Chapter Text
“What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”
It’s really only Betty’s luck that out of everyone this town, it’s Reginald Mantle that finds her in a state like this. Heartbroken, tears streaming down her face, in broad daylight at a bus stop on the outskirts. Like a ticket out of Riverdale could be a solution to any of her problems. She knows that it’s not as easy as that.
“Go away, Reggie.” Betty wipes her nose, keeping her gaze away from him.
He steps out from behind her.
“Andrews break your heart again?” He jets but then, she doesn’t answer and—“Oh.”
Well, now he just proved to be a grade A asshole. The one from high school. The one he’s tried so hard to overcome but never could. Or maybe he has but it’s the one perception of himself that he could never change in others’ eyes.
He sits down next to her. “Look—”
And then he looks at her, and waits for her to meet his gaze, so that they can fully see one another—so that she understands his true intent. “I know I’m probably not the first or even second or third, or let’s be honest, simply a person you’d go to, but I am already here. And nobody else is as far as I’m concerned.”
He gestures about, and then he places his hand on his chest. “If you want to, you can pour your heart out to none other than Reginald Mantle. Free of charge for first timers.”
She stays silent.
“Come on.” He tilts his head. “Don’t be shy.”
Betty looks up at him, her eyes wide and lips in a thin line, and shakes her head. That straight out of a cartoon depiction of a mobster. Could he be any more—well, actually, any more him?
“This is ridiculous.” And she has to laugh—she does. Because it is. She’s about to open up to Reggie and tell him everything.
“Archie and I… we were sleeping together. We said it would be casual, and I thought I was fine with that but he’s… he’s Archie Andrews. The first boy I ever fell in love with. The boy who asked me to marry him when we were kids.”
She smiles, reminiscent of the childhood she’s once had, and Reggie smiles back, too. He’s seen it, too.
“But then… I started catching feelings for him. And—and he basically rejected me. Again. And then I—I,” she rambles on, without intending to, “even told him he was a ‘window of light in the dark’! I mean, who does that? Me, that’s who.” She sighs. “And it was like it was high school all over again. And he—it’s like every time I fall for him and I feel like it might be the right time and he loves me too, he chooses—”
“Veronica,” Reggie finishes.
He is no stranger to this. He’s experienced it before. The pull, the senselessness… and how it never works for anyone else, and how nobody truly understands it. Not even them.
“You know,”—he holds Betty’s stare—“maybe it was just… inevitable.”
Inevitable.
Inevitable—like Archie and Veronica.
Inevitable—like…
Like Reggie and her.