoke of humor and filled Betty with hope.

              “Yep, pretty much,” she conceded.

              “Alright,” he closed his laptop, slid to the side, and leaned forward with his arms crossed, elbows on the table, “lay it on me, Cooper.”

              The smile that she gifted him with was extraordinary. He’d spent half the night feverishly trying to capture her wit and charm and beauty on the page and the other half trying with an almost pathetic desperation to convince himself that she couldn’t have been as amazing as he’d built her in his mind.

              Now that she was once again face to face with him, he could see that she was all of it and more still.            

              And she was still married.

              He watched her breathe in deep through her nose, then she offered him her hand across the table, “Hello! My name is Betty Cooper Andrews! I got married at nineteen to my high school boyfriend, put college on hold, and have never been out of my small hometown of Riverdale. I clean my house from top to bottom every Saturday and when I do this, I take off my wedding rings and am sometime a bit careless and forget to put them back on.”

              “Wow. That was…a lot.”

              “And last night at the engagement party of my dearest friend in the world, I was flirted with by an attractive, interesting man and I maybe encouraged him more than a married woman should have.”

              Jughead felt like rooster ready to preen, “Oh, yeah?”

              “Yeah,” she grinned, “but in my defense, he was really cute.”

              Jughead laughed at that, but as per his typical modus operandi, his insecure self-deprecation kicked its way to the surface, “So, you led this poor schmuck on because he was cute?”

              The laughter left her eyes and all at once she looked so incredibly small and lonely somehow. He hated it. Someone as breathtaking as she should always be smiling.

              “I didn’t mean to lead you on,” she said, open and vulnerable.

              But he was vulnerable, too. She’d made him that way. “Then why – ”

              “You made me feel butterflies,” she said and Jughead thought he might swallow his tongue at the wistful little smile that fluttered across her lips. What a pretty picture she was. “I – I haven’t felt anything like that in a long time but you – you smiled at me. You laughed with me. And – pow. Butterflies.”

              “I – uh – ”

              “I just wanted to hang on to that feeling for a little while, you know. While I could.”

              There was a battle that waged within Jughead at her admission. Part of him was beyond elated that this smart, charismatic, angel on earth had felt something – fucking butterflies! – for him. The other part of him wanted to weep because he knew that nothing would or could ever come from those – from their – feelings.

              He needed to stop this. He needed to self-preserve. He needed to steer them back to safer ground. “What?” he said, “your husband doesn’t give you butterflies.”

              She laughed, a humorless sound that was more akin to the push of a small burst of air through her nose, “No, not for a long time.”

              So much for safer ground.

              He ran his hands through his hair, tangled his fingers in it, tugged. “Okay, you can’t – I’m still confused about what you want with me, Betty.”

              She looked away from him, plucked at her fingers, chewed on her bottom lip. “I – ” she brought her gaze back to his once more, “I want to talk to you. I want us to get along. We can be friends, right?”  

              “So, you wanna be – friends?” he replied.

              She nodded with enthusiasm, her pretty eyes alight, her golden ponytail bobbed up and down. “I have it on good authority that I am an excellent friend.”

              “And it won’t bother you that I’m wildly attracted to you?”

              He didn’t know where that had come from. He was never that bold, that forward…but there was something about Betty that brought it out in him.

              Betty blinked at him, slow, sensual. Her pupils dilated. God, he was a masochist. When she spoke, her voice was breathy and rasped with what he recognized as lust, “As long as it doesn’t bother you that the feeling is entirely mutual.”

              The air between felt thick and heavy and charge, as though any moment there would come a crackle of electricity. Jughead forced himself to look away from her oceanic eyes, cleared the arousal from his throat, “Okay, enough of that, now.”

              Betty shook herself out of the desirous haze she’d fallen into and willed her pulse to calm. “Yes,” she agreed, “moving on!”

              “So, we’re gonna be friends.”

              “I’d like that very much.”

              “Okay, friend, tell me about you.”

              She wasn’t sure why, but she hadn’t expected that. “I, uh, what – what do you want to know?”

              Jughead’s eyes were so soft, “Everything.”

              Dammit, there went her heart again.

              “But, let’s start small,” he gestured to their neglected coffee cups, “coffee talk, if you will. You mentioned you delayed college. When did you go?”

              Just a little embarrassed, Betty sighed, “Still delayed.”

              “Okay,” Jughead nodded and she could see there was judgment in him, “what do you do instead?”

              “I’m a bookkeeper for my husband’s construction company.”

              “You work with your husband?”

              She nodded.

              “Is that why you put off school?”

              She nodded again, “When his father passed, Archie took over the family business. He needed my help getting out of the red.”

              Jughead held his head slightly to the side, appeared deep in thought, his intelligent eyes seemed to see too much, “And you’re still in the red?”

              Too, too much.

              She decided to steer clear of her poor life choices and disappointment. Instead, she pointed to his laptop, “So, you were staring pretty intently at that thing when I came in. Can I expect to fork over $24.99 for a new F P Jones the Third masterpiece from Glamazon in the near future?”

              He fixed her with a solid stare for a good long moment and she knew it was for the sole purpose of letting her know that he knew exactly what she was doing. Then, he moved on. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said easily, “I could probably arrange you an advanced copy for free.”

              “Ooh,” she cooed.

              Jughead lifted his coffee cup, “Play your cards right, I might even get you a signed copy.”

              Betty slapped a palm to the table, “Yes, I love it when you talk dirty.”

              Then she watched in horror and humiliation as Jughead inhaled his coffee, then coughed harshly and spat droplets across the table and his own lap. He continued coughing as he grabbed at the napkin dispenser. Betty covered her face with her hands.

              What was wrong with her! She never just blurted things out like that.

              “I’m so sorry,” she apologized, “that was – so incredibly inappropriate and I – ”

              “Betty, Betty, calm down,” Jughead laughed as he dabbed at his pants with a paper napkin, “It’s alright.”

              Betty felt every muscle in her body relax in stark relief at both his words and jovial tone. “I don’t know why I said that.”

              He grinned, his green eyes twinkled, and Betty wanted to stay lost in them for the rest of her life. “Look,” he said, “we’ve decided to be friendly. We’ve admitted that we’re attracted to each other. I know that you’re taken and that – nothing romantic can ever happen.”

              Betty wanted to cry.

              “So, I don’t see any harm in innocent flirting.”

              “You don’t?”

              “No,” he decreed, “in fact, I rather enjoy it. There are worse ways to spend my time than being flirted with by a blonde goddess.”

              And just like that, Betty found her mood shifted and his words made her giggle like a school girl with a crush. “Now, you’re just being ridiculous.”

              “Yeah, I am,” he said with that grin that Betty had started to believe might be essential to her very existence, “but I’m also being sincere. I don’t mind the teasing if you don’t.”

              “Well, alright, then,” she acquiesced, then her eyes caught sight of the time on the clock, “I should really get going.”

              “Oh!” Jughead seemed so disappointed that Betty felt something warm and squishy in the best way twist in the depths of her belly, “Oh, of course.”

              “I have some wedding errands to run for V,” she explained, gathered another shred of bravado and continued, “Do you – maybe – wanna come with me?”

              He did that adorable rapid blinking thing again and she knew that he was surprised by the invite. But he seemed to recover himself quickly.

              “Uh, sure. Definitely.”

              He gathered his computer and a few coffee splattered notes and slid them all into a leather messenger bag, dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the table, and then followed her from the diner – with his warm hand at the small of her back.

              Betty had had the best day. Better than she’d had in a long time, maybe years. Jughead had proved to be an entertaining companion. The small bit of time they’d had at Veronica’s party really hadn’t done him justice. His wit was acerbic and dry, his powers of observation were terrifying and more than once he had her laughing so hard that her stomach had cramped. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed that much, the last time she’d had that much fun.

              As she stirred a pot of spaghetti sauce, she let herself think about when they’d popped into Pansy Patel’s Party Place to pick up some little glass swans that Veronica had ordered as table décor/party favors. She’d been at the counter with Pansy to examine a few of the fragile figurines and make certain all was well. Pansy had said suddenly, “Sir, don’t touch that.”

              Jughead’s voice had come from behind her, “What is this?”

              “Sir, please – ”

              BOOM

              Pansy was cut off by the ear-splitting sound that caused both her and Betty to flinch. Betty spun on her heel to see where Jughead stood. He looked slightly shell-shocked, surrounded by a small puff of sulfur smelling smoke. Small bits of purple, pink, and blue confetti dusted his shoulders and clothes and clung to the dark strands of his hair. Betty turned back around slowly to face Pansy who looked red-faced and a little murderous. Betty’s voice trembled as she struggled to suppress her giggles. “These, um, these all look great, Mrs. Patel I’ll go bring the car around if you could get the boxes ready.”

              She rushed for the exit, caught Jughead by the sleeve as she went and dragged him with her. They had laughed like children all the way back to the car. She’d accused him of having the mentality of a five-year-old and he’d complained that he still didn’t know what the hell that this was.

              Betty added a pinch more garlic to the sauce and thought about how nice it had been to just play. She hadn’t just simply played in forever. And wasn’t that what you were supposed to do with a partner? Yes, you shared each other’s burdens – but what about each other’s joys, dreams, and silliness? You should be able to be silly with your partner. You should be able to be playful.

              She suddenly wondered how playful Jughead could be in bed.

              Then Archie was beside her and she tramped down that train of thought real quick. When she turned to offer him what she knew to be a tight smile, she noticed that he did not look happy.

              That in and of itself wasn’t unusual. They were rarely happy anymore – but he looked borderline irate.

              “I went by the hardware store today,” he started.

              Again, this was not out of the bounds of the ordinary. “Okay,” she said.

              “Ran into Chuck. He’s putting in a hot tub.”

              Betty turned back to the sauce. She couldn’t have cared less about Chuck Clayton installing a hot tub at his house. Though she might subtly warn any of his prospective dates to be on guard for aquatic sexual assault along with his typical vehicular groping.

              “Good for him,” she said.

              “He told me he spotted you running all over town with some dark-haired man.”

              Betty froze, and then forced herself to continue her stirring motion. “I was running errands for the wedding. Jughead Jones was with me. You met him at the party last night. He’s Reggie’s best man. He agreed to keep my company, help me out since there were some boxes and such to lift.”

              She fixed two plates, ladled sauce over the noodles, and carried them over to where Archie sat at the dinner table – waiting to be served.

              “It doesn’t look right,” he said, “you out with another man.”

              “For God sake, Archie.”

              “I’m just saying,” he went on, “people talk. And I don’t want them to talking about my wife.”

              Betty set her fork down with more force than really necessary, “Archie, I was running errands for Veronica’s wedding. Jughead offered to help me. I wasn’t going to turn down help when I had so much to do. I don’t care what your good old football crony thought when he saw us.”

              “Fine, I suppose it’s fine. Especially since the wedding is soon and it won’t be a regular thing.”

              Betty wanted throw her plate of pasta at his head. Instead, she twirled some around her fork and shoved it into her mouth so she wouldn’t say something she may – or to be fair may not – regret later.

              Archie took a bite as well, then cleared his throat, a dropped another bombshell. “So…I’ve been thinking, Betty. Maybe it’s time we started trying for a baby.”

              Betty choked a little on her bite of spaghetti. She took a drink of water to wash it down, “I’m sorry, what?”

              “I mean, why not?” he said, and he was smiling almost manically, “The business is doing well enough, now. We could start making our family.”

              Betty took a breath, “If the business is doing well enough, maybe I could take some time off – go back to school and – ”

              “Don’t start this again, Betty. I still need you at Andrews. But…we’re on stable enough ground now, we could have a kid or two. Don’t you want that?”

              “Um, I, uh,” she stammered, “I suppose it’s definitely worth considering.”

              He reached over and gave her hand a somewhat stilted pat, “Good. Good. That’s good.”

              Later that night, Archie had settled into his recliner to watch some sports team or another. Betty rushed into the bathroom with her cell-phone, locked the door, and turned on the shower. Veronica answered on the second ring.

              “Betty, my angel, my dream, I’m going to have to call you back!” she said in lieu of a greeting.

              “V?” Betty said, choked down her own panic, “Are you okay? You sound a little – frazzled.”

              “Fucking Marty is here and he and Reggie are screaming at each in the living room. Vicky is in the corner working on her fourth glass of Chardonnay and I’m looking for my ice pick!”

              “Okay, well, forget the pick. If it all goes downward, try to make it look like an accident. If you can’t do that, I’m sure I know one or two excellent places to dispose a body.”

              “My devotion to you is unshakable and eternal.”

              “As mine is to you.”

              “Love you, B.”

              “Love you, V.”

              Before the phone beeped off, Betty heard what distinctly sounded like Veronica calling her soon-to-be-father-in-law a cocksucker.

              She sat there for a moment longer, debated what she had a mind to do next, then tapped the contact that had been input into her phone that very afternoon.

              “Hey, there, Cooper,” Jughead answered on the very first ring.

              “Are you at Veronica’s?”

              “God, no,” he stated on a chuckle, “Reg’s parents were coming to dinner and the last time I saw Marty Mantle, he threatened to have me thrown in jail and I pulled my switchblade.”

              “That’s hot.”

              “We’ll talk about that later. Anyway, I just figured it would be better for all if I made myself scarce. I’m at Pop’s enjoying the best fucking burger I’ve ever tasted.”

              “I could have told you that. Make sure you try a milkshake.”

              “Oh, yeah?” he said, “What flavor should I get?”

              “I’m partial to vanilla, but they’re all delicious. And you seem like a chocolate kind of guy.”

              “You are correct. I’ll make sure to get one when the waitress comes back around.”

“So, I have a ride or die question for you, Jug,” she said, “If Marty Mantle passes away tonight due to an unwieldy ice pick, will you help me stash the body?”

              “Don’t say that shit on the phone, baby. Big brother is always listening,” he chided, “but, hell, yeah, of course.”

              Betty laughed, “I like you.”

              “I like you, too.” He said and Betty could hear the smile in his voice, “Now, tell me what’s wrong. You sound a little shaky.”

              “I don’t know if this is something that I should talk to you about. Not you.”

              “Hey, we’ve decided to be friends. You can talk to me about anything.”

              “Archie wants to have a baby.”

              “Well, fuck.”

              “Well said,” Betty countered as she sank to a sitting position on the floor, wedged in between the toilet and the bathtub.

              “Betty…”

              “I just, he said now that the company is doing better, we should get busy starting our family. The thing is, it isn’t about school anymore, which I did mention and he shot down immediately – ”

              “Why did he shoot that down?”

              Betty blew past the question as her frantic words became interspersed with choked sobs, “but the truth is my knee-jerk reaction to his suggestion of a baby was that I – I can’t. I can’t have a baby with this man. I can’t do it, Jug. Not – not with him. I know that’s wrong – but even the thought of – of carrying his – ”

              There was a long pause during which all Betty could hear was Jughead’s steady, if a little quickened, breathing on the other side of the line.

              “Say something, please.”

              “I think you were right, Betty,” he said at last, “you shouldn’t be having this conversation with me.”

              Betty sniffed, “I know. I know, it’s not fair.”

              “Look,” he sighed and Betty could picture him. He’d be sitting in that same back booth. He’d pull his glasses off, set them on the table, and pinch the bridge of his nose between his fingers. God, how she wished she was with him. “Here’s what I’ll say on the matter, Betty, and this is what I would say to any woman, so it isn’t colored by my very bias views of the situation. Nobody, including your husband, has the right to tell you what to do with your body. If you don’t want to have a child, don’t have a fucking child. That is your choice. Not his.”

              “Somehow,” Betty said, took a deep breath, “somehow you knew exactly what I needed to hear. How did you do that? I wish I were at Pop’s with you, right now.”

              “I’m glad you’re calming down,” he replied, “but I’m going to hang up the phone now…before we venture into that dangerous territory again.”

              “I understand.”

              “Sleep well, baby.”

              “Good night, Juggie.”

              He chuckled, “Juggie?”

              “Yeah.”

              “I’m good with that.”

              “Good.”

              “Bye.” 

              “Bye.”

              She didn’t see him at all Sunday, but she did have a rather pleasant, albeit brief exchange. She’d been tucked in the passenger seat of Archie’s truck as he drove them both to Sunday Morning Service and Riverdale Presbyterian when her phone had dinged with a text message notification. Seeing the singular letter ‘J’ as the sender brought an immediate smile to her face.

              J: Can I interest you in an innocent breakfast at Pop’s?

              Betty: I’d love to, but I’m afraid I’m on my way to church. Sorry.

              J: Ooh, organized religion. Not really my scene.

              Betty: Welcome to small town American, Mr. Jones. If I didn’t attend every Sunday, the townsfolk would I assume I’m a Satanist and break out the pitchforks.

              J: Have you ever studied actual Satanism? Beautiful religion.

              Betty: Should I be concerned?

              J: LOL. No. I don’t adhere to any particular brand of worship…but interestingly, neither do actual Satanists. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t worship the devil.

              Betty: Is that right?

J: Yep. Basic principles are respect nature and don’t be a dick. I can sorta get behind that.

              Betty: You are an enigma.

              J: I’m gonna take that as a compliment.

              Betty: It is.

              Betty: I don’t know if I should be taking about Satanism when we’re pulling into the parking lot of the house of the lord.

              J: Wipe your feet. Tell the big guy I said hi.  

              Betty: Will do. Have a nice day, Juggie.

              “Who are you talking to?” Archie asked, his eyes trained on her phone in her hands.

              Betty didn’t hesitate in answering, “V. She’s on her way to mass. Wanted to know if I’d be available later.”

              Archie didn’t look entirely convinced, but he didn’t question her any further. Betty found herself praying that his non-existent powers observation had not somehow suddenly improved.

              The rest of the week went by in a blur. Betty had managed to sidestep any more talk of children and family startings with Archie. Monday was the joint wedding shower. Veronica and Reggie opened wedding presents as Betty sat dutifully by their sides and wrote down each gift and who it’d been gifted from. She’d also spent the night sharing longing glances with Jughead as he’d hovered in the corner of the room with a drink.

              Wednesday night was the respective bachelor and bachelorette parties. Around one in the morning, no more than twenty minutes after Betty had guided a drunken Veronica into bed, Jughead had stumbled into the apartment with an equally inebriated Reggie draped over his shoulders. Betty had helped him drop the big, silly lug on the sofa where he’d immediately passed out.

              And Jughead and Betty had found themselves alone together in the middle of the night.

              They stayed in the living room, on opposite sides, a lightly snoring Reggie on the sofa between them.

              The tension was palpable.

              “It’s good to see you,” she said, her voice low, secretive.

              Jughead smiled in a shy boyish way, “Why does it always seem like when we manage to speak, we’re getting away with something?”

              Betty took a step closer, “Because we are, aren’t we?”

              “Like naughty children?”

              “You make me feel like a child sometimes,” Betty grinned, “And I mean that in the best way. I feel like I can be silly with you.”

              He stepped closer, “Are you feeling better than the other night?”

              “I am. You helped,” she replied.

              Jughead took a deep breath and smiled, his green eyes so tender and bright, “God, I want to touch you.”  

              Betty swallowed hard, “I want you to touch me.”

              “But I shouldn’t, should I?”

              “No,” she answered with honesty, “I’ve had some to drink tonight and if you touch me now, I won’t be strong enough to ask you to stop. And we both know that it would be wrong.”

              He nodded and clasped his hands behind his back as though he didn’t trust himself not to reach for her, “I – should go to bed.”

              Betty whimpered and Jughead closed his eyes as though in pain.

              He tightened his jaw in determination, opened his eyes, and started for the guest room. He brushed his arm against Betty’s as he passed and they both inhaled sharply at the contact. His step stuttered only for a moment, then he continued to his room and shut the door tight behind him.

              Betty pressed the palms of her hands hard to her flushed face, then fanned them to cool her cheeks, wiped away the brimming tears, then went and crawled into bed with Veronica.

              Thursday was a day full of text message exchanges.

8:53am :

              J: Having a vanilla milkshake at Pop’s and it made me think of you.

              Betty: It’s 9am!

              J: Jealous?

              Betty: Extremely.

              J: You could always join me.                            

              Betty: I’m at work, Jug.

              J: Me, too!

              Betty: Yeah, my job requires an actual office.

              J: That sounds miserable.

              J: You should take a break. Come see me.

              J: I’m a lonely outsider in a foreign land.

              J: I need a friendly. :*-( 

              Betty: You’re a bad influence.

              J: You’re not the first to say so. 😉

11:31am :

              Betty: If you want some exciting reading material, you should try some minerals rights surveys, blasting permits, and workman’s comp forms.

              J: I don’t know about the surveys and comp, but blasting sounds fun. Where can I get those?

              Betty: I’m trying to figure out if you’re joking.

              J: I’ll never tell.

              Betty: LOL

1:00pm :

              J: Picture Message Attached

              J: Hot Dog say “Hi!”

              Betty: OMG! He’s so fluffy! Look at him!

              J: He felt like you might need something to smile at.

              Betty: He did, did he?

              J: 😊

              Betty: You’re making this hard.

1:20pm :

              J: Do you get lunch?

              Betty: We’re not heathens! Of course, I get lunch.

              J: Where do you go for lunch?

              Betty: I eat at my desk.

              Betty: Like a heathen. 😊

              J: What if you went to that little café down the road from your office?

              Betty: How do you know where my office is?

              J: I assume it is that giant site that say Andrew’s Construction on the sign.

              J: This may surprise you, but I can read.

              Betty: I can’t today.

              J: Please.

              J: I just want to see you.

              Betty: I really can’t, Juggie. Archie is bringing some prospective clients by. I have to be charming and get them to sign a contract.

              J: More than just a pretty bookkeeper.

11:51pm :

              Betty: Juggie?

              Betty: Are you awake?

12:01am :

              J: Betty?

              Betty: I missed you today.

              J: Can I call you?

              J: I want to hear your voice.

              J: Please say I can call.

              Betty: Yes.

              Betty had tucked herself into the corner of the bathroom and swiped to answer as soon as her phone lit with Jughead’s contact.

              “Hi,” She said and when she heard his response, she released a long breath that she hadn’t realized she been holding and her eyes closed in a kind of emotional relief.

              “Hey, baby,” he said.

              “I should tell you to stop calling me that,” she replied, “but I don’t want you to. I like the way it sounds on your lips.”

              “You know, it occurred to me today that we’ve only known each other for six days,” he said, his voice incredulous, “How is that possible? I feel like my life wouldn’t be the same without you and I’ve known you for six fucking days.”

              “I couldn’t sleep,” Betty admitted, “I couldn’t fall asleep. I just kept thinking that I needed to talk to you one more time. I wanted…no…I needed you to be the last person that I spoke to before I closed my eyes.”

              Jughead sighed, “We can’t keep doing this to ourselves, Betty.”

              “I know,” she said, “but you’ll be leaving soon. Can we just – enjoy each other’s company while you’re here? Is it so wrong?”

              “You know it is.”

              “I know no such thing.”

              “Betty – ”

              “Don’t spoil it, yet, Jug,” she begged.

              “I won’t,” he acquiesced, “I won’t, baby. I don’t think I could stop now, anyway. Like I said, I can’t imagine my life without you. You’ve become…essential to me.”

              “You’re essential to me, too, Juggie.”

              They both sat in silence for a long moment, just listened to one another’s breath, allowed the weight of their reality settle on their shoulders. Betty could have sat that way all night and just taken comfort in the knowledge that Jughead was there on the other side of the phone. It was Jug who broke the silence at last.

              “Get some sleep, baby.”

              “You too, Juggie.”

              “Goodnight.”

              “Night.”

              Friday night was the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

              The rehearsal had been an unsettling experience for Jughead as he’d had a myriad of emotions to deal with in a very short span of time; almost simultaneously. At 6pm on the dot, the entire wedding party showed up at St. Catherine’s Church to walk through the ceremony procedures before they would gather at the Pembrooke’s five-star restaurant for a celebratory pre-wedding feast. Jughead couldn’t help but notice how lovely Betty looked even having come straight from work. She wore a fitted gran pencil skirt that showed her fantastic curves and had unbuttoned her pale pink silk blouse a few buttons. She looked just a little rumpled and he couldn’t suppress the desire that he had to rumple her just a little bit more – preferably somewhere private where it was just the two of them.

              But it was the order of the ceremony that really fucked with his mental state.

              He and Reggie walked in first, together with Monseigneur Murphy. They stood there at the front of the church as Moose escorted in Ronnie’s first bridesmaid, cute pixie of a girl named Midge Klump. She had taken a shine to Moose (even though he seemed more interested in Betty and Ronnie’s friend, Kevin.) Then, Mad Dog escorted in a fierce red-headed creature by the name of Cheryl Blossom. She was apparently an attorney and after one conversation with her, Jughead was equal parts terrified and tempted to put her on retainer. He figured if he ever got himself into trouble, having someone as quick, clever, and intimidating as her in his corner would be a hell of an advantage.

              Betty, as the maid of honor, walked in solo.

              Jughead stood at the front of a church and watched as his literal dream girl walked down the aisle in his direction. His stomach twisted into knots, his hands grew clammy, he felt sweat drip from his neck down his spine. It was heaven and hell all rolled into one torturous one-minute walk.

              When she locked eyes with him at the halfway point, he forgot to breathe.

              She took her place at the front of the line of bridesmaids and Jughead managed to pull himself together if just barely. Then of course, Ronnie entered on the arm of her horrifying father, Hiram and things proceeded.

              As the Monseigneur walked them through what would happen throughout the ceremony, Jughead kept looking over at Betty. At one point, she twisted her mouth into an odd line and crossed her eyes at him. He snickered rather loudly which earned him a death-glare from Veronica’s mother, Hermione. When he cleared his throat after the reprimand and glared over at Betty, she furrowed her brow in an expression of faux seriousness and pursed him lips in a shush. He scrunched his nose and narrowed his eyes at her. Her returned smile was radiant.   

At the following dinner, Jughead was seated across from Betty at the long elegant table…and her red-haired husband who had joined them after the actual rehearsal was by her side.

              It was uncomfortable, almost painful, to watch her sit there and tolerate him.

              An army of servers flooded the room so that each guest was served their plate at the same exact moment. Jughead stared in unfaked horror at the tiny portion of unknown substance before him. He glanced up at Betty and stage whispered across to her, “What the hell is this?”

              Betty snickered into the back of her hand, “Duck a l’orange.”

              “Is that like Chinese orange chicken?” he asked, “Is this sweet and sour sauce?”

              “No, honey,” she said, and didn’t notice when her husband’s gaze snapped over to her and narrowed. Jughead cleared his throat, tried to warn her with his eyes to be careful but she was enjoying herself apparently, “Aren’t you supposed to be this sophisticated, big shot New York author?”

              He forgot himself as he basked in her delight and attention, “A New York Strip is about as sophisticated as my palette gets, babe.”

              “How’s your dinner, sweetie?” Archie interjected, though the word ‘sweetie’ could have been substituted with ‘bitch’ with all the warmth it held.   

              The light left her eyes and her smile turned brittle as looked over at him, “It’s good. Very…tender. Are you enjoying it?”

              “Little fancy for me,” he said.

              “Amen,” Jughead chimed, tried to appear less of a rival, less of a threat.

              He tried to behave the rest of the evening, kept his guard up. He spoke with Midge a lot as she was seated next to him. She was a sweet, somewhat ditzy girl with a charmingly optimistic attitude. He would have characterized her as the stereotypical pixie-manic-dream-girl, except that every once in a while she hit him with a scathing observation about their one of their fellow attendees that would have him laugh aloud. After one such outburst, he had just smothered his laughter in his white linen napkin, when he glanced over and caught Betty glaring at the young woman. When she saw him catch her, she tried to look away like she hadn’t just been staring daggers at the brunette but he waited her out. When she glanced back up, he quirked an eyebrow in question. She smiled bashfully and shrugged her lovely shoulders.

              God, they were in so much fucking trouble.

              When the party finally broke apart, Veronica returned to the Pembrooke with her bridesmaids and Reggie and Jughead headed out to go to Moose’s house where they would spend the night. Jughead tried to linger behind just a bit, hoping he could see Betty…just talk to her for a minute without everyone around.

              But Archie seemed to have lingered behind as well, his suspicious eyes tracked Jughead’s movements. He was waiting for him to leave before he relinquished his wife to her evening.

              It was the last thing Jug wanted. He didn’t want to cause problems for her. He knew that was probably too little, too late. The problems were there…in abundance. He couldn’t deny that he felt something for Betty anymore than he could deny the fact that she obviously returned those feelings.

              But he couldn’t openly approach her in front of her husband. He wouldn’t put her in that position. He would never purposely embarrass her like that, he would never hurt her. So, he kicked one foot at nothing like a sulking toddler and hurried out to Reggie’s car to get the night over with.

              It was after 2am and he was wrapped in a quilt on Moose’s lumpy living room couch when his phone buzzed to life.

              Betty: Are you awake?

              He debated just not responding, but he’d just a soon give up oxygen as he would give up the chance to talk to her for a few minutes.

              J: Hey, pretty girl. Shouldn’t you be getting your beauty sleep?  

              Betty: Archie doesn’t like you.

              J: Yeah, I gathered.

              Betty: He seems to have figured out my crush.

              J: Is that what this is? A crush?

              Betty: What would you call it?

              J: More than a crush.

              Betty: I don’t know. Seems like an apt description to me.

              Betty: I feel pretty damn crushed.

              J: Don’t say that, baby.

              Betty: Why does this hurt so much, Juggie? I barely know you!

              J: God, Betty, I don’t know. I don’t wanna hurt you.

              Betty: When do you leave, Jug?

              J: Tomorrow.

              J: My flight is 3 hours after the reception.

              J: I didn’t think I’d have a reason to stick around.

              Betty: That’s probably for the best.

              Fuck text. He hit her name in his contact list. She answered but didn’t say anything, so he did, “You don’t mean that!”

              “Don’t I?” she asked, and he could hear the quiet shakiness of her voice, knew that she was crying, “It’s not like we can be together, Jug. Nothing can happen. We know this. I know this. You know this!”

              “Goddammit, Betty, I – ”

              “The distance will help,” she said and her voice had taken on a determined hue laced with a finality that cleaved Jughead heart in twine, “If I know you’re not nearby, if you’re completely out of my reach, I can stop fantasizing. I can stop all the voices in my head that keep saying ‘what if.’ I need those voices to stop, Juggie.”

              “But I hear them, too, baby.”

              Her breath shuddered from across the line, from across the town, from across another plain of existence where he couldn’t ever touch her and they could never come together, “I know you do.”

              “I don’t think I can give you up,” he said plainly, put his heart on his sleeve. He could hear the panic is his voice and hated it. He didn’t want to seem weak, but, dammit.

              Her response was so purposely flat and somehow colder than anything he’d ever heard, “You can’t give me up, Jughead. You never had me.”

              And the line went quiet.

              The weather was sunny, clear, warm, and beautiful for the wedding. Veronica Lodge would have accepted nothing less. Even rain dare not defy a Lodge.

              Betty, on the other hand, woke once again with swollen, puffy, bloodshot eyes. Jughead’s voice was on a loop in her mind saying again and again, “I don’t think I can give you up.”

              He’d sounded so on the edge, so desperate, she didn’t doubt that something in her soul had fractured when he’d said it. But what could she do? She was married and he was leaving! There was no right or good answer to the situation that they’d found themselves in; that they’d put themselves in. She couldn’t be what he needed and despite the fact the he was everything she needed, she couldn’t ever have him.

              “Good morning my beautiful Betty-boop!” Veronica chimed as she entered the en-suite bathroom, “I’m getting married toda – good Lord!”

              Betty looked up from brushing her teeth, startled. “What is it?” she said with a mouth still full of Colgate.

              “Don’t take this wrong, B,” Veronica said carefully, “but you look like you haven’t slept in a year.”

              Betty spit, wiped her mouth, “Oh, yeah. Rough night. Bad dreams. Sorry. I’ll dab a little concealer on and be good as new, I promise.”

              Veronica started her for a long moment, her lips pressed together in a tight line as though she were fighting the desire to say something more.

              “I’m fine, V, I promise,” Betty said, plastered on the trademark Cooper grin, “I’ll be dressed in just a few and we’ll head over to the church to get ready.”

              And so it began.

              Everything went by fairly quickly after that. At the church, a beautiful dressing room had been laid out and stocked with champagne and orange juice, which everyone drank, and piles of fruit and breakfast pastries which no one ate. Betty was pampered by two attendants devoted solely to helping get her prepared. She was lotioned, manicured, and massaged. Her hair was curled and arranged in a delicate updo with golden ringlets that framed her face. Her makeup was expertly applied before she was slipped and zipped into a lavender silk slip of a dress that hugged her curves lovingly and fell to just beneath her knees.

              And she thought about Jughead.

              Jughead, had a somewhat different morning.

              He had been dragged off the couch by his ankle and told to “wake the fuck up” by a raucously laughing Moose. They’d been joined by Reggie and Mad Dog and the situation had rapidly devolved into an impromptu wrestling match between the foursome.

              To an outsider looking in, it would surprise them to know that Jughead tended to come out on top in these little rough-house scenarios, despite the fact that he was much slighter than his three friends.

              Reggie liked to say he was “small but scrappy.”

              The two had been the victors in many a barroom brawl with over intoxicated frat boys together. The muscle-bound meatheads never expected the lanky weirdo with Reggie to have the reflexes of a cat and the swing of a jackhammer.

              After the morning wrestling match, the friends had dragged themselves from the relative comfort of Moose’s house and on to the church.

              It was there that Reggie had his small meltdown.

              Moose and Mad Dog had popped out to sneak them all a bottle of liquor to do some pregame shots. As the door had clicked shut, Reggie had collapsed into an arm chair, his bravado gone, his breathing turned rapid.

              “Jones,” he said, “holy Christ, Jones, what am I doing? Who am I kidding?”

              “Reg,” Jughead had replied, “calm down, man. Breathe. Deep breaths for me!”

              “Can I do this?” Reggie asked as tears formed in his lower eyelids, “Veronica – I mean, shit, Jones, Ronnie’s a goddess!”

              “I’m sure she’d agree.”

              “And I’m nobody!” he exclaimed, “I’m just a punk-ass kid from Riverdale! Who am I to think I could ever make her happy?”

              “Hey!” Jughead knelt in front of the dearest friend he’d ever had, clasped his face in his palms, and forced him to look into his eyes, “that’s my bud you’re talking about. And you’re not nobody. You’re Reggie fucking Mantle! And you’ve been in love with Veronica Lodge since before I met you. She’s been your world and you’ve been hers. The only she needs from you to be happy…is you.”

              Jughead couldn’t help but picture a completely different woman as he spoke.

              “She just needs you to be there for her; to listen when she’s had a bad day. To tell her that she’s right when she needs to hear it. She’s more than capable of fighting her own battles, but she needs to know that if she ever needed to turn to you for support, you’d be there. She needs to know that you’ll be there and that you’ll love her no matter what. She just needs you, man.”

              Reggie had calmed down. And in a true sign of his friendship and love, he slapped a hand over Jughead’s shoulder, “That was beautiful, man. I think I might be in love with you now.”

              Jughead shoved him away on a cackle, “Fuck you, Reg.”

              “Seriously, thanks, bro.”

              And the door burst open and Mad Dog and Moose reappeared with not one, not two, but three bottles of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey.

              When Betty made her way down the aisle, a bouquet of simple white roses in her hand, she didn’t notice the crowd of people that stared at her. She didn’t notice Archie in the audience. Didn’t even know where he’d sat.

              What she noticed, was Jughead Jones standing at the end of the aisle in a dapper black tuxedo, looking right back at her.

              She didn’t know how she’d made it through the ceremony, didn’t remember a word that was said. She’d just stared across the aisle and into Jughead’s eyes for practically the entire thing. She had managed to take Veronica’s bouquet and hand her Reggie’s wedding ring at the appropriate times, which nothing short of a small miracle. But she spent the whole wedding distracted by the beautiful man who’d swept into her world and upended everything like a tornado.

              At the reception, the champagne flowed.  

              After having posed for dozens upon dozens of pictures, the wedding party entered the reception hall, sans bride and groom who had a few more pictures still to take.

              Archie was waiting for Betty practically at the door. She entered on Jughead’s arm, as was apropos, but Archie more or less ripped her away from him as soon he laid eyes on her.

              “Archie!” she exclaimed in a hushed whisper. People were already staring at them and she didn’t want to draw anymore attention than they already had.

              “Thank God this wedding nonsense is almost over,” he snarled, “I don’t trust that guy and now you don’t have to be around him anymore.”

              As discreetly as possible, Betty twisted her arm out of her husband’s grasp. She shoved her bouquet into his chest and snapped at him, “Well, as long as you’re happy, Arch! I’m getting a drink.”

              It took everything Jughead had in him to not follow after her like the lovesick pup that he was. He could see that Archie had his eyes on him and he didn’t want to cause Betty more trouble than he already had. They’d been too obvious in their preference for each other’s company. Instead he watched her make her way over to the bar where she immediately downed a glass of sparkling champagne in one go. There was a large part of him that wanted to laugh, because of course she chugged a glass of champagne. The other part of him hated to see her so agitated. He wanted so badly to go to her, touch her, pet her, stroke her until she was soothed. He wanted to make her happy. He believed he could…make her happy.

              Unfortunately, he could still feel the weight of her husband’s stare on him. So, he forced himself to look away from her, walked away to join Moose and Mad Dog. Moose had a beer in hand ready for him when he approached, which he accepted gratefully.

              He had always, by nature, been a solitary kind of guy. He had always been more than content to keep his own company. However, in moments such as this, where his own thoughts were dangerous, where all he felt was a deep longing for something outside of his reach, there was a comfort inbeing together with these unexpected friendships. He enjoyed the next twenty minutes teasing and being teased by these men who had become as brothers to him.

              “So, Reggie bit the matrimonial bullet,” Mad Dog said, “who you thinks gonna be next?”

              “My money’s on Jones!” Moose exclaimed, raised his beer in toast, “he’s all sensitive and artsy.”

              “How exactly does that equal married?” Jughead countered.

              “Ladies love an artist,” Moose explained.

              Jughead discreetly brought his heel down hard on Moose’s instep to the boisterously presented delight of Mad Dog.

              “Dammit, Jones,” Moose bellowed and dusted at the top of his foot, “you got my new shoes dirty!”

              “You know,” Mad Dog said after a long pull of his Corona, “I’d happily canter down the aisle if Jonesy here would let me have a go at JB.”

              The comment was met by a punch to each arm from both Jughead and Moose respectively.

              Sisters were off limits. Universal bro code.

              “Ladies and gentlemen!” the MC suddenly announced from the stage, “please welcome, for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Mantle!”

              The reception hall erupted into applause as Reggie entered with a radiant and blushing Veronica on his arm. Jughead put two fingers to his lips and let out a piercing whistle. Reggie pointed at him as he passed with the biggest grin Jug thought he’d ever seen on his friend’s face. Across the crowd, he saw Betty smile.

              After the speeches and toasts, Reggie spun Veronica onto the glossy, polished dancefloor as the bad struck up “To Be With You” for their first dance.

              At the halfway point of the ridiculously romantic song, the moment that Jughead had been equal parts dreading and waiting for came to be.

              “Will the wedding party please join the newlyweds on the floor to complete the first dance?”

              Jughead watched Mad Dog meet with Cheryl and as Moose took Midge into his arms. They all began to dance. No hesitation. No worries. It should be so simple. Jughead made his way to where Betty walked toward him. He held his hand out to her.

              Betty eased into Jughead’s embrace and felt as though she’d finally come home. She felt the heat of his hand at her waist through the thin material of her dress. His grip was tight, but he held her a more than respectable distance from his body and she knew that he knew that Archie was watching their every move.

              It took her a moment to gather the courage to look up into his eyes, but once she did, she was lost. She feared she would be lost forever. Of its own accord, her hand slid around from his shoulder to rest on his shoulder blade and her body moved in closer, lessened the distance between them.

              Jughead’s eyes darted into the crowd where she knew Archie stood, probably with smoke coming out of his ears. “Not too close,” Jughead whispered.

              “It feels like there are miles between us,” she countered.

              She watched the pained expression that crossed his lovely face and felt it deep within her own self.

              “I – ” he began, “I – I wish – ”

              “Mind if I dance with my wife?”

              Betty looked to where Archie has stormed the dancefloor and stood, arms crossed over his chest, and glared at them. Several people were staring slightly slack-jawed at the breach of etiquette. “Archie!” she hissed, “It’s the wedding party dance.”

              “No,” Jughead stated, his cheeks flushed, “It’s fine, Betty. Here ya go, man. Betty, thanks for being a fantastic wedding buddy. I was – nice to meet you.”

              And then he walked off the dancefloor.

              Archie pulled Betty against him none-too-gently and she finished out the song with him.

              Jughead was on his third beer of the night when Reggie found him.

              “Holy shit, Jones,” he exclaimed and wrapped Jughead in a bearhug, “I’m fucking married!”

              Jughead laughed and slapped him on the back, “You noticed that, huh?”

              “I’m very observant, Jones.”

              “Indeed.”

              “Example, I noticed the bar is down to two meager bottles of champagne and the caterers have disappeared. Think you could check the kitchen for me?”

              “All over it, big guy,” Jughead nodded, “now get back to your wife.”

              “My wife!” Reggie bellowed, “I have a wife!”

              The kitchen was more or less abandoned. A sterile, open room filled with clean white tole and stainless-steel appliances and trays of food but no people. No a soul. Jughead paused to shove a crab-stuffed pepper into his mouth, chewed it quickly, then called out, “Hello?”

              Nada.

              “If someone could just point me in the direction of the booze!” he said to no one. His eyes landed on a giant metal refrigerator, so he took a chance.

              Bingo. Three cases of Moet.

              He grabbed one, hauled it out, turned, and damn near dropped the entire damn thing. Betty had followed him. She stood less than six feet away. He set the case of champagne on the nearby prep table.

              “You scared the hell out of me, Betty,” he said on a breathy chuckle.

              Betty didn’t respond. She didn’t say anything. She simply closed the distance between them, rose to her tiptoes, and pressed her soft lips to his in the sweetest, most chaste kiss he’d ever had in his life.