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“Betty!”
Archie practically rips the door open upon hearing the doorbell ring, only he looks a tad bit surprised to see Betty standing there, even though he is the one who asked her to have dinner with him, not the other way around.
Betty furrows her brows, but an amused smile appears on her lips nevertheless. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“Yes ! I mean, no!” He retracts and shakes his head. He’s nervous. Betty can tell. “I was just… Uh, come in.”
He steps aside to let Betty in, and helps her take her coat off. Before she has any time to take the house in, the changes to it after the last time they’d been here, the smell and intense heat of something homemade immediately hits Betty—although she couldn’t say for sure whether it’s a pleasant or unpleasant sensation to her actually.
She follows it all back to the kitchen, and Archie surprisingly doesn’t mutter a single word to her, or try to stop her. She spots the source of it sooner than later; the steam still rises from it. It’s the skillet filled with what looks to be a bunch of meatballs and half-cooked sauce with pasta that hangs off to the side. The pasta strainer dries off on the counter next to the two works and two plates.
Betty turns to Archie. “Archie, did you…”
“Yes, I cooked us some pasta but the sauce and the meatballs, well, you see…”
Aww . That might be one of the sweetest things he’s ever done for her. “Do you mind?” She lifts the fork up.
“I really don’t think you should, Betty. That’s why I ordered us pizza…”
But Betty bites into what should be the perfect bite—one half of a meatball with a little bit of sauce and a lot of pasta wrapped around it—but, “Oh, my God,” she can’t help but burst out laughing and tries not to choke at the same time.
Somehow, the pasta is cooked unevenly, the meatballs are overcooked and taste like the entire content of a salt shaker had been dropped onto them, but the sauce is also burnt and tasteless?
Archie smiles, a bit of a blush on his cheeks, and scratches the back of his head. “It’s really that bad, isn’t it?”
“No, no, if you…” Betty puts the fork down, and wipes off her mouth, the smile still on her face. “If you put enough sauce on it, it’s actually… tolerable, I think.”
“So I should cancel our pizza order then?” He points back somewhere—maybe to the landline, maybe out of habit—with his thumb.
“ No, no! ” She protests, even if the gesture itself is sweet—but if she’s here for actual food and to actually eat, she might as well get something digestible. “Pizza is good. Pizza is great.” She points to the skillet. “Um… these? Maybe as leftovers for, uh, next week. For the boys.”
Archie chuckles. “Ah, for the boys.” Then he gestures towards the kitchen table. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable, uh…” Then, as if he’s reminded of something else, he heads towards the fridge. “I’ve got us some beer, too. The one I know that you like.”
Betty smiles. He really is earnestly trying now.
Just as he places the opened beer bottle in front of her, the doorbell rings again. “Let me get that.”
Betty sighs as he watches him go. What does this all mean? Obviously, were it not for their history , this would be him making a move on her. She sees that, but she also doubts it because of that history, the one that kept them apart and together at the same time. The one they have never managed to overcome, only rehabilitate into their own lives, even as adults. One that keeps on dragging on them.
Archie comes back, and tosses the delivery onto the kitchen—and he gets the two plates, but as reaches for a slice, he hisses and pulls his hand back. “Hot!” He rushes over to the sink.
That reminds Betty of the main component of their complicated and messy history, but the one that is theirs only—they are best friends . Best friends who are comfortable around each other. Best friends who don’t need to be this nervous around each other.
“It’s okay, Archie.” Betty rushes to stand next to him, and rubs his arm up and down. “We don’t need to rush, we have the whole night to eat,” she reassures him, and he finally breathes out. “Besides, we can eat pizza literally anywhere , even right here, without any fancy plates or—or with the smell of the salty meatballs.”
Now it’s his turn to laugh, and the nervous Archie is gone in an instant—it’s the carefree one with the goofy smile and bright eyes that Betty has always loved.
“Okay, all right.” Archie nods more to himself than to Betty.
They move over to the kitchen counter with their beers, and Betty pokes a particularly cheesy slice, and she, too, feels the burn—it wasn’t just Archie’s nerves and his fidgeting.
“Well, if everything went to hell in this town, at least the quality of the pizza delivery is top notch,” she remarks.
“Maybe we should go against the palladium with this, and then the town would be saved.”
Betty smiles, and then claps. “Okay, well, I can’t wait anymore.”
Archie raises his brows. “Didn’t you just say we had plenty of time to eat?”
“That was then and this is now ,” she says, and reaches for a piece, and almost moans upon the first bite.
Archie gets his own piece, and before biting into it, he jokingly asks, “Is it that much better than my meatballs?”
That’s a question she’d really rather not answer.
“Those were… an experience,” she says.
They share a glance, and then quietly go back to eating. And for a moment, it seems all so comfortable—like a snapshot straight out of what they could be, of what their lives could be like, if they chose each other, if things went the way they should’ve.
Alas, that’s not the case.
“Do you think we’re going to be fine?” Archie dusts his hands off after he finishes his first slice. “The town, I mean. With Cheryl and the curse and all that.”
Betty sighs, and pats her fingers against the counter. “We’re going to be fine the moment that she realizes we’re still cousins, and that it’s actually Nana Rose orchestrating this all. If not, we’re going to have to help out a bit.”
“How’d you…” Archie knits his brows together, but they straighten out in an instant. “Right. Agent Cooper.”
“And also,” she hesitates whether to bring it up or not, “there’s the case of… Toni.”
Archie nods at Betty. “That must be heartbreaking for Cheryl. Especially since she tried to make things right between them before, too.”
“I mean, she’s just had Anthony.” She shrugs, and chugs from the beer bottle. “I can understand why she’d turn to someone so…” Bland. Boring. She looks to Archie as if he might finish that sentence for her so that she doesn’t have to, but he just looks at her, and waits for her to go on. “Comforting as Fangs. He’s the baby’s father, too, after all.”
Archie nods. “That makes sense. Thankfully, it doesn’t have much of an effect on his performance, or Kevin’s for that matter… He got the shortest end of the stick, I fear.”
“He really did. I hope he finds what he’s looking for in New York, though,” Betty says, a solemn smile on her face. Things are changing, and not having one of her closest friends near her is going to be hard. “But, eventually, Toni will find her way back to Cheryl. I know that in my heart. People like them always do.”
Archie looks at her, as if to ask, are we people like them, too?
But he blinks away, and along with it goes the question. “Jughead and Tabitha, on the other hand…” He grins, clearly happy for them. “They left, even during your party. I’m guessing things are more… uh… merrier over there.” He leans forward to Betty.
“ Please , they’re not even subtle about it,” she remarks, and he laughs, and as their eyes meet, she begins to laugh, too—harder than she means to because she ends up slapping the kitchen counter, and she almost spits out the beer, too. Maybe because it’s about her ex, or because a lifetime ago this all seemed so unfathomable, especially that she and Archie, the boy—the man that she’s always loved since she was a kid, would be gossiping about their friends in his kitchen late at night. Or simply because it’s Archie .
The smiles slowly wear off, and they just stare at each other, before Archie breaks the silence. “Speaking of couples…” He avoids her eyes, like he needs to gather his courage, but then meets them. “I don’t like the way we ended things.”
Betty’s lips form a thin line. It’s not like she loved the way they ended things—not out of her fault, not out of his fault, but of both of their faults—but did he have to bring it up?
Maybe he did. She’s stopped him many times before. To make him comfortable, to make herself comfortable. When they were kids, when they were teens, when they were adults. But maybe this time letting him actually speak his mind, and being uncomfortable, is what they both need . What could put them both out of their misery.
“We ended things the way we did for many reasons, Archie.”
Archie shakes his head. “We ended things because I was being stupid, Betty. I thought that—that…” He exhales. “I thought that if I went back to Veronica, to a relationship that I thought that I knew how to be in, that kept me in a bubble all throughout high school because I was… convinced that you were too perfect for me, that you deserved better than me, that we were too different… and it kept me from you. Always from you. And things were just so… overwhelming for me, coming back to Riverdale and the war and the things I’d seen, and I thought that if I… that if… I went back to what I knew.
“But now I see it. Clear as day. It’s not our circumstances anymore, Betty.” Archie steps closer to her. “It’s what I thought that stood between us. It’s what we think that stands between us . You’re not the girl-next-door, you’re Agent Cooper. I’m not the all-American boy, I’m Firefighter Andrews.”
Archie moves even closer to Betty—mere inches apart now. “But you know what I always thought?”
“Hm?” Betty swallows.
“A little part of me always thought that… That it was going to be you and me, Betty.” He stares into her eyes—and she stares into his. “And I want it to be.”
Betty’s chest heaves—she can hardly contain her own emotions.
“Will you let me try?”
The tears in her eyes are simply tears of pure happiness, of pure joy, of pure want and of pure need; and before she can register it herself, she cradles Archie’s face, and she kisses him like they are both new and old, both young and mature, for the first time in the rest of their forever .
“Yes,” she whispers in between kisses. “I will always let you try.”