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They meet for the first time behind a podium.
Jughead’s crown beanie is tucked into the interior pocket of his suit jacket. Toni teases him that it makes the gray jacket bulge awkwardly, but really no one can see.
Betty’s hair is up in a bun that Veronica promises is “Practically presidential”. Betty doesn’t bother pointing out that there still hasn’t been a woman president (an ax to grind another day).
Fred Andrews, the former mayor, introduces them both. They smile and shake hands before sitting side by side. Both are too busy practicing their own speeches in their heads to think of the other much.
Betty notices his eyes though. The way they catch the light. His face is all angular, harsh and hardened, but his eyes are soft and full of hope.
Jughead notices the way Betty walks, like an experienced runner who is forcing herself to slow down. Her calves are firm, visible even in the pant suit she wears.
Fred introduces Jughead first. He’s running on a platform that focuses on rehabilitating the Southside, the part of town he grew up in, the part that lost its’ “pep” long ago.
Jughead’s ideas are concrete and manageable, even with the cities limited budget. Betty can’t help but admire him. She can’t see his face from where she’s seated, although she finds herself admiring other parts of him, but she can hear the way passion seeps into every word. What surprises her is that he seems to care about the things she cares about. In fact, they’re both high school teachers, just on different sides of the track.
Instead of his speech making her mad or intimidated or even indifferent, it excites her. After years of languishing, Riverdale has two young candidates with good clear goals, even if they lack experience.
Betty nods to Jughead, a genuine smile on her face as she approaches the podium to take her turn. This catches him by surprise. It’s an unexpected twist. He’s faced prejudice for most of his life in this town, but he knows from her expression that she was actually moved by his speech.
To his even greater surprise he discovers that he’s moved by hers. She’s articulate and outspoken. She talks about the need for school reform as if it’s a town wide issue, and not a Southside issue, and she has the data to prove that she’s right.
He finds himself clapping loudly for her, even as Toni rolls her eyes off stage.
After meeting with all the potential donors and voters, Jughead finds himself sneaking out back to smoke, a terrible habit for a potential politician to have, but one he has yet to break.
Surprisingly, Betty’s already in the back parking lot, not with a cigarette but a cell phone. She’s talking into it in a low quiet voice. The only words he overhears are, “I love you. Don’t be afraid of the dark.”
She hangs up and turns to him. Jughead’s cigarette is now lit and perched between his lips.
“I would vote for you, if I weren't running against you.” Betty volunteers with a shy smile.
Something about her presence overwhelms him. He finds himself unable to be confident with her just a few feet from him. “I feel the same way.”
Betty smiles brightly as she passes him on the way back into the venue. Jughead should be focused on defeating her in the polls, but instead all he can think about are those lips, the way they looked, the way he hoped they would feel.
The next day while she’s packing Juniper and Dagwood’s lunches for school, she thinks again of how he looked in the parking lot, his silhouette illuminated by the street light. He’s a stranger to her, but there’s something about him that feels like home to her. It’s not his dark hair or his blue eyes, the way she feel comfortable with him, when she should be nervous.
The next night Dilton Doiley announces his last minute candidacy. He’s running as “the voice of reason”, or as Toni puts it “the voice of the mother-fucking patriarchy.” Jughead resists the temptation of pointing out that she is in fact the campaign manager for a man.
At first the fact that Dilton’s joined doesn’t matter, the race remains one between the two candidates that started it together.
Betty pulls ahead for a bit, But then the information that she has two children at home and no husband, puts Jughead in the lead. Betty wonders if people are scared of voting for her because of the implications of being a single mother, or that they think a mother’s place is in the home, not the office.
That’s when Jughead’s juvie record leaks, and all of a sudden Dilton Doiley is in the top spot. He already has far more funding than either of them. The owner of the local car dealership seems to be throwing money at him.
Still Betty knocks on every door, and Jughead gives impassioned speech after impassioned speech.
The reader polls in the Register make it pretty darn clear that they’re splitting the vote.
With one week to go, Jughead’s dead on his feet, but he still has to drive himself home from campaigning at a nursing home.
When he turns on the radio in his pick up, he hears Betty Cooper’s voice say, “I’m going to step down from the race, but as I do so I want to endorse Jughead Jones. He really cares for his constituents, even though they’re not his constituents yet.”
Jughead almost slams the car into the one in front of him. Within minutes Toni is talking to him over the Bluetooth. Toni’s ecstatic, he can practically see her dancing, even without a video connection.
He wishes he felt that way. Instead he feels like the better candidate stepped down because he was too stubborn to. He tries to communicate this fact to Toni but she only becomes angry, belligerent in a way that almost surprises him.
Still by the time he hangs up they’re back to neutral territory. Toni assures him he’ll feel better about all this in the morning. The problem is he doesn’t. The next morning he feels even worse. The morning after that when he’s well ahead in the polls, but it feels like a bear is clawing a hole in his stomach.
Jughead needs to see Betty, he needs to talk to her. He doesn’t know what he’s going to tell her, but he knows he has to tell her something.
Because of this Jughead calls Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea knows about half the people in town, mostly southsiders, but a few northsiders as well.
It turns out that Sweet Pea does indeed know Betty. They both tutor elementary students at the library on Saturday. Sweet Pea is reluctant to give Jughead Betty’s address at first, protesting, “I was going to vote for her, now I’m going to have to vote for you, you motherfucker.”
Jughead drives over to Betty’s on Monday night after school. When he finally parks in front of her house, he’s a little surprised. There’s something so polished about Betty, that he expected her to live in one of the new condos or McMansions that had sprung up around town. Instead she lives in a faded blue bungalow. There are two bikes and a basketball abandoned on the front lawn.
Jughead rings the doorbell. A pre-teen with long red hair and a surprising elegance about her, answers the door.
“Can I help you?” she asks dismissively. It’s strange because this girl looks nothing like Betty and seems too old to be Betty’s daughter.
“I’m here to speak to Betty,” Jughead says, his throat suddenly feels parched.
“Auntie!” the girl screams into the house.
Jughead hears Betty’s voice call back, “I’m coming.”
The Betty that comes to the door is not the polished women from the campaign trail. Her bun is messy and her face is make-up free. She looks both younger and older.
“Jughead,” she says, a surprised look crossing her face. In that moment the girl seems to realize who he is and kicks him soundly in the shins.
Fifteen minutes later, once the girl, who Jughead now knows is named Juniper, is reprimanded, Jughead is set up on an Adirondack on the back porch, with ice for his shins and coffee for his soul.
Betty has some coffee as well. There’s an amused look on her face as she sits down across from him.
“Sorry,” Betty says, although her expression is not entirely apologetic. “The twins didn’t want me to bow out of the race.”
“There are two of them?” Jughead asks. “I guess I’m lucky they both weren't home. I think I deserved one bruise, but more than one might be over the top.”
Betty laughs, “Dagwood’s a lot stronger, so you got off easy.”
The names strike Jughead as strange and un-Betty like, but then again, she didn’t name them. These are her niece and nephew, not her children, although Jughead knows better than to ask where their parents are. He could tell just by walking through the house that both kids lived here.
He was raised in part by people who were not his parents, so this fact only makes him admire her more.
“Why are you here?” Betty asks softly.
“To apologize for not bowing out earlier. For not even thinking of it, really, till you did.”
Betty laughs. “It’s ok. Veronica was mad at me for conceding, but I only ran because I wanted there to be a half decent mayor of Riverdale. I think you have just as good a shot at being a good mayor as I do.”
“Oh.” Jughead wasn’t expecting that. Even though she had endorsed him on the radio for all of Riverdale to hear. “I think you might have been the better one, actually. Since out of the two of us, you’re the less stubborn.”
“I have my stubborn moments.”
Jughead’s shin still hurts, but he can’t care. The coffee they’re sharing is good, but the company is even better. It feels strange that he ever considered her a rival.
He says the words out loud before he can even second guess himself, “Would you go out with me on a date?”
A skeptical expression travels across Betty’s face and she asks softly, “Is it a pity date?”.
“Who would pity you?” Jughead says, thinking of her smile, her kindness, the kids who clearly love her.
“The kids aren’t mine, but they aren’t temporary either, in case you were wondering.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.” Betty clarifies, and in that moment Jughead can’t help but sit up, reach for her hand, and squeeze it once, gently.
It’s a good first date, although it’s really more of a hike. On their fifth date he meets the twins and they all go geocaching together. The sixth date involves a mysteriously kid free house and a very good bottle of wine.
They don’t date publicly till after the election, when Jughead is securely seated behind the mayor's desk, and Dilton Doiley is working at the car dealership that once funded his campaign.
Jughead steps down after a good four year run and Betty is voted in as the new mayor. At that point, it is a Jones replacing a Jones. Juniper in her last year of high school is still eager to boast about the time she severely injured the mayor. She also tells an equally popular story about when Jughead chased off a boy on a motorcycle after that boy called her a slut.
Betty ends up being mayor for un precedented decade, stepping down only once the twins are in college, and she and Jughead want to free up their summer’s to travel.
--
Long ago, when Betty turned sixteen, she had lots of hope and energy invested in the tattoos that appeared overnight on her skin, like a gift from the fairy godmother of love.
That first morning, when she woke up (having gotten very little sleep the night before), she looked all over her body for the tattoos she knew were now hidden somewhere, the tattoos that hopefully would lead her to find her soulmate. She found the ladder on the front of her rib cage, unsturdy looking even in ink. It filled her with hope.
Archie, the boy next door, her long time best friend and crush, was the son of Fred, who owned Andrews Construction.
The second tattoo was a burger on her wrist. This didn’t seem as directly correlated to Archie, his favorite food was onion rings, but still, he never turned down a burger.
It was only the third tattoo, hidden on the nape of her neck that made it clear that Archie was not the one for her. It was a typewriter.
It wasn’t that Archie didn’t write, he referred to himself as a songwriter after all, but he wrote on his phone, in the spare minutes of a busy day. The kind of person who typed on a typewriter was very different than Archie. They took time to craft longer things. Each keystroke was fueled by thought and they never feared auto-correct.
Betty was so upset she didn’t leave the house that day, but it ended up being for the best. Twenty years later Archie is still her best friend, and his three tattoos (peals, lipstick, and a credit card) have led him to marry not one but two wealthy women, both of whom subsequently divorced him.
The tricky thing about soulmate tattoos is they’re easy to misread. Most are vague enough to connect someone to any number of people, particularly with the help of the internet. Since one soulmate could be located anywhere in the world, the internet should be a great help in terms of locating them, but that was rarely the case.
Archie met both of his ex-wives on soulmate matching sites, where they took people’s tattoos and using a convoluted and highly guarded algorithm, connected you with a potential match.
Unfortunately, most tattoos were vague, and lots of people had general interests in things like burgers. Betty thought the typewriter might narrow it down, at least in terms of her own personal search, but it turned out typewriters were making a comeback.
So Betty steered clear of all soulmate matching sites in terms of her personal life, but in a way they were how she made her living.
Betty was a soulmate detective. It wasn’t her original plan. She thought she would be a normal PI stalking cheating spouses with a camera, but then a client approached her and offered her a lot of money to prove that the person he’d met online actually was or wasn’t his soulmate.
Betty easily gathered evidence that they were not actually soulmates and she ended up not only with a healthy paycheck but with the first in a series of glowing recommendations. Now she made a living working for wealthy clients who wanted to make sure they had the right soulmate before any papers were signed.
She would follow their soulmate to discover if they were telling the truth. Often potential soulmates would lie about their compatibility in terms of their soulmates tattoos if they thought that the other person involved was a good catch.
For example, if a wealthy business executive really loved cars, someone who wanted to convince them of their compatibility might get a car tattoo. Or they may claim that they really love books because the executive had a tattoo of books on their own body, even if that wasn’t the case.
Last week Betty found out that the alleged soulmate of an heiress was actually allergic to strawberries, which was rather unfortunate given the fact that the heiress had a tattoo of one on her ring finger. It was a particularly nasty break up, but Betty knew the heiress would probably hire her again in the near future. She often had repeat customers.
Betty quickly learned it was a lot easier to prove that two people were not soulmates than the other way around. But if she didn’t find any evidence to actively disprove the bond, she considered it a successfully handled case, and the couple often moved forward towards marriage immediately.
It was strange to make a living in the soulmate business when one didn’t really put much stock in it themselves, but Betty had never actually looked for her soulmate. When she was younger, she always hoped he might find her, and now that she was in her late thirties, she was too busy dealing with other people’s soulmate issues to delve into her own.
Besides being a soulmate detective had turned her into a little bit of a skeptic. She wasn’t able to take most things at face value anymore. She’d seen too many schemes over the years.
When Betty’s secretary Midge ushered Ethel Muggs into Betty’s office for her first appointment, Betty didn’t know quite what to make of Ethel’s case.
Ethel was the first person to hire Betty to prove that someone who she wasn’t actually dating was in fact her soulmate. Ethel was in love with Jughead Jones, a regular customer at her coffee shop.
Ethel had asked Jughead out many times, but he always put her off by saying that he was waiting for his soulmate.
Ethel wanted to pay Betty to find out what Jughead’s tattoos were of, in order to prove that they matched Ethel’s personality. Ethel’s tattoos were a pen, a knife (rather ominous if you asked Betty), and a cup of coffee (the reason she became a cafe owner in the first place). Ethel was convinced that all of her tattoos aligned with what she knew of Jughead.
Betty wanted to turn Ethel’s case down, but Ethel was so insistent that in the end Betty acquiesced. She decided that maybe knowing what Jughead’s tattoos actually were would help Ethel move on.
The first day Betty was undercover at Ethel’s cafe she brought her laptop with her and set it up at the communal table. Betty ended up becoming preoccupied with work while waiting for Jughead to show up. She only looked up from sending an email because she heard an unusual clacking sound beside her.
Betty turns her gaze to the side only to see a man typing at a typewriter. She’s thrown by this strange turn of events that she doesn’t even look at his face at first. In all her years she’s never met anyone ridiculous enough to use a typewriter in public.
For the first time in her life, she thinks she might actually be meeting her soulmate, then when she looks up, Betty discovers that she’s staring at Jughead, whose face is familiar from the many pictures Ethel has shown her of him.
Betty takes any feelings she has about him possibly being her soulmate and forces herself to forget them. This is work, not some sort of strange fantasy novel. Betty is determined to solve this case as quickly as possible, so she can move on.
The next day Betty makes Ethel turn the heat way up. There’s a snowstorm outside, but inside all the patrons are forced to shed layers. That’s when Betty discovers that Jughead has the words Nancy Drew tattooed on his left arm.
Ethel’s ecstatic, she’d loved Nancy Drew as a little girl. Betty didn’t point out that lots of girls felt that way, herself included.
During the artificial “heat wave” Jughead had seen Betty’s hamburger tattoo and complimented it. He licked his lips after he said that in a way that seemed borderline scandalous.
Jughead starts making small talk with Betty every time she comes into the cafe. For the sake of their interactions she claims to be a journalist.
Jughead even asks her opinion about soulmates and Betty tells him she’s not interested. He looks a little put out when she says that, but not much. Betty knows that in order to see the rest of Jughead’s tattoos she’d have to get to know him and find some excuse to see more of his skin.
Jughead seems like he wants to get to know her as well. He asks her out for a beer after their first week of casual chatting at Ethel’s coffee shop.
Betty’s never found it this easy to talk to someone about something that isn’t work. They have long conversations about books and unsolved mysteries, as well as a very loud debate about butter cream versus cream cheese frosting.
As part of her work Betty’s met a lot of people, but none that she’s liked as much as Jughead. She keeps having to remind herself that this is a job, that she’s scouting him out as the ideal partner for someone else. It doesn’t help that he always orders burgers.
Sometimes Ethel, watching from behind the counter, seems jealous. Because of that Betty stops meeting Jughead at her cafe.
After two more weeks of dates, Betty’s able to talk him into running the indoor track at the Y with her. He’s wearing a pair of basketball shorts that reveal a picture of a milkshake on his calf. It looked exactly like the one Betty ordered all through high school at Pop’s.
Betty can see that he’s trying to get a good look at the back of her neck, her ponytail isn’t able to cover the typewriter completely, but it does partially obscure it.
After, while they’re stretching everything out, Jughead’s shirt rides up and Betty can see the silhouette of someone with a ponytail tattoo-d right above his hip. That silhouette is not Ethel. The nose and the hair all wrong. Betty knows that profile from the mirror.
Betty’s jaw is slack, and she knows Jughead has seen her reaction because he sends her a cocky wink.
They both stand up and he walks over to her and says, “Can I guess what your last tattoo is of?”
“Yes,” Betty says. She can’t believe any of this is actually happening, in a kind of dirty gym no less.
“It’s either a tree house or a ladder.”
She’s tempted for a second not to answer him. To play it off as no big deal, but it’s too late for that. It’s clear he’s her soulmate. She lifts up the hem of her shirt a little so that he can just see the base of the ladder. It’s good the track’s mostly empty.
He lets out a low whistle “Holy cow,” he says.
“How did you know?” Betty says.
“Because at least one of the tattoos is always about the other person’s childhood, and the most important thing in my childhood was the ladder I climbed to get to the treehouse that kept me safe when my parents were fighting or my father was out for blood.”
He kisses her then. They’re both a little sweaty from the run, but Betty doesn’t care. It feels so good to press her lips against his. The kiss feels so much better than any she’s had before. She wonders if it’s the soulmate difference.
A loud “Hey, this isn’t your bedroom!” from a runner rounding the track snaps them out of it.
Betty tells Jughead about her real profession on the walk back to his apartment. She expects him to be horrified by the fact that she’s actually on the job, but he just seems amused.
“I don’t care how you found me, only that you did.”
Betty gives Ethel a full refund and a profound apology, but Jughead still has to look for a new coffee shop to work in. It doesn’t really matter though, not compared to finding each other.
-
When they first asked Betty to join this panel on research and creative writing at the AWP conference, Betty was honored to be sought out. Then when the panel she was on was accepted, she saw why.
It would be five men on the panel, plus a male moderator. She was the token female. Unfortunately, it was too late to back out.
Besides Betty was going to the conference anyway, her new book had just come out and she had to do signings for her press and two off-site readings. Still she wasn’t looking forward to the panel.
That morning she put on her best don’t mess with me dress and drank an extra cup of coffee. She meets the other panelists and the moderator in the room right before the event starts. The other panelists seem nice enough, but the moderator, Reggie Mantle, seems preoccupied. He barely says hi to Betty.
She wonders if it’s because she’s not quite what he expected. She’s young looking for fifty-one, but lots of men have blinders for “women of a certain age”. She wonders if he’s one of them, as he flirts with a twenty year old. He’s in his fifties too, his belly softer than hers, his hair grayer.
Betty forces herself to focus on something else. Her attention shifts to the tall man sitting next to her. He’s about her age, slivers of gray spread throughout his inky black hair. He’s got soft skin and bright eyes, and instead of flirting with anyone his attention is on the notes in front of him. He’s drawing a monster in the margin, just a doodle, but still an impressive one.
Betty sneaks a look at his name tag, and then she can’t help herself. “You’re J. Jones?” she says, turning to him. “I loved your first book. The scene with the sister leaving for Toledo made me weep.”
He looks up from his doodle and extends his hand, “I’m Jughead, and you are?”
Betty realizes at this moment that her name tag is flipped the wrong way. She straightens it out and then shakes his hand and says, “I’m Betty.”
His eyes light up, “You’re the reason I agreed to be on this panel. Your research on intergenerational poverty has really shaped my work in progress.”
Betty wonders if there is a better compliment out there than that. She’s about to ask for details when Reggie says, “Quiet everyone, it’s time to begin.”
The room around them is completely full. People are standing in the aisles as all the chairs are already taken.
The first question Reggie’s asks goes to Kevin Keller, the token poet, the second is for Jughead, the third is aimed at some writer Betty’s never heard of named Chuck Clayton, and the fourth question is aimed at Jason Blossom. Then general discussion opens up. Every time Betty tries to speak, Reggie cuts her off.
This was not Betty’s first panel, it’s not even her first AWP panel, it’s actually her 10th. She’s won major book awards, and she’s an editor at The Atlantic. Still this sort of treatment isn’t unheard of. Maybe Reggie thought he should have her job, or maybe he was just having a bad day, either way, she was being punished for it.
Betty could stand up and leave or forcibly interrupt what was going on to make a statement, but both of those actions were likely to get her labeled as an “emotional woman”.
Instead, she was just going to wait this out. Suddenly on her lap there appeared a sheet of paper with the words “This is awful. Please leave with me.”
Betty looks up at Jughead and she’s torn. Leaving alone might get her branded as emotional, but leaving with someone else might actually be ok. It suddenly feels like the right thing to do. He stands up and offers her his hand, she takes it. Reggie only notices what’s going on when they’re halfway across through the room.
Reggie shouts, “Hey, where are you going?”
Jughead responds quickly with the words, “Anywhere there are fewer misogynists.”
Betty is shocked to discover half the room is on their feet and following them out. In the hallway Jughead leans down and whispers in her ear “Is now a bad time to ask if you want to get a drink?”
Betty laughs, “No, not at all.”
It seems strange to be day drinking in a hotel bar with someone she just met, but the conversation comes easy. Usually at these conferences she was focused on networking, on selling books and making the proper impression (some Alice Cooper installed habits take a long time to die).
She’s somehow spent two decades trying to make a proper impression. It’s given her an impressive career, but it’s taken a lot from her too. Even her best friend Veronica is also her agent. Betty just didn’t seem to meet people outside of a professional context, so when Veronica asked her out for drinks, it seemed like an easy fix.
But when she takes Jughead’s hand and they walk to her bedroom together, she’s thinking of one thing, and one thing only.
In the moment Betty could call it a hook up, but it’s not, both of them are sober and they’ve already shared deeply personal things about themselves.
Jughead that he’s worried people will find out about his criminal past, and Betty that she’s not sure she’s even a real person anymore, outside of work
The next day they both leave for separate cities, but within a month he’s booked a trip to see her, and they talk every day on skype.
He moves in a year later. It’s not an easy adjustment for either of them. Betty hasn’t had roommates since college. Jughead hasn’t had any for over a decade. Betty always puts her dishes away, whereas Jughead easily forgets such things.
They argue a little over chores, and fumble through how to give each other space when it’s needed. She calls him impossible more than once. But they always make up, and slowly they’re habits align. Jughead learns to always put the toilet seat down and Betty knows to start the coffee machine even if she isn’t planning to drink any.
After a while Betty doesn’t know what to do with herself when Jughead’s away for work. The apartment seems too lonely without him by her side.
-
Every barista has a favorite customer. Jughead is no different, even though he’s also the owner of Bean around the World, and therefore he shouldn’t show favoritism.
Betty was the very first customer when they opened, six months ago. She ordered a large mocha every day for five months, but a month ago switched to herbal tea.
Betty runs the bookstore, Ages of Pages across the street. She’s always kind and thoughtful, quick to loan books and offer recommendations. She also has a toughness that Jughead wouldn’t have guessed at initially. He’s witnessed her chase down three different shoplifters successfully.
All four employees at Bean Around the World have an ongoing bet about when Jughead’s finally going to cave and ask Betty out. They even have a hand drawn poster and a jar up about it in the back. Jughead is always worried she’ll see it by accident.
Today Betty comes in looking more tired than usual and carrying a soft canvas tote with the words “I like big books and I cannot lie” printed across the side.
Jughead doesn’t even think of the ongoing bet, when he hands Betty her tea and says, ”Do you want to go on a date with me?”
Her expression shifts so quickly he finds it hard to track, there is joy and then sorrow, and then something else entirely - determination maybe, and she smiles and says, “No, I just can’t right now.”
Fangs ends up being the technical winner of the bet, but no one claims the money. Jughead is in such a bad mood about the date that it’s impossible to celebrate.
Betty keeps smiling at Jughead, she keeps bringing him books, and in spite of turning him down, she somehow remains his favorite customer.
He wonders if he misread the situation. Mistook her gentleness and generosity for flirting. Still it’s not only him that is confused. Kevin has an ongoing rant about the subject, thankfully he mostly discusses it out of Jughead’s ear shot.
Then a month later, Betty throws up in front of the shop. Jughead runs out to help, even though clearly she’s embarrassed to even be witnessed in such a state.
He cleans it up and walks her to her shop. He tries to get her to go home, but she shakes her head, “I’m not contagious, and it’s not going to go away. I’m pregnant.”
Jughead doesn’t know what to say about this. He wants to say the right thing, but he’s confused. She’s never talked about seeing anyone even casually.
“How’d that happen?” Jughead asks, before he realizes what he’s saying. “Shit. I’m such an idiot.”
Betty, a little pale, but still beautiful, shakes her head, “No you’re not. What happened is this - I paid a medical professional a lot of money to inject a stranger’s sperm in me.”
That was not the answer Jughead expected. Frankly even a one night stand, as out of character as it seemed, would have been less shocking.
“What?”
“I’ve been trying for two years now, and it finally took. I always wanted a kid, Jug, I just didn’t have a partner. I’m thirty-seven. I’m done with waiting.”
Jughead understands, he does. He might have been born unwanted after an ill planned for fling, but there are lots of people out there that want kids, without having an easy way forward in terms of obtaining one.
Betty must be even braver and more determined than he originally thought, to start a family on her own, to commit her savings to one. He wants to tell her that he admires her for the decisions that she made, but instead, he goes with the theme of the day and blurts out, “Is that why you turned me down?”
She laughs, “Yes.”
“You could have told me that.”
Betty raises both eyebrows, “I’m not telling people till the 10 week mark.”
“Does that mean you’ll go out with me now?” Jughead asks.
“You want to date a hormonal pregnant women, carrying an anonymous strangers baby?”
Jughead shrugs. “I want to date you.”
For a minute Jughead’s sure she’s going to say yes, but instead she shakes her head. “I’m just not in the mind space for a new relationship. I like you Jughead, I do, but I’m not even the real Betty right now. I’m some lost-in-space version of her.”
“Ok. Friends?”
“Friends,” Betty says.
Jughead doesn’t expect anything more to come of it really. He expects to make chit chat at Bean Around The World and continue to benefit from her book sharing generosity.
Instead the next Friday Betty cooks him dinner. The following week they go to the movies. Then it starts to evolve into two nights a week, sometimes meals, sometimes walks, or films or shopping.
One evening Jughead comes over and notices that the two cans of yellow paint are still sitting in the white future nursery. They’ve been there for a month. When Betty confesses that the doctor told her not to paint while pregnant, and she hasn’t been able to find a reasonable painter, Jughead takes over.
At Bean Around the World the teasing has shifted. There are two factions now, one comprised of Sweets and Fangs, believing that Betty and Jughead are secretly dating, while Kevin and Toni are firmly in the “Betty’s stringing him along” camp.
Jughead ignores it all. He sifts through books of baby names and they text about swaddling blankets, and Jughead reads up on baby wearing.
One night, when he falls asleep on her sofa, he wakes up to her singing show tunes. Another morning, when she thinks he’s still sleeping she says, “I wish you asked me out before I was pregnant.” It takes all of his willpower to keep his eyes shut. Those words feel like hope running through his veins.
When her water breaks, it’s two weeks early. They’re at Bean Around the World after hours, trying to switch up the artwork. The contractions start right after. He hates witnessing her in this kind of pain, but they’re hard and fast, and he drives her to the hospital, praying for the first time in years.
He’s not sure if he should come in with her or not, but she insists that he wait in the waiting room. Her mom and sister arrive at some point. They don’t join Betty in the delivery room, Polly quips “Been there, done that.” They barely acknowledge him, preoccupied with pacing and looking at their phones.
When they’re all called together by the pink clad nurse, Polly and Alice shoot him dirty looks and Alice mutters something under her breath about family only. He waits his turn to hold Lilly. She seems so soft in his arms, but strong too, squirming against him.
Jughead doesn’t know what happens next. Alice practically shoves him out of the room when Lilly cries with hunger. During the next two months he doesn’t see her everyday, like he used to. Instead the bookstore’s being run by other employees and she’s at home resting.
Jughead still visits her once a week, but it’s not the same. Polly and Alice are staying with her. They say they’re helping but mostly that seems to mean monitoring Betty’s diet. Betty and Jughead can’t really have a conversation the same way.
Jughead misses her so much. He knows now that as much as he wanted more, that their friendship is special, and it is enough for him, if that’s all she can handle. Then two months pass and Betty enters Bean around the World, with Lilly in the Ergo Baby Carrier Jughead bought her.
She’s tired looking. There is a smear of something white on her pants, but she’s glowing, in a way she hasn’t before. Fangs steals Lilly right out of the carrier. Thankfully Lilly’s too young to have developed a sense of stranger danger.
Betty announces that Polly and Alice have finally returned home and she’s now back at work. Jughead visits her at Ages of Page’s the next day, and when he enters, it’s empty of customers. Only Betty is behind the counter with A Prayer for Owen Meany. She looks up from the book and smiles at him. “Would you go on a date with me?” she asks.
Jughead didn’t think he could even smile that big. “Anytime.”
Two years later when Betty asks him to marry her, he says the exact same thing.
When their daughter is born a little while after that, Lilly informs the entire staff of Bean Around the World that she’s a big sister. No one ever uses the word half.
_
Betty’s been undercover for a month as Lisa Pennyworth, a single forty year old woman with three cats at home, who works as a secretary for Senator John Johnson.
When she was first assigned the role, Betty joked to her handler, Veronica Lodge, that she’s undercover as herself, just with cat’s. Veronica laughs in the moment but later sends Betty a personal email with links to four different dating sites, as well as two apps focused on hook-ups.
Betty doesn’t respond to the email. She thinks it’s amusing that Veronica is under the impression that Betty’s in a position to date. Because in Betty’s experience no one wants to date someone who had to assume a new identity and hairstyle every three months or so.
Hooking up had always been good for other people, but not for her. She had two serious boyfriends, but she’d broken up with the last one in her early twenties during training at Quantico.
Trev was a nice guy, but she didn’t like him as much as she liked her job. Every female agent that Betty knew who was in a serious relationship, never rose in the ranks. No one ever talked about this, instead it was treated as a fact of life.
Sometimes Betty wishes she wasn’t so attached to working for the FBI and could actually have a personal life, but she loves what she does. Betty is good at her job and is considered one of the most discreet undercover operatives.
Besides it’s nice to step into a slightly different personality a few times a year and the work itself is largely rewarding, although today it doesn’t particularly feel that way.
Senator John Johnson is away in Washington, and their office in Wyoming is quiet, but Betty has a lot of work to play catch up on. Sometimes the line between being an undercover agent and an actual employee is invisible.
Betty would love to go into Senator Johnson’s office and poke around on his computer, but in an unusual turn of events Veronica has expressly forbidden her from doing that.
So instead of actually doing that, Betty is reviewing, cross checking, and syncing all of Senator Johnson’s various calendar apps, a thankless job (the senator is a big believer in never saying thank you to anyone he employs, he believes paying them is thanks enough).
Johnson is under investigation by the FBI for secretly working with the Russians. Betty thinks that probably is the case, but she’s yet to prove it.
After another hour of tedious work, Betty decides that she deserves an iced mocha latte. She locks up and then heads out to the closest coffee shop.
It’s a nice day and she lingers outside for a few minutes, watching a robin search the grass for worms. Betty then goes through the security checks and walks back to the office. She tugs at her baggy blue dress. It looks like something a cat lady would wear (Betty has in fact stuck three hairs from her sister’s cat on to it), but it’s not very flattering, and it’s not what Betty would choose to wear for herself.
She opens the door to her office. It’s empty per usual, and she sits down and gets back to work, replying to a few emails sent by other senator’s secretaries. Betty’s trying to figure out how to strike the right balance between being firm and polite, when she hears a glass fall in Senator Johnson’s office.
She jumps up in shock. Is the Senator back from Washington already? Betty gets up and knocks on the door. No one responds which is strange.
Betty opens the door and she glances in. There’s no one in the room, at least no one that she can see. Still she’s sure she heard a sound. Betty wonders if she should call security, but then she thinks better of it. Betty is after all trained in three different forms of hand to hand combat.
She looks in the closet first, but no one’s there, and then she crosses the room and peers under the Senator’s desk.
Underneath it is a man, his body contorted into a space that is far too small to be comfortable. He’s got short black hair and a nervous expression on his face. Betty’s about to pull him out from under there, when his face relaxes, he laughs, and says, “Holy shit. I’m so glad it’s you!”
Betty’s confused. Maybe he’s just trying to throw her off balance, by pretending to know her. “And who am I?” Betty asks.
“Betty Cooper, currently undercover as Lisa Pennyworth.”
Betty tries to maintain her professional attitude, but in spite of herself her jaw drops a little. “And how do you know this?”
Sometimes the FBI puts more than one agent undercover on the same case, and they don’t always warn them. That happened before with Betty and Cheryl Blossom and it ended in an all out brawl (Betty is happy to report that she won).
“Archie sent me here.” The man looks a little embarrassed. Archie does not technically work for the FBI, he runs a consultancy with his partner named Jughead (Betty’s not making that part up, although why anyone would go by Jughead is beyond her). They’re infamous for doing dirty work that falls outside the jurisdiction of the FBI.
Betty’s run into Archie a few times before, and outside of the time she tasered him, they’ve always gotten along well.
“And you are?” Betty asks. She hasn’t let her guard down completely, but it does explain why Veronica didn’t want her searching through Johnson’s computer.
“Jughead Jones,” he says as he crawls out from under the desk.
Betty doesn’t know what she expected from Archie’s partner, but she didn’t expect anyone named Jughead to be so good looking. She finds herself glancing down at his ring finger in spite of herself, even though that’s silly. No one in her line of work wore a ring on the job, no matter how married they were.
“Oh. I’m going to have to run all this by V after,“ Betty says.
“I get it,” Jughead says. “I’m just glad it’s you, because I have a perfect record of breaking and entering and I don’t want to lose it.
“I think you already have,” Betty says with a wink. She did catch him after all.
“Fair enough,” Jughead says. “So what happens next? Do you have to turn me in?” He looks a little nervous.
Betty laughs, “I suddenly really need to go to the bathroom really badly.”
She doesn’t say anything else, instead she turns to leave. If Jughead is going to pull off this job, she should get out of here.
As the door closes behind her Betty hears Jughead say a soft “Thank you.”
She stays in the women’s restroom for twenty minutes. When she returns back no mysterious sounds are coming from Johnson’s office.
Betty assumes that she’ll never see Jughead again. She’s happily ensconced in her new undercover job at a bank, (complete with fake glasses and a dog), when she opens up the door to the break room one day only to see Jughead exiting the manager's office.
She clears her throat loudly to announce her presence and Jughead turns towards her and he smiles so large, Betty can’t help but take it as a compliment.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Betty says.
“Now that I’ve met you, I don’t think I can stop seeing you,” Jughead says with a wink as he walks past her to the exit.
That night while Betty’s changing, she finds in her purse, a blue business card with an email address ([email protected]) and nothing else on it.
Betty sends an email containing the word hi to that address in the morning before going to work. When she gets back home she finds three emails in response to hers. Each is progressively longer. They are flirty and clever. Jughead has a surprising way with words.
He talks about himself, his little sister Jellybean (bad names run in the family, apparently), work, and Archie. He also asks her about herself.
Betty can’t divulge much to him, but he’s a contractor for the FBI so it’s probably fine to divulge a little. She confesses that she’s an aunt, and that she really wants a dog. Then over time she tells him a lot more than that.
She tells him about the miscarriage she had in college, and about the time she found out that her mother was cheating on her father. Betty even told him the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to her at Quantico, which involved both an instructor and nudity.
Jughead opens up too - about how Archie was his closest family, even if they didn’t have any genetic material in common, and how he failed to get into Quantico because he had a juvenile record, so starting the consulting business with Archie felt like the only way forward.
Over email Betty had become closer to Jughead than she had been to anyone else years. Whenever she got a new email from him, she felt nervous and excited. It felt a little like dating, but it wasn’t of course. They hadn’t seen each other in person in months.
Jughead suggests video chatting, but that seems strangely like a step backwards in terms of intimacy. Betty was worried that over the phone it would be easy to stick to surface subjects, not dive deep.
Veronica places Betty on a new assignment, an unusual one for Betty, because it did not involve going undercover. Instead she had to follow the same executive, a Tom Landy for a month.
On her third day tailing Mr. Landy, she spotted a familiar face in the restaurant he had stopped for lunch. It was Archie, which couldn’t be a coincidence. Betty wishes for a moment that it was Jughead.
When Mr. Landy goes to the restroom Betty pops by Archie’s table and says, “It’s nice to see you.”
“Jughead’s going to be so jealous of me,” Archie says. “All he talks about now is Betty this and Betty that.”
Betty blushes in spite of herself. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine. He’s just never been that way before,” Archie says.
Betty desperately wants to ask follow up questions but at that moment Mr. Landy returns from the restroom and Betty leaves the restaurant to protect her cover.
That night when Betty returns home, it’s to an email that asks, “How badly did Archie embarrass me?”
Betty answers it with the sentence, “Pretty badly ;)”.
Maybe it’s because of the email, or maybe because it’s inevitable, Betty runs into Jughead the next day while tailing Mr. Landy to a park.
He’s wearing shades and carrying two coffee cups. He hands her one and then stands next to her. Mr. Landy is 10 feet away.
They don’t see anything for a few minutes and then Jughead starts talking about how much he wants a sheep dog. Betty can’t help but engage with that conversation (who wants to deal with that much hair?). They manage to keep all conversation neutral for twenty minutes while Mr. Landy pushes his daughter on a swing.
“We can’t follow him all day together,” Betty says.
“Why not?” Jughead offers up an exaggerated pout.
“We’re too noticeable together.”
“Fine,” Jughead sighs. “But this is the first time I’ve been in the same city as you in five months, and I really wanted to share the day with you.”
Betty’s surprised, he had never spoken of traveling before, so she’d always assumed he was here and just didn’t want to meet up. Now she wonders where he’s been.
“I’m free tonight,” Betty says. The smile that lights up his eyes, warms her deeply.
“I can accept that. Pick you up at 8,” Jughead says as if he already knows where she lives.
It turns out that he does, because he knocks on her door promptly at 8, holding a large bouquet of flowers.
“Thank you,” Betty says. “You didn’t have to.”
“Actually I did. I wanted to make it very clear that I am serious about you.”
They don’t leave Betty’s apartment that night.
The next morning Betty wakes up with his arm draped over her waist.
“We’re not moving too fast?” she asks when he wakes up.
“There’s no such thing as too fast with you and I,” he says, sounding rather confident for someone who can barely keep their eyes open.
+ 1
Jughead’s skipped school again, even though he knows his father will find out. In the scheme of things, it doesn’t even matter. The move from Toledo to Riverdale has been rough. He hasn’t learned anything in class when he has bothered to attend, so what’s the point?
Instead most days he takes his bike to Sweetwater River, reads library books and chain smokes till his pack runs out. It’s pretty embarrassing actually. He can just imagine what JB would have to say about it – “Jug the 90’s called and they want you to star in a teen movie.”
Still he’s sitting by the river, watching it churn over the rocks, when a blond girl runs by. He’d usually think nothing of it, except that she’s not wearing a running outfit. She has on a denim skirt and a wool sweater.
She stops at the edge of the water and bends forward leaning her hands on her knees. She’s breathing hard. Jughead can see that her mascara is streaked even from where he’s sitting.
He may be in a hell of a funk himself, but right now he seems to be better off than her, so he stands up from the bench and walks over.
She must not notice him till he says “hey”, because she jumps slightly.
Before she turns, she wipes her face with the sleeve of her sweater. When her eyes meet his she makes the most pathetic attempt at a smile he’s ever seen. But her eyes contain a whole world, vivid and partially hidden from him, but beautiful.
It’s funny because it would easy to dismiss her. She had polished nails, and mascara running down her face. She was the kind of girl his friends in Toledo would mock over lunch.
Jughead wants nothing more in this moment than to make her feel safe, so he says, “You don’t have to pretend with me.”
She laughs slightly, and even though it’s tinged with sadness he notices the gleam in her eye.
“Most people like me better when I pretend.” She spits out, like it’s a confession.
“Not me. I like the real you.” He realizes that what he said to her was true, and he doesn’t even know her name, yet.