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Jellybean skips over as Jughead advances across the playground, her secondhand backpack bouncing up and down on her shoulders with each stride.
“Juggie!” She greets him excitedly, eyes brilliant in the sparkling sunlight of the snow-covered blacktop. “Guess what we did today?” She skips another step, pigtails swinging, mouth still moving. “Wrote letters to Santa. D’you think he’ll write back soon? He’s gotta have so many letters to write. It’s okay if he doesn’t get back to me — I told him that in my letter.”
He reaches to take the backpack from her as they head for home, shouldering it opposite his own. Lighter now, she seems to bounce even higher. Jughead’s happy to hear that none of the other kids have spoiled the magic of Santa for her yet, especially considering how much more effort their parents have put into the holiday since Jellybean’s been old enough to understand it all. Christmas in the Jones family has an importance now that it lacked before. The plastic wreath on their trailer door, the red ribbon streamers hanging from the ceiling, even the piles of brown paper bags salvaged from the groceries for wrapping paper. A facade it may well be, but the holidays brought the family together in a way that seemed unattainable at any other time of year. Even his parents’ fighting was kept to heated whispers behind bedroom walls as opposed to beer bottles shattered over the kitchen floor.
“Juggie?”
“Sorry, uh. Yeah.” Jughead watches her head tilt to the side, her threadbare mittens reaching out to shake the snow off a low-hanging branch along the side of the road. “Yeah, I’m sure he’ll write soon, Jelly. Real soon.”
~~~
At dinner the next week, the corners of the newest Baxter Brothers book on loan from the library dig into Jughead’s thigh. He occasionally risks a peek down at his lap to read the next line, only to glance up and catch a reprimanding look from Gladys. He isn’t all that bothered — he’s finished his portion of fish and chips already and has no food left on his plate to go cold.
“Did you pick up the mail today, Jughead?” she asks, as a distraction.
He hums, points a finger to where he’d left it on the kitchen counter, the same place he left it every day.
“Anything interesting?” asks his father, tongue slipping over the Ts. He takes another swig of his beer, eyes glassy and unfocused. It’s clear he has no real interest in Jughead’s response anyway.
“A letter for Jelly, actually.” The little girl drops her fork with a squeal, and it clatters in her plate. Gladys winces, shoots Jughead a look as if he’d been the one to make the noise. Jellybean stands quickly and runs to pick her letter out of the pile. She squints, as if that’ll make the words easier to read, and finally picks out the envelope with her name across the front.
Jellybean tears her envelope to shreds and asks if Jughead would please read it to her. She hands it to him across the dinner table, and Jughead shuts the book in his lap.
“Any bills?” his mother interrupts, and Jughead shakes his head silently. He shoots Jellybean a look, and she shovels the rest of her half-frozen broccoli into her mouth. The two of them set their plates in the sink, promising to wash them in a bit, and then race to the couch.
“Dear Forsythia, thank you for the wonderful letter,” Jughead begins to read aloud.
“He knows my name!” She jumps to her feet before falling back on the sofa cushion — a way to burn off the energy she always seems to have more than enough of.
“He’s Santa,” Jughead responds in explanation, though he wonders who exactly had written this letter back to her.
Later, through Jelly’s teacher, Jughead finds out about a program at her elementary school that allows both parents and volunteer students to read and reply to the letters the younger kids of Riverdale address to the North Pole during the holiday season. He tells Archie and Betty about it during their lunch break the next time he sees them, though Archie doesn’t seem to be paying much attention.
“Oh Archie, you’re a dear,” Tina tells him as she tucks a lock of hair behind her ear with one hand, the other copying down his homework for their afternoon classes. She’ll no doubt pass the answers off to Cheryl as soon as she returns to the girls’ lunch table, but Archie has no qualms about letting his homework answers leak to the rest of their class — as long as it’s in exchange for some attention from whichever of Cheryl’s minions gets sent over on any particular day.
Betty, on the other hand, actually seems to be listening, though she could also just be studiously ignoring Tina’s flirtations. She pulls her pink peacoat tighter around her as she turns her back to the other girl, lifts her legs up onto the bench, and folds her knees together to keep warm as they eat their lunch out in the winter cold.
“Sounds like a great program, Jug,” she tells him while he eyes her unopened chip bag. Betty nods her head at him, indicating that he take them, and he shoots her a grateful half-smile. She reciprocates. “Maybe we could do it together next year?”
He pauses his efforts to open the bag as his breath hitches, then he exhales heavily. He struggles for words, fingers now frantically fidgeting with the crinkly chip bag. “I, uh, yeah, yes. I’d love that, Betty.”
“Good,” she responds, then takes a bite of her apple. It’s the only thing she’s eaten since Tina joined them.
~~~
Betty and Jughead are the first ones to sign up for the Letters from Santa program the next December.
On weekends, when their parents still work and the radiator in the trailer doesn’t, Jughead drops Jellybean off in the children’s section of the Riverdale Library and meets up with Betty on the second floor, where the librarian dumps piles of letters onto wooden tables and hands them the proper paper and black ink pens to respond with.
Jughead’s personal favorite of the day includes a drawing of a snouted-horse standing on its two hind hooves, the front ones raised in the air. The heavily slanted eyebrows are just as menacing and angry as the letter itself:
Dear Santa, You better bring my pony this year. Or there will be consiquinses.
Betty reads the letter over his shoulder as she brings two cups of coffee over to their table from the staff room. Her breath flutters over the tips of his ears, and Jughead reaches up to pull his hat lower over them, a flush of heat moving up his neck.
She sets the coffee down next to him, then returns to her own seat. Jughead’s gaze follows her, but snaps back to the letter when she looks up at him across the table. He hears the letter-opener slice through the paper of the next envelope in her section, and Betty chuckles as she reads the writing quickly. She looks up again. “A kindred spirit, I’d say.” She slides the letter across the table.
Under the standard “Dear Santa” greeting, Nicholas has written “I want pizza”, and nothing else.
Jughead’s stomach grumbles at the thought, and he forces his chair to squeak across the linoleum floors to cover up the sound. A smile cracks across his face, and he hands it back to her. They work in silence after that.
~~~
When Jellybean’s in third grade, she announces to a weary Gladys that she officially “knows the truth about Santa.”
Rather than try and convince her daughter of his existence, Gladys lets out a heavy sigh of relief. For a moment, the lines etching her face smooth out. “Thought I’d have to break it to you myself this year, kid. We just don’t have the cash for gifts anymore — if we ever did.” At that, her face pinches again.
Despite his mother’s rejoicing, Jughead can’t help the sinking feeling in his stomach. The Jones family has lost something forever. He tells Betty as such the next day, in between her teaching him how to solve the algebra problems they’ve been assigned for homework.
She wraps the end of her ponytail around her pen, biting down on her lip as she frowns at the news, and Jughead’s gaze quickly shifts from her lips back to the problem in the textbook. His fingers curl the edge of the paper when he shuffles on Betty’s bed, putting some more space between the two of them.
“I’m sorry, Juggie,” is all she offers after a few seconds, and he’ll take it. He’ll take anything Betty Cooper’s willing to give him.
“It’s alright,” he responds, because it is. Everything’s alright as long as she’s with him.
~~~
It turns out she has a bit more to offer, as a few knocks on the trailer door the next day pull him from the couch and an old, frayed copy of the first Baxter Brothers book that his grandfather had left him. A basket covered by a plaid-patterned blanket and a note sits at the foot of the stairs. He pulls them inside quickly and places the blasket on the kitchen table.
Dear Juggie, reads the note. He already knows it’s Betty’s handwriting.
I hoped this might cheer you up.
PS: Keep the basket, and the blanket. And everything else, of course.
When he pulls the blanket off the top, an already-opened envelope addressed to the North Pole rests on top of a pile of frosted sugar-cookies shaped like snowflakes and Christmas trees.
He pulls the letter out, then lays it flat on the table.
Dear ‘Santa’,
Even though I know the truth, I want you to know how much I enjoyed believing in you for the past 8 years.
Love,
Forsythia
He wants to cry. He laughs instead. He saves the cookies for when Jelly gets home.
~~~
He and Archie drift apart as they become high schoolers. It was inevitable, Jughead knows, but it stings nonetheless. His best childhood friend had found football, and guitar, and a new group of friends. Jughead had retreated into himself, his reading, his writing.
He and Betty barely even see each other as freshman year progresses. She’s gotten busy too, and he doesn’t blame her. He’d always known she was destined for more.
They still meet up at the library on weekends in December.
He’s sure she just doesn’t want to disappoint the kids.
He doesn’t tell either of them when FP’s drinking gets worse than it’s ever been, or when Gladys whisks him and Jellybean, or JB as she calls herself now, away to Toledo the summer before sophomore year. He’s sure they won’t miss him all too much — Archie hadn’t even bothered to show up for their annual camping trip on the Fourth of July anyway.
~~~
He asks around, but nobody in his new community seems to be responding to children’s letters to Santa. There are no programs through his school, or the library, or even the local post office. He decides to start one himself.
It takes a few weeks of scouring, but Jughead finally intercepts a cardboard box being thrown out that fits the dimensions of a mailbox perfectly. JB helps him tape the top and bottom shut, cut a slit along the front and a door in the back, and paint the exterior. She spells out “Letters to the North Pole” across the box, and they place it at the end of the driveway of their townhouse. A few heavy rocks placed at the bottom keep it from flying away with the gusty Midwestern winds. Some celophane wrap keeps it waterproof.
He checks the box after school every day. At first, there’s nothing. Jughead isn’t even sure how many of their neighbors have kids young enough to want to mail any letters to Santa, or old enough to write them. He hasn’t been here long enough to know.
The first letter drops in the day he makes a new friend — Joaquin — and the two read the letter over together after Jughead fishes it out of the mailbox.
“So, uh, this is something you do every year?” Joaquin asks him. He’s confident, leaning easily against the crooked wooden fence separating Jughead’s yard from the sidewalk. But he’s also having a hard time navigating their new friendship, if the hesitation in his question is any indication. It’s nice to know that Jughead isn’t alone in that.
Jughead nods in response.
It’s getting quite cold out now, and much grayer than he’s used to. (Riverdale had been white in winter, with a speck of blood red over the horizon at sunset.)
He misses the familiarity of home, of his friends, of Betty.
He rips the envelope open with his finger, careful not to cut himself. The skin along his knuckles cracks.
Dear Santa,
Joaquin reads along over his shoulder.
My mom said to send you a Christmas list. I wanted a remot control car and helicopter but I don’t want that any mor. kid at school are still picking on Amber and its not fair because she doesn’t do anything to them. It makes me mad. Can you ask Bilie Eilish to come to her birthday party it will make her so happy. If you can’t then get her everything she asks for.
Thanks Santa,
Love Ryan
At the bottom there’s an additional line, a note: my mom throw the best partys you can come if you want.
“Ey, that’s pretty nice!” Joaquin exclaims, a few beats after Jughead finishes reading it himself. “Could you imagine giving up your gifts for your sister when you were a kid? I don’t know if I would have. Good on ‘em.”
Jughead would have. Had , actually. He doesn’t tell Joaquin that, though he doesn’t get the impression that Joaquin would judge Jughead, or his family, for it.
Looking the letter over again, Jughead realizes that what he’s doing is worth it, even without Betty by his side. He’d started writing these letters just because of Jellybean — he’ll keep writing them for kids like Ryan.
****
She had known he hadn’t been to Pop’s in a few days, but it hadn’t even crossed her mind that he could have skipped town.
“Are you sure?” she asks the secretary at the front desk of Riverdale High on the first day of school.
The older woman, Ms. DiGuardi, lifts her eyebrows slowly, her glasses shifting lower on the bridge of her nose. “I’ve checked the roster twice already, Ms. Cooper.” Exasperation drips, heavily, from the words.
Betty drags her feet across the floor as she shuffles away from the desk, hands now tightly wrapped around the straps of her backpack. “Alright well, thank you, then.” She figures she’s been rude enough so far. Ms. DiGuardi nods politely and returns to pounding heavily on her computer keys.
Betty turns on her heel towards her next class. She’d taken minutes out of her lunch break to find Jughead after noticing his absence this morning, while giving a tour of the school to the new girl, Veronica Lodge. Her gut clenches and her chest aches — she’s no longer hungry.
She’s mad at him for not telling her, for not telling Archie. (Surely he hadn’t told Archie? He would have told her if Jughead had. Right?)
She’s mad at herself for not checking in on him more often. This summer, and this past year. She hadn’t been a very good friend, if she’d been one at all. Jughead should’ve felt comfortable enough to tell her that they were leaving, or loved her enough to ensure that she could contact him afterwards.
“Are you alright, B?” Veronica strides to her side, already having adopted a nickname for her newly proclaimed best friend. “You look pale.” The back of her hand reaches out for Betty’s forehead, and rather than pull away, Betty leans into it.
She’s fine — or she will be, and she tells Veronica as much — but she’s decided to be a better friend from now on. To find comfort in her friends, like she wishes they would. To enjoy her new friendship with a girl, after the boys from her childhood had abandoned her so easily.
Veronica complains about the “stereotypical social structure” of Riverdale High, and questions whether or not Cheryl realizes that “the Plastics are so 2004? Maybe she’s hoping to ride the wave of the musical revival.”
Betty responds noncommittally — she honestly has no idea what Cheryl’s thinking most days — and leans in closer to her friend. Veronica links their arms together as they make their way down the hallway. The bell rings, indicating that they’ll be a few seconds late to class, but she doesn’t panic; instead, she matches her stride to Veronica’s and takes a deep breath with each step.
~~~
Betty ropes Ethel into reviving the Blue and Gold with her later that school year, and she hides away in the newly-dusted office when life starts spinning too far out of her control — when deadlines creep up too quickly, when her mother’s nagging becomes more scathing, when Polly disappears for nights on end, and when all her father seems to do in response is watch old tapes in their basement.
Veronica, brown paper bag of muffins in hand, finds her curled up in her desk chair as she reads through the latest batch of letters to Santa. Veronica sets the food down on a nearby table before collapsing dramatically onto the faded velvet loveseat that appears dusty no matter how many times Betty vacuums it.
“Does it ever hit you that other people live just as much as you do?” Her legs swing in the air as her knees bend over the armrest, her heels clatter to the floor when they fall off her feet.
Pen to her lip, Betty looks up from the letter in front of her.
“I mean, I just saw Reggie deal some jingle jangle in the men’s bathroom and—“
“Why were you in the men’s bathroom in the first place?”
“Pussycat practice. Josie says it’s got the best acoustics.” Veronica brushes through her hair with her fingertips, twists the pearls around the necklace resting above her collarbones. “But that’s irrelevant, B. I just meant that, you know — it’s always weird seeing the people you only ever get drunk with in real life. It made me realize...” She trails off quietly, unable to articulate her thoughts further.
Betty can’t say she’s been out clubbing with Veronica and Reggie enough times to know what her friend means by that, but she does understand the underlying sentiment. “It’s hard to recognize that other people aren’t just side characters in the story, unexplored and underdeveloped, you mean?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Even meeting Ethel was like that — finding out what my dad did to hers. I’d known that what my dad was doing was bad, but I never understood how much it could hurt others.”
“It shouldn’t be your burden to make up for what your father did, V.”
“No, I know.” She shakes her head lightly against the couch cushion. “But, in a way, it is. Someone has to.”
The sins of the father, the mother. Betty can relate. She’s sure half the kids in this town can, and they probably aren’t alone outside of that bubble either.
“Come read some letters to Santa, V,” she suggests lightly, trying to cheer her friend up as she reaches for a muffin from the bag Veronica had left next to her. “The kids can be pretty hilarious.”
Veronica huffs, but eventually she sits upright and walks barefoot over to the desk, setting her weight on the corner by the stack of letters. Betty returns to her own letter as Veronica runs through the top of an envelope with her nail.
After rifling through a few, Veronica lets out a loud snort, her shoulders lifting with it. “Listen to this one, B: ‘If you always know what kids want, what’s the first thing on my list?’ Then they skip a line, cross a bit of writing out, and end with ‘I thought slave labor was illegal’.”
Betty had never really thought of the elves as slave labor, but now that they mention it, they’re not exactly wrong.
Veronica’s still shaking her head fondly at the letter. “Maybe you should write back ‘Not in this country.’”
“Ha, I can’t.”
“Why not? Is it not the truth? Do we not live in a capitalist prison state?”
Sometimes Betty sees more of a resemblance between her and Jughead than either would probably care to admit, if they’d ever met.
“Santa and the truth have never really gone together before, V.”
“That should tell you something right there.”
~~~
Betty’s never felt so alone during the holiday season.
All attempts at a social life during her first semester at Columbia had failed miserably, and it’s been hard not seeing her friends from home every day like she had before.
The city doesn’t help. As much as she loves the buzz of the air around her, the crackling lights and quick pace, she also feels like yet another cog in the machine. Walking down the streets means shuffling along with her headphones in her ears, listening to music or podcasts or nothing at all. It means not recognizing anyone, and not having anyone recognize her. She’d never realized how much she missed being known, even if what people thought they knew of her was nothing like who she really was.
At least campus is a bit of a refuge, but the cold keeps her trapped in her dorm on days when she doesn’t need to leave for class, or food. Even runs along the Hudson River don’t have as much appeal as they did earlier in the fall, when colors and sunlight soothed her mind.
Ethel calls her occasionally, and Veronica texts her as much as possible, but they’re both busy juggling their course loads and extracurriculars at their own respective schools.
She writes letters to Polly and the twins before bed — The Farm doesn’t allow technology of any kind, but Betty doesn’t really mind. She finds communicating with her sister through pen and paper almost therapeutic, actually. Polly recommends she find a Letters to Santa program similar to the one she had contributed to so heavily in Riverdale, and some research reveals Operation Santa: a program run by the USPS through which postal employees and volunteers write back to children’s letters to Santa.
The Postal Elf running the New York site, a post office on West 33rd and 8th, argues loudly with the woman in line in front of Betty about stepping away from the service desk. ( “The yellow line exists for a reason, ma’am. Now please give myself and this customer some space and step. back.” ) The woman with the Louis Vuitton handbag huffs angrily and steps a fraction of an inch backward, her kitten heel now on top of the yellow line painted on the floor.
Betty reaches the service desk a few minutes later, and the Postal Elf, Gail (her name tag is now at a legible distance), greets her with a heavy sigh.
“I’m really sorry about her,” Betty starts, feeling terrible about the treatment this no-doubt criminally-underpaid government employee had just received.
Gail waves her concern out of the air. “You aren’t with her, are you?” Betty shakes her head no. “Then no worries, girlie. Don’t apologize for bitches you don’t even know. Don’t apologize for being a bitch yourself — just direct your self-righteous anger towards people who deserve it more, you know? Wall Street’s a good place to start.”
Her gray curls bounce around her shoulders as she reaches for a pen out of a cup, then scribbles something down quickly on the notepad next to her keyboard.
She looks up again. “Now, what can I do for you today?”
“I’m here for Operation Santa; I’d like to adopt some letters.”
“Lovely!” Gail smiles approvingly. “I’ll need your driver’s license or ID card, please.”
After scanning her license into the office’s records, Gail points to a door with a paper wreath hanging on it. “Read a few from the piles in there — they’re a bit overwhelming, I’m afraid — and pick one, or more, that you like. All of the kids’ personal information will be blacked out for the sake of anonymity.” Gail slides a piece of paper outlining the instructions for replying to the letter, and mailing out the gifts the children asked for, across the counter.
Betty thanks her, then heads for the back room.
Gail had warned her about the stacks upon stacks of letters piled up from floor to ceiling, but she hadn’t mentioned that Betty would have any company in sorting through them all. Company with an unmistakable gray beanie, raven locks that poke out from underneath it, and sparkling blue eyes that widen perceptibly when they land on her.
~~~
“Betty?” He seems to choke out her name as he trips over himself across the room. It’s annoyingly cute how flustered he is.
“Jughead,” she responds tersely. She still hasn’t forgotten how much it had hurt when he’d left without a word. Sure, she’d been mad at herself too at the time, but right now all that registers is her anger.
Jughead visibly winces, his forehead creasing as a hand reaches up to tug at his beanie. He’s still the same Juggie she remembers, though he’s much taller than he used to be — certainly taller than her now — and his features have become more angular.
“I deserve that, I guess.”
“You absolutely do.”
“Honestly, I deserve worse.”
“Don’t get masochistic on me, Jones.”
He grins at that, teeth peeking out from behind his thin lips. She finds that she can’t stop herself from grinning back.
“It’s really nice to see you, Betty.”
“I didn’t think we’d ever see each other again.” She’d meant it to come out a bit harsh, biting, but the hurt manages to seep into her voice. His frame collapses into itself, and she tiptoes around piles of paper to get closer to him. He still smells like worn books and pine.
She reaches a hand out to grip his arm over his red-and-black flannel jacket. It’s soft from years of being worn — even softer than she remembers.
“I’m really sorry, Betty.” His gaze traces the tiles on the floor. “My mom, she didn’t give us any warning—”
“I forgive you.” Surprisingly, she finds it isn’t hard to say. She’s decided to forgive him, after all these years.
“Just like that?” His expression is incredulous, joyous.
She lets out a laugh and repeats the words back to him — a guarantee. Then, suddenly, her fingers tighten around his arm. “But if you ever hurt me like that again, Jughead Jones, I swear—”
“I won’t.”
She believes him, she lets him go. “Good. Back to work then?”
Instead of turning his gaze back on the myriad letters before them, he stares at her for a beat, two, and then Betty has to ask: “What?”
He shakes his head, fingers drumming a beat quickly on the tabletop next to him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re ridiculous, Jones.”
“So I’ve been told.”
She hugs him. She isn’t so lonely anymore.
~~~
They meet up in Union Square to buy some last-minute Christmas gifts together. The subway stop is close to some pop-up shops, the Strand Bookstore, and Jughead’s apartment in the East Village. Betty takes the 1 train to Times Square, then the N to 14th Street. Overall, it’s a pretty painless trip.
Winter in New York, even without any snow, feels pretty magical.
Jughead grumbles incessantly about the crowds of tourists as they weave through streams of window-shoppers ( “Would someone please teach them how to walk?” ), but Betty hasn’t been this happy in years. At one point, as they maneuver around a group of teens strolling too slowly for Jughead’s liking, he reaches out for her arm when he surges ahead and catches her hand instead. He doesn’t let go.
Neither does she.
After they decide on a pair of fishnet tights and some fairy lights for JB and a few wooden puzzle games for the twins, Jughead insists on accompanying her back to her dorm.
“I can get back on my own, Jug,” Betty protests weakly. In truth, she really wouldn’t be opposed.
“Yeah, I know, but I’d like to spend some more time with you, if that’s okay.”
She can barely breathe, and the air before her frosts as she exhales quickly. “Of course it’s okay.”
He’s still holding her hand.
They listen to Michael Bublé together on the subway, one earbud for her and one for him, and despite Jughead’s contempt for Christmas music, he doesn’t say a word. She loves him for it. She doesn’t tell him that — it’s too soon — but she hopes he can see it in her eyes.
~~~
After spending Christmas in Toledo with his mom and JB, Jughead texts her that he’s in Riverdale for a few days before New Year’s to spend time with FP. Veronica watches her type a few texts in response.
“Who’s the guy?”
“Hmm?”
Veronica tilts her head towards Betty’s phone and bats her lashes excessively. “ The guy , B.”
“It’s just Jughead,” Betty responds, more focused on the cat gifs he keeps sending her. A few of them remind her of Caramel, and Betty beams.
“ Just Jughead? The Jughead you haven’t stopped talking about since I first met you?”
“That would be the one.”
“Oh girl, you have got it so bad.” Veronica swallows a bite of sugar cookie, then lets out a chuckle. She peers over at their text conversation. “Ooh, but so does he.”
“Veronica!”
“Don’t at me, B, it’s the truth. And I’d say it’s high time you reconciled your relationship with it, Ms. Santa.”
Betty blushes, remembering their conversation in the Blue and Gold office years ago. “Maybe it is,” she agrees, scanning her mother’s kitchen to analyze whether or not she has enough batter and frosting left to make more sugar cookies for the Joneses — she does. She gets to work.
~~~
Dear Santa,
When it was Saterday I thought I would try to be good the whole winter vacation. But it seems like I did not succeed. Will you still give me a present enyway?
From,
Sofia J.
“Hey, Betts, have you seen this yet?”
The bedside lamp flickers as the storm rages outside, wind knocking branches against the window panes. Betty reaches for a few more noodles from the take-out container while Jughead splits open a fortune cookie over his empty box. The letter lays between them in bed, and she glances over to read it as she chews.
She nearly chokes on her bite of Chinese food, then stifles her laughter so as not to wake up their daughter sleeping in the room next-door.
“She takes after one of us, I’d say, and it’s probably the one with the cut-up snake tattoo on his shoulder — the one currently making a mess in our bed.” Cookie crumbs spill onto the duvet cover as Jughead knocks over the take-out container he’d used as a catch-all, and he blushes heavily. She reaches out to brush a hand over his cheek, the motion now practiced over the years.
Betty moves the take-out to the floor before climbing over his legs and onto his lap, her hands drawing his face up to hers. “But that,” she points to the mess cheekily, “is just one of the many, many reasons why I love you, Jughead Jones.”
He’s about to throw a joke back at her — she can see it on his lips — but then her hand falls to his shoulder, to the scarred tattoo that still pains him on bad days, and his breath catches. “Betty Cooper, I love you too.”