They set out into the night as something other than enemies; something far from friends. The space between their bodies isn’t wide, but the tension is thick enough to make it feel like a hundred feet and a single millimeter at the same time, and Betty wonders still whether she should run. Whether she should keep running until she’s far away from this stupid tiny town and everything she’s learned in the short time she’s been here.

Then, clearing his throat, Jughead asks if he might walk her home. “If you want,” he adds, because he’s protecting himself too.

“I’ll be fine,” Betty tells him, because she will (even though she isn’t - not yet anyway) and she’s not sure she can stand to be around him like this. He looks sad and her overwhelming urge is to kiss him; taste the salt in his tears and stroke it back into his mouth with her tongue, and all of that is tearing at her chest.

“Okay,” he says, and nods, his beanie still clutched in his right hand. “Okay.”

She turns to walk in the direction of the north side, back to her street and its house painted white and pure, and she hears him speak again.

“Betts?”

She jerks her head at the nickname and watches his lips part, shallow breaths visible in the cold air. He closes his mouth again, then opens it and her gaze slides to the grip his fingers have on the hat. His knuckles are white and tense and all he does is clear his throat again.

She doesn’t reply either.

Miraculously, Betty manages to make it up to her room without Alice torturing her for dance details, and buries her face into the pillow. She wants it to smell like Jughead but of course, it doesn’t; just smells of clean cotton and the floral fabric softener her mom uses.  

She allows herself a minute or so of pining for the boy she doesn’t want to love; for the boy she hopes she doesn’t love (and yet, she knows how that one is likely to pan out) allows herself the sniff of air when she lifts her head, just in case there’s a trace of cigarette smoke lingering outside of her bedroom window.

There isn’t of course, and she pulls herself up, washes her face and cleans her teeth, changes into pajamas printed with cherries and pulls her hair into a bun on the top of her head before climbing under the covers.

Her phone vibrates in her purse and she stretches over the side of the bed to pull it out, trying not to hope for anything. It’s Veronica: several texts and missed calls, and she quickly types a reply: I’m home. Everything is fine. Thank you for earlier.

And then, just as she sets it back on her nightstand, it vibrates again with a call - only this time it’s Jughead.

“Hello?” she whispers, partly so her parents won’t hear, and partly because her voice doesn’t seem to be working properly anyway.

“I’m sorry. That’s… that’s what I should’ve said earlier.”

Betty sniffs, finding already there are tears.

“I don’t want to make you cry.”

She shakes her head but she’s crying anyway.

“Are you home?”

She takes a breath. “Don’t… don’t come over.”

She can hear him swallow. “I won’t, just… I wanted to check you’re safe. Uh…that you’re home.” he’s rubbing his neck - she can tell. “ Are you?”

Betty sniffs again. “I’m home.”

“Right.” It’s tensely quiet between them save for his breaths over the receiver. “Good. That’s… good.”

Neither of them hang up, and Betty listens to him on the other end of the line, wondering whether he’s at his trailer yet or whether he’s somewhere else: the Wyrm Hole or Whyte Wyrm perhaps, or maybe still Pop’s. She doesn’t ask.

“I wanted to ask you something, and I don’t know… shit, maybe I’m supposed to do it in person.”

“Jughead,” she says finally. “What is it?”

“Will you go out with me? Uh…On a date I mean.”

“A date?”

“A real one this time. I won’t… it wouldn’t be like last time.”

The sudden metal taste on her tongue tells her that she’s bitten too hard on her lower lip, and she releases it, soothing the split with her tongue. Her mind wanders to the way it had felt when Jughead had sucked on her lip and she’d pressed her core against his and he’d groaned fuck, Bettsinto her mouth.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” he adds. “I just wanted to ask you.”

They’re starting over. Is this what people do, she wonders, when they start over? Be more brave? More honest?

“Yes,” Betty decides aloud. “I think I’d like that… a date.”

There’s yet another pause on the end of the line, but then she hears Jughead say, “Yeah?”

She can tell he’s smiling; wonders if those dark sapphire eyes of his are twinkling. “Yeah.”

When they hang up, she smiles so wide that she buries her face back into her pillow lest anyone walk in and see. Her phone buzzes with a text and she sees his name appear on the screen:

Goodnight x

They arrange to meet the following evening at the playpark a couple blocks away from Elm Street. It’s drizzling in a way that makes her hair frizz and her jeans stick to her legs, but there are butterflies fluttering in her stomach which she can’t tell are from nerves or excitement.

Jughead is late. He’s texted to apologise, and that he’ll make it up to her, but already there’s a stab of disappointment and the weight of it is settling in her chest. She shelters under her umbrella for ten minutes until the chugging of his dad’s truck catches her attention. Its wipers are squeaking across the windscreen and he leaves the driver side door open as he rushes out into the falling rain.

“Sorry!” he gasps. “My dad was… are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Betty says, and watches him as he blinks against the droplets.

He nods towards the vehicle and says, “The heater’s on.”

Jughead looks as though he might be about to take her hand, but then must decide against it because before she knows it, they’re heading towards the truck and he’s opening the passenger door for her.

“Thanks,” she smiles, and feels those butterflies flutter again when he grins back.

He climbs in beside her and shuts the door, sealing them off from the weather. There’s a song playing on the radio whose lyrics talk about second chances and skies of hope, and Betty wonders whether he’s planned it like this.

“Where’re we going?” she asks, her eyes fixing on the sweep of dark, damp hair which is tumbling forwards over his eyes.

“You know the drive-in in Greendale?”

She shakes her head.

“It’s this old theatre in the town across Sweetwater. Hadn’t planned on it raining though.” His grin is wry but she thinks, maybe, she might detect nerves. “Snacks are the most important though, right? I got plenty.”

Jughead gestures behind him and she sees the plastic bag brimming with chips and candy, and it makes her smile.

“It’s not far,” he says. “Maybe twenty minutes.”

He looks sincere in the way he says it - like he doesn’t want her to be scared. Incidentally, it makes him look scared. (It reminds her of the way he’d clutched his beanie across from her in the booth at Pop’s the previous night, and she feels a lump form in her throat)

They ride in a relatively comfortable quiet and pull up in the parking lot, which is more of a muddy field than anything else. Jughead pulls on the handbrake, keeping the engine running, and asks whether she wants any popcorn or soda from the booth. Betty can see that he’s obviously dropped enough money in the grocery store that he won’t have much left, and besides, he seems to have the snack selection covered.

“I’m good,” she says, “Thanks,” and his lips twitch like he wants to say something in response. Whatever it is though, he keeps it to himself, and suddenly she feels like she’s back in the Wyrm Hole with its darkness and the vibrating tattoo gun that had inked the dandelion clock into her skin.

Finally, he says a simple, “Okay,” and reaches around the seat to grab the bag from the back. “What would you like?”

“What do you have?”

“Uh…” he starts, and then proceeds to display all of the items across the dashboard. She picks Skittles and regular salted chips, and Jughead smiles and says, “Good choice.”

He’s wearing a blue sweater beneath his sherpa jacket, and it makes his eyes look striking against his olive skin. Her mouth waters and it makes her realise that even after everything, she still finds him incredibly attractive.

“You okay?” he asks, and Betty almost jumps, clutching her two packets tighter.

“Yeah, sorry. Just…” she changes the subject. “What’re you going for?”

“Everything that’s left,” he replies and they both chuckle, normal teenagers hanging out for a moment. That is, after all, what this is supposed to be.

From the billboards either side of the field-cum-parking-lot, she can see that the movie scheduled to play is The Breakfast Club.

“Have you ever seen it before?” she asks him. “The movie I mean.”

“No,” he answers. “Have you?”

She shakes her head.

“It’s supposed to be a cult classic.”

“I heard that,” she says.

They watch the movie without chatting, and out of the corner of her eye Betty can see the boy next to her stuffing Swedish Fish into his mouth, seemingly without even chewing. Throughout the various scenes of the gang in the library and running through the halls, she also sees Jughead’s head turn several times in her direction as if he might be about to say something, and yet he remains quiet.

Eventually though, the movie finishes and Betty presses her fingers against her palms as she waits for him to say something. She still wants to kiss him; can feel a mild stirring in the pit of her stomach that she knows means her body wants more than just a kiss; and yet they both just sit there with twitching fingers and increasingly shallow breaths.

“Where do your parents think you are?” he asks, eventually breaking the silence, and she feels guilty for her subsequent answer.

“Veronica’s.”

Jughead nods.

Wondering if he’s asked that on purpose to tip the guilt scales in his favour, she throws the question back. “How about your dad? Where does he think you are?”

He shrugs. “Out, I guess.”

It’s tense for a few moments and she deliberates yet again whether this - being here with Jughead Jones, is a mistake. A horn honks signalling that they need to move, and Jughead maneuvers the gear shift accordingly.

“Do you want to go back?”

Betty blinks at him, not quite sure what he means. She’d thought that was the obvious - they do have to go back, but then he elaborates.

“I just…. I thought maybe we could grab a milkshake at Pop’s? We don’t have to, I mean, I can drop you -”

“- Juggie,” she interrupts, surprised at her use of the pet name which had slipped out so effortlessly. It makes her think of his trailer and bare skin; his body pressed against hers and an ache that makes her press her thighs together. She forces herself to keep her tone even when she says, “A milkshake sounds great.”

His eyes are soft and shining when he looks at her, and it reminds her of before she knew about the bet; of when she’d been cold in his bed and he’d wrapped her in that ratty old blanket. Jughead’s fingers twitch and she thinks he might be about to move his hand over hers when he says,

“Okay.”

Yet again, he keeps his distance, and she tries not to feel too disappointed.

After sitting in his preferred booth in the warmth of Pop’s diner for close to an hour, Jughead drops her off at the end of her street so she can walk the final block. She thinks (for what may or may not be the millionth time that evening) that he might be about to kiss her. It’s perhaps no longer surprising when he doesn’t.  

Betty’s hair is damp again by the time she reaches the front door, and her mom is sitting at a perfect ninety degree angle on the couch when she enters.

“Elizabeth,” she chides. “It’s past eleven. Where were you?”

She feels her cheeks flush. “Sorry mom. We were just at Pop’s.” It’s not a lie. “I guess I lost track of time.”

Alice’s eyes narrow. “I don’t like you walking these streets at such a late hour.”

“It’s not New York; I’m hardly going to get attacked in Riverdale,” Betty argues. Part of the problem, she suspects, is that she was at Pop’s - a place of calorie-laden food and drinks with the kind of lighting that makes the skin take on an otherworldly palour.

Her mom nods and announces that the rain has smudged her makeup. “You should wash your face before it clogs your pores.”

She’s happy enough to leave at that, and heads upstairs to the bathroom. She passes Polly on the landing who’s clutching a hot water bottle against her stomach as she asks,

“Did you have a good time?”

Her tone indicates she suspects her sister wasn’t at Veronica’s, and Betty’s honest when she answers. “Yes. It was nice.”

Polly smiles knowingly. “I’m glad.”

“You’re cold?”

“Cramps,” her sister replies. “If mom wasn’t around I’d be making a dent in the ice cream too.”

Betty gives her a sympathetic smile and bids her goodnight, heading into the bathroom to wash her face. It’s only when she looks in the mirror that she realises she hasn’t had her own cramps to deal with in a while.

In over a month.

Her face grows hot and her hands feel clammy. She scrubs at her face, removing the mascara and then anxiously scrubbing much longer at non-existent remnants of eyeliner until her skin stings.

You used protection, she tells herself. Every time.

And yet, back in her bedroom, she works backwards through her diary, counting the weeks since her last period: five.

She knows she’s been stressed and anxious; upset about the bet and everything that entailed, and she knows, too, that that can affect her cycle. She climbs into bed rationalising her late period, and her phone buzzes on the nightstand.

Goodnight x Jughead’s message reads, and she quickly types the same back. She doesn’t expect the return text to say what it does, and the jolt it sends through her mixes thrill with dread.

Maybe next time I’ll kiss you.

Betty turns out the lamp and tries to sleep.