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“So if I can't get close to you
I'll settle for the ghost of you
but I miss you more than life
And if you can't be next to me
your memory is ecstasy
I miss you more than life”
“Ghost,” Justin Bieber
He never forgot Betty Cooper.
Sometimes Jughead was able to drink enough to blur the edges of his memories, to muffle the cacophony of sounds from the past, to blunt the bruising sucker punch of lost happiness that hit him in the gut, even now. So he drank, chasing forgetting, even if the closest he ever got was a night spent haunted by his own ghosts. But he never forgot Betty Cooper. Not for a second. That he kept trying, tossing glasses of acrid liquid down his throat night after night, was either a testament to Jughead’s tenacity or to his incredible stupidity. He didn’t like to think about that distinction, either.
He assumes he’s drunk now. (This is a reasonable assumption and has been for quite some time.) When he woke up, cheek pressed to cold concrete, his hair matted in clumps, his ribs pulsing painfully, his glasses either lost or forgotten, lending a surrealist quality to his vision, and his hand bleeding and broken, Jughead figured he’d had too much to drink and passed out…somewhere. Again.
His head feels impossibly heavy, so he lays prone on the floor, willing himself to stay still while he gets his bearings. What advice had his sponsor given him? Jughead lets out a hollow bark of a laugh at the thought of his aborted stint in AA; you had to want to quit drinking to make AA work, and Jughead most decidedly did not want to stop. His memory erasure plan would work eventually. He just had to drink more, dammit. Dan, a teddy bear of a guy who’d grasped Jughead’s hand in his own over snickerdoodles and stale coffee, had told a newly (like, for 12 hours) sober Jughead that it was time for him to commit to sobriety, and then had quickly recognized that Jughead was nowhere near ready to commit to anything.
What had he advised for getting through the blackout aftermath? Don’t move quickly—check. Don’t force your eyes open because the light is painful—check. Jughead keeps his eyelids closed, dim light filtering through them anyway. Take stock of your body, check. His fucking hurts. What had he done the previous night, anyway? Catalogue your memories—okay, he can do this. He remembers Jessica, cold and smirking, delivering his maple mushrooms. He remembers Tabitha, swallowing her skepticism and agreeing to check in on him during his trip. He remembers the bunker, with motes of dust that fell like new snow. He remembers his fingers on the keys of his laptop, barely able to keep up with the whirring of his brain.
He remembers…he remembers Betty? She hadn’t been there, not really, but she’d arrived right on schedule anyway, asking for his forgiveness (all he’d ever wanted, those three words from the cotton candy mouth of that woman), and trailing kisses down his body. He remembers a surge of pure happiness before it all went to shit, with a rat wriggling its filament whiskers and the deafening roar of a train and an emaciated figure crouching a few feet from his bed, watching.
A surge of pure happiness before it all went to shit. Story of my fucking life.
He remembers the breakup with Jess—breakup #17 or something, at long last, and the total lack of emotion he felt as she swept into the hallway with her eyes narrowed. He didn’t care that she’d left. He’d barely noticed when she was there. He remembers his editor, chummy hands resting on the park bench, prodding at the status of his much awaited (and late) second novel. He remembers the fear—that he’d be a one-hit wonder, that he’d never been a wonder at all—crawling into his throat like acid. He remembers Archie’s phone call, and the strange mix of emotions he’d felt upon seeing his sort-of-friend’s name appear unbidden on the screen. He remembers steering his bike onto the outskirts of Riverdale, how the trees dipped low into the sky like paintbrushes, and how he’d felt both trapped and completely unmoored at the same time.
Kevin and Fangs and Toni and their baby. The ill-fated key party. Cheryl’s seclusion, paintings, and simmering rage at the friends who’d left her behind to molder in Thistlehouse. Veronica and her stuffed shirt of a husband, and Archie watching them—wearing his heart on his sleeve, always, his face totally, painfully open. Hoping desperately—drunkenly—to snag Betty’s key from the bowl so he could—sit with her? Apologize? Beg? Probe the heartbreaking emptiness in her flat eyes? Exist in her presence and savor each second of color in an otherwise gray life? That, certainly that.
Okay, so he remembers. He remembers who he is and what had happened and the slow, steady collapse of the life he’d been building. Wait. What had Dan said? The slow, steady collapse that I caused. With my drinking.
Fuck. His lungs are burning, his mouth dry, his hands clenched painfully into claws, scrabbling on the floor. He thinks where the Hell am I, and this is the first time he’s wondered how he got here.
He can move, with difficulty. His limbs seem disconnected from his body and attempts to use his slack muscles prove futile. Figuring out where—who he is—and leaving, that task feels monumental. It feels Sisyphean. When has fighting to better his circumstances ever done him any good? Jughead’s tongue is fat and rough in his mouth; he gags and turned his attention away from his current predicament—and inward, where he keeps the possible-memories he destroyed before they could be made.
We could’ve both gone to Yale. We could’ve both gone to Iowa. We could’ve both gone somewhere else, together. Anywhere else.
“Juggie!” and her giggle finds him there, on the filthy floor. He surrenders to it. “I’m just helping, Betts,” he claims, holding his hands up in mock innocence.
"Just helping,” she scoffs. “I’m trying to unpack and I’m not going to get anything done if you keep tickling me and sucking on the nape of my neck!”
“But those are more fun activities than unpacking.”
“Do you want to be late to the dorm mixer tonight?”
“Yes,” he replies honestly, and she can’t help but sigh fondly.
“Jug, it’s our first day of college, and we can’t spend it holed up in here, making out and groping each other.”
“Can we spend tomorrow night making out and groping each other?” Jughead raises one eyebrow fetchingly and proffers an unopened box to his annoyed girlfriend.
“Yes,” Betty promises, turning her attention to the cork board of childhood photos she’s brought from home. “Tell you what,” she says, and she has her boyfriend’s attention. “Why don’t you dig into the snacks we picked up awhile ago, and I’ll spend half an hour, tops, unpacking, and then we’ll call it good?” She adds: “that’ll give us some make out time before the party tonight.”
“Deal,” Jughead agrees, and no one can argue that he hasn’t got the better end of the deal as he settles down on Betty’s unmade bed with a stick of beef jerky and the perfect view of Betty’s ass as she bustles about the room, tongue caught between her lips.
Jughead shakes his head out of his (pleasant) reverie and looks around the structure in which he is currently residing, albeit miserably. It resembles the southside garages he remembers from his childhood, desperate attempts at making an honest living in a part of town where honesty was hard to come by.
Jughead is intimately familiar with these haphazard homages to living by the book, having spent scared childhood moments hiding in them when FP had “business” to conduct but no one to watch his young son. He’d instruct Jughead to hide behind towers of car parts and metal shelving units, leaving the boy to watch the dim light cast shadows on the floor, as FP chain-smoked and exchanged twenties for baggies of powder and pills. Jughead always worried the edges of his beanie as he sat silently, feeling the knit that was the closest thing to comfort he had.
Jughead narrows his eyes, trying to refocus his vision. Out of the corner of his peripheral vision, he spots a hulking chassis, and a sudden beam of light through the cracked window illuminates the body of a classic 1960s Chevy. Buffering it on all sides are lifts and jacks, and tools discarded casually in puddles of oil. He realizes with a start that he is lying on a wrench, and he grits his teeth and shifts off of it.
He wishes for a drink—to soften the pain in his chest, to dull the rapid-firing of his brain, to wash away the tide of memories that haunt him like vengeful spirits.
Debt collectors had tracked him to Riverdale. He’d returned, tail between his legs, to his shitty hometown, but his city mistakes had traipsed dutifully behind him, crowbars in hand, and he knew you could never really escape anything.
What had Jess said to him, that last day? “You wouldn’t let yourself love me.” Well, that hadn’t been true at all. He couldn’t love her. His love wasn’t available, had been given and not returned.
He didn’t want it back anyway.
He remembers happiness that felt utterly unearned, always surprising, and how constantly he feared having it ripped away. He remembers how easily he’d accepted Betty’s betrayal, because he’d always known it was coming. What else could possibly await the third doomed incarnation of Forsythe Jones?
The debt collectors had found him in the bunker, a somewhat impressive feat consider how well Dilton had hidden his lair. But the rest—the dragging, the drugging, the beating, the threats, the insistence that he manufacture money he did not have—was straight out of a ‘70s gangster movie. No creativity at all.
Failing to get anything out of him—save the contents of his backpack: a couple of $20 bills, a fuzzy breath mint, and a tattered Updike novel—the goons had roughed him up a bit, deposited him like an old golf bag, and left.
He doesn’t know where he is. Riverdale? Greendale? Centerville? One of the many other ruinous, vile little hamlets that dotted upstate New York? The thought of figuring out his location, and somehow finding his way back to horrid Riverdale, is too much to bear.
He lets his mind wander to more pleasant could-have-beens.
I was going to wait until graduation to propose, he remembers. That was always the plan. With a freshly minted college degree in hand, and Betty sparkling at his side, he would’ve asked his only love to be his wife.
“Forsythe,” Alice hisses, making her displeasure known. “Did you have a pick a pizzeria for Betty’s graduation dinner?”
“I picked it, Mom,” Betty says cheerily, wrapping her arm around Jughead’s waist. Nothing would bring down her mood today. “This is our favorite local spot. I can’t tell you how many mysteries we’ve solved at these tables!”
“It’s nice of you to cover for him, dear.”
“Sit down, Alice?” Jughead gestures to a chair. “It’s so wonderful to have you here to celebrate Betty’s accomplishments.” It is not wonderful, but Betty is.
“And yours, Juggie!” Betty swats playfully at his shoulder. “Mr. Summa cum Laude!”
Is it appropriate to make a Mrs. Summa cum Laude joke? Maybe now is his moment. Jughead chances a glance at Alice, her face a thundercloud.
Then he looks at Betty, spinning in a ray of sunlight with her golden hair illuminated by the setting sun, and he decides he cannot wait one second longer. Their friends seem to know something is up, and Jellybean and FP watch him expectantly from their seats—far away from Alice. Jughead clears his throat or tries to.
“Betty,” he says, praying for words to form. “I’m so proud of you.”
“I’m so proud of you, too!” Before she can list everything he’d done over the past four years, as she’s wont to do, Jughead takes her hand, right there in front of the ordering station. Gino, who owns the place, grins knowingly.
“Betty, I’ve loved you for decades, but it feels like a lifetime.” He drops to his knee and Betty’s mouth falls open. Somewhere behind him, a strangled protest bursts from Alice Cooper’s throat. “Want to make it an actual lifetime? Will you marry me?”
Betty takes one look at the ring, bursts into tears, and throws herself into his arms, launching both of them onto the tiled floor. “Is that a yes? You haven’t actually said anything, love.”
And then Jughead is pretty sure she murmurs yes over and over again into his hair, into his neck, into his chest, but it’s hard to tell what she’s saying because she’s weeping and laughing and kissing him at the same time.
Jughead shakes his head to clear away what could have been—and what most decidedly was not. He had not proposed to Betty Cooper on graduation day (not that he’d even had one). If he had made that dream come true, he wouldn’t be groggy and sore on the floor of a garage. He wouldn’t be broke and pathetic and dodging calls from his irate agent and an ex-girlfriend who really wanted $500 for her maple mushroom delivery. He wouldn’t be held captive by the very possibility of memory.
Perhaps he wouldn’t be Jughead Jones in any meaningful way, either.
His head feels heavy and awkward, but no longer caught in a vice grip, so he chances sitting up, bracing himself against a shelf for leverage. He is still slumped, his head lolling on his sore shoulders, but he’s not lying in a puddle of grease like a rag doll, so he considers that a small win.
Wins are hard to come by these days.
He still craves a drink, now for something to do outside of his chaotic brain.
He hadn’t just started drinking to forget Betty—although that was the main purpose of his new hobby, no matter how many times he’d spun tales to Jess about rough days and traffic and overdue bills and writer’s block. Drinking filed away his edges, filled his cracks, made him a Forsythe Jones who could make small talk with publishing bigwigs and sarcastic quips with Jess’s faux-intellectual friends. It made him the Forsythe Jones everyone expected him to be, not the Jughead Jones he really was.
The Jughead Jones Betty had loved without reservation.
He didn’t much like drunken, charming Forsythe Jones, but everyone else seemed to, so he buried Jughead in an avalanche of empty whiskey bottles and pretended he’d shed the past like a snakeskin that no longer fit.
The past trailed him like a shadow.
He thinks about Betty, always encouraging him to be better, but always himself. He thinks about Jessica, pressing a glass into his hand and laughing at him to “loosen up.”
He suspects that he is sitting—he’s pretty sure he is, and it is an unpleasant sensation. His head swims, his temples pulse, and his hands, gripping the shelves for purchase, are shaking uncontrollably. Maybe sitting up was a bad idea.
Debt collectors…he never thought he’d stoop so low. But what other options were there? He’d maxed out his credit cards, Jess was (as she constantly proclaimed) “fucking sick of carrying his ass,” and his advance for his first book had run out long ago. Just like FP Jones II before him, the newest version needed money and had no way to get it.
(His landlord was less-than-sympathetic and wanted his three months of back rent.)
The loan sharks looked like accountants. That’s the first thing Jughead noticed when he met them at a nearby Starbucks—and not, thankfully, down by the docks or somewhere equally cliché. Thinning hair, round spectacles, and tweed suits. They carried envelopes of cash, which proved to Jughead that loan sharks had yet to modernize.
They didn’t threaten him, not exactly, just made it clear that they expected their money plus interest in a timely manner (very timely). And Jughead promised, because he needed the money, even though he had no earthly idea where he’d get $5, let along $5k.
He couldn’t even pretend to be surprised when they barged into the bunker, wielding switchblades and unceremoniously freed him from his handcuff hallucinations, only to toss him into a truck and then a garage for proper roughing up.
What had he whimpered mid-beating? Ah, yes. That’d he’d get the money from his rich friend. He was sure Veronica would be thrilled to lend a “washed up derelict who’d broken Betty’s heart” money. He also knew she’d do it, for the sheer joy of having something to hold over his head forevermore.
“You’re reached a new low, kid,” Thug #2 had remarked before punching him in the ribs, and Jughead had had to agree, spitting out a blood clot and nodding at how well he could be read, even by virtual strangers who were kicking the shit out of him a dirty, semi-abandoned garage.
He staggers to his feet, and the resulting lurch is half-drugged, half-defeat.
“I believe in you, Juggie,” Betty had reassured him so many times. Could she believe in him now, with one eye swollen shut and blood dotting his forehead?
He is standing, which didn’t used to feel like an accomplishment. Now what? Ah, yes. Figuring out where he is. That’s the first step towards getting…home? Back to Riverdale. If he has to be somewhere, Riverdale is…a place to exist, even if he’d fought like Hell to escape it. Trouble is there’s a thick padlock on the garage’s door—and even sober Jughead lacks Betty’s lock-picking skills. His slow shuffling around the garage, punctuating by occasional wheezes for breath and rummaging through desks and bookshelves—does not yield any information about this garage, which is apparently located nowhere.
He can relate.
Also, his ribs feel like they’ve been forcibly separated from his abdominal wall, and he’s lost his glasses, so he views everything through a sort of sepia-toned haze—though the forced drugging is probably contributing to his faulty vision.
He drops like a marionette into a rolling chair, barely making it into the seat without face planting onto the familiar floor.
He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He barely has any concrete understanding of where he’s been.
He knows what he’s given up.
After ten minutes of futile searching, he can treat himself to a should-be memory.
What comes first is an acrid taste on his tongue, that first adult slug of whiskey—that he hated, but he kept drinking, which might make him weaker even than FP, who could never turn down the liquor he genuinely loved.
They are on the banks of Sweetwater River, and the shy blush in Betty’s cheeks is the perfect accessory for the lace wedding dress Veronica has just zipped her into. For one, terrifying—and perfect—moment, as she emerges from a grove of trees and presses her hand to her mouth at the sight of him, Jughead is sure she’s happened upon the wrong wedding, the wrong groom.
Alice sure seems to hope so, standing as she is away from the cluster of people awaiting the arrival of the (soon-to-be) Joneses, with her arms crossed and her mouth twisted into a pout.
But now Jughead understands what people mean when they said their world narrows to one person.
He is peripherally aware of their friends and family arranged in neat rows at the mouth of the river, all of them dressed in light suits and breezy dresses. He knows they’re nearby, having gone over the guest list with his fiancée a dozen times, but all he can see is Betty: her smile luminous and her eyes wide and shining. At him? At him.
He waits for someone to tap him on the shoulder: to wake him up or direct him towards his real life, but no cruel reminder comes.
And then he is marrying Betty, which he can scarcely believe. The words—the minster’s, his, hers, the crowd murmuring in agreement—sound like they’re underwater, otherworldly, a fantasy. And when she launches herself into his arms, he feels a rush of happiness so profound he thinks his chest might burst with it.
“I’m your wife!” Betty squeals, radiant with joy, her curls loose around her shoulders and carried by the breeze. “Your wife!”
“You’re my wife,” he breathes, feeling both humbled and awed.
Jughead would have happily remained in the bubble of his wedding to Betty, had fate allowed him. But he slips off the chair he’d briefly thought of as a salvation, and crumples onto the floor again, his battered ear resting on the cool cement floor.
Fatigue sets in, loosening his muscles and slackening his jaw. The thought of escaping on his own had been foolish.
He remembers Betty as he had really known her.
“Also,” he says, sucking in a breath.
“What?” Betty asks, biting her lip in anticipation.
He kisses her like he’d been waiting his whole life to do it. He doesn’t tell her that he has.
“I’ve never stopped loving you,” she says. “I don’t think I can.”
She straightens her bandana and returns her attention to his car.
He feels a peace he’s never felt before, facing her in that parking lot. He calls it belonging.
“I love you, Betty Cooper.” His heart is in his throat. What has he said? He opens his mouth to take it back, to rephrase, to laugh nervously.
“Jughead Jones, I love you.”
Something inside him feels complete at last.
“Jug, our story’s not over.” She leans over him, pressing at his face, patting his shoulders, her tears baptizing him. “Don’t leave me.”
And he finds he can’t.
“Hey,” he says, trying not to look at her, but doing it all the same.
She blesses him with a small smile, a quirk of her lips, as if he’d honored her with that word.
“Hey,” she says.
He is full to bursting with his love for her; the weight of it sits heavy on his back.
First: before he can relieve those memories with Betty; before he can make beautiful new ones he can’t yet imagine; before he is able to bring those sustaining visions of her to life, he’s stuck confronting the reality of his situation.
And then he realizes, like a shot to the heart: he can’t do it alone. That was his original mistake.
He closes his eyes, an image of Betty promising to find him floating behind his eyelids, and he waits for her to come for him.
(She does.)