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Veronica is curled against Archie’s side in a booth at Pop’s, his arm loosely around her waist, her hand resting on his leg. It’s something she’s still getting used to – being someone’s girlfriend. She sees him every day at school – he kisses her good morning before the first bell, tastes like tooth paste and smells freshly showered; sometimes they pair up together in classes and he holds her hand while the teacher explains something about something; they always sit together in the cafeteria and sneak more kisses in the student lounge – and they also seem to be spending a lot of their free time together, at Pop’s in the middle of the afternoon, or walking Vegas by Sweetwater River, or even just watching Netflix with Fred in their living room.
Veronica never thought she would be ready for being someone’s girlfriend, that she would be so comfortable spending so much time with the same person, so turned on by kissing the same guy every day. It still terrifies her, having a boyfriend who thought she was the “best girlfriend ever”, words that she wasn’t really expecting when she first heard them, since they had only been together for a week or so. It was scary how eager Archie was to commit, even scarier how much she wanted to give him that.
But it didn’t really matter how scary it was because she has no other choice. The things that happened inside her when he was around, she has never felt them before, and now that she knows what it’s like, she doesn’t think she can let them go out of fear. She wants to be with him all the time, she wants to protect him from all harm, she just wants him. It’s like a permanent hunger, something she had never experienced before. She remembers when they first kissed and what they had talked about before, and sometimes she wants to go back to that closet and say, you know what? I’m lying. I have never felt what I’m supposed to feel. I didn’t even know what it was before you came along.
He’s getting better, too, and she can see that in the way his features are more relaxed and how he doesn’t really shriek anymore when they walk into Pop’s, but she’s ready to hold his hand if he does, watches him closely to see if there’s any signal. But right now, he seems fine, mouth around his milkshake’s straw, lips curled up because he’s also laughing through the nose at something Jughead is saying, in the other side of the booth.
“I swear, it was on during the whole thing and he didn’t notice,” Jughead says, and Veronica tries to focus. Apparently, he’s telling a funny story about how Dilton Doyle failed his driving license exam.
“What was on?” Veronica asks.
“The handbrake,” Jughead says, “Then he asked if he had passed and the instructor was like, are you kidding me? Can’t you smell that??”
Both Archie and Betty crack up, Jughead drinks his milkshake with a pleased expression of someone that has just told a great story, and Veronica smiles uncomfortably – the feeling that settles in the bottom of her throat is one that comes whenever she’s diving into a subject she doesn’t master.
She likes to learn, though, and those small-town kids have taught her a lot about the American way of life already (like, you can actually get lost in a Walmart), so she asks, not thinking it through, “What happens when you drive with the handbrake on?”
Jughead chokes on his milkshake, Betty lets her mouth hang open, and when she looks at Archie, he has turned his body a little towards her, so he can stare at her as if she came from another planet, “You… Don’t know?” he asks, a little careful, and Veronica shakes her head.
Betty seems downright offended, “But… it’s a handbrake! You’ve never pulled them for your parents or something when you were little?”
What? Veronica frowns. Jughead, who is still coughing a little after the milkshake struggle, says, “As if the Park Avenue Lodges would ever be caught dead driving a car.”
“My parents know how to drive,” she says, sitting up straighter, tilting her chin up, “But we always had chauffeurs, s–”
“This is a word that has fallen into disuse since the sixties’,” Jughead breathes out, and Veronica rolls her eyes – the worst part of being Archie’s girlfriend was having to endure his best friend’s mood swings towards her. One day, he’s being nice and asking if she wants to talk about what’s bothering her, the other, he’s irritated by her social status and everything she’s clearly not guilty of.
“It’s okay, V,” Betty, predicting where this all could go, says in a sweet voice, “I’m sorry. The handbrake is the… parking brake. The one that we pull so the car stays in the same place when we park.”
“And the car doesn’t work properly if it’s on while you’re driving,” Archie goes on, and Veronica hates the tune they are using – very patient, but also very patronizing, “It forces the wheels, and if you drive too much, the car heats up and it smells like burnt oil and stuff.”
“Of course, if you had taken two minutes of your day to talk with the people you hire to drive you around, you’d know something about cars,” Jughead says, pointedly.
“Juggie,” Betty places a hand on top of his. Veronica opens her mouth to snap back, but Archie shifts uncomfortably in the seat, holding her waist a little more firmly and pressing her even closer against his side.
“Cut it out, Jughead,” he says, ever the protective, “It’s not her fault she never had to drive, she’s from Manhattan.”
“I’m sure she never set foot on the subw–”
“Wait a minute,” Veronica lifts up a hand, interrupting them, “She is right here. And I’m so glad you know how to drive, Jughead, maybe we can hire you if you need any extra cash to bribe those stupid gangbangers –”
“Oh, my God, stop” Betty cuts in, sounding exasperated, “Can’t you two just be nice to each other for ten more minutes?”
Jughead crosses his arms in front of his body, a visible pout surging on his mouth, and Veronica keeps her head up, says, “Fine,” but what she really wanted to say is he’s the one who started it.
Thankfully, Jughead is no longer attending Riverdale High, so she doesn’t have to endure any other comments about how Africa is starving because her parents have money. There was, however, and as usual, some true she didn’t want to face in his words – she could have spent more time talking to her chauffeurs (learn some French, Dickhead) and learning about what they did.
The first thing she does when she gets inside the town car again is to say good morning to Andre – who she kind of really hated in the beginning for replacing Smithers, but that wasn’t his fault, now, right? – and try to locate the handbrake. All the way from the Pembrooke to Riverdale High, she pays attention to Andre’s movements, all the little procedures she never really took notice of whenever someone was driving. It seems soothing, to a certain extent; especially here, in Riverdale, where nothing happens and there’s no crazy traffic or loud horns.
It’s not even a week later when Archie passes his DMV test with no driving faults. He looks adorable in his driver’s license black and white picture, all smiley – Veronica kisses his cheek, feeling warm and sort of proud of him, but she also feels a little sad. It’s not that Jughead’s stupid Marxist’s wet dreams got to her, is just that…
The idea hits her when they’re sitting together in his living room – Fred is in the kitchen heating up some pizza – and Archie’s got his arms wrapped up around her, her back resting on his chest, “Archiekins,” she calls, looking up at him. He smiles at her, tilting his head to kiss the tip of her nose, and she scrunches it, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Oh, boy,” he says, laughing a little, “Here we go.”
“No, really, it’s a nice idea,” she’d usually pretend to be offended just so he would apologize and look at her with goofy, brown eyes, but this time she decides not to dwell on it, “Now that you’ve got your license and all, I want you to teach me how to drive.”
He frowns, looking at her with an expression that’s somewhere between amusement and curiosity, but then it’s like something hits him, “You’re not asking me this because of what Jug said the other day at Pop’s, are you?”
The other thing she is still getting used to is having someone that can figure her out without even trying. She used to be better at hiding her true reasons, but there’s something about Archie that gets him reading her like an open book. She shifts a little on his embrace and takes a deep breath before admitting, “Yes, and no. I mean, yes, Jughead’s insufferable, but he’s also right. After everything that’s happened with my dad and moving here and… I can’t be this little princess forever.”
“But you’re my princess,” he says, because he’s always so stupidly cute, and she would tease him if he wasn’t leaning in to kiss her on the lips, and if there wasn’t a buzz going through her hands, and if her stomach wasn’t flipping in that still weird, but also familiar way, something that happens every time their lips touch.
“I’m serious,” she says against his mouth, breaking the kiss before it gets way too deep, “I live in Riverdale now, people drive here, and what if you or your dad need me to do something or a ride to somewhere and Andre is not available? I know, Ubers, but what if they’re not available or –”
He smiles at her, “Of course, I’ll teach you, Ronnie. But are you sure you don’t want to ask Betty? She’s better than me.”
“Yeah, but –” it’s petrifying that she’s starting to realize how much she counts on him, how much she trusts him that he wouldn’t make fun of her if she did anything wrong, if she couldn’t get it right the first time, how she trusts that he would never use any of her vulnerabilities against her. She could never say this out loud, though, so she decides to steer the conversation in another direction, “I was planning on repaying you in the backseat, after.”
She kinks an eyebrow. Archie lets his eyes linger from hers down to her mouth, and after a second, he clears up his throat, even moving his body a little so they wouldn’t be touching so much (think about a boy who could get turned on very quickly).
“I can hear you, children!” Fred announces from the kitchen, and Veronica laughs, hiding her warm face into her boyfriend’s neck.
It’s settled.
On Sunday morning, Veronica gets ready for her first driving lesson of all time – which requires a special outfit. She puts on black leggings and a white t-shirt, topping it with a black, red and white BMW start leather jacket that she bought in a trip to Germany forever ago and never thought she’d end up using. She puts on her cheer practice sneakers – they are the only one she owns, anyway – and, ironically, asks Andre to drive her to the Andrews.
Fred’s truck is already parked in front of their house – she’s thirty minutes late, but the look on Archie’s face and the wow that comes out of his mouth when he opens the door is worth all of them. He normally doesn’t shave on Sundays, so his face is a little stubbly when he leans down to kiss her, “Good morning, babe,” he says, smiling against her lips. He’s always saying that now, babe, mainly whispers while they’re having sex, but apparently is now on their non-bed vocabulary too, “Ready?”
He has rosy lip gloss smeared across his upper lip, and she reaches up to wipe it away. She’s ready for the driving lessons, yes, she’s not, however, ready for how she seems to melt and let all her guards down every time he looks at her like that.
She opens the truck’s door – it’s the first time she’s ever been in the driver’s seat, and to be honest, it’s weird. The pedals are way too far from her feet, which are actually hanging in the air – how the hell is she supposed to reach them? Archie, who has just closed the door on the passenger’s side, chuckles when he notices she has no idea what to do.
“Okay, hum,” he goes a little on top of her, hands going on between her legs.
“The payment comes after the lesson, right?” she jokes because she knows he’s just trying to reach something underneath her seat. He laughs, but does, however, get red-cheeked. Archie pulls her seat forward, and oh, now it seems better, “That’s cool!” she says, pushing the pedals with her feet, now that she can reach them.
Archie teaches her a lot of things while they’re still parked. First, he teaches her how to position her feet on the pedals. Once he’s sure she’s learned what to do with her feet, he explains how she should adjust the mirrors so that she could see through them clearly.
He holds her hand and places it over the gear stick, showing her all the positions it could go, and how the car should behave in each position with just a tad of boyish laughter in his voice, which makes her roll her eyes. He leans in to kiss her cheek, and she turns around her face a little so his lips land on hers, and it’s a solid two-minute distraction before they’re done.
Veronica doesn’t really know how long they stay parked in front of the Andrews’ house narrowing down the basics, but Archie makes sure he’s got all the details covered before he even allows her to start the car. There’s a trick to it, too, her feet need to be positioned in the right way, so it actually starts, and she feels a little nervous when she turns the key, but apparently, she gets it right, because the engine makes the right noise and the car starts shaking a little underneath them.
“It’s on!” she says, excited, and Archie is right there with her, a big smile on his face, “See! I can do this!”
He teaches her a hundred more things before allowing her to release the infamous handbrake. When it finally happens, she carefully does whatever Archie is telling her to, and the car does move forward, and she drives it very slowly all the way down Elm Street. They pass by Betty’s house, Mr. Albert-who-lives-with-his-cats’ house, and they even make a turn before the inevitable happens and she mistakes one pedal with the other.
“No, no, Ronnie, the brakes, not the accelera–”
The car runs more than it should and heads itself towards a tree. Out of reflex, Veronica screams and lets go of the wheel to cover her mouth, but Archie manages to pull the infamous handbrake and the truck stops abruptly before it crashes into the tree, the seatbelt tight against her chest.
She turns to look at Archie, horrified, and he doesn’t look hurt at all (thank God), and he’s also a little stunned, but when their eyes meet, he smiles and then laughs.
She is trying not to laugh too (after all, she did just almost cause an accident), but then Archie says, “That’s what handbrakes are for,” and she cracks up despite herself.
“I’m sorry,” she says, still laughing, covering her face with both her hands, and Archie’s laughter seems to have taken over his whole body, Veronica Lodge does not succeed in all her endeavors, it’s what she wants to say, but then she peaks at Archie between her fingers, and her face is warm, and to be honest, she has never felt that either, the notion that she couldn’t care less if she could just watch him smile for the rest of her life, “Maybe I should hire Jughead to be my driver.”
He catches her looking at him and then, very carefully, unbuckles his seatbelt, shifts the gear to its neutral point, turns the car off, unbuckles her seatbelt, and reaches towards her face so he can brush her hair away from it, and she bites her lower lip, feeling something between embarrassed and defenseless, but not in a bad way, not when around him, “We’ll try again tomorrow,” he says, leaning in to kiss her lightly, but then he starts giggling against her lips.
“What?” she asks, her hand stopping on the way to cup his face.
“I’m just thinking that since you almost crashed my car, I should get double paym– ouch” she pinches the side of his stomach, but something pleasant swims through her chest as she kisses him, mouth opening with his. Idiot, she thinks, but to be honest, she doesn’t know if she means Archie or herself.
the end