Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Pop clinks their milkshakes down onto the table in front of them, it takes Archie only a second before he"s vacuuming his up. He spoons mouthfuls and mouthfuls of neapolitan ice cream into his body like he’d die without it, and when he eventually gets a brain freeze, Betty tuts at him. Her scolds are hard to hear over the Beach Boys song that someone’s just put on the jukebox, but Archie nods his head at her vigorously, his face screwed up in pain.

Veronica watches this go down as Brian Wilson sings in the background, crooning about how summer’s just about to arrive. Veronica almost doesn"t believe him, even though she knows it"s true.

“How did that date with Valerie go, Arch?” Jughead asks from across the table. He’s got a smile on that shows his teeth.

Veronica feels Archie deflate a little against her side. He seems to have shaken the brain freeze finally. “It was fine,” he says shortly, and then, “Well, it could have gone better.” He sadly swishes his straw around what’s left in his cup.

Veronica snorts. “Archie, she’ll always be out of your league.”

Archie frowns at this. “Hey,” he says, offended.

Jughead and Betty both laugh at him lightly from across the table. The two are intertwined together like they often are: Jughead has an arm securely wrapped around Betty’s shoulder, his other arm free to scoop french fries into his mouth, and Betty’s hugging his torso tightly. 

Her head is snuggled into the crook of Jughead’s neck and her cheeks are rosy, even under the harsh, neon lights of Pop’s. She looks nice, but Veronica always thinks Betty looks nice.

Veronica doesn’t mean to stare at her, but she finds herself doing so. She only realizes it when Betty suddenly catches her eye. She smiles back at Veronica, unsuspecting.

The dinner is as good as dinners go. They’re celebrating the end of junior year, an event that has them all in very high spirits, and Pop keeps giving them free onion rings even though they don’t ask for them. While Betty hates onion rings and Veronica is sure she’s about to throw up if she eats one more, Jughead and Archie keep throwing them into their mouths like popcorn. The four of them laugh at what seems like nothing and talk about the school year animatedly, relieved that it’s over.

The whole scene is nice, and it makes Veronica feel connected to all of them in a way she hasn’t felt in a while. These days they only get together at Pop’s for very special occasions, and outside of that the four of them rarely hang out all together when they’re not in the confines of school. For a moment, Veronica wonders what summer will be like this year, if they’ll swim in Sweetwater and have movie marathons every weekend like they did last summer. But she worries as she thinks about the ways that they’ve changed since then.

The appearance of joy diminishes toward the end of the meal. By their fourth round of onion rings, Jughead and Betty have progressed to talking to each other in dangerously low voices. Although they’re sitting just across the table, Veronica and Archie are abundantly aware that this is a conversation they’re not invited to. Archie is showing Veronica something on his phone in an attempt to distract themselves from the scene that’s taking place in front of them – the same thing he always does when this happens – but Veronica can’t help but keep part of her attention on the way Betty raises her voice every once in a while. How Jughead always says something defensive back. How this always makes Betty sit up straighter, her spine stiff and her face permanently screwed up in a frown.

Veronica sits there, staring blankly at whatever video Archie’s trying to show her, and thinks about how she just wanted one good night with all of them again. Just one good night.

“I just –” Betty cuts herself off, huffing a laugh like something is both cruel and funny, “You know, it’s fine. Nevermind, Jughead.”

Veronica spares a glance up. Jughead is looking at Betty with his mouth shut. Veronica can just barely see the muscles of his jaw clenching and then relaxing.

“Okay.” He says, but nothing sounds very okay.

There’s a moment of silence that seems to fill the entire diner. Jughead and Betty stare defiantly at each other the whole time.

Archie clears his throat. “Hey, did you guys hear about that party Chuck’s throwing tonight?” It’s a poor imitation at causality, but everyone around the table desperately wants to follow it.

Betty turns her attention onto him like a bird of prey. She smiles at him, but Veronica thinks that it makes her look like a stranger. “That sounds cool, Arch, but I think I’m a little tired.”

Jughead turns to him too. He coughs. “Yeah, me too.” They sound like robots.

“Are you gonna go?” Betty asks, tilting her head to the side.

Archie shrugs. “Maybe Ronnie and I’ll go.”

Veronica wants to scoff – she hadn’t even heard of this party until this moment – but she says nothing out loud. She shrugs along with him, thinking about how she wants to ring out the tension that sits between all of them like it’s a wet rag.

The neon signs outside buzz Veronica’s bones, and her high heels give an unsteady crunch with every step she takes in the gravel parking lot. The balmy summer weather is already in full swing and just walking through it only for a moment has Veronica sweating.

The four of them go their separate ways with timid goodbyes. Veronica watches Betty and Jughead leave and notes the distance between them as they walk. Betty turns to put something in her backpack and Veronica catches a sliver of her face; she looks sad, so sad like she might cry right then and there in the parking lot of Pop’s.

Veronica wants to reach out and pull her back into a hug, whisper something into her ear that would cheer her up or make her laugh, but she doesn’t know what she’d even say.

Falling out of love is a cruel, slow thing. 

The summer before senior year is the hottest summer Riverdale’s seen in a decade. It’s under the boiling sun and in between cheap, melted popsicles that Betty and Jughead break up for good.

If she’s being honest, Veronica didn’t think they would ever truly break up. Betty and Jughead had become a staple of Riverdale High in the same way that Polly and Jason once were; they seemed untouchable and golden, even at their worst. Over the years, Veronica had watched them spat a dozen times and then come back together, only to collide chaotically.

But they always seemed to make it work. They got through murders, threats, riots, and almost death on several occasions – practically every bad thing someone could think of. They seemed so set on loving each other that Veronica was sure one day, in fifty years, she would be getting Christmas cards from them and all of their kids, littered with picturesque photo after photo, and Veronica would wonder every year, looking down at their faces, if they were truly happy.

But what did Veronica even know about Betty anymore? The distance that had grown between the friend group they once had was palpable, and it didn’t bother Veronica much as long as she didn’t think too hard about it. It had been a slow kind of unraveling, the kind that starts so small it goes unnoticed.

On the surface, it wasn’t that easy to see anyway. Veronica, Archie, Betty, and Jughead still did so many of the things they did when they were fifteen; they had late night dinners at Pop’s, they laughed loudly at their lunch table, and Betty still drove Veronica to school and back sometimes. These things happened few and far between now, but they still happened.

It’s just that outside of these regular, ingrained traditions, there was nothing. There were two sides, with Veronica and Archie on one side and Betty and Jughead on the other, and there were people that connected them, people like Cheryl and Toni or Kevin and Josie, but there was a crack there. Something had happened. Something had created a fissure that then turned into a ravine overnight. In Veronica’s opinion, something had changed the moment Jughead had climbed a ladder up into Betty’s room and kissed her, but she keeps that to herself.

And then one day, three weeks before their senior year starts, Veronica gets out of a movie to find a text from Betty that says, Can you come over?

This is how she ends up in the pink paradise of Betty Cooper’s childhood bedroom at midnight, wiping away the tears off of Betty’s flushed cheeks. 

Betty’s eyes are swollen and puffy along with the rest of her face, and they’ve been sitting in this room for hours. Betty has gone back and forth between sobbing so hard she can’t catch her breath and laying silent, staring up at her ceiling with red eyes.

Currently she’s doing the latter, her chest rising slowly with breath, hitching every so often. Veronica holds her hand, rubbing her knuckles with the soft swipe of her thumb, and watches as Betty’s shoulders give out the last shakes from her sobs, like aftershocks from an earthquake.

The open window of Betty’s room lets in the hum of cicadas and the humid night air, reminding them that summer’s not quite gone yet. Beside this, the only thing that interrupts their silence is Betty’s heavy breathing and the occasional rummage from downstairs, where Alice must be washing dishes. The silence between them seems to stretch on for an eternity, which is why Veronica startles when Betty speaks.

She whispers to the ceiling, her voice hoarse, “I feel like all my emotions are made of jelly.” Then she looks up at Veronica with glossy eyes. “It’s so stupid, but... I feel like I don’t know who I am.”

Veronica looks down at Betty. Her eyelashes are clumped together and she has black mascara smudged all under her eyes. Her cheeks are flushed pink toward the jaw and her lips are red-bitten and bright in contrast to her skin.

Veronica’s brain goes fuzzy all of a sudden, looking down at Betty like that, and the only thought Veronica has is: she looks beautiful, even like this.  

She recognizes that it’s a cruel thought to have right as Betty’s in the breakdown of the century, but Veronica just can’t help but look at her and be struck dizzy by her beauty. For a fleeting moment she feels fifteen again, like she’s just walked into the neon lights of Pop’s for the first time to find Betty and Archie in a booth there, both of them watching her with wide eyes.

Betty’s watching her with wide eyes now. Her pupils dance back and forth across Veronica’s face, and Veronica realizes that Betty’s waiting for her to say something.

Her hands go up to cradle Betty’s face before she can think too much about it. Betty’s cheeks are warm to the touch and still slightly damp from where all her tears have been wiped away.

“You’re Betty Cooper,” Veronica tells her, looking down into her green eyes, “You’re my best friend and the kindest person I know. You’re the editor-in-chief of the Blue and Gold and a River Vixen. You’re a daughter and a sister and a good person.”

Veronica can’t help but hear her own voice echo back best friend like it’s a lie. She can’t help but think the term best friend belongs to Archie these days, even if that relationship, too, is complicated. Veronica thinks about how this is the first time she’s been in Betty’s room in months, so many months she can’t count them exactly. Veronica thinks about the gaps in between them, their friendship, and the people they used to be.

Then Betty’s eyes soften, and she looks up at Veronica like Veronica might be an angel dropped down from heaven. In that moment, Veronica doesn’t feel like it matters anymore. She’ll think about it later.

Right now, she holds onto Betty by the torso and listens to the way Betty presses her cheek against Veronica’s shoulder and lets out a sigh. For right now, it feels like enough.

The night before school starts finds Veronica sitting in Archie’s bed, thinking about how nice her recently-shaved legs feel against his sheets. She moves her calves back and forth, feeling luxurious, silky, and smooth, as Archie laughs at her.

“What are you doing?” He asks. His face is goofily amused.

He’s shirtless and aimlessly plucking the strings of his guitar, perched on his desk chair. His hair is not styled and instead all mussed up, going in several different directions. It makes him look soft and worn down. Veronica constantly tells him he looks cuter this way, but he always ignores her in favor of slapping a handful of gel in his hair.

Veronica just smiles up at him, and goes to check the time on her phone. It’s almost eight. She figures her mother’s dinner party might be over by now and that she could easily slip into her room without being caught up by the wealthy men her mayoral mother is trying to get money out of.

Veronica drops her phone onto the bed and wraps her arms around herself, hearing Archie play a little twangy tune. The sky outside is slowly getting darker, and Veronica thinks about the fact that she’ll have to plan an outfit for school tomorrow. The last day of summer is leaving a bad taste in her tongue and a knot low in her stomach. Both are things she can’t seem to ignore.

She looks away at the window and back at the boy in front of her. Just as Veronica opens her mouth to tell Archie that she should probably get home, he looks up at her from under his tangled hair and asks, “How’s Betty doing?”

The question catches Veronica off guard for a moment. She sighs before she can stop herself, and idly thinks about how she thought that Archie’s room was the one place she could be where she didn’t have to talk about Betty and Jughead’s breakup, which is the only thing she’s seemed to talk about with anyone for the past three weeks.

“She’s… fine.” Veronica tells him and then shrugs, “I mean, you know. It’s hard for her. How’s Jughead?”

Archie bites his bottom lip in thought. “He’s not good, but he’s dealing.”

Veronica nods. “Yeah. They both are.”

She’s hoping the conversation will trail off at that point, because what can they say, anyway? They both know the circumstances. They both know that this will just be something that everyone will have to wait out.

But Archie, of course, doesn’t stop there. He sighs as he looks down at his hands on the guitar and remarks to her, “They really loved each other, you know?” like he’s some old poet who has the heavy burden of musing on lost lovers and romance.

Veronica can’t help how the sentence makes her laugh. Archie looks up at her in surprise and she stares at him with her jaw set, something terrible bubbling up in her chest. “Arch, they’ve been running themselves into the ground for weeks.” She says, one eyebrow raising up like it’s daring him to defy.

Archie frowns. “Veronica…” He says, like it’s a warning.

His tone makes her scoff before she can think to stop herself. “Don’t give me that. Do you remember what you said a couple months ago? How we all went to Pop’s and afterwards you drove me home and said, ‘God, Ronnie, all they ever seem to do is make each other sadder.’” She spits at him, her voice filled to the brim with venom and bitterness. Bitter, bitter, bitter.

Archie splutters in surprise at her ferocity, “Well – I mean – that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been hard for them. That doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. That doesn’t mean it’s not a shame, Veronica.”

Veronica feels the anger in her chest that she can’t quite identify rise up to a boil. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m – I’m saying – ”

She wants to yell at him, If they wanted to explode, they could have at least had the decency to do it after we all graduated, or, We had to put up with their lovey dovey bullshit for two whole years, Archie, and what did we get in return? A shattered friend group? or, It feels like my best friend only wants to be my best friend now that her boyfriend broke up with her.

Most of all, some part of her – some bitter, terrible part of her that is left over from who she was at fifteen – wants to say, I had to watch Jughead Jones and Betty Cooper fall in love and ruin my life, just to ruin it all over again when they broke up. I would have loved her more. This would never have happened if it was me. I would have loved her more.

But she knows, she knows, that all of her thoughts are unfair and selfish. She’s had enough tearful phone calls with Betty in the past few days to know how hard it’s been for her, and she can’t imagine how torn up Jughead must be inside. Despite everything, Veronica knows they loved each other, and Veronica loves them, even if they have all grown apart and even if it hurts more than it’s worth sometimes. It breaks her heart to know that Jughead will never talk to her about what he’s going through and it breaks her heart that she has to watch Betty tear herself to pieces, but she’s just – she’s angry.

She curls her nails into her hands, hard, like Betty always used to, like she saw Betty do yesterday in the middle of a breakdown. She closes her eyes and lets out a breath, and when she opens them, she finds Archie watching her with an expression that carries too much judgement for her to bear at the moment.

They stare at each other for a second. Archie’s hands have stilled on the strings of his guitar and Veronica is sitting in his bed as still as a statue, wrapped around herself as though she could make herself any smaller.

Veronica thinks about it then. About opening her mouth and telling Archie every secret she kept to herself, every fantasy she had about kissing Betty and blonde hair under a white veil, as though to say, See, see? Don’t you understand me now? Don’t you understand why I’m like this?  Then she’d ask him about Jughead too, and tell him about every little loving glance Archie threw at Jughead that Veronica noticed all too much. She’d say, We’re two sides of the same sad coin.

But she closes her mouth instead and her teeth make a sharp clink. She suddenly feels exhausted by the thought.  

Archie breathes through his nose and gets up from his chair, leaning his guitar against the desk. When he sits on the edge of the bed and takes Veronica’s hands into his own, the mattress dips under him. “This Jughead and Betty stuff is bigger than the two of us, Ronnie. It’s not something we can touch.” He says quietly.

“Yeah,” Veronica mumbles and uncurls her body from herself, “I’m just having a moment. Ignore me. You’re right, all we can do is be there for them.” The words don’t settle perfectly on her tongue, but she wants to get this conversation over with.

He smiles at her then, a good, old Archie smile that she can’t help but smile back at. Her hands feel small in his palms like they always do, and when he leans into kiss her, something at the bottom of her stomach turns uneasy like it always does.

Veronica ignores it, like she always does, and surges up to kiss him back instead.

At exactly seven the next morning, Betty pulls up in front of the Pembrooke in Alice’s old minivan. It’s baby blue and certainly dented, but ever since Betty got her license last year it’s the only thing Alice will let her drive. 

Veronica hops into the passenger side with ease, a thermos full of coffee cradled against her chest. It takes her a moment to notice the way that Betty’s looking at her frantically.

Betty stares at her and says, “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

Betty hasn’t changed that much in appearance since Veronica met her, but she’s changed enough. She lets her hair down more often these days, she wears less peter pan collars and more shirts half-tucked into flowy pants. Sometimes there are days where she will pick Veronica up with bright pink sparkles on her eyelids and a bold lip and other days she just shows up with her glowy complexion. Mostly though, her face has remained the same. Her cheeks still flush pink at just about anything and she still has the last of her baby fat rounding out her face.

But when she looks at Veronica then with startled, puffy eyes and purple eye bags that are so big they have a life of their own, Veronica is suddenly reminded of the fifteen year old Betty she met. The Betty that was starry-eyed in a Vixen’s uniform, the Betty that turned distressed and inconsolable at all of the heavy weight that fell upon her shoulders during sophomore year.

Veronica wants to lean across the console and shake her, say stop it, stop it, – or maybe shake herself for seeing so many ghosts of the past – but she doesn’t. Veronica gives her an easy smile instead and drops a hand on Betty’s arm to offer a squeeze of support. “Elizabeth Cooper, I have watched you stand in the face of psychological torture and weird step-brothers. An ex-boyfriend is a small bump in the road.”

It doesn’t seem to ease Betty’s anxieties that much, but it does rouse a small smile out of her for a moment. Veronica carries the conversation on the drive to school and rubs Betty’s back when they get out of the car. She doesn’t think much of it and pulls away after a second, only to watch Betty’s face fall, her eyes tracking the movement of Veronica’s hand returning back to her side. She doesn’t say anything, but when Veronica returns her hand steadily at the small of Betty’s back as a warm comfort all the way into the doors of school, Betty doesn’t seem to mind.

When Betty comes to a full stop in the middle of the hallway after making eye contact with no other than a Jughead Jones in their path, Veronica just pushes Betty through the crowds of students with determination. As they pass, Veronica throws a smile at Jughead, who looks back at her like a deer in headlights, and then one to Archie, who’s standing right next to Jughead at his locker. Archie gives a nod and a smile back when their eyes meet. He has a hand on Jughead’s shoulder and looks a little tired.

Two sides of the same sad, stupid coin.

The first month of school goes by without much incident. 

Veronica finds senior year to be much easier than the rest of high school had been, but also she suspects that is because this year is the only year where Riverdale hasn’t been in some type of peril. When summer came, they all held their breath as no one was murdered, Veronica’s dad went to jail for good this time, Jughead finally got control over the Serpents, and everything seemed to settle, almost like it was giving room for the catalyst of Betty and Jughead to happen.

Some things are messy. The only time Veronica sees Archie anymore is outside of school, and they don’t do much talking then. Beside that he is always at the far end of the hallway, laughing at Jughead’s side. Betty and Jughead refuse to make eye contact when they’re in a room together, which makes for some very awkward Blue and Gold meetings, as Kevin tells Veronica.

And Jughead – Veronica has barely any contact with Jughead. She understands that suddenly the distinct sides that had been drawn between their friend group have quietly switched members: Veronica now belongs to Betty and Archie now belongs to Jughead. The lack of contact does get to her more than she thought it might, though. Despite Veronica’s own reservations with his and Betty’s relationships, she’d felt like she and Jughead had built up a solid dynamic, especially once Veronica finally distanced herself from her Dad. It feels weird to have to chuck it away all at once.

On the other hand, Veronica and Betty spend more time together than they have for – well – a really long time. If Betty’s not texting her, then Betty’s right beside her, and the only time Betty’s not doing either of these things is when she’s sleeping.

This sounds like a good thing, and Veronica thinks that, in theory, it is and that it can be, but Betty seems to need Veronica like a flower needs sunshine. Veronica, who, for the past year or so, rarely saw Betty without Jughead by her side, is now needed twenty-four seven by a girl who doesn’t seem to notice that anything about their friendship has changed. Sometimes, when Betty and Veronica will be studying or eating lunch, Veronica wonders if it’s her Betty really needs, or if it’s just someone Betty needs.

Once, as they’re waiting by Betty’s locker in between class, Veronica looks at Betty as she talks angrily about the last Blue and Gold meeting and some passive aggressive remark she thought Jughead made against her, and Veronica suddenly feels empty. She feels like a vessel for Betty to talk at. She feels replaceable.

She thinks about the last time Betty asked her how her day was and can’t remember. She thinks about the last time they had a conversation that didn’t somehow turn into talking about Jughead and can’t remember.

Then Betty turns to her and gives her a smile and Veronica melts, of course, like she always has and always will. Betty reaches across to her and intertwines their hands together, making warmth shoot up Veronica’s arm, and she feels solid again. The fifteen year old Veronica in her chest softens and says, This is all you ever wanted, and just like that, she forgives Betty for everything.

Now that Hermione Lodge is the mayor of Riverdale, she doesn’t have as much time for her daughter. Hermione finds mother-daughter bonding moments in the small opportunities she has. This particular moment is taking place during dinner. 

Dinner tonight is a sad salad that’s been in the fridge for a week with some chicken Veronica reheated, but it’s better than nothing. As Veronica crunches on a particularly hard crouton, she idly thinks about how she misses the cooked meals of her childhood, the image of her mother and abuelita smiling in the kitchen, their hands messy but passionately making something.

It’s a different sight now to see her mother looking over pages and pages of paperwork with a scrutinized gaze, one hand with a ballpoint pen and the other with a fork and salad. Veronica supposes this is better than what it was like before, though, when her father was around. So she’ll take old salad and a mom who does more paperwork than sleeps.

Hermione does heave a big sigh about ten minutes into their meal, though. She drops the papers onto the cherry wood table and slides her glasses off of her face. She massages the bridge of her nose for a moment, before she sits upright again, takes a stab at her salad, and looks up at Veronica.

“I’m so sorry for doing work at the dinner table.” Hermione comments, frowning.

Veronica crunches loudly on her croutons. “It’s fine, Mom. I really don’t mind." 

Hermione only hums. Another stab into the salad. “How have you been? We haven’t even talked about school that much yet. How’s it been going? And college apps?”

The mention of college apps makes Veronica’s stomach drop.

“Well,” Veronica says, “School’s been fine. It’s been good, actually. It’s pretty easy... River Vixen practice is the same as ever and my AP classes aren’t too hard yet, and well… yeah.”

Her mother keeps looking at her. “And college apps?” She repeats. “Have you met with your school counselor about your application for Columbia?”

Veronica tries to think quickly of a lie, something that will placate her mother in her procrastination. “Well, –” Veronica starts, but is abruptly interrupted by the sound of her phone going off.

Her mother gives her a wave, telling her it’s alright to answer it, and Veronica gets up quickly to see who might be calling. She looks down to find her phone buzzing urgently up at her with a photo of Betty at Pop’s and the contact name B❤️.

Veronica answers it immediately. “Betty?” She inquires.

“Veronica,” Betty seems to gasp out, and then she hiccups, “Veronica, can you – can you come get me?”

Veronica’s mind immediately blanks. “Uh – what? What do you mean? Betty, are you okay?”

On the other end, Betty is breathing heavily, and Veronica can hear her faint crying underneath it. “I’m – yeah, I’m – I mean –” She lets out a horrendous sob and then regains her breath, “I’m safe. I’m just – can you come get me?”

Something about the words makes Veronica kick into gear. Immediately she’s stomping into her room, searching for a pair of shoes and saying to Betty on the phone, “Where are you?”

“I’m stopped on the side of the road,” Betty says, “I’m near the bus station that’s right off of the exit you take to go to Pop’s.”

“Okay, um,” Veronica says as she dawdles finding her keys and wallet. She waves off her mother’s worried gaze and mouths, I’ll be home soon, before she exits out the door. “Okay, Betty I’ll be there in like, ten minutes. Will you be okay?”

Betty squeezes out a loud breath before she speaks. Veronica would call it a sigh if it had any sign of relief in it. “Yeah,” she says.

Thanks to Veronica sweetly coaxing Smithers to speed, they get there in eight minutes. They spot the Cooper minivan pulled onto the shoulder of the road, looking ominous in the dark night of Riverdale, and Smither’s pulls their town car right behind it. Veronica does not waste a single moment before she’s practically leaping out of the car, scurrying to Betty’s side door. 

What she sees through the window is a Betty Cooper completely frozen at the wheel. She’s slightly hunched over, her whole body tense, her knuckles so tight around the wheel that they’ve gone white. Veronica knocks lightly on the driver window and Betty’s head swivels around to meet her immediately, her eyes wide like an owl. When she sees that it’s Veronica, she relaxes only a fraction.

As soon as Veronica hears the click of the driver door unlocking, she tugs it open.

“Betty,” Veronica says, suddenly out of breath from adrenaline and anxiety, “Did something happen?”

Betty’s eyes start to water. Her face crumples.

“I thought I saw him,” she says, her voice raspy and unused, “The Black Hood. I thought I saw him.”

She all but breaks into sobs as she removes her grasp on the wheel and falls into Veronica’s arms. It’s quite an uncomfortable position, with Betty still buckled into her seat, giving her limited motion, but she manages to bury her face in Veronica’s shoulder and wrap her arms around Veronica’s neck. She cries uncontrollably, sniffling every once in a while, and Veronica stands there in the cold night chill and rubs her back.

“I know,” Betty says, muffled into the fabric on Veronica’s shoulder, “I know he’s in prison and I know he’ll never see the light of day again, but sometimes – sometimes I think I see him out of the corner of my eye or on the side of the road at night. Or sometimes when my phone rings I –” Betty shivers in between her sobs.

Veronica looks back at Smithers, who is waiting patiently in the town car for her and looking terribly worried. With the hand that’s not rubbing circles up and down Betty’s back, Veronica waves him off and mouths overtop of Betty’s head, Go, I’ll be fine. I’ll take her home.

Although he looks rather reluctant, Smithers slowly turns the wheel and drives off, the sound of tires against asphalt fading away in the distance.

Veronica turns her attention back to Betty and makes soothing sounds into her ear. “You’re safe now and everything"s alright. Nobody like that will ever hurt you again. You’re safe, your mom is safe, I’m safe, Archie’s safe, Jughead’s safe… everyone is okay. Riverdale is okay. Your father is locked up miles and miles away from here, and he is never coming back.”

Betty weakly nods against Veronica’s shoulder. Her cries have quieted, although she’s back to hiccuping and broken breaths.

Veronica places a hand gently against her jaw and pulls her back until they’re face to face and the seat belt isn’t straining so much against Betty’s torso or cutting a sharp red line into her neck. Veronica smiles at her, one that can’t help but look worried and warm at the same time.

Betty sniffs up at her. Her nose and cheeks are bitten red, and her eyes are puffy. It’s a very similar scene to Betty in her bedroom all those weeks ago after the breakup, and also entirely different. Something about this breakdown is much less cathartic and makes Betty go rigid. Even though the cold air surrounds them, Veronica can see that Betty’s sweat through the t-shirt she’s wearing.

Betty looks up at her with scared eyes, and just says, sadly, “Veronica…”

Veronica moves a hand up to smooth back some of the stray hairs that have flung free from Betty’s ponytail while her other hand is still at the base of Betty’s jaw, feeling the warmth of her flushed cheek and her thumb softly stroking the skin there.

She should stop herself from doing it, but she leans her forehead against Betty’s for a moment. She watches Betty’s eyes immediately flutter close. Her eyelashes are so long that for a moment Veronica’s convinced she felt them brush against her cheeks as they closed.

As Betty’s breath evens out, Veronica tells her, “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

After she helps Betty get into the passenger seat, Veronica hesitantly slides into the driver’s side and places her hands on the wheel. She has a series of brief thoughts before she starts the car that go as follows:

1) Veronica does not have a driver’s license and it would be terribly embarrassing and bad if Sheriff Keller or one of his deputies pulled her over as she drove Betty home. (Even though she hopes the Sheriff would be kind, considering the situation.)

2) Veronica has driven a car maybe… three times? And none of them were a minivan like this, so she very much hopes they won’t die.

3) For some reason, she’s convinced she can still feel the warmth of Betty’s forehead touching hers, and the weight of Betty’s jaw in her palm, which makes her feel all kinds of ridiculous. She thinks about how close their faces were and freaks out for a moment. Something inside of her chest screams, Why did you do that? Why would you ever do that?

She ignores it in favor of sparing a glance over at Betty, who is curled up in the passenger seat with her eyes closed like she’s trying to focus on breathing. Veronica clicks on the radio before starting the slow drive to suburbia.

Alice is out for the night – working late at the Register, as Betty tells her – so they have the house to themselves. Betty sits wrapped up in a blanket at her kitchen table as Veronica putters around the kitchen, heating up a container of old tomato soup she found in the pantry. 

While the microwave is going, Veronica takes a moment to survey the dark and empty scenery of the Cooper household. She suddenly remembers coming to visit for the first time and the amazement she felt at Betty’s life. The house seemed so… so full of family, whether they were happy or not. It seemed lived-in and whole, like a well cared for and often played with dollhouse. It was such a stark comparison to Veronica’s lonely life with her mom and Smithers, the threat of her father’s return hovering above her like a weight that was always about to drop.

Now the Cooper household just seems sad and broken. The remnant of what once was or what could have been.

Veronica doesn’t have more time to think as the microwave beeps and Veronica transfers a steaming hot container of soup to Betty at the table.

Betty looks better than she did and she’s certainly calmer, but something about her is still shook up. Veronica sits next to her as she slowly sips on spoonful after spoonful of tomato soup and nothing much happens.

After a while, Betty leaves her spoon in the half-eaten bowl and looks down at the table. Veronica raises an eyebrow at her, but is met with silence.

Until Betty finally speaks up and says meekly, “I’m sorry.”

Veronica blinks in surprise. “What?” She asks, confused, “Why?” She reaches a hand out and puts it on top of Betty’s.

Betty looks up at her. She looks so, so tired. Veronica wonders if she’s been sleeping better this past year.

“I just feel bad,” Betty comments, “That I made you drop everything on a Tuesday night to come and take care of me over something stupid that wasn’t even real –”

“Betty…” Veronica says, frowning.

But Betty keeps going. “I –” She starts, and then abruptly looks down at the table. “Jughead used to do this. I used to call him when things like this would happen and he would come find me. But, well, I can’t really do that now.” She lets out a sad, watery laugh. “I thought about calling Archie, because he would understand all of this better than anyone else, but I don’t think – I don’t think he’s ready to talk about it yet.”

Veronica frowns even more. “I – that must be really lonely.” She squeezes Betty’s hand in support.

Betty looks up at her again. Her eyes seem so green under her lashes. “I’m just really sorry.”

Veronica scoots her chair close enough to put her arm around Betty’s shoulders. “Hey, it’s really okay. Don’t apologize for things like this.” She says, trying to give Betty her full attention, but truthfully, Veronica’s brain is running a mile a minute with the words, Jughead used to do this. I used to call him, swirling around her head.

She hadn’t known this was a regular thing. She hadn’t known that these things still haunted Betty this badly. She hadn’t known.

Something about this realization makes bile swirl at the pit of her stomach, and she feels like a stranger invading Betty’s life at that moment. Veronica wonders how you can feel so far away from someone when you’re sitting so close to them. She thinks about all the things Betty kept secret, only for Jughead to know, and she just feels upset. Upset at herself, upset at the cards they were dealt, upset at the residual pain Betty has to deal with, and – rather unfairly – upset at Betty and Jughead, because of course she is. She’s Veronica and she’s selfish, so of course she is.

Betty leans her head against Veronica’s shoulder and then scoots closer to her, until she can wraps her own arms around Veronica’s torso and turn it into a hug. She feels very warm against Veronica.

Veronica sighs directly into Betty’s ear. “You should go to sleep.”

She feels Betty tense up for a quick moment, before her voice quietly asks, “Will you stay?”

It’s Veronica’s turn to freeze. She stays silent for a moment, even though she knows what her answer will be. “Of course.” Veronica tells her after a beat.

Upstairs in the bedroom, when Betty changes into her soft pajama pants, Veronica looks away. Betty throws her an old t-shirt and shorts for her to sleep in, and as Veronica’s slipping them on in the bathroom, she’s suddenly met with smell of Betty in the cotton. It throws her off guard for a moment. She blinks at herself in the bathroom mirror. What’s wrong with you? she thinks to her reflection.

When she tiptoes back into the bedroom, Betty’s already comfortably under the covers. She looks like a cocooned caterpillar or maybe a bedding burrito with her whole body consumed by the covers and only her head popping out. The sight makes Veronica laugh immediately, and Betty smiles back at her. Her lips are glossy with lip balm. It’s the first real smile of the night and it’s a stunner.

Veronica slips into the other side of the bed carefully and stays respectfully on her side of the bed. It takes only a few seconds before hands are suddenly at her waist and she’s being dragged across the bed, Betty scoffing in the background.

“What are you doing?” Betty asks her, looking at her with both amusement and confusion, “I miss cuddling.” Her voice still sounds a little congested from crying.

Veronica just rolls her eyes, which is the only thing she can think to do at that moment when her thoughts are preoccupied with the feeling of Betty’s hands on her hips. Betty smiles at her again, this time smaller, and settles her face into the crook of Veronica’s neck. Betty seems mostly herself again, distracted from the bad thoughts of past ghosts, which is a relief.

Her lips brush unexpectedly Veronica’s neck for a quick moment and Veronica just freezes in place. Veronica takes a big deep breath in, thinking wildly to herself, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?, and then Betty does it again and all Veronica can think about is the feeling of Betty’s lips on her neck, the idea of them kissing columns up and down her skin.

Veronica, who can’t seem to control her body or her mind, gives a sharp intake of breath at the thought and accidentally squeezes Betty on the forearm, where Veronica had been resting her hand. Betty immediately lifts her head up and looks at Veronica with a slightly concerned face.

“Are you okay?” Betty asks in the dark, her eyebrows knit together.

The little moonlight that’s streaming through Betty’s window is enough to illuminate some of the features on Betty’s face and turn strands of her hair silver.

“Oh, what?” Veronica asks, trying to sound innocently inconspicuous and not like her body and its insides are burning for no reason besides that a girl touched her.

Betty looks at her for the briefest moment before shifting back down onto the bed, this time directly behind Veronica. She pushes at Veronica’s side a little bit. “Budge up, Lodge.” Betty remarks, “I want to be the big spoon.”

The comment makes Veronica snort, but she shifts onto her side. “What, did Jughead never let you cradle him?” It occurs to her right after that maybe it’s still to early to be making jokes about Jughead, but Betty doesn’t seem to mind.

She feels Betty snake her arms around her waist and then settle comfortably behind her. Betty"s nose nudges the back of Veronica’s head for a moment as she settles. “Sadly not. Something about his ‘fragile masculinity’ apparently.”

It makes Veronica give a little laugh.

They lay in silence for a few minutes, Veronica warmly drifting off into a near sleep. She feels more than hears Betty breathing behind her, her soft sighs that play with the hair on the back of Veronica’s head, the ever-so slight shifting of her torso against Veronica’s back as she inhales and exhales, the weight of her arms settling heavier and heavier across Veronica’s hips as she gets closer to sleep.

Veronica almost doesn’t notice when Betty speaks, drowsily, into the air of the bedroom, “I missed this.”

Veronica’s head wants to say many things, but her mouth can’t keep up. Then suddenly, her eyes are closed and she’s asleep, Betty quickly following suit next to her.

They accidentally sleep in by twenty minutes the next morning, and Veronica bursts into her first period class with a minute to spare, her hair probably in disarray, and one of Betty’s shirts still securely on her torso because she didn’t have time to find something better. Jughead, who happens to be in her first period class and sits all the way in the back corner, looks up at her arrival with mild interest. Veronica can’t help but think that she notices the way his eyes linger on Betty’s shirt. 

She thinks about it the rest of the day, sickly and selfishly smug. She’s not really sure why. What would he think, anyway? That she and Betty are –

Well.

Veronica can visualize it in her mind, but she can’t bring herself to think of it in concrete words. She thinks of her crush on Betty in sophomore year and she thinks of when they kissed. She thinks of watching Jughead walk into Pop’s with his Serpent jacket on for the first time and the sense of unease that set itself in stone in her chest as she studied the way he and Betty held hands. Betty’s pink shirt with the lovely cream collar had seemed so bright against his black leather jacket, but Veronica kept her mouth shut. She thinks of the anger coiled in the bottom of her stomach that sat there festering for years at the sight of Betty and Jughead together.

These all mean something when put together, she knows, and she knows, she knows what it means.

But she just can’t bring herself to think of it in concrete words.

The thoughts don’t leave her head, so she turns to her best distraction: Archibald Andrews.

She invites him over to the Pembrooke on a night where her mom’s not home, and they finish their homework as they watch old reruns on TV. His presence is comforting to Veronica in a way that she’d forgotten she missed, and their back and forth is natural. Veronica doesn’t have to think about anything with him, she just does.

Even though Betty and her have gotten back to a stable relationship, something that mimics what they had before, Veronica still feels constantly on guard around her. It’s a combination of everything: the thoughts Veronica has about Betty that she’d surely like to drown and the ghost of their distance still haunting everything they have now.

She doesn’t have that with Archie; he was there through it all. While Jughead was kissing the scars on Betty’s hands in his trailer down south, Archie and Veronica were singing to songs loudly on the radio in Fred"s old truck. While Veronica’s dad was in trouble once again and threatening the stability of Veronica’s life, Archie let her live with him. He’s got his problems, but Veronica knows through and through that he’s a good kid, and that he’s always been good to her.

Archie sighs and puts his pencil down. He’d been scribbling in the margins of his lined paper for the past five minutes in favor of doing work. He runs his hands through his hair, frustrated. The glow of the fire reflects back on his face, making his hair seem a much brighter red than it actually is.

“What’s up, Archiekins?” Veronica asks, her hands stilled on the keyboard of her laptop.

“My dad was just on me about college applications today, and I can’t stop thinking about it.” He says, sighing again.

Veronica shares his sentiments. She thinks about all the deadlines swimming in the back of her head, all of the half-finished essay and questionnaires she has yet to fill out, and all of the repressed fears she has about the future and it’s anonymity.

It’s Veronica’s turn to sigh. She pushes her computer and sits up. Archie looks at her, watching her move, and when their eyes meet, Veronica does the first thing she thinks of. She puts on a smile in an attempt to be seductive and leans closer to him, her eyes trained on his lips. “Well, I can think of something to take it off your mind.”

As the words come out of her mouth, Veronica internally cringes. She feels like a poor imitation of herself, but Archie eats it up. He meets her in the middle, his teeth roughly clashing against her upper lip and then in the next second they’re kissing, his top is off and Archie’s hands are fumbling with the zipper of her shorts.

The knot in the bottom of her stomach that always forms when she and Archie do this is brightly there. Veronica barrels through it and distracts herself, as she often does, by thinking strategically. She’ll bite Archie’s bottom lip with a little bit of force, he’ll unzip her pants quickly and not even take them off before he slides his hand into them, she’ll moan a little loudly to encourage him to go on, and then she’ll kiss and bite at the soft skin of his neck and up until his jaw, where the tiniest bit of stubble is.

Veronica executes these moves with success, detached from the situation, and after they’re done, when they’re lying side by side on the carpet in front of the fireplace both breathing heavily, Veronica will feel the blooming emptiness inside of her chest. She’ll blink away the tears that threaten to sting her eyes and breathe through it, thinking idly of all those Cosmopolitan articles she read at thirteen about women who cry after sex and think, This feels different than that.

“Ronnie, are you okay?” Archie asks from her side. He extends his hand to touch her on the shoulder.

Veronica flinches on instinct, but it’s small enough for her to conceal. She turns to look at him and finds Archie staring back at her with his bushy eyebrows screwed up in concern. Something in her heart eases at the sight of his face. It’s just Archie, she reminds herself, it’s just your best friend. She blinks then, and feels ridiculous for feeling whatever it was she felt just moments before.

As she takes Archie down to his car that night, the cold bites at them. It’s finally October and winter is starting to set in, little by little. Tonight"s a chilly night, and Veronica snuggles up in her winter coat for warmth as she walks Archie out of the Pembrooke lobby. They look up at the dark night sky and Archie yawns, causing a warm puff of air to be visible in the sky. 

“Look at that.” Archie says, laughing like a little boy, and then he turns to Veronica, “When it starts snowing, we should go outside and make snowmen.”

Archie’s frank giddiness eases the lingering tension in Veronica’s stomach. She rolls her eyes at him. “Hanging out with you is like babysitting a five year old.”

He looks down at her, his expression full of offense, and he swats at her playfully. She dodges his blows and laughs just as they hear an, “Oh,” from in front of them.

They turn to find Betty. Her face is flushed pink from the cold and her hands are stuck firmly in her pockets. She’s watching them with an expression on her face that seems both surprised and sad. The sight of her makes Veronica’s stomach drop in a mixture of pleasure and fear. Pleasure because for a moment all Veronica can think is how beautiful Betty looks, and fear because the whole scene seems wrong. A tapeworm is in her stomach and is steadily growing bigger, eating up all of her insides.

Betty smiles at them, but it’s rough around the edges. She looks at Veronica. “Sorry, I just – got bored and thought I might come over. I was just about to text you.” Her eyes flick over to Archie, unsure, and Veronica watches as her gaze instantly falls on a hickey on his neck. It’s freshly bruised purple and pink.

Veronica immediately extracts herself from Archie’s side and goes to wrap her arms around Betty. “Oh please! You always know you’re welcome.” Her cheek is smushing against the top of Betty’s shoulder, and she knows her voice is frantically high as she tries to compensate for the situation. “I was just walking Archie to his car, but then we can go back up and make hot chocolate and s’mores or something!”

When she pulls back from the hug, Betty’s smile seems warmer, but her gaze keeps flicking between the two of them warily. “I’d love that, V. Here, I’ll go wait in the lobby.” She waves a hand at Archie and starts moving inside. “See you at school tomorrow, Arch.”

She’s already gone through the lobby doors before Veronica can protest that there’s no reason for her to leave. Veronica watches her figure disappear and sighs, her whole body deflating.

Archie looks at her with a bemused expression and scratches the back of head. “Is she alright?” He asks.

She turns back to him and sighs. She then pats his cheek playfully. “Oh, Archiekins, you know how it is. There’s nothing that can’t be fixed with fancy hot chocolate and s’mores.”

This only causes Archie to frown. “Are you alright?”

Veronica smiles at him automatically, like there are mechanical gears in her face. “Of course.”

“Well, call me if you or Betty need anything, alright?”

“Alright.”

“See ya, Ronnie."

Upstairs, the Pembrooke is silent except for the crackling fire in the living room. Veronica unzips her fur coat and looks at Betty doing the same with her winter clothing. Betty is heaving off the fluffy winter jacket wrapped around herself, and Veronica can see rolled up fuzzy socks over the top of Betty’s boots. A silence wraps in between them that makes Veronica’s stomach tense. She tries to think of something to say as she walks into her kitchen and gets down two mugs: a baby blue one for herself and a matching baby pink one for Betty. Betty had gotten them as a Christmas gift for Veronica last year, but this was the first time they were actually using them.

Veronica busies herself with getting out milk, chocolate, and marshmallows as Betty walks over to join her. Immediately upon entry, Betty clears her throat.

“So…” She starts with a raised eyebrow, “You and Archie…?”

Veronica thinks about how much she doesn’t want to have this conversation and she accidentally spills a little bit of milk outside of the cup. “Yes?” Veronica asks, finally looking up.

Betty stares at her with her big-eyed expression that says, Well, you tell me.

Veronica sighs and puts the milk down. “Betty, you know that Archie and I have been broken up for well over a year now.”

Betty’s one eyebrow goes up even higher. “But you’re still sleeping together.”

Although the statement makes Veronica grimace, she holds her own. “You knew that, too.” She responds.

Betty sighs, frustrated. “I mean, I guess. I didn’t really know it was still going on.” There’s a beat where Betty purses her lips together and just looks at Veronica. “Is that a good idea for you two?”

It makes Veronica want to scream . Betty sounds exactly like her mother: snooty, disapproving, and absolutely patronizing. She wants to ask Betty what she would even know about Veronica and Archie, much less their weird friends-with-benefits relationship. Veronica knows that maybe it is bad, maybe this thing with Archie freaks her out more than she will ever admit, but she sure as hell won’t let Betty waltz back into her life to turn around and criticize her, even if it is the truth.

Veronica keeps her cool, though, curling her palms around the edge of her marble counter, and simply says, “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Her voice is sharp though, and it’s not hard to miss.

Betty doesn’t let the topic go. “I thought you guys stopped that – I don’t know – at the beginning of summer when Archie became re-infatuated with Valerie.”

Veronica stares at her. “It did. For a while.”

“When did it start up again? I didn’t even notice.”

Something about it breaks her. Veronica can’t stop herself from saying, “Yeah, well, maybe you were distracted with other things.” She knows that it’s a cheap shot.

The silence that occurs is deafening. Veronica closes her eyes and sighs softly at herself. She opens her eyes, fully ready to apologize or at least say something, but Betty’s staring at her with the most astounded face Veronica has ever seen on her.

“What does – what is that supposed to mean?” Betty asks. Her cheeks are still as pink as they were outside, and with that plus her angry expression, she looks like a little smurf.

Veronica scrubs a hand down her face. “I don’t know. It’s fine. Let’s not –”

“Is this about Jughead? Or is this about me breaking up with Jughead?”

Veronica looks across the island at Betty. She starts, “Betty –”

But Betty’s worked up now. “I know you always hated Jughead and I together. I could always see that – everyone could always see that, Veronica – but now that we’re broken up it’s like you hate it – us, me – even more.”

Something about the knowledge that Betty has awareness of the way Veronica’s acted makes her vulnerable, even though she knows Betty doesn’t know the source of the problem. It makes her feel like she’s been stripped, layer by layer, until Betty’s gotten to her red, plush insides to find all her insecurities there.

There is so much Veronica could say to her, so many scathing things she could yell across her kitchen until it killed Betty. Fifteen year old Veronica is absolutely fuming with her hands on her hips and her glossy, acrylic nails ready to act like claws.

But that’s not Veronica anymore, so she looks at Betty directly in the eyes and, as calmly as she can, asks, “Before you and Jughead broke up, when was the last time we hung out, just you and me, for more than like an hour?”

The question seems to halt Betty. Her face that was just screwed up in anger now creeps into confusion. “Veronica, I don’t know. Why would I –”

“Betty, I don’t know either. I can’t remember either.” Veronica says, her hands tightly clutching the marble counter top, “You’re supposed to be my best friend. My best friend. But where were you when my dad went to jail ten months ago? Where were you when I was falling apart at the seams last year – did you even notice? Do you know who I went to when I felt upset? Archie. Do you know who’s house I slept over at when I didn"t want to face my parents? Archie’s. Why? Because you were unreachable, Betty. Because you were always with Jughead or at the White Wyrm or,” Veronica widely gesticulates with her arms, “I don’t fucking know – anywhere I wasn’t.”

Betty stays quiet for a moment. “You didn’t –” Betty cuts herself off, and she sounds frustrated in the same way she always used to be in the middle of a fight with Jughead, “It feels like you never even tried to tell me any of this. Veronica, my choices are mine to make, and I was never trying to avoid you. I think we just… caught got up in our different lives.”

“No!” Veronica cries, “You got caught up in your life. You were sixteen and the choices you made were fucking stupid. I get it, I made stupid choices too, but I never, ever left you behind in any of them.” Veronica feels her eyes start to sting with tears and she looks up at her ceiling, breathing through them.

“You never reached out to me.” Betty says. She sounds betrayed. Veronica can’t look at her.

“Neither did you,” Veronica says back. Her voice breaks in the middle of the sentence.

Silence.

Veronica blinks back tears and looks back down at Betty. “Do you remember when we first met and I kissed Archie like an asshole and it almost ruined our entire friendship? Do you remember when we sat at that booth and Pop’s and promised, like two dumb kids in middle school, that a boy would never come between us?” She asks. “I want to be that B and V again. I don’t want to just be the person you run back to because you don’t have Jughead anymore. I – ” She says, looking Betty directly in the eyes, “I refuse to take that position in your life.”

Betty’s quiet for a moment. She whispers, “Why didn’t you say anything? I wish you would have just told me. How am I supposed to know there’s a problem when you didn’t tell me anything?”

“I know you felt the distance,” Veronica breathes out, but she knows that’s not an excuse. “Betty, I was afraid of a lot of things back then, and… suddenly you and Jughead had already been dating for months and it felt like a lost cause. I thought I could get used to it but I – ” and for a moment, she thinks of saying, I love you.

The thought catches her off guard and then suddenly Veronica is fully paused at her kitchen island, two half-finished mugs of hot chocolate sitting in front of her, looking over at Betty with both seething anger and the realization that, Oh my God, I still love you, running through her head.

Fifteen year old Veronica Lodge had been absolutely, splendidly, without a doubt, in love with Betty Cooper. This wasn’t something she could admit to herself until she was halfway through sixteen, and even then, the rest of sixteen and seventeen was dedicated to moving past it somehow, as Jughead and Betty loomed in the distance as the beautiful, destined couple. Now at eighteen, Veronica is still trying to figure herself out, but she thought she knew at least all of the things she wasn’t, and she certainly thought that she wasn’t in love with Betty Cooper anymore. That she had moved past it, after all. That, sure, while she looked at Betty sometimes thought that there couldn’t possibly be anyone in the world who was more beautiful, thought about quiet kisses and hand-holding, that these things just happened, that somewhere in there was a fifteen year old Veronica who would just not let it go.

She’d never stopped to think that maybe that was just her, and not some other fractured, far off version of herself that needed to be ignored, but that it was just… her.

When she doesn’t continue her sentence right away, Betty’s eyebrows furrow. Veronica blinks and catches her breath, her brain running a million miles an hour, trying to remember what she was saying.

“I… I missed you.” Veronica finishes with, practically out of breath. “With my whole entire heart.”

Betty’s expression crumbles. “Hey,” she says, “I missed you too.”

Veronica shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you about it.” And she should have; maybe not the full truth of, I love you, but the simple truth that really was just, I miss you.

Betty swallows. “It’s okay,” she says, and then walks around the counter to where Veronica is. “I’m sorry, too. I should have been there for you. You"re right: I did notice that there was something wrong between us, but I was always so busy with Jughead or the things happening around town that I never had a moment to breathe and collect myself. I had priorities... and you stopped being one somewhere along the way.” Betty looks so, so sad. "I can never say how sorry I am for that. I will never be able to make it up to you."

Betty reaches out for her hands, and Veronica takes them. Both of their palms are sweaty, something that Veronica laughs at and then Betty laughs too. It eases some of the tension away.

There’s a lot more that they could say and probably a lot more they should discuss, but Veronica sniffles for a moment, and then looks up at Betty. “There is one thing you could do to make it up to me: I know it’s late, but do you want to watch a scary movie? Like we used to do?” She feels a bit ridiculous asking.

But Betty busts out a grin that practically shines under the lights of the kitchen. “Yeah,” she says, “I’d love to.”

By the time ten o’clock rolls around, Betty is fast asleep in Veronica’s bed, Veronica’s laptop is pushed aside onto the floor, paused on the end credits of Scream, and Veronica herself is in the kitchen cleaning up the hot chocolate she never finished making.

She feels both good and weird. The mess of emotions in her chest has been both resolved and complicated by tonight’s events, and she’s just a little tired, overall. It doesn’t stop her from singing a little tune as she washes the dishes though.

She stops humming abruptly when she hears the door open and her mother’s distinctive laugh follow suit.

Hermione walks into the kitchen, the collar on her shirt a little rumpled and her cheeks a little flushed from wine. A man with stubble and a nice suit follows behind her. Hermione seems surprised to see Veronica in the kitchen, and she does a little jump. Then she giggles.

“Oh, Veronica!” She exclaims, although she looks happy. “I didn’t know you’d be up. This is my friend David. He’s from the Chamber of Commerce.”

David waves from behind Hermione. They both look a little wine drunk. “It’s wonderful to meet you. Your mother has told me such great things about you – you’re a senior at Riverdale High, right?”

Veronica, who has one hand in a sink full of dirty dishes and is in pajamas, doesn’t particularly feel like having this conversation, but both her mom and David are looking at her expectantly. “Yes,” Veronica says, trying her best to sound sweet.

“She’s looking to go to Columbia University next year,” Hermione blurts out, walking toward Veronica to card her fingers gently through Veronica’s hair, “And she wants to study Political Science.”

Hermione beams at her so proudly that Veronica’s voice gets lost in her throat. “Yeah,” she says, looking back at David and then her mom.

“Is Archie still here?” Hermione asks.

“Oh, no, but Betty is. She’s sleeping over.”

“Betty?” Hermione asks, her hands stilling in Veronica’s hair. She stares at Veronica with a mix of caution and surprise.

“Yes, Mommy. Betty.” Veronica says pointedly.

“Hmm,” Hermione hums, sweeping her hand by Veronica’s cheek in a motherly caress before turning back around and walking toward David. “You know, Veronica’s boyfriend Archie is the captain of the varsity football team at Riverdale High.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Veronica protests. Hermione just turns back around at her and smiles, then rolls her eyes so David can see.

“Fred Andrews son?” David asks, “He’s a good kid. Got into a little trouble a couple of years ago, if I remember, but well… we were all having a rough time then.” He turns to look back at Veronica again. “He’s a good kid.”

Thankfully the conversation ends shortly after that as Hermione and her friend go to sit in the old study and drink some more while Veronica gets to finish the dishes, sighing her way through them.

She tiptoes as quietly as she can into her bedroom as not to wake Betty, shuts off her computer, and makes sure she has alarms set for school tomorrow. As she’s standing next to the bed, scrolling through her phone aimlessly before she puts it down, she hears Betty rustling in the bed.

“V?” Her voice croaks out.

Veronica immediately switches her phone off. “Hey, sorry if I woke you.”

Betty sleepily rubs her face as Veronica ducks down into bed. “It’s okay,” Betty slurs. She wraps her arms around Veronica and pulls her in. “You know I love you, right?”

Veronica squeezes one of Betty’s hands that are wrapped around her stomach. “I know,” she says softly.

Betty nuzzles her head against Veronica’s neck. “Okay,” she sighs, content. 

Veronica looks down at her for a moment and can only think, I love you, I love you, I love you, the realization seemingly seeping out of her skin, her body, ready to burst.

Winter comes much faster than any of them expected. By the time early December rolls around, Sweetwater River is frozen solid and Veronica is regularly coming to school in this big, furry jacket that her Dad bought her as a present years ago. It’s pink and fluffy, and even though she wears it all the time, it makes Betty laugh every morning when she descends from the Pembrooke and into the minivan.

“You just –” Betty says, giggling, “You just look like the Abominable snowman.”

Veronica pouts at her.

“But like, cute!” Betty assures, and then only laughs harder.

Betty and Veronica have lunch in the same spot everyday: the student lounge. It seemed to belong to her in wake of the “Bughead Divorce” as Cheryl’s been calling it. Now that it’s winter and outside is unbearable, suddenly they’re not the only ones seeking asylum under the heated roofs of Riverdale High. As she makes her entrance into lunch that day, Veronica notices that the student lounge that used to only house Betty, Veronica, and Kevin during lunch, is suddenly packed in wake of winter.

In Veronica’s usual spot on the red, comfy couch, now sat Cheryl with her legs in Toni’s lap, and sitting in the arm chairs around them are all of the Pussycats chatting happily with each other through mouthfuls of Doritos.

When Betty catches Veronica’s eye, tension leaks out of her body immediately and she jumps up from the couch she and Kevin are sitting on across from Toni and Cheryl.

“V!” She exclaims, her eyes big and her fists curled at her sides.

“Hello, hello everyone.” Veronica waves as she steps over two kids making out in order to get to Betty and Kevin.

“Well, if it isn’t Veronica Lodge,” Cheryl remarks, her eyebrows raised.

“That would be my name, yes.” Veronica agrees as she hugs Betty and pats the top of Kevin’s head. She pulls Betty down onto the couch with her and sits between the two of them, facing Cheryl.

Toni has a mouth full of sandwich and her hair’s in a pretty pink fishtail braid that Cheryl has surely done for her. Cheryl dramatically drapes her arms over Toni’s shoulders and looks at Veronica.

“We were just talking about the fact that ‘Bughead’ is no more,” Cheryl says and raises her eyebrows like this is juicy gossip, even though it’s been almost four months since the breakup.

Betty visibly cringes. “Cheryl, don’t call it that. You sound like a badly-written character on, like, Glee.”

“Why were you guys talking about that?” Veronica asks, looking between Betty and Cheryl with furrowed brows, “I’m sure Betty doesn’t want to talk about that right now.” She places a supportive hand on Betty’s thigh.

“No, no, it’s fine, V.” Betty says, and places her hand on top of Veronica’s.

Veronica looks back at Cheryl to see her gaze fixed on their hands for a moment. Then she turns to look at Toni, and an understanding seems to pass between them before Cheryl smiles and looks back at Veronica.

Kevin jumps in, since no one else seems to be talking. “Cheryl wants to hold a big party,” he explains, looking at Veronica excitedly, “but she wanted to know if it was okay with Betty if she invited both her and Jughead.”

“Oh,” Veronica says and blinks. She had thought Cheryl was being a needless bully to Betty, like she always had been in the old days. Sometimes she forgets that Cheryl started dating Toni and became practically one hundred percent happier in every occasion of her life, like right now when she’s get her legs in her girlfriend’s lap as Toni disinterestedly eats a sandwich and scrolls through her phone.

“And I was just saying that I wouldn’t mind at all if Jughead was there.” Betty says, looking pointedly at Cheryl.

Cheryl grins brightly, her cherry lips shining under the linoleum lights. “Great! Toni said that Jughead didn’t mind either, so it looks like we’re all set.”

Something, maybe just the simple mention of Jughead’s name or the idea that he’s been asked about her, makes Betty tense for a second. Veronica turns the hand around that’s still on Betty’s thigh so she can squeeze Betty’s palm. Betty squeezes back.

Betty smiles at Cheryl, but it’s a little strained. “Great.”

“Great!” Cheryl exclaims, “It’s a New Years party. I expect all of you to be there,” she says pointing at Kevin, Betty, and Veronica, and then she turns to tap Josie who is sitting in an armchair beside her, “and all of you.”

Josie sticks a Dorito in her mouth and looks at Cheryl. “As long as it doesn’t get busted by the cops, sure. Kevin and I can’t have the combined force of our parents finding out or we’ll be dead.”

Kevin rolls his eyes, nodding along with Josie. “You should have seen their faces when they found us drunk in my room one time. You think they would appreciate our step-sibling bonding, and yet…” Kevin sighs wistfully.

“Please, the cops never come out as far as our house in the woods.” Cheryl says and claps her hands together in excitement, “Yay! I’m so happy we all get to spend the holidays together.”

She positively beams around at them, full of such genuine excitement that Veronica can’t help but smile back. She doesn’t realize that her hand is still clasped with Betty’s until Betty squeezes it once more to get her attention.

Betty’s smile is warm, and any tension that was there a second ago seems to be almost forgotten. “I am excited, actually.” Betty tells her in a low voice, as though it’s a secret.

“Me too.” Veronica whispers back to her and knocks their shoulders together.

When Veronica turns her attention away from Betty, she finds Cheryl staring at her with what she could only describe as scheming eyes.

She forgets about it after lunch, focusing on the in-class essay she has to do in her next period that’s worth way too much of her grade than it should be. She’s mentally exhausted by the time the school bell rings, signalling the end of the day. She drags her herself to her locker, putting her heavy textbooks inside and thinking about the possibility of taking a nap after Betty drops her home. 

Veronica thinks about her warm, fluffy bed as she closes her locker door, only to find Cheryl Blossom’s face behind it like she’s a prize behind a game show door.

“Oh, fuck,” Veronica gasps out, placing a hand to her chest, “Cheryl, you scared me!”

Cheryl is unfazed. Her red lipped smile still remains in tact. “You have heart eyes for Betty Cooper.” She says as she takes a step toward Veronica.

Veronica feels her breath hitch and her body freeze. Veronica levels Cheryl with a hard-set gaze. “Stop it.”

Cheryl cocks her head to the side. “Stop what?”

Veronica points a finger at her. “Stop your gay meddling.”

She grins madly. “So I was right! And I am not meddling,” Cheryl proclaims, “I am stating facts. I saw you holding her hand during lunch. I know what that is.”

Cheryl is looking at her all buddy buddy, but Veronica doesn’t want it.

Veronica sighs, frustrated. “Listen, it’s great that your the new Mother Teresa of gays, but not everyone is like you and Toni. Not everybody gets to do that, not everybody gets that happy ending.”

Cheryl, looking a little offended, opens her mouth to say something Veronica is sure is scathing, but before she can, Betty walks up behind her and goes, “Hey, you two.”

Cheryl closes her mouth and glowers at Veronica for a moment. “We’ll talk later, when you’ve got less of a stick up your ass.” She promptly turns around and walks down the hallway with only a quick, Bye, cousin Betty, thrown Betty’s way.

Betty looks at Veronica with wide eyes and laughs awkwardly. “Woah, is she okay? Are you okay?”

Veronica musters up a wobbly smile, although her stomach suddenly feels tied up with anxiety. She won’t get to napping any time soon. “She’s fine, you know how Cheryl is.”

"That doesn’t sound good,” Betty remarks, but her tone is light. She throws an arm around Veronica’s shoulders, “Come on, Lodge, your chauffeur is here and she is ready to go home and eat ice cream. Would you like to come along?”

Veronica sighs wistfully, like eating ice cream might be the most strenuous thing in the world, “If I must. ”

Betty grins and lets out a laugh. Veronica wants to tell her, Your face lights up like the sun. She tucks a piece of Betty’s hair behind her ear and says instead, “I like it when you laugh. I like it when you"re happy.”

These comments seem to catch Betty off guard for a moment, but then a warm, warm smile spreads across her face. “I like being happy. You make me happy.”

Veronica smiles. “You make me happy, too, Cooper.”

Betty gives a dimpled grin and pulls Veronica even closer to her, almost making them lose their balance while walking in the hallway. They leave school laughing and head to Betty’s house to gorge themselves on ice cream.

There are many things Betty Cooper does well. She’s an amazing student, a fabulous singer, and the most polite young women you will ever meet. She can rock a high ponytail like it’s nobody’s business. She can make mac and cheese out of the box without even having to read the directions. She has the determination to push herself to do just about anything she puts her mind to.

But Betty Cooper does not do parties very well.

Veronica watches her now from across the room at Reggie’s house. Betty’s leaning against a far wall, and there’s a red cup in her hand that has her name scribbled messily on it in sharpie. She’s looking around the room with anxious eyes, jumping from person to person like she’s afraid if any of them might try to talk to her.

A song plays through the background, weaving through the crowd. Even though the bass is good and the woman’s voice is nice, the song seems a little sad. Veronica listens to it idly as she looks around at everyone. It’s a smaller party. She’s surrounded by faces of people she sees day in and day out in class, but there’s only a few people she would really consider her friends.

She doesn’t know where most of those friends are. She knows Kevin is behind her in the kitchen, mixing drinks for everyone. She knows Archie is around here somewhere, maybe trying to talk to Valerie again and see if she"ll go on yet another date with him. And she knows Betty is at the far wall, looking like she’d rather be anywhere but here.

Veronica studies her again. Her hair is hanging around her face in waves and her makeup is light, barely noticeable. She’s wearing something out of her closet that Veronica hasn’t seen before, some nice, silky top that makes her seem soft and gentle.

Betty’s gaze rakes over the room until it falls on Veronica. She smiles and her shoulders relax a little bit. The dim light hanging above her makes her look like an angel. Veronica smiles back.

The lady is still singing softly and Veronica wonders who put this song on. It doesn’t sound like something Reggie listens to regularly. Betty seems to know it, though, and she mouths the verses to Veronica across the room goofily now that she has her attention.

I can taste your lipstick, I can lay down next to you. Betty winks at her exaggeratedly and Veronica laughs at her, endeared by the intimacy of the moment. If I drink enough, I swear that I will wake up next to you. Veronica’s stomach twists as she watches Betty mouth the lyrics out, but when Betty points a finger across the room to Veronica as she sings out the you, it has Veronica smiling.

They grin to each other on opposites sides of the party, kids dancing in between them, and Veronica is surprised at how silent the moment feels to her, like it could just be her and Betty in the room, everyone else an unimportant extra in the movie of their life.

The girl sings, Broke my heart now I’m wasting my time on you, broke my heart now I’m wasting my time, and Veronica could laugh at the irony of the moment if she found it funny anymore. As the words echo from out of the speakers she watches Betty, the way Betty is only looking at her, the way Betty looks soft and lovely, even here at a rowdy high school party, the way Betty tilts her head at Veronica and mouths, Come over here. She looks a little desperate. Please, she mouths with emphasis.

As Veronica traipses through the room, weaving in and out of her classmates, she hears Reggie yell out, “Cheers to the end of our first semester as seniors!” People wildly yell back, sloshing beer out of their cups as they raise them in the air and slur their words.

When she gets close to Betty, she reaches her hands out like Betty’s a lifeline. Betty catches her hand and pulls her close, their bodies bumping together and the cup in Betty’s hand almost spilling

Veronica looks down at the cup. “What’s that?” She yells into Betty’s ear over the music.

Betty moves her head toward Veronica’s ear. “It’s water!” She yells back and then steps back to look at Veronica, “But don’t tell Archie, he thought I wasn’t having fun if I wasn’t drinking.”

Veronica looks to where Betty gestures with a nod of her head. Her gaze finds Archie standing in a corner, surrounded by his football buddies, looking like he’s about to fall over with how drunk he is.

Veronica turns back to her. “Are you having fun?”

Betty just shrugs.

Veronica holds onto Betty’s forearm and starts walking toward the outside porch, dragging Betty along behind her. When the sliding the glass door opens, they are immediately met with the smell of smoke – nicotine and otherwise – and dodge the hazy clouds to sit on the steps of the porch, looking out to the dark expanse of Reggie’s backyard. Fairy lights illuminate the air above them and the chill of the night bites them to the bone immediately. Veronica rubs at her arms, already thinking about going back inside.

But Betty sits down and gives a sigh of relief, making herself comfortable. She swishes around the water in her cup and then takes a sip. She looks down at the drink in Veronica’s hands. “What’s in that?”

“I think vodka and orange juice? I don’t know, Kevin made it for me and it tastes good.” Veronica tips it toward her, “Do you want some?”

Betty scrunches up her face and shakes her head. Her hands go up to the back of her hair like they’re going to tug and tighten her ponytail – an old, nervous habit of hers – before she remembers that she’s wearing her hair down tonight. She cards her fingers down through her waves instead.

“You know,” she remarks, “parties are a lot cooler in the movies.”

“They’re alright,” Veronica shrugs, “I’m glad you’re here, though.”

Betty smiles at her. “I’m glad you’re here, too. But I do like it better when it’s just the two of us getting drunk in your room off your mom’s fancy wine and we fall off the bed from laughing too hard.”

Veronica smiles down at her drink. “You forgot the part where you spend two hours moaning and groaning, kneeling by my toilet, and then after you throw up several times, I have to carry you to my bed.”

“Hey,” Betty says, trying to sound offended even though she’s grinning through it, “That’s only happened a couple times.” She looks at Veronica fondly.

Veronica rolls her eyes. “I know. And when it happens again, I’ll still carry you to the bed.”

Betty lets out a burst of giggles. Someone opens the glass door behind them and a group of people tumble out, letting the loud music shoot through the backyard. The song has changed to something much more upbeat and poppy now, something with a rap verse in the middle. Veronica’s sure she’s heard the song on the radio before.

Betty knocks their knees together playfully. “Do you want to sleepover at mine tonight?”

Veronica looks at her. Strands of blonde hair are falling into her face and her cheek is dimpling with a smile. Her lips are very pink, pinker than usual, like maybe she had lipstick on and decided to wipe it off. Veronica, who is only barely tipsy, suddenly feels drunker just by looking at Betty. Veronica wants to hold both her hands and look into her eyes and say, Of course I want to sleepover, but I also want to kiss you until it hurts, and, Do you know how beautiful you are? Do you know how lucky I am to be in your life? Do you know how lucky I am that you chose me to be in your life?

Veronica lets out a shuddering breath and opens her mouth, “Yeah, sure, but I’ll need to borrow –”

Suddenly a warm palm is on her shoulder and someone is speaking behind her, “Veronica.”

She whips her head around to find Chuck Clayton, of all people, and is surprised that he looks sober. She shrugs out from his grasp. Despite their rough start, she hasn’t really talked to him that much over the past year or so, but she’s still suspicious of him. She’ll always be suspicious of him.

Veronica flutters a forced smile up at him. “Chuck.” is all she says.

He grins down at her. Betty stiffens beside Veronica and Chuck looks toward her too. “Hey to you as well, Betty.” There’s a pause where he expects Betty to say something back, but she does nothing but stare at him. “How are the two of you doing? Is there anything y’all need that I can get? Drinks? Or water maybe?”

“We’re fine.” Betty says quickly.

But Chuck’s looking at Veronica expectantly, not Betty. “We’re good, Chuck,” Veronica says, “How are you doing?”

Chuck shrugs, trying to remain cool, effortless, and nonchalant. “I’m doing alright. I’m mostly staying sober while the rest of the boys go wild.” He rolls his eyes. “Someone needs to watch them. Man, I can’t believe we’re already halfway through senior year, though.”

“Chuck, why are you here?” Betty asks bluntly. She’s looking at him with shrewd eyes.

Chuck scratches his head and looks to the rest of the backyard for a moment before looking back at the two girls. “I actually wanted to say sorry. You know, for everything that happened. What I did to you guys in sophomore year wasn’t cool. I knew that then, but I can admit it now. I’m not like that anymore.”

Betty stays silent beside her, but Veronica looks up at him and smiles. “It’s cool, Chuck. Water under the bridge and whatever. For the record, we’re sorry too.”

Betty mumbles behind her, “I’m not sorry for anything,” but Chuck doesn’t seem to hear it.

Instead, he’s looking down at Veronica with a million dollar smile. “I just didn’t want to end on bad footing. You are two pretty cool girls, and it wouldn’t be right of me to never own up to my actions.”

Veronica is pleasantly surprised at how genuine he sounds. “I’ve actually been wondering about these rumors I’ve heard about you being an artist?” Veronica asks. “Archie told me he saw some of your stuff awhile back hanging up in the art room at school. He said it was pretty cool.”

Chuck laughs. “Aw, shucks. Yeah, I want to get into comics, actually. I’m thinking of moving out to New York City after graduation and getting an internship at one of the big companies like Marvel or whatever.”

Veronica smiles up at him kindly. “That sounds really cool, Chuck. Let me know if you need any good NYC recommendations.”

Chuck crosses his fingers. “Let’s hope I get there first.”

Betty coughs from behind Veronica. Out of the corner of her eye, Veronica can just barely see Betty’s expression and the way she’s looking at Veronica like she’s ready to strangle both her and Chuck. Veronica would roll her eyes at Betty’s dramatics if she knew nobody would notice.

She’s about to say something to Betty, maybe something snide about her attitude or something to unwillingly bring her into the conversation, but then Chuck’s talking to her again. “Hey, Ronnie, do you know where the bathroom in this place is?”

Veronica doesn’t particularly like his use of her nickname, but she knows it’s harmless. She turns back around to him and says, “Yes, actually.” She’s been to so many football parties at Reggie’s house over the years, especially when she’d been dating Archie.

“Could you show me?”

As Veronica starts to stand up, getting ready to walk Chuck inside and upstairs and to the bathroom, she feels Betty pull on her hand. “I can show him.” She says almost urgently.

Veronica looks down at her. She wants to say, When have you ever been to Reggie Mantle’s house before today? but she says instead, “No, it’s really alright, Betts. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

Veronica knows she shouldn’t indulge the feeling, but the way Betty looks after her as she walks away with Chuck is something entirely foreign for Veronica to see on Betty’s face about her. It looks like jealousy. She’s not sure why Betty’s looking at her like that, and even though she knows it’s bad, Veronica does revel in it for a quick moment before she leads Chuck upstairs.

It takes him a quick couple of minutes to use the bathroom, and then she goes to pee after he does. Veronica is both surprised and not surprised to come out into the hallway afterward and see him leaning against the wall. “Oh, you didn’t have to wait for me.” She tells him.

He smiles at her. “I know,” he says, “But it was really no problem.”

The music is muffled enough all the way up here that she doesn’t have to strain her ears to hear what he’s saying. She smiles up at him politely, and turns to start down the stairs when he catches her elbow.

“Actually – Veronica, I wanted to ask you something.” When she turns back around to him, he almost seems shy. “I was wondering if you’d want to go out to Pop’s sometime with me during winter break? Or we could just go to the movies or something. I know that I haven’t been a good guy to you, like I said downstairs, but I promise I won’t be an asshole and spread rumors about you this time.” Chuck says, half jokingly. His face is screwed up in pain, like the idea of what he did makes him cringe. “How does that sound?”

Veronica takes a sip of what’s left of her drink and leans against the wall to mimic his posture. She looks up at him. “I’m actually… kind of in the middle of something right now, Chuck. Sorry. There’s someone I really like, and I don’t think it would be fair of me to be in a relationship with someone else when I couldn’t be fully committed to them.” She wants to point to what her and Archie had and the way it fizzled and say, This is what will happen if I go out on a date with you, except we won’t manage to be best friends afterward.

Chuck doesn’t look sad, disappointed, or surprised when she says this. All he does is raise his eyebrows and ask, “Who is it?” with what seems like genuine interest.

Veronica opens her mouth, ready to say something. It would be so easy to tell him, a stranger, about everything. To just gush about how much she likes Betty and how much she’s always liked Betty. But while he might be a stranger, he is still Chuck Clayton, the boy who spread rumors about her two years ago and had only thought to apologize now.

Veronica sighs. “It’s complicated.”

Chuck nods like he understands. He leans down close to her. “Well, you better tell him before the year is over, or your moment will be gone.” He moves to start down the stairs. “Come on, I’ll help you wade through the sea of drunk kids.”

Kevin catches Veronica as she’s passing through the kitchen and fills her drink up for her before she goes back outside. This is about the time that she loses Chuck somewhere, as he fades into the background, maybe to go say mean stuff about her to his friends or to ask another girl out. Or maybe just to party.

Veronica shimmies through the sliding glass door and closes it behind herself. She looks up to find that Betty’s turned toward the sound and is sitting in the same spot on the stairs, waiting for her. She seems relieved as Veronica walks over and sits down next to her again, so close that there’s only a centimeter between them.

Veronica knocks their knees together. “As I was saying, I’ll need to borrow some of your pajamas.”

Betty just smiles at her.

A few days later, a week before her party, Cheryl adds Veronica and Toni to a group chat and sends the text, “Pop’s, this friday, I’ll drive us xxx ” and Veronica figures there’s no way to get out of that. 

Which is how she finds herself exactly in that situation, sitting in a booth across from Toni and Cheryl, who sit so close to one another Veronica wants to suggest that Toni might as well just sit in Cheryl’s lap.

Pop Tate brings them their milkshakes and a round of fries for an appetizer, and Veronica is met with the greasy food stench she has come to know so well.

Promptly Cheryl takes a sip from her drink and looks at Veronica. “So,” she says, swirling her milkshake by the straw, “Welcome to the gay club, courtesy of yours truly, Queen Cheryl.”

Veronica chokes on the fry in her mouth. “Thanks?”

Cheryl barrels on. “I mean, I should have known when you first came to tryouts and laid one right on Betty, but I didn’t really know you then and I just thought it was a fun, quirky straight girl thing –”

Toni places a hand on Cheryl’s arm and Cheryl stops talking. “What she’s trying to say is that we’re just glad that the gay circle of Riverdale is expanding.” Toni rolls her eyes, “Our gay group chat consists of the two of us, Kevin, and Fangs. We had to kick Moose out after he and Kevin broke up and Kev started dating Fangs, and it’s been a whole, messy thing.”

“We need more lesbians in the group chat, anyway.” Cheryl remarks, popping a fry into her mouth.

“Oh,” Veronica says hesitantly, “I’m not a… lesbian.”

Toni nods from across the table. Her eyes are comforting when she asks, “Oh, so you’re bisexual?”

The word makes Veronica pause. “Uh, yeah.” She decides.

“It’s cool if you don’t know, Veronica.” Toni says. “Or if you identify as something else.”

“No!” Veronica protests for some reason, “No. I mean… I mean I think I’m bisexual.”

“Well,” Cheryl starts, swishing her straw around in her milkshake, “We know you like girls à la Betty Cooper. Are you romantically and sexually attracted to men?”

It sounds so clinical, the way she puts it, but the question puts a full stop to Veronica’s thoughts. Archie’s goofy face shows up in her mind and suddenly all of the uncomfortable feelings that she represses when her and Archie have sex worm their way up to the surface. She thinks of telling Cheryl and Toni about it for a moment, but the idea makes her queasy with shame.

“I find men attractive?” Veronica tries.

Cheryl looks at her with an unamused expression. “Veronica, even I can appreciate when a man is attractive and I am a raging, raging homosexual.”

This makes Toni laugh, but then she reaches across the table and takes Veronica’s hands into her own. Her hands are very soft, and Veronica thinks about asking her if she moisturizes when Toni tells her, “Cheryl and I won’t judge whatever you say or if there’s anything you want to talk about. We invited you here because of that,” Toni then spares a glance back at Cheryl before smiling sheepishly, “... and because we thought you and Betty might be secretly dating already and we wanted the details before anybody else, in true women-loving-women solidarity. But now that we know you’re not –”

Cheryl butts in. “And now we know that you’re hopelessly in love with her, because it’s obvious –”

“We just… we’re here to talk, is what I mean. I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide or feel judged around us.” Toni finishes.

It’s a nice speech, but Veronica feels like she’s about to vomit up slugs like Ron Weasley in the second Harry Potter book. She takes a deep breath, though, and starts to speak. “I just… whenever Archie and I have had sex, it just makes me feel… it’s just not always enjoyable. But the other night I…” Veronica trails off, thinking about the feeling she got just from Betty accidentally brushing her lips against her neck, “I think I just – I wouldn’t mind – I think the idea of having sex with a girl sounds a lot better than any of the experiences I’ve had having sex with guys.”

The words sit in the air around Veronica and suffocate her with their truth. She’d never said any of these things out loud to anyone, God forbid she had even thought them through the whole way. Any time the topic would pop up in her mind she’d push it down with so much force that it became habitual. But to say it out loud is something entirely different, something so scary.

She feels Toni give her hands a light squeeze. Toni looks at her and smiles. Her hair is curly today and only the last of the pink is still hanging on. “Veronica…” she starts, “Labels aren’t everything, and sexualities and identities are complicated, and you don’t even need any of these things to feel comfortable with yourself, but also – you do know that "lesbian" isn’t a bad word, right?”

For some reason the sentence makes Veronica’s eyes start to sting. “Yeah,” Veronica says, but it comes out a bit snotty. "I know." She tries to say it like an of course, but it falls terribly flat.

“It took me a really long time to be okay with calling myself a lesbian, you know.” Cheryl tells her. Her voice is completely absent of the usual fanfare and wit she carries around and is instead just calm. “It took me a long time to even just associate myself with the word ‘gay.”

“Yeah,” Veronica says absently, and then rubs at her eyes as she takes a deep breath, “I mean, I think I knew. It’s just… I don’t know.”

There’s a beat of silence between the three of them, but then a moment later Cheryl asks quietly, “Are you in love with her? Like, I know I just called you ‘hopelessly in love with her’ but I mean for real. I mean without hesitation.”

Veronica laughs halfheartedly. “I’ve been in love with her since I was fucking fifteen.” She takes a deep breath in and looks up at the ceiling, trying to blink away the tears that are still threatening their way through. “I feel like I’ve done so much crying recently.”

She hears both Toni and Cheryl laugh. “It’s senior year, crying is expected.” Toni tells her.

Veronica sniffs, trying to clear her suddenly blocked nose. She wipes away the last of the dampness around her eyes and goes, “Anyway.”

As Toni grabs a french fry to munch on and Veronica goes for her shake, Cheryl gasps and sits up in her seat upright all of a sudden, like an electric shock went through her. “I have an amazing idea to get you two together.”

Veronica sighs and rolls her eyes. “Cheryl –”

But Cheryl places a finger in front of her lips. “You’ll thank me one day.” She gives Veronica a little wink. “I’ll let you know the plan at my party.”

“Cheryl!” Veronica exclaims at her, hoping it will be more effective if she yells.

“Stop it and enjoy your milkshake.” Cheryl demands, all while smiling smugly.

Toni looks over to Veronica and sees her concern. I’ll make sure everything is good, don’t worry, Toni mouths to her. It makes Veronica relax a little, and she throws it out of her mind, knowing Toni will dismantle any crazy scheme Cheryl has in store.

Pop brings their burgers and they spend the next hour eating and giggling about nothing in particular. They don’t talk about the conversation they just had and they don’t press Veronica anymore about her feelings or sexuality or Betty, beyond adding her to this gay Riverdale group chat that Veronica’s been missing out on for the past couple of years. For the rest of lunch, it’s just the three of them goofing around as the sky outside gets dark.

Veronica thinks about how much she’ll miss this when it’s gone.

Christmas at the Lodge apartment is even lonelier this year, as it’s the first holiday season since Veronica’s dad got thrown back in jail. Veronica and her mother have a nice and polite breakfast of eggs, pancakes, and orange juice, her mother gives her a pretty necklace, and Veronica kisses her on the cheek, hugs her a little longer than she would on a normal day. 

During the holidays, Veronica tries to not hold grudges against her mother. Their relationship is complicated and shallow these days, which is tragic when she thinks about it too hard, but eighteen year old Veronica prefers to the explosive closeness that being apart of the “family business” gave fifteen year old Veronica.

By dinnertime Hermione is barricaded in her office on a Skype call with several important people that Veronica forgets the names of. So Veronica goes to the Cooper house for Christmas dinner that night, where Betty opens the door with her eyes wide and hairs flying loose from her ponytail.

Betty takes in a big breath. “Mom’s running around like a chicken with her head cut off.” She says, her expression full of exhaustion and fear. Veronica can hear Alice yelling for her daughter in the background.

Betty looks warm and comfortable, dressed up in a modest white sweater that seems to have some sparkle in the fabric. It’s a nice contrast to the pink collar that’s folded over top of the neckline, and the subtle but soft, rosy makeup she’s put on. It’s a very “Betty Cooper, All American Girl” kind of outfit – the kind of outfit she wears less and less these days, but is still a staple of her persona. It’s the way everyone will remember her years from now, when telling their kids stories about high school.

Part of Veronica wants to reach out and touch her, cradle her face or pull at the cottony fabric around her waist, but she shakes herself out of it.

She smiles up at Betty and laughs, holding up a big tote bag that Veronica brought with her. “Don’t worry, that’s why I came early with treats.”

The Cooper household parallels the Lodge household in image: only Alice and Betty live here these days. Alice and Hal are officially divorced, with Hal in prison. Chic is long gone, thank God, and Polly still lives at the cult-ish farm two hours away where she raises her kids, but –

“Polly’s coming tonight,” Betty says as she gestures to her mom running around the kitchen, “And Mom wants everything to be perfect for it.”

“Is she coming with the kids?” Veronica asks with a hesitant smile. She knows how big of a deal that is.

Betty can’t help but grin. “Yes, with the kids.”

Alice takes a moment to smile at Veronica politely and thank her for the dessert she brought (Three pies she ordered from Pop’s specifically for tonight.) and then immediately puts her to work in the kitchen with Betty. Despite the fact that Alice is breathing down their necks, watching the way they mash potatoes with a shrewd eye like she’s sure they’ll mess it up somehow, the experience still remains to be the best time Veronica’s had in a kitchen for a long time.

Christmas music plays from a radio loudly in the other room, and the kitchen smells sweet like cinnamon. While Veronica is distracted by how cute Betty looks wearing an apron, Betty smushes flour onto Veronica’s nose. Veronica then “accidentally” drops mashed potatoes on her socks. Alice scolds them both, and the whole scene distantly reminds Veronica of cooking with her cousins and abuelita at family gatherings as a kid.

Before Alice can waggle her finger at them too hard and ask for Betty to go change her socks, they get distracted by the doorbell ringing. Alice whips her apron off and turns to Betty, “Honey, what if it’s Polly?”

Betty rolls her eyes, but there’s a fondness to it. “Well, then you better get the door.”

It’s not Polly; it’s Archie and his dad who have come bearing a bouquet of flowers for the table and a whole platter of roasted turkey. Archie kisses Betty on the cheek modestly and then crushes Veronica with one of his bear hugs. When Fred greets Veronica, he makes a comment to her about “how nice it is to see you outside Archie’s bedroom” and then winks, which makes the whole room uncomfortable, but especially Veronica. She exchanges a rough gaze with Archie, who looks more embarrassed than anything, and tries to convey to him through eye contact how much she wants to physically perish in that moment. It doesn’t translate, but in the next second, Veronica feels Betty’s arm slip around her waist and her head gently lean against her shoulder. It eases the tension in Veronica’s gut as Betty gives a tiny laugh at Fred’s joke to fill the awkward silence.

The doorbell rings out through the house once again, but this time it seems much louder. Veronica watches as Alice pales suddenly and clears her throat. Fred smiles down at her. “Come on, Alice, let’s go help your daughter.”

They open the door to a very exhausted, but very festive Polly, who has come in matching Christmas sweaters with her children. With Dagwood and Juniper around, Betty immediately turns into a doting aunt. She holds them for Polly as Polly hugs her mom and says hello to everyone else.

While Polly goes into the bathroom to change Dagwood, Betty holds Juniper in her grasp and rubs their noses together as the baby giggles. Veronica stands beside her and can’t help but smile at the scene. Betty and the baby have the exact same rosy, flushed cheeks, and the way Juniper’s small little hand tries to wrap around the stray pieces of Betty’s hair has Betty laughing and cooing at her. Veronica has seen Betty happy many times, but there’s a certain kind of joy that wraps itself around her when she’s with her niece and nephew that never fails to light up her entire face.

Betty turns to Veronica after a moment and absolutely beams at her. She looks back at the baby and points at Veronica.

“Do you remember your Aunt Veronica?” She asks Juniper, who looks at Veronica for a second and just babbles before fixing her eyes back on Betty’s face, “Do you remember her? One day, when you’re all grown up, she will take you on a shopping spree and buy you the nicest diamonds a girl can have.”

Veronica can’t help but laugh. She reaches out a finger to boop the baby"s nose, and is pleasantly surprised when Juniper makes a delighted noise in response.

“Do you want to hold her?” Betty asks, her voice soft. She looks at Veronica with her eyes sparkling.

Veronica laughs awkwardly, “Oh, I don’t know, I’m – you’re a lot better at this stuff than I am. Babies aren’t really my… thing.”

Betty looks at her with an expression that makes Veronica know she’s already lost this argument. “They seemed to be your thing five seconds ago when you booped her on the nose.”

“Holding a baby is different than –”

“Oh, come on.” Betty says, and suddenly Veronica is catching the baby that Betty is practically forcing into her arms.

Juniper stares up at her, her eyes big and green. She’s warm and bubbly in Veronica’s grasp. Veronica ducks toward her little face and says, “You have the same eyes that your aunt does.” Juniper seems delighted at this, but Juniper does seem delighted at most things.

When Veronica looks up at Betty, possibly to give the baby back, Betty is looking at her with such fondness it melts Veronica’s body. Betty places a hand on her arm and says, with her eyes full of warmth, “You look cute with her, V. Babies definitely are your thing.”

Veronica wants to laugh and say, Betty, I’ve been holding this baby for five seconds, but she also doesn’t want Betty to ever stop looking at her like that. Like the world doesn’t deserve her. Like she’s the best thing to exist.

Veronica doesn’t know how to stop herself before she says, with her voice laced with too much raw honesty and awe, “Betty, you’re going to be the best mom on this planet.” She looks down at the baby again, “I mean, she’s already the best aunt, isn’t she?”

Juniper babbles in agreement, and when Veronica looks back up at Betty to give her the baby, she finds Betty just staring at her. It’s not without fondness, but it’s definitely different than the expression she was just giving Veronica. Her eyes travel across Veronica’s face for a moment, like she’s searching for the answer to something, and then after a few seconds her face cracks with a smile. The small kind that still manages to dimple her cheeks.

“Thanks.” She says, her voice quiet and soft, as she reaches out to take the baby from Veronica’s arm. She gently pushes back Juniper’s fluffy hair and kisses her on the crown of her forehead.

The whole scene is right out of something that Veronica used to fantasize about at fifteen. It’s a little too much to bear – this casual domesticity, this safety and warmth and oozing love – and it does things to Veronica’s heart that make her feel like she’s going crazy.

Dinner goes smoothly: Alice and Polly get along, Archie eats enough turkey to render him comatose, and the babies are as cute as ever, which makes Betty happy. She sets them up in their highchairs, tucking in their bibs securely, and squeezes their cheeks intermittently like her hands just can’t help it.

When Alice makes them all hold hands and say grace at the beginning of the meal, Veronica takes a moment to look around and appreciate the family Riverdale gave her. They’re certainly a patchwork job, and only a fraction of the people she holds close are present, but the idea that she has a place to go for Christmas dinner when she doesn’t want to be with her Mom is such a big deal. In New York, Veronica dealt with her parent’s explosive personalities by seeping her fingers into all the precious things money could buy and all the terrible boys who would want to kiss her. All the wrong people, because the right people scared her.

Eighteen year old Veronica isn’t like that. She"s still scared and she still has a lot to figure out, but she knows has time. She knows she has people.

However, Veronica can’t help but look around the table and think about how everything feels a little bit incomplete without Jughead. She looks across at Betty and Archie, who are squeezing their eyes shut and listening to Alice’s word, and wonders if they’ve thought the same thing. It makes Veronica wonder what Jughead’s doing for Christmas, if he’s at the White Wyrm with the Serpents or having a quiet night in with his father. It makes her wonder if FP has a tiny plastic Christmas tree that he takes out every year and sticks in the corner of the living room to make their trailer feel festive. It makes her wonder if maybe they went to Toledo and Jughead finally got to spend a Christmas with Jellybean after too many years apart.

Most of all, it makes her sad that he’s not here.

When Veronica excuses herself to the bathroom after dinner, she writes a text to Jughead that says, “Merry Christmas Jones! Hope your holidays are going well. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do."

She signs the end with the lipstick emoji and hits send before she can hesitate. It reads as shallow, but she didn’t know what to say. Veronica hopes that Jughead will focus on the sentiment of the thing.

Veronica scrolls up; the last text conversation between them was Jughead asking to borrow a book of Veronica’s, and the only text before that is around the time he and Betty broke up. She’s been in a weird place between them since the split, not wanting to betray Betty for talking to her ex-boyfriend, but also not wanting to completely forget her friendship with Jughead. She sees the evidence of their lack of contact actualized on her phone screen, and all she can do is hope Jughead understands.

Her phone buzzes then, and she’s surprised to scroll down and see a reply from him so fast.

[7:05]  Jug: Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you too, Veronica. Give Betty my regards.

She reads it and sighs immediately. It’s such a Jughead text to send; she doesn’t know what she was expecting.

It makes her feel a lot of different things, not all of them good.

She doesn’t reply back.

Veronica somehow gets pulled into party planning by Kevin who was also somehow pulled into party planning by Cheryl. This is how Veronica ends up watching Kevin tack up the other side of the banner he had been putting together in the dining room of Thistlehouse. In green and white sparkling letters, it proudly displays, “HAPPY HOLIGAYS!" 

Veronica laughs at the words from the other side of the dining table, where she’s blowing up balloons.

Kevin looks up at it with his hands on his hips and sighs with content.  He turns to look back at Veronica. “This’ll be the best New Years yet.”

Veronica smiles at him as she ties up another balloon and lets it go free. “With that banner, I would expect nothing less.”

Kevin grins at her for a moment before he turns around to go check on Toni and Cheryl in the kitchen.

As Veronica hears the three of them distantly bicker in the kitchen, Veronica is suddenly struck by the thought that this will be the last New Years with all of them together. Sure, she knows most of them will be home from college for winter break next year, but Veronica can’t imagine what will have changed by then. She can’t count on anything; what if school is horrible? What if she loses touch with everyone? What if school is so good she doesn’t want to come home?

Her thoughts run around and around in circles, every single what if? popping up like a worm out of dirt that Veronica just can’t smash. She has no answers to any of them, and the overwhelming amount of uncertainty that is about to attack Veronica’s life takes over the empty space in her chest. Veronica doesn’t often think of herself as an anxious person, but the only word that seems to make sense of the panic seizing her chest is “anxiety.”

A distraction comes in the form of Cheryl emerging from the kitchen with Kevin following behind her. When she gets into the room, she looks at Kevin’s banner and puts her hands on her hips. “Kevin! This is a New Year’s Eve party, not a Christmas party!”

There is no ounce of shame on Kevin’s face. “When you find me a good gay pun that goes with ‘New Year’s Eve,’ then I’ll change it.”

Cheryl looks at the banner for a moment. She turns to Kevin to halfheartedly slap him in the chest. “How about ‘Happy TwentyGAYteen,’ you dumb bitch.”

Toni, who stands as a silhouette in the doorway, bursts into laughter so hard she almost cries. Cheryl rolls her eyes. Veronica laughs, albeit shakily. Kevin has no more time to argue against  Cheryl’s wishes as the doorbell echoes shrilly all over Thistlehouse.

Cheryl squawks, “Guests are already arriving? Oh God, we’re not even presentable yet! This party is going to be a sham!”

Toni rolls her eyes. “Cheryl, it’s fine. Let’s get back to setting up and let Veronica or Kevin answer it.”

Cheryl, who, for a moment, looks as though she is to the point of tears, scurries back into the kitchen after Toni without a word. Kevin looks over at Veronica, with a pointed eyebrow raised and an expression that says, So, you’ll get the door?

Veronica sighs at him and hands off the rest of the balloons before she makes her way to the door. It takes her a moment to wrench open the heavy, hulking wood that protects the Blossom Castle, but behind the drawbridge door reveals none other than Riverdale’s own Betty Cooper.

Betty looks both stunning and different. Her hair is down in waves and Veronica can tell that she’s styled it to look like she hasn’t styled it all. The blonde frames her face angelically, and serves as great contrast to the tight black jeans, the strappy high heels, and the tight, lacy shirt that hugs her figure.

Veronica has a striking thought that she looks exactly like the Betty who stripped on the stage of the White Wyrm and gave her life away to serpenthood for Jughead.

Betty takes no notice of Veronica’s ogling and instead her face lights up upon seeing Veronica. “V!” She exclaims, grinning and going in for a hug immediately.

Her perfume smells strongly of citrus and vanilla and the sensation immediately comforts Veronica. Veronica holds onto her a little too long, a little too tight, and she feels Betty frown against her shoulder before they pull back.

Veronica clears her throat and says, “You look wonderful, B.” Something about her voice is off and she can’t help it.

Betty frowns even deeper. “Is something wrong?” She asks, and absentmindedly tucks a stray piece of Veronica’s hair behind her ear. The slight brush of Betty’s fingers against her temple linger for a moment.

Veronica looks at her and wants to say, Yes, you came to this party dressed only to appease your ex-boyfriend, or What if a year from now you’ve found better friends and we don’t talk? or Do you know that I’m in love with you? And I think that you’re beautiful even when you try to be someone else?

Instead she shakes her head and says, “No, nothing’s wrong.”

Betty steps toward her and places a hand on her arm. It makes the hair there stick up. “Hey,” she says softly “If you need to go, we can go. I’m sure Cheryl would understand.”

There’s so much about it that makes Veronica’s heart. Both the idea that Betty would even offer to ditch a whole party just for her, and also the idea that not even that – going home to watch scary movies with her favorite person in the comfort of her own bedroom – would even cure the all the problems Veronica has sitting inside of her head.

Veronica shakes her head and smiles at Betty. “No, no. Thank you for offering, but no, I’m fine. It’s just a little bit of pre-party jitters. You of all people know how it goes.”

She must play it off really well, because she sees the tension leak out of Betty’s face. Betty breathes out and says, “Oh boy, do I know. I know I told Cheryl I’m fine with it – and I am fine with it – but I’m so scared to see Jughead.” She smiles at Veronica sheepishly, like she’s sharing a secret between them.

Veronica thinks of what to say as she reaches out to give Betty a comforting touch on her waist, but they’re interrupted by Kevin appearing behind them. Veronica jumps away from Betty without thinking about it.

“Ah, here are the two culprits who are letting the cold draft of winter in,” Kevin says and saunters up to close the door when he sees Betty and gets visibly surprised. “Betty! You look… hot. You look very hot!”

Betty, who has just been looking at Veronica with a confused face, turns to look at Kevin and laugh. “Thanks, Kev.”

Cheryl is delighted at the sight of Betty and visibly lets out a sigh of relief that it is not the massive hordes of Riverdale High that she’s invited to this party. Toni’s just cleaning up the last of the kitchen mess, making sure they have all of the food ready to be put out as well as all of the alcohol lined up. There is a lot of alcohol.

Betty seems to be having the same thought. She blinks at the three bottles of vodka Cheryl has set on the counter, along with the other various poisonous liquids. “Wow, you have quite the stock.”

Cheryl rolls her eyes. “Well someone, who is definitely not Toni Topaz, told me I couldn’t hire caterers to this party and that I should spend the money on something more useful. So I did!”

Toni comes up from behind Cheryl to wrap her arms around Cheryl’s waist. “See? I was right, it was more useful.” She kisses Cheryl on the cheek before she continues, “High school kids want hard liquor, tortilla chips, and pizza. Not salmon and escargot on fancy plates.”

“It’s not my fault no one has taste.” Cheryl shrugs, and then looks at the way Betty is still eyeing the alcohol. “We can do some shots, if you guys want.”

The party prep is essentially done; they need to carry some of the snacks out into the living room, strategically place the alcohol so not all of it gets consumed right away, and Kevin and Veronica probably have to finish blowing up the rest of the balloons, but all of this seems rather trivial in the excitement of getting absolutely wasted on New Year’s Eve.

The vodka burns as it goes down Veronica’s throat and into her chest. She makes a sour face and coughs. “You’d think I’d be used to this by now.” She remarks, mostly to herself.

Looking around at the faces of everyone else has her feeling better though. No one seems like their quite fond of hard liquor, and the five of them all have various scrunched up faces. It’s Betty who recovers first, and immediately pours herself another shot.

Cheryl whoops and claps her hands together, “Yes, girl!”

Veronica can feel the mixture of surprise and terror on her own face as she watches Betty knock down her second shot. Veronica looks to Toni and Kevin to see that both of their expressions share her sentiments. Toni is looking at Betty with something akin to fear, and Kevin is eyeing her shot glass like he’s trying to figure out the most effective way to keep it away from Betty’s grasp the rest of the night.

Betty looks down at the shot glass on the counter for a moment and then says, “You know what? I think I’ll do one more.” Maybe it’s placebo, but Betty’s words already sound slurred.

“I’ll do one with you!” Cheryl exclaims.

Veronica covers her face with her hands as she hears the clink of their glasses hitting the marble counter tops. She sends up a tiny prayer, God, please, if you’re out there… don’t do this to me.

The doorbell buzzes then, and Cheryl rushes out to see who it is.

“I just… I just think that puffy Cheetos – especially the white cheddar ones – I just think that… they are proof that God exists.” Archie ends this soliloquy by loudly chomping on a puffy Cheeto. The bag lays open in his lap, already half-consumed. 

Reggie looks at him, betrayed, “Bro, you know that Coach doesn’t let us eat those.”

Archie continues to eat the Cheetos. “Coach doesn’t let us drink alcohol either, now does he Reggie? And guess who’s drinking alcohol?” He points an accusatory finger at Reggie.

“Yeah, well guess who smoked so much weed that he just gave a monologue about Cheetos and God ?” Reggie’s lips are turned down into a pout as he stares at Archie.

Archie puts his hands up in defense. One of them has Cheeto dust all over his fingertips like a true culprit. “I never said I was sinless, Reggie, my boy.”

Veronica snorts and playfully hits Archie in the shoulder, “What are you even saying?”

Archie does nothing but offer the open bag of Cheetos her way. Veronica rolls her eyes and shakes her head.

The party is going on around them in full swing. There’s a lot of people here, more than she expected, more than Reggie’s party last week had, but she’s a bit more delighted to realize she knows most of them from school. The few she can’t put a face to a name with are bearing either Serpent jackets or tattoos.

Veronica is fairly drunk by this point, can’t remember the last time she saw Betty, and doesn’t know how long it is until midnight. She’s trying not to worry about any of these things, but there’s a bud of anxiety nagging at her chest that is leftover from her pre-party freak out, and while it can be easy to ignore, there are moments where it seizes her completely and she has to remember how to breathe. Breathing is easier when she’s around someone she knows, so while she’s lost Betty, she’s glad she has Archie – even if he is high out of his mind.

She watches Archie lean back in his armchair and enjoy his Cheetos. They’re in the corner of the large foyer, where couches and chairs have been arranged to face each other. Most of the people around them seem to be made up of the football team and a few River Vixens, but the only one really paying attention to Archie’s stupid antics is Reggie.

Veronica sighs and looks around. Her attention catches by the door, which has practically been letting in a nonstop stream of people for the past hour. A few people come in from outside, almost empty beer cans in their hands, but taking up the rear is a familiar face navigating through the crowds.

Veronica sits up in her chair and yells, “Juggie!” very loudly across the room.

Jughead is close enough to hear her, and swings his head toward the sound. It occurs to Veronica then that the only girl who calls him that anymore is Betty, and when Jughead’s eyes fall onto Veronica, she watches his gaze fall just enough that she can tell he’s disappointed.

He still makes his way over toward her, although he looks entirely apprehensive. She tries to think of the last time she saw him in person and has a hard time recalling.

Upon seeing his best friend, Archie visibly perks up. “Jug!” He calls loudly, even though Jughead is only a few feet away from him at this point.

Jughead visibly cringes, but he crouches in between Archie and Veronica’s chairs, like maybe it will keep him invisible somehow.

“Hey guys.” He says. His voice is soft and quiet under all of the loud noise, and Veronica thinks about how much he must hate this. Jughead never seemed to be a big fan of huge gatherings unless it was Serpent related.

Veronica looks at him. “How are you doing? Are you okay?”

Jughead looks at her confused, almost offended even. “Yes? Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

Veronica shrugs into herself. She clutches her drink to her chest as she points out, “You don’t really like parties.”

Jughead has no time to answer before Archie cuts in. “Jughead, man, I have these Cheetos for you.”

“Archie, if you don’t stop talking about the fucking Cheetos, I’ll scream.” Veronica tells him, and swats at him with the hand that’s not holding a drink. It must not look as menacing as she thinks, because Jughead laughs at her.

Archie looks distraught. He turns to Jughead. “You are the only one in this world that understands me and that’s why you’re my best friend. And that’s why I love you. And that’s why you mean so much to me. And that’s why I’ve missed you so much –”

“Archie,” Veronica blurts out, panicked by the heart eyes Archie is giving Jughead. She smooths her voice into something calmer and she laughs. “Archie, you’re so high, you have to stop babbling.”

Jughead doesn’t seem affected though. He looks at Veronica with a humorous smile. “Babbling is what high Archie does best.”

She smiles up at him and for a moment, Veronica is hit with how much she missed him. She spent a long time being angry at him for being Betty’s boyfriend, for being the perfect, pre-packaged couple all of the time, but he had always been a pillar of her life in Riverdale.

For a moment, she has an impulse to reach up to him and pull him down in a hug and tell him how much she missed him, but even drunk Veronica knows that’s a bad idea. She looks over at Archie and finds him looking up at Jughead like he’s thinking about doing the same thing.

Veronica spent all of Sophomore year mulling over her internal feelings for Betty, but she watched Archie too. Even though Archie pursued her, Veronica never missed the way he lit up when Jughead entered a room, or the personal things the boys seemed to share, and the big, fat, festering crush that Archie had on Jughead. Veronica knows all too well about big, fat, festering crushes. She knows one when she sees it.

Jughead can’t help but smile back down Archie. He looks happy and cute; there’s one little black curl falling into his face, and he’s wearing a white button-up t-shirt that’s left open at the top.

Veronica sighs and watches the boys talk without actually listening to what they’re saying.

“Veronica –” a voice calls out to from her right, and then stops to say, “Oh.”

It’s Betty, who is holding a drink in her hand like she might crush it at any second and is looking at Jughead like he’s an alien. The fireplace flickers it’s warm, orange light onto her, and makes her look soft in all of the right places.

Jughead stands up and wipes his hands on his pants absently. He clears his throat and then smiles. “Betty,” He says as he dips his head in greeting, “Hey.”

“Hey,” she says back and gives a faltering smile.

Silence stretches between the four of them for a moment, only background noise easing the tensions. Veronica looks at Archie; he’s looking at her, eyes wide with fear and one hand in the Cheeto bag.

Veronica sighs, and lifts herself up from her seat. “Why don’t we go get some more drinks?” she asks Betty, and then turns around, “Do you boys want anything?”

Jughead averts his gaze immediately and sits down in the chair Veronica was sitting in. “Ah, no. I’m not drinking tonight.” He says, refusing to make eye contact with either of them.

Archie’s only response is the crunch of food in his mouth and a, “Hmmm,” So Veronica supposes that’s that.

In the kitchen, Veronica searches for cold water while Betty paces beside her.

“I know – I know I like, see him all the time at Blue and Gold meetings and in the hallways of school and stuff and like – I know I said I was okay with him being here but I –”

Veronica stretches out an hand to place on Betty’s arm. The movement immediately stops Betty’s pacing, and she looks into Veronica’s eyes. Her face is a crumbling wreck, her eyes look like they are just about spill over with tears, and her chest is breathing so fast and shallow Veronica feels like she’s going to have a panic attack of her own by just looking at Betty.

Veronica moves her hand down to Betty’s palm. She intertwines their fingers together.

“I think it’s perfectly normal to feel freaked out upon seeing your ex-boyfriend again.” Veronica tells her in a soft, sweet voice.

“But I see him all the time,” Betty whines, swaying closer to Veronica, “I shouldn’t be like this.”

“This isn’t school, this is different.” Veronica smiles at her and hopes she doesn’t look as drunk as she feels, “It’s okay, it’s really okay to feel like that. I just wish… I just wish you didn’t have to feel like this. That I could take it away.” Her words come out breathless, and it’s only after she’s spoken them does she feel embarrassed with how much she’s said.

Betty’s expression is unreadable, but it changes back to normal suddenly. “Well, you could always do more shots with me. This whole episode of mine really sobered me up.” She teases.

Veronica knows it’s a bad idea, but they’re both a little drunk anyway, and what else is there to do? Veronica can’t make her feel better, but alcohol sure can. They do a shot and Veronica sputters out a cough. Her phone tells her it’s eleven fifteen, and she’s glad that this night is going relatively fast.

The shot plus the drink in her hand that she’s been nursing for the past half hour hits her more than she thought they would, and suddenly time jumps and Veronica is sitting on a couch squashed between Betty and Kevin, thinking about how nice it would be to climb into Betty’s lap.

She vaguely registers the people around them. Cheryl, Toni, and Josie and are dancing to the music and giggling. Jughead and Archie are sitting on the floor bumping shoulders, and Veronica keeps eyeing the way Archie ducks his head to whisper closely into Jughead’s ear and how dazzled his face looks when he makes Jughead laugh. Kevin and Betty have a conversation over the top of Veronica’s head. Veronica feels so drunk she might melt. Her eyes feel droopy, and she thinks she must not look that pretty, so she sits up properly all of a sudden and hopes Betty notices.

Betty just laughs at her and asks if she’s okay, but she doesn’t sound so sober herself. Kevin and her giggle and Veronica lets her body fall onto Betty’s. She wraps her arms around Betty’s neck and presses her face into the warmth of her shoulder. Betty lets her do it without complaint, and even wraps her arms around Veronica’s back. Veronica’s in bliss; they always fall asleep around each other with this same kind of intimacy, but for some reason it’s so much better when she’s drunk. She still wants to climb into Betty’s lap, so she does with a surprised giggle from Betty.

Veronica’s lips rest against the smooth skin that lays in the juncture between Betty’s neck and collarbone. Suddenly one part of her mind has red alarms going off all around it, screaming, Oh my God! You are basically kissing her neck, Veronica Lodge! You are basically kissing her neck! And the other part of her mind is laughing at how dramatic she is about everything.

Veronica tries to ignore her thoughts because they fill her stomach with butterflies that make her shaky. Instead she thinks about the way Betty’s warmth seems to thrum through her, how if she concentrates hard enough, she thinks she can feel the distant thump of Betty’s heartbeat. Veronica wants to wrap around Betty tighter like a boa constrictor, like maybe she can pour all of her love into Betty through force.

Betty still maintains a conversation with Kevin even with Veronica securely wrapped around her, and Veronica can vaguely understand that they’re talking about something that has to do with the paper. Veronica sighs and thinks how of course Betty would still be talking about school at a party.

From somewhere nearby, Veronica hears Cheryl exclaim how it’ll be midnight soon, and then Cheryl’s voice is right next to her, saying, “You know Veronica, you and Betty should kiss at midnight.”

Veronica sits up, startled and blinking fast. Cheryl’s towering over them with a smile, and she gives Veronica a wink. Veronica is ready to slap Cheryl and tell defy her, say, No, no, this is not the plan. This can’t be the plan. Veronica feels the vibrations of Betty’s laugh more than she hears it and looks down at her best friend.

“I’m so sorry I’m sitting on your lap,” Veronica mumbles out, staring dazedly down into Betty’s clear green eyes, which seem very bright in the dim room.

Betty’s face is nothing but happy. “Oh stop, you know I don’t mind.”

“The kiss? Or Veronica on your lap?” Cheryl supplies from above them.

Stop your gay meddling! Veronica wants to tell her, but she can’t look away from her best friend as Betty shrugs and drunkenly giggles, “Why not both?”

Veronica’s confused. “You want to be my New Year’s Eve kiss?” Maybe she’s imagining it, but Veronica can almost feel Jughead’s stare boring into her from his position on the ground. She’s sure she’s imagining it; he probably can’t even hear this conversation, but she feels the hair on her neck stand up.

Betty places a hand on Veronica’s jaw. “Veronica Lodge, I would be honored to be your New Year’s Eve kiss.” Veronica knows that Betty’s tone is joking, but the sentence alights a swarm of butterflies within her stomach. She suddenly feels like she might throw up, but also like she has to run around the whole house to get her burst of excited energy out. She can’t look away from Betty’s smile or how perfect she looks when she’s happy.

Cheryl says, “Good, ‘cause we’ve got thirty seconds till midnight!” and the whole room around them cheers. Veronica hadn’t realized it was that close. Veronica hadn’t realized so many people were in the room.

People around them start yelling before they begin counting down. Their chant is loud and boisterous, full of nothing but energy. Betty still has a hand on Veronica’s jaw and Veronica’s still sitting securely in her lap. Veronica places both of her hands on each side of Betty’s neck and they softly rest there. Veronica feels like she’s buzzing, and when she clenches her teeth together for a moment, they hum. Betty’s other hand goes to sit on her thigh. Veronica’s wearing a very, very short dress, and Betty’s palm is warm on her skin.

Betty leans up into her, ever-so-slightly, and Veronica realizes that the chanting has gotten close to, Ten, nine, eight…

Her stomach is buzzing. She think she’s really going to vomit, for a moment. Which is stupid, she thinks, because she’s kissed Betty before, at cheer practice when they first met, for no good reason beside the fact she subconsciously thought Betty was cute and needed an excuse to do something. It was a bad, bad excuse.

Five, four…

She wonders if Jughead’s looking at them. She wonders if her breath smells bad. Betty leans closer, and Veronica follows her lead. She wonders if Betty will be too drunk to care.

On, One, the whole room around them bursts into celebratory cheers, there are popping sounds of confetti and the large noise of laughter, and Betty and Veronica lean into kiss each other.

When their lips touch, something like a small explosion of fireworks go off inside of Veronica’s chest and rise up to her throat. The kiss itself is nothing really; it’s chaste and short, only lips touching chapped lips, but Veronica can’t help but be caught up in how soft it is. She can’t help but swipe her thumb softly against Betty’s pulse point. She can’t help but think, Holy shit.

It’s over just like that. Betty pulls back from her, and Veronica opens her heavy eyelids. Betty’s looking at her softly and laughing, her white teeth visible. Veronica does the first thing she thinks to do: she climbs off of Betty and gains her footing on her high heels. Her legs feel light and weak, like they have no hope of holding her up. Veronica tugs her dress down her thighs, and smooths it out. She thinks if she kept her hands still, they would be shaking.

This is all very dramatic, you’re very dramatic, Veronica, is what she thinks to herself in an attempt to calm down. Somehow, it doesn’t work. She can’t meet Betty’s eyes.

“Do you need more to drink? I’m going to get more to drink.” She says to Betty, but it’s more down toward her own feet.

“Sure!” Betty says cheerfully, and her red cup is shoved into Veronica’s view. Veronica grabs it and wobbles off to the kitchen.

She only walks a few steps before Cheryl swoops in, wrapping an arm around Veronica’s hip in order to support her. “You okay?” She asks, and Veronica nods. “I can’t believe you kissed Betty Cooper! ” Cheryl exclaims, much like a thirteen year old squealing about meeting their favourite celebrity. Her grin is wide and all bright red lipstick.

Veronica blinks. “Yeah,” she says, although the thought makes her stomach churn.

“Betty looked really happy.” Cheryl tells her, unable to keep the smile out of her voice.

Veronica’s head is such a jumble of intoxication that the words go right through her. Cheryl helps her wobble into the kitchen and Veronica recognizes how much her feet hurt. Once they get into the kitchen, Veronica shoos away some of the people resting on the counter so she can heave herself on top of it.

Cheryl scowls at Moose and his new girlfriend, who are making out by the beer. “I don’t want to look at straight people kissing in public; I have to do that everyday of my gay life. Please, if you’re going to be animals, do it in an empty room upstairs. This house has plenty. ”

Ethel Muggs, who happens to be filling up her drink, laughs for a good five minutes at this; Moose and his girl don’t find it to be so funny, but they vacate as told. This leaves more room for Veronica to sit on the counter top as Cheryl gets her water.

They stay in there for a few minutes, people trailing in and out. Kevin eventually saunters in, checking in with everybody to make sure they’re alright, and soon after Archie trickles in behind him. She thinks she sees Jughead behind him, but it also might be literally any other person wearing a beanie. Veronica looks around the room and frowns.

“Where’s Betty?” she asks.

Cheryl’s too distracted, snuggling into Kevin’s side comfortably, to answer, but Kevin looks up at Veronica with that charming, reassuring smile of his and says, “I think she went upstairs to go find a bathroom. But those stairs can be hard to tackle if you’re drunk.”

She appreciates Kevin for being the sober voice of reason at this party, but she also doesn’t care. Veronica waves him off. “I’m feeling pretty sober.” This is a lie, but she feels remarkably more in control than she did however many minutes ago.

The trek upstairs is certainly wobbly, and Veronica thinks about taking off her high heels several times throughout the process, but ultimately decides against it. This outfit wouldn’t look half as cute without her strappy kitten heels, and Veronica Lodge always looks good.

The second floor of Thistlehouse is a labyrinth of hallways and dimly lit rooms with their doors shut. Veronica is sure that behind most of them are images of her classmates doing things she’d rather not be privy to, so instead of looking into any of them, she wanders around calling Betty’s name.

“Betty?” Veronica calls down a particularly dark hallway. It’s covered with pictures and portraits. Veronica catches the eye of one and meets face to face with the painted visage of Jason Blossom. He’d been dead before she ever got the chance to meet him, but the sight of his glassy, empty stare sends a shiver up her spine. She sighs and turns away, strolling down another dark hallway.

“Beeeettty?” she calls again, inspecting each door and wondering if she can tell just from how it looks whether it’s a bathroom.

The thought is never finished because in the next moment, she hears a laugh behind a door in the distance that sounds distinctly like Betty Cooper; Veronica knows what her best friend’s laugh sounds like.

Veronica walks toward it, frowning. Why would Betty be laughing in a bathroom? Maybe she’s crying?

Panic seizes Veronica’s chest as she turns the intricate brass doorknob. “Betty?” she asks into the room as she opens the door ajar.

It’s not a bathroom; it’s immediately apparent to Veronica that she’s just stepped into a bedroom by the grand bed frame centered in the middle of the room and the dusty, fancy furniture that surrounds it. The bed mattress is plump and covered with white sheets. Sitting on the edge of it is Jughead, looking much more disheveled than he did when he arrived, with a few more buttons on his shirt undone.

Betty has her hands on Jughead’s cheeks, cradling his face softly, and he has his arms around her waist. They kiss softly, and Betty’s blonde curls block Jughead’s expression from Veronica’s view, but she knows it’s them.

They look perfect together.

The facade shatters as they break apart and look back at Veronica with wide eyes. Jughead’s lips shine with saliva, which Veronica gives a moment to think about how disgusting that image is before the panic in her chest makes her rib cage fall into itself. The air knocks swiftly out of her body at the same time her stomach drops to make what feels like a physical thunk in her body . All of a sudden, she can’t seem to breathe.

“Oh,” is all she can seem to get out, “I’m – Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll –” and then she takes a breath and turns around before she can say any other words, closing the door securely behind her.

She stomps back through the hallway with her hands curled into themselves and her chin held high. Her eyes sting with tears so intensely they burn, and Veronica has tunnel vision, frantically looking for any free room to tumble into. She spots a door a couple feet away that’s cracked ajar and has a light on. Veronica gasps for breath and grapples for it.

She practically falls into the room. Tears have started to spill down her face steadily and she just can’t breathe. The only things she can register immediately about the room she’s chosen, after blinking away some of her tears, is that it’s all porcelain white – a bathroom – and there’s a girl washing her hands at the sink.

Veronica gasps for breath and sniffle. “I’m –,” she gargles out, her voice broken and her throat suddenly coated with mucus.

“Veronica?” the girl asks. It’s Toni cleaning her hands on a towel, her face screwed up in concern.

Veronica sniffles, looking at Toni. She manages to get out. “I’m – Betty and Jughead are making out in a room down the hall.”

Toni’s face immediately falls. “Oh… oh Veronica, I’m so sorry.”

Veronica loses her balance and lets out a burst of a sob, snot rolling down her face. Veronica’s sorry, too.

Toni wraps herself around Veronica, offering her support, and says, “Come on, let’s go someplace quiet.”

She rubs a comforting hand against Veronica’s back and manages to find an empty bedroom for them to take shelter in. It looks remarkably similar to the one that Jughead and Betty were in, but with a few different furniture pieces and a bluer color scheme. Veronica doesn’t have time to appreciate this in the middle of her breakdown.

Toni sits on the bed and brings Veronica down with her, positioning Veronica against her chest so she can hug Veronica from behind. Toni rocks her from side to side, putting her cheek against the top of Veronica’s head.

“You don’t deserve this.” Toni tells her softly.

Veronica can’t stop crying and letting out high-pitched whines. “This party sucks.” She comments in between sobs.

As she cries, she replays the scene over and over in her head. Sober Veronica probably would have stormed in there and broken them up, scolding their stubborn asses by saying, This is not what you want, you idiots! This is not what any of us need!, but Sober Veronica is also lot better at repressing her gay feelings for her best friend.

“You know, I was so in love with her when I was fifteen. I would have done anything for her.” Veronica lets out a jagged breath, “And she chose Jughead. And what did he do for her? He broke her heart. And now he’s about to break it again!”

If she wasn’t so drunk, she doesn’t think she’d be babbling on and on this much. There’s nothing to be said, so all Toni does is hold her and rock her softly from side to side.

Veronica wipes some snot from her face. “That’s such a stupid name, do you ever think about that? Fucking Jughead. Who gives their child a nickname like that? I guess it"s better than Forsythe Pendleton. He was probably an ugly baby.” Silence fills the room for a moment before Veronica starts sobbing again, “Oh my God, that’s so mean. I didn’t mean that. I miss Jughead so much, but I also wish he wouldn’t kiss Betty. I wish they weren’t both so stupid. I wish everything wasn’t so messed up.”

Toni nods her head supportively. Veronica can feel the movement. “I know, I know.” She coos.

“I’m not usually a teary drunk, Toni, I promise. I’ve been crying so much.”

Toni looks down at her with a smile. “It’s okay. Sometimes you gotta.” She says as she cards her hands through Veronica’s long hair. It’s the same action Veronica does to Betty’s hair whenever they have a sleepover because it helps Betty fall asleep. She’s always had a hard time sleeping since Veronica’s known her.

The thought does nothing to ease the whirlwind of emotion in her chest.

Veronica vaguely register’s that one of Toni’s hands has stopped rubbing comfortingly circles on her arm and is doing something else instead, but then Toni’s hand is back and Veronica forgets about it until Cheryl suddenly bursts through the door with a deep-set guilt plaguing her face five minutes later. She practically jumps onto the bed to be beside Veronica and Toni.

Toni positions Veronica in between the two of them. Veronica’s head lays on top of the fluffy feather pillows and her pliant, sad body practically sinks into them. Toni and Cheryl wrap themselves on either side of her as she sniffles.

“Veronica,” Cheryl says, looking at her and wiping away strands of hair away from her sweaty face, “I didn’t know it would happen like this. I would never have invited both of them if I had known.” For a moment, Veronica’s sure Cheryl is going to start crying too, which is the last thing they need. Instead, she just frowns deeply and places her head on Veronica’s shoulder.

They hold her like that for a long, long time, until her crying dwindles into small hiccuping and her breathing evens out as much as it’s able to. Veronica has so many thoughts swirling around in her head she can barely sort them. A big part of her just feels downright stupid, stupid to ever think her straight best friend could have maybe even liked her a little bit. Stupid to believe that Betty and Jughead could ever be fully untangled from one another’s mess. Stupid to be laying there, crying in between two of her friends, one of whom is the host of this party. Stupid just because she is so, so stupid. She’s come so far from the girl she was sophomore year who hated herself for wanting to kiss girls, but in this moment, it feels the like distance between who she was and who she is now barely exists, and all she is a gross fuck-up who should really just have stuck to boys. It would have made everyone much happier: her parents, probably people like Betty, and even herself. She could have settled for someone like Archie. She should have.

Nobody says anything for a long time, and Veronica is wholly consumed in her thoughts when, after God knows how long, Cheryl takes a breath and says quietly, “You deserve to get the girl, Veronica.”

Veronica’s not sure what about that sentence breaks her, but she bursts into tears.

The night ends much later, at some obscene time that is much closer to the morning than the nighttime. Most of the house has been vacated by then, and the only people left are sitting around Cheryl’s dining room table, the same place where Veronica started her night blowing up balloons. She looks around at the remnants of the popped balloons all over the ground and sighs. 

Cheryl and Toni sit on one side of her, Toni in Cheryl’s lap. Every once in a while, they glance over at Veronica like they’re afraid she’s going to have knife against her jugular, ready to take action. Veronica wishes she had that kind of energy. Instead, she’s burn out emotionally, physically, and mentally, slouching uncomfortably in a ornate wood chair with sore eyes and Archie’s letterman jacket on her shoulders. She somehow misplaced her winter coat.

Archie’s on the other side of her, looking just as tired. He’s wrapped up in a blanket he’s found on one of the couches that Cheryl gave him permission to take home. Josie and Valerie are on the other end of the table, packing up and preparing to leave. Valerie’s on the phone with Melody, asking if she got home safe.

Kevin comes back into the room and smiles at all of them, although he looks just as exhausted. Veronica would commemorate him for staying sober the whole time and putting up with everyone’s stupid, inebriated asses if she had the words.

“I just checked the whole house and I think everyone’s out.” He tells Cheryl. “Although, this clean-up job will take weeks, I imagine.” As he says this, he eyes a particularly sticky spill on the floor that has collected all kind of debris, from lint and confetti to a stray sock, somehow.

Cheryl shrugs. “Nana and I have a dedicated cleaning team.” Kevin rolls his eyes.

“Did Betty leave?” Veronica asks, her voice hoarse.

The room is silent for a moment before Kevin sighs, “She left with Jughead.”

Cheryl and Toni are the only ones who know about what Veronica walked into and her subsequent breakdown that happened afterward, so both of them cringe and look at Veronica wearily, but everyone in the room knows the implications of what that sentence means and they are all exhausted by it. Veronica even sees Josie roll her eyes.

Kevin grabs his jacket with a sigh, checking all the pockets for his things before putting it on. He looks up at Archie and Veronica. “You guys ready to go?” He asks.

The drive to Kevin’s is cold and silent. Archie and Veronica sit in the backseat as Kevin fiddles with the radio in the front, switching stations every minute or so. The sky outside is lightening at the horizon line, signaling the dawn of morning.

“Happy New Year, everyone.” Veronica says weakly.

Archie smiles as much as he can in his exhaustion, and Kevin says, “Happy New Year,” back to her.

Kevin pulls his car into the driveway, and Veronica and Archie hug Kevin goodbye and goodnight before they start the short walk down the street to Archie’s house.

The cold bites harshly at Veronica’s bare legs. She tugs Archie’s letterman closer to her torso and tries to ignore the soreness in her entire body, but her feet throb with every step. Veronica huddles closer toward Archie for warmth, and they walk with only inches in between them, bumping into each other every once in a while.

Something about his warm, boyish presence and the leftover smell of his cologne makes her heart hurt. This is what she could have had if she wasn’t so fucked up. The bitter chill of winter whips around them and Veronica thinks about the girl she could have been.

She’s still tipsy enough and sad enough to voice her thoughts out loud. “If I could have loved you better – ” she croaks out so quiet it’s almost lost in the morning dew, “This would never have happened if I could have just loved you better.”

Archie’s face immediately drops. “Ronnie?” He asks.

She feels her face crumple for a moment, like she really might start crying again, but she doesn’t. They walk the rest of the way in silence, but Archie’s worry is palpable in the air between them.

“Veronica,” he keeps muttering, and puts his arm around her shoulder like it’s going to make her feel any better.

In the safety of Archie’s house, they tiptoe upstairs. Archie suggests they take a hot shower together to save more time. Veronica shakes her head no and feels her body fold into itself even more. Looking at Archie’s confused face creates upsetting, thick feelings in her chest.

Veronica’s silent as she gets out of the shower and changes into pajamas. She borrows an old t-shirt of Archie’s and a pair of his warm flannel pants, tries to not think about how it all feels so sickly domestic, and the two of them slip under the covers of Archie’s bed just as the sun starts to shine through his window. Veronica was hoping for an immediate pathway into sleep since she’s so exhausted, but she just lays there, stuck in purgatory.

In hopes of sleep, she adjusts her position on the bed and turns over to face Archie. She finds him awake too, his eyes open and blinking, looking at her.

“Ronnie?” he asks quietly, as though not to break the silence of the first morning in the new year, “What’s wrong?” He has a frown permanently etched into his face.

Veronica pauses. She thinks about how many times she’s sat in this bed and wanted to tell him every feeling she held on so tightly to. Her mouth feels gross and slimy as she opens it to say, “I walked in on Betty and Jughead hooking up.”

Archie’s face contorts a little bit, both like he understands what she means and also like he’s not quite sure he’s heard her correctly. “That must have been weird." He admits.

“Yeah, it was,” she whispers, and then after a moment of silence continues with, “I kissed her at midnight.”

Archie pauses for a moment, still confused. “Oh. I didn’t know.”

This rouses a small smile out of Veronica, which in turn makes Archie smile encouragingly. She watches his face for a moment, this boy she’s gotten to know so well over the past three years. Sure, she’s kissed his face a million times and done a little more than that, but he’s still one of her best friends. She does love him. Veronica loves him with her whole entire heart, and she trusts him with her whole entire heart.

It’s these thoughts that allow Veronica to look at Archie and say, “I’m in love with Betty. I’ve been in love with her since I met her.”

If she wasn’t so tired, and if the whole night hadn’t been a constant and dramatic display of Veronica’s emotions, maybe the reveal would have made her feel something grand. It doesn’t; she just closes her eyes for a moment of rest and then opens them a second later.

Nothing about Archie’s face has changed except for the fact that his eyebrows are furrowed in thought. “Oh,” he says, and then suddenly his eyes light up with discovery as he says, “Oh my God, that’s why you guys have matching mugs at your house.”

Veronica lets out a slow, tired laugh and rubs at her face. “Archie, she got those for me for Christmas.” Anxiety is starting to finds its way into her chest. She’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to be mad.

“So?” Archie asks, his voice still in a quiet whisper but rising by the sentence, “Maybe she’s in love with you too.” He says it so easily it makes Veronica want to laugh.

She looks at him, her eyes sore and crusty because she couldn’t get all of her mascara off. “What a big fucking ‘maybe’ to bank on.” she tells him. “Does it surprise you?” Her voice comes out meek. She closes her eyes, bracing for the answer.

Archie is quiet for a moment. “Yeah,” he says, “I mean, I guess it makes sense looking back at it. You hated Jughead for a while for some reason that neither he or I could figure out.”

Veronica frowns. “He hated me too.”

Archie sighs and picks a piece of lint off of the covers. “He never hated you, he’s just… bad at emotions. It takes him a while to warm up to people.” Archie’s voice has taken on that airy light tone that it gets whenever he talks about Jughead. “Anyway, it’s still kind of surprising. Also, we like… have sex with each other. Not that that means you can’t love Betty – it’s just, you know, I wasn’t really thinking that it was in the realm of possibility. I don’t know.”

Veronica laughs lowly. “No, Archie, it’s fine. I get it. It was confusing to me too. It still kind of is.”

He smiles then, but she can tell his thoughts go someplace else. He clears his throat softly and hikes the covers up to his own chin too, mimicking Veronica. “So are you…?”

“Gay?” Veronica supplies.

“Uh, yeah.” He says, uncomfortably.

“You would be correct.”

“So every time we…”

“Yeah,” Veronica admits quietly, “I think I just wanted to feel like somebody loved me. It felt like the only thing to do at the time, even though I knew it wasn’t.”

A beat.

“Does it make you feel weird?” She asks.

“A little,” Archie says.

“Do you hate me?”

“What?” Archie exclaims, breaking the silence of dawn. “Veronica, no. I’m sitting here thinking about how many times you must have felt weird and hoping that you don’t hate me. ” He sounds rather distressed.

“Archie, that’s not it at all,” she assures him, “At all.”

This seems to ease his worries a bit, but it’s only a few seconds later before he’s filling up the silence again.

“Why did you date me in the first place?” Archie asks. He sounds more curious than malicious.

“You were the perfect boy, Archie.” Veronica pauses to simmer in the sadness she remembers feeling at fifteen, how locked in and lost she was. “And a great distraction from Betty.”

“Hm,” Archie says, like he’s seriously pondering this thought.

“Why did you date me?” Veronica asks back.

“I thought you were cute.”

“Betty’s cute.” Veronica points out. “You could’ve dated her.”

Archie pauses for a moment to think. “I don’t know. You just seemed right.”

The irony of that is something Veronica wants to remember for later, but for now, she’s too focused on the next question she wants to ask. She’s unsure how to approach this in a way that won’t have Archie running. “Do you think you’d ever date Jughead?”

She tries to spin it with such casualty that it won’t even be a problem, but she’s met with silence. Absolute silence.

She feels the way Archie has frozen beside her. “What?” He asks. “What do you mean?” There’s an urgency and breathlessness to his words that Veronica can’t help but notice. He won’t look at her.

“Archie, I just meant –” she says, and her hand goes up to touch his shoulder, but he shifts away from it.

“Veronica, I’m – I’m not in love with Jughead,” he attests adamantly, “I don’t even know where you got that idea from.”

“It was just an innocent question.” She argues, her fist tightening in the sheet. “You don’t have to get so mad.” Her voice comes out in a whisper

“I’m not mad,” Archie rushes out immediately, and then takes a breath, “I’m not. It just caught me off guard. Veronica, I can’t believe you think I’m in love with Jughead. I’m – I never – I’m not like –”

Archie’s voice fizzles out into the air and they both lay there, tense and twisted in the sheets. There’s a mean spark of anxiety and panic rushing around Veronica’s head. I’m not like you.

“Maybe I was wrong, okay? I got it wrong.” Her voice is so high it feels like it could scratch glass. “I don’t know. I’m tired. We need to sleep. I’m sorry.”

And with that, she turns over to face the wall. She hears nothing else out of Archie beside his labored breathing from their heated conversation that evens out as he falls asleep.

Veronica wakes only a few hours later to the wonderful smell of bacon throughout the house. Veronica’s body sure does ache even as she lays still in bed, and she’s got a headache that throbs throughout her veins, but something about waking to the morning light with the smell of breakfast is nice. She can’t remember the last time she awoke to a house where one of her parents was already up making breakfast 

Veronica doesn’t get up quite yet. She blinks her eyes slowly, begging them to feel lighter on her eyes. Archie’s snoring quietly next to her ear and she turns around to face him. His mouth is wide open and she swears there’s a trickle of drool on his cheek. As he sleeps, she sighs. Out of everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours, Veronica feels broken.

Veronica decides not to mull on her poisonous thoughts any longer. She carefully raises herself up and out from the bed, gently maneuvering over Archie as not to wake him. She pads around his room, making sure she has her dress, bra, shoes, and bag, before finding a pair of Archie’s socks to slip on. She’ll give him his clothes back later and it will be fine.

She tries to sneak out of the house as quietly as she can. Veronica considers herself a master of the Andrews household; she knows exactly where to step on the step on the stairs so they don’t creak and she knows how slow to turn the front door so it unlocks without making too much noise.

She’s crouched down, halfway down the stairs, when she hears, “Hello, Veronica.”

She looks through the wooden banister and sees Fred, smiling smugly at the stove with a spatula in his hand.

Veronica sighs, and straightens herself up. She pads her way downstairs without preamble this time and trudges into the kitchen.

As he flips a pancake, he wishes her a, “Happy New Year,” and then asks, “How was the party? Hope you guys didn’t get too rowdy.” He winks at her.

Veronica wants to crack all her bones in half and be sent to the Underworld. “It was tons of fun, Mr. Andrews.” She says with a smile on her face even though it’s possibly the biggest lie she’s ever told, and she’s Veronica Lodge – she’s told a lot of lies.

“Don’t worry, I won’t interrogate you long. You can head out before my boy wakes up. I just wanted to know how you’re doing, maybe see what colleges you’re applying to?” He looks at her with an excited and fatherly face, like he bets Veronica just can’t wait to open up about college. Like she hasn’t been asked about it by every adult she’s encountered in the past eight months. Like the thought doesn’t frighten her so much she refuses to think about it. Like she doesn’t have several unfinished applications sitting on her computer with deadlines fast approaching.

“Oh, you know, I’m applying here and there.” Veronica gives him a quick smile. “We’ll see where I get in. But I really have to go, Mr. Andrews. Gotta get back to my mom.”

Fred smiles, something nostalgic in his eyes. “Ah yes, well tell miss mayor I said hi.”

Veronica nods, sending out a quick text to Smithers. “Of course Mr. Andrews.”

She waits by the door until the familiar black town car pulls up, but because God is cruel and petty, at the same moment Veronica walks out of the Andrews residence to get into her car, Jughead pulls up on his motorcycle with Betty on it.

She bumbles off of it, all bundled up in a scarves and layers. Veronica averts her eyes just enough so that when they kiss, she won’t have to directly look at it, but instead see it out of the corner of her vision. Jughead never takes off his helmet, though, and a kiss never comes. Instead, Betty waves to him from the sidewalk and he drives away.

Veronica intends on simply walking straight into her car and dodging out of Betty’s vision, but Betty turns around faster than she thought she would and catches her right away.

“V!” She says surprised, “I didn’t know you went home with Archie.” She seems happy, like the weight of the world has just been lifted off of her shoulders.

“You went home with Jughead.” is the only thing Veronica can say, venom and all.

Betty’s face falters at her tone. “Oh, yeah… it’s a long story. I tried to find you before we left, but I couldn’t.” She explains, suddenly looking sheepish. Maybe she remembered how Veronica had walked in on them.

“Well,” Veronica says, fiddling with the jacket Fred had graciously lent her, “Was it… good?” She doesn’t know why she’s asking this. She just wants to get into her car, but it would feel weird just to walk away from Betty.

Betty’s eyes light up with happiness, “It was –” she starts to say, but just then the living room light turns on from inside her house, “Listen, why don’t we hang out tomorrow and I can tell you all about it?”

Veronica surely does not want to hear all about it. She would personally rather die. She would rather have Betty just strangle her right now on the spot, but instead she smiles at Betty and nods, “Sure, B.”

Betty smiles at her and Veronica suddenly has a flash of memory of last night, sitting on top of Betty in her lap, leaning down to kiss her, the same exact smile on her face.

Veronica turns away and gives a halfhearted, “Have a good day, B.” and gets into the car. She hopes Betty excuses her unusual mood as exhaustion.

She hears Betty give her a muffled, but still cheerful, “Goodbye!” from outside the car. Veronica watches her silhouette descend into her house and hop onto the steps, in front of the door, as Smithers drives away.

Even though it’s winter, Betty and Veronica sit inside of Pop’s and sip on milkshakes. Veronica wishes it was summer, misses the freedom and carelessness of June and July, but she also doesn’t want summer to ever come again. Summer means the end. Summer means having to give up youth for something else. Summer means the impending doom of school. 

“Isn’t it crazy to think that, by this time next year, we’ll be in colleges somewhere?” Betty wonders aloud, spooning vanilla ice cream into her mouth happily.

Veronica swirls her chocolate milkshake around and around. It is crazy, but not in any good sort of way. Veronica knows what comes next for her: four years of school at some reputable, expensive university where she works her ass off as a Political Science major and parties probably too hard, slips back into too many of her old ways, ignores the slow disintegration of all of her friendships here in Riverdale, and then graduation only to be undercut but the stress of applying to law school. None of it seems in any way appealing, but it’s always been the plan.

Veronica sighs, and leans forward on the table, looking across at Betty. She puts on her best smirk and raises one eyebrow. “Who cares about that when you have yet to spill the news on you and Jughead?” Her voice sounds fake and sweet, like artificial cherry. She wiggles her eyebrows at Betty suggestively, and suddenly feels fifteen and immature again. She’s sure she’s succeeding then, as that’s the point: to act like everything was before. Jughead and Betty will get back together and the latter half of senior year will fall back into place just like it was before. They’ll look back at first semester and laugh at it like a misremembered dream, a simple and ridiculous bump in the road. Betty will go back to kissing Jughead like she could give him everything, Veronica and Archie will have burgers in a separate booth down the other end of Pop’s with Toni and Cheryl, and everyone will pretend once again that this is what happiness looks like, this cracked, broken thing. And Veronica will go back to suppressing the ache that is her crush on Betty until it’s buried away under years of distance.

Betty smiles to herself and twirls the long metal spoon in her milkshake cup. She looks up at Veronica, “We didn’t do anything, V.” She says, slightly laughing.

Veronica cocks her head to the side. “What?” She asks. Did she miss something?

“I mean… we kissed, like you saw,” Betty looks down at her hands then, like she’s embarrassed, “But after you opened the door we stopped and… I don’t know – I cried a little bit and then he cried and then drove us back to his trailer, but we just sat at his kitchen table and talked until morning. We talked about us and about the last six months of our lives and everything we’ve been feeling.”

“Wait, so you guys didn’t, like, fuck?”

“V! Jesus – no!” Betty’s eyes go wide, and her face is flushed all over, like Veronica hasn’t heard the very intimate details of her and Jughead’s sex life before. “No, we just talked through everything.”

Veronica thinks about that for a moment. She feels her whole body deflate with a sick, selfish kind of relief. Thank God, she wants to cry out, Thank God!

Betty tells her about it more as they finish their milkshakes. She talks about the relief she feels that she hasn’t known for months, the closure it’s seemed to give both of them, and the fact that their friendship might actually have a chance now. She tells Veronica all of the details, how they talked about everything from themselves to the Blue and Gold articles in the recent issue, from their parents to all the movies Jughead’s seen in the last six months that he has nobody to talk about with.

Betty does a sharp intake of breath after describing all of this. She looks up at Veronica and says, “I miss him, you know? And maybe it’ll always hurt a little, maybe that’s just what love does. But I looked at him and I also remembered how… sad I was, throughout our entire relationship. How many things there were about us that just tore me apart.” Betty shakes her head then. “I can’t go back to that, Veronica. I want to be happy, and I have been, for the most part. He was so good to me for what we went through, but it was still so hard. Talking it through with him allowed me to realize that I don’t want to go back to being that unhappy. I want to be better and welcome new things into my life, like change and moving away from home.”

Veronica reaches across the table to take Betty’s hands in her own. “I think that all sounds great, B. Really great.”

Something about Betty’s expression seems hesitant then. “I’ve been going to therapy,” she says. The words come out thick, like it’s something she’s had to work up to saying.

Veronica blinks, and opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but it falls flat. That’s good, she thinks, but for a moment, she can’t get past the fact that she didn’t know.

“I – that’s wonderful, Betty. I mean – maybe wonderful isn’t the best word. That’s good, Betts.”

Betty nods. “It’s what made me decided to reevaluate my relationship with Jug,” she says and swallows, “and ultimately end it. It made me realize that it… it wasn’t really working out. That familiarity and happiness are two different things, and they don’t always come as a pair.”

Veronica nods back too enthusiastically, probably. “Betty, that’s so good. Like really. I’m really proud of you, and I think that’s a strong decision for you to make.”

Betty smiles back, her face still reserved, but Veronica squeezes her hands once and Betty beams back at her. The two of them stay in the vulnerable moment for a bit, soaking in the presence of each other. Veronica rubs her thumb lightly against one of Betty’s knuckles, and all of a sudden, a feeling of urgency rises in her body.

Because her life seems to be a dramatic display of confession after confession, Veronica suddenly decides now is the time to blurt out, “Betty – I’m gay.”

It’s Betty’s turn to look surprised. She cocks her head to the side in the exact same way Veronica had done minutes ago at her. “What?” She asks, her voice high, “But you’ve been sleeping with Archie for years?”

“Yeah,” Veronica admits, nodding in agreement, “We’re not anymore.” And we’re probably not talking anymore, either.

“Archie knows?” Betty asks, her voice going even higher, “That you’re… gay?”

Veronica’s breathing turns shallow. “Yes.” She says, trying to sound confident. “Is there something wrong?” Veronica asks, her chin held high. If anything will help her move on from Betty, she supposes it’s Betty’s disapproval of her sexuality.

Betty’s eyes widen immediately and she rushes out, “No! Oh, no! I just – I guess I was just… disappointed that you didn’t tell me first.” Before Veronica can even form her next thought, Betty butts in, “I know that’s selfish, but it was just my first thought. No, oh my God Veronica, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you being gay, I was just surprised.” She blinks, and pauses for a moment to think. “Like, really surprised. I mean… you’re like, the straightest person I know.”

Veronica wants to burst out laughing right then and there. What? she wants to say, howling with laughter, Did you miss that time I kissed right after we first met? Or that we touch all the time? Or that I literally just kissed you the other night? It occurs to her then, that coming out to the best friend you have a crush on practically right after you made her your New Year’s kiss doesn’t seem to be the best move, but Betty doesn’t seem to be making the connection.

Instead, Veronica just snorts and says, “Yeah, no. If it makes you feel better, I only told Archie because it just happened like that, and Cheryl only knows because she figured it out and Toni knows because well – Cheryl. But you’re the first person after them.”

Betty snorts. “Wow, fourth place. Good to know I’m high up there.” But she smiles and nudges Veronica’s feet under the table with her own.

“I didn’t mean to steal your thunder.” Veronica tells her.

Betty just smiles. “Stop,” she chides, “This B and V duo support talking about their emotions and personal secrets with each other.”

Veronica smiles at her. They’re still holding hands across the table, and for a second, Veronica has fear seize her chest that Betty will realize she’s holding hands with someone who’s – who’s gay and pull away. Veronica pulls away for her. She rests them on her milkshake instead, and drinks the rest of it.

Betty stares at her. “I really thought you and Archie were gonna end up together someday like, married with two kids and a white picket fence. Jughead and I had bets on it.”

Veronica literally gags on her straw in surprise. “Shut your whore mouth, Betty Cooper.”

The rest of winter break passes by too quickly, but Veronica also knows that she will remember these moments as being some of the best memories she has from high school, even in a long time from now. 

She and Betty practically spend every day together, from morning until late in the night. Alice starts making three plates of breakfast instead of two and Hermione stops asking Veronica where she is half of the time, knowing that the answer will just be “with Betty.”

Betty keeps trying to be the number one gay ally. She points at girls in the mall and whispers to Veronica, “Do you think they’re cute?” as a way of showing her support, and asking if there are any girls she has crushes on that she can help wingman. Veronica’s eyes linger too long on Betty’s lips and she says, No, of course not. Riverdale never had much to pick from anyway.

But it’s nice. She was afraid that Betty wouldn’t know how to act around her after it happened, that she would dawdle or be weird with touching or something. But they still touch the same, Betty still puts her head on Veronica’s shoulder or swings their hands together casually in public places. Her queerness doesn’t seem to scare Betty as much as it scares Veronica herself.

On the other hand, Archie is absent. Veronica can tell he’s made his distance clear, though she’s thinks it’s more a reflection of his own needs than anything else. She did just kind of spring it on him that she thinks he might be hopelessly in love with his best friend, which Veronica knows is a lot to take on. The more she thinks about it, the more she doubts herself about the declaration, and the more she feels bad about it.

So she spends the days with Betty having late night sleepovers and soaking up the last that Riverdale has for them. On the occasion that they do spend a night in the Pembrooke, if Veronica’s mother hears them whisper into the late night, she never says anything about it. She greets Betty with a wonderful, easy smile in the morning, but Veronica can see through it. The smile looks at Veronica and says, You’re playing with fire again, and she knows, she knows. 

But she also can’t remember the last time she was this happy.

They don’t talk about college, they don’t talk about the future, and they most certainly do not talk about the fact that by this time next year they will probably be so far from each other it will hurt, or that they will be so busy with their new lives that they might not notice. These topics had become unspokenly off limits since the one time Betty had mentioned an essay she was doing for an application and Veronica graciously snapped at her about it. It wasn’t her finest moment.

At the end of the day, Veronica is just scared about everything. Scared about who she is, who she is going to have to be, and all the people she will lose along the way. So she doesn’t think about it and they don’t talk about it and they have a good time.

On one fine, dewy winter morning, Veronica wakes up to a phone call from Betty. She answers it with concerned fervor, scared that something’s happened to Betty and Veronica needs to be with her immediately. Instead she picks up the phone to Betty asking her, in a soft, excited voice, if she wants to go on a road trip.

“Just for the day.” Betty says.

Veronica blinks her bleary eyes. “B,” she croaks out, her voice rusty with sleep, “It’s six in the morning. We start school in like two days.”

“Veronica Lodge,” Betty teases her over the phone, “I thought you liked adventure.”

This is how Veronica and Betty end up in the Cooper minivan, catapulting down the icy, open back roads of Riverdale that eventually lead into bigger interstate highways. Betty has the radio on and a peppy smile on her face. Veronica is in a blanket with a cup of hot coffee in her hands and she’s almost nodded off about five times since they started this journey twenty minutes ago.

When she asks Betty where they’re going, her smile turns mischievous. “You’ll just have to see.” She says, her face a little smug.

It starts being obvious to Veronica pretty soon into the hour. They pass signs and billboards that say New York City in large letters, and she also recognizes the landscapes from the times she’s taken these roads over the years to go back and visit her NYC in the holidays.

Betty’s dingy, blue minivan stands out ridiculously in New York City against the aggressive taxi drivers and the pedestrians that jaywalk anywhere and any time they want. Every time someone cuts Betty off illegally in traffic, Veronica laughs as she frowns. Betty doesn’t get angry, she just gazes at them in a bit of awestruck wonder instead, like she can’t believe someone could even do that with their car.

Most of the day feels like a fever dream to Veronica. She hadn’t thought about it before, but she’d never seen anyone from Riverdale, well, outside of it. Seeing Betty in the bustling midst of New York City makes her look like a comic book character transplanted into the real world.

Betty demands to be shown around Veronica’s old haunts and so she obliges. She takes Betty to the coffee shop she used to go to everyday after school with her friends. She takes Betty by the house she grew up in, the one they don’t own anymore. She takes Betty by the building her high school was in. She takes Betty by the park her abuelita always used to take her to as a kid, by the convenience store where her dumb friends stole cigarettes from in freshman year, to the street corner where she had her first kiss. All of her old memories clashing with the new ones.

Veronica looks over at Betty as they stand in the spot where she had her first kiss with Nick St. Clair, the grubbiest boy she’s ever known, and imagines the young, thirteen year old Veronica who never knew that kissing girls was allowed. She wants to tell Betty, the girl I used to be wouldn’t believe I would be standing here right now, but she’s not sure Betty would understand.

They stop by Central Park at the end of the day for the sunset. They walk with hot chocolate across the crunchy grass that’s wet with melted snow and toward the frozen lake. Despite it being winter, the skies are mysteriously clear today, and the sun shines in their eyes like a golden, runny yolk.

Betty looks around and goes, “This place is so nice. I can’t imagine what it must look like in the summer.”

“Have you never been to the city?” Veronica asks, dumbfounded.

“Oh, I have for school competitions and stuff, and a few times when I was really little,” Betty explains, “but I don’t think I’ve ever been here.”

“It’ll be fun to explore then when you come here for school next year,” Veronica waggles her eyes, “You know, at Columbia.”

Betty looks at her from the side suspiciously, although it seems she can’t help but smile a little. “I thought we weren’t allowed to talk about college,” Betty says, “Who are you and what have you done with my Veronica?”

Veronica smiles. “I"ll make an exception for you this one time. This is different. This is exciting. This is you.”

“I haven’t even gotten in yet,” Betty says sheepishly, staring down at her hot chocolate.

“But you will. And you’ll be great.” Sometimes it feels to Veronica like Betty Cooper is the only girl who will make it out of Riverdale alive.

“What about you? You applied too, didn’t you?”

Veronica huffs and shrugs. She thinks about the big mess in her head where all of her thoughts about college take up, and she imagines it as one large, messy scribble. “I don’t think… this isn’t about me, this is about you. This is about the great life you’ll live in the city next year, and all the things we can now talk about with you living in the city.”

Betty frowns. “It won’t be that great if you’re not in it.”

The sentence makes Veronica’s heart stop in her chest. She stands there, frozen. “I’ll still be in it.”

Betty blinks like she’s holding back tears. “I’m sorry, that was – I just think, sometimes, about how much I’ll miss you next year. Sometimes it feels like I won’t be able to take it.”

Betty’s lips wobble and then she gives a watery laugh. The next thing Veronica knows, there’s a Betty Cooper nestled in her grasp, holding onto her tight like she’s worried Veronica will disappear right in that moment.

Veronica’s hands come out of her pocket to hold onto Betty’s frame. One of them finds its way to her neck. Veronica’s cold fingers feel like intruders compared to the warm, smooth skin of Betty’s neck.

Betty pulls her face back just a little, so she can make eye contact with Veronica. They’re very close together. Veronica goes a little cross eyed looking at Betty’s pink, sniffling nose.

Betty lets out a puff of breath. “I want you to get into Columbia with me so we can be roommates,” she says, “I want to live in the city with you and have you teach me how to be a city girl. I want to see all of the places where you grew up, all of them, not just the ones we saw today.”

Sometimes it feels like Veronica’s body is being pulled in two very different directions, like the world is trying to rip her apart. There was the half of Veronica that adored both Betty and Jughead and their happiness together because they were her best friends, and there was the louder half of Veronica that was endlessly bitter, that was tired of their happiness being thrown in her face all of the time.

There was the half of Veronica who knew, deep down, that she did not want to have any kind of intimate relationship with Archie, and there was the half that just wanted somebody to love, that would take whatever she could get even if it caused an uncomfortable chasm in the pit of her stomach.

Standing there, looking at Betty tear up and talk about the life they could live together in New York, there’s the part of Veronica that wants it with every fiber of her body even if it is only platonic, and there’s the part of Veronica who is done giving the fragile, vulnerable parts of herself to people who don’t know how to care for them.

She wants to have a life with Betty beyond Riverdale, but doesn’t want to give Betty the small moments of her past and all of the things that made her. She’s given Betty so much, so much already, and she’s not how much more she can give when she wants something out of it that Betty will never be able to give to her.

Betty’s green eyes seem almost translucent as they roam around Veronica’s face. They’re red-rimmed, both from holding back tears and from the treacherous cold that surrounds them. As a particularly cold gust of wind whips around them, Veronica thinks about how she can feel Betty’s warm breath mingling with her own, how close they must look to passersby.

Her eyes spare a quick glance toward Betty’s lips for a moment too long. She thinks about how many times she’s done this in the past three years, how many times she’s looked at Betty’s lips and just thought about taking the leap.

Her hand falls away from Betty’s neck and instead takes a place on her shoulder as Veronica takes a step back, making distance between them. There’s an unreadable expression on Betty’s face.

Veronica doesn’t know what to say; she can’t quite meet Betty’s eyes. All she replies is, “I love you,” and is exhausted about how unwaveringly true it is.

Betty’s face tightens. Her grip loosens on Veronica. She says, “I love you too,” but something about her voice is small.

Veronica finds their first few days back from break horribly uneventful. Cheryl leads Vixen practice like she’s trying to break them,  Veronica has three essays due from three different classes plus a disgustingly hard physics quiz, and college acceptances are the buzzwords on everybody’s minds. 

Something’s happened between Betty and Veronica since the New York trip, and Veronica can’t put a finger on what it is exactly, but suddenly there’s an awkwardness in between them that had never been there before. Suddenly, she finds their conversations stilted and hard to get through, and when they do find an occasional rhythm, their talks end abruptly afterward.

Veronica hopes it"ll pass. They got through a whole year and a half of almost complete silence, they can get through this, right?

She tries not to think about it too much.

On Friday, they have a game after school. They change into their Vixen uniforms at the end of lunch and then stop by Betty’s locker so she can stuff her change of clothes away. As she’s rummaging around and stuffing things into her backpack, Veronica leans on the locker next to hers. She looks out the windows of the school and watches the dreary sky. They’re going to freeze their asses off tonight out on the field.

“We should get hot chocolate before the game,” Veronica says absentmindedly, “Or hot cider." 

“Oh,” Betty says, shutting her locker tight. “I’m actually hanging out with Cheryl after school.”

Veronica pauses. “Oh,” she says. It’s not a problem, but there’s something about the way Betty says it that has Veronica on edge.

Betty tugs her skirt down. “She said something about me needing to practice some of the routine for tonight’s game.”

“Yeah, it’s no worries.” Veronica says to her and tries a smile.

“We can hang out tomorrow, maybe,” Betty says and reaches out to hold Veronica’s hand, “or maybe Sunday.”

Betty is playing with Veronica’s hand casually. It’s not weird, it’s something they do all the time, this casual intimacy. It’s fine. But for some reason, it makes Veronica antsy and nervous. A voice in the back of her head keeps saying, Don’t touch her, don’t touch her, don’t touch her, until it gets so loud that Veronica pulls her hand away. She cradles it against her stomach. “Sure,” she tells Betty, but Betty’s looking at her weirdly now.

“Why do you do that?” She asks, looking hurt.

“Hm?” Veronica asks in surprise.

“You always… you pull away now. After you touch me.”

Veronica’s mouth goes dry. “Oh.” She says, barely audible. She’s not sure how to reply. “I didn’t notice.” She tells Betty, but it might as well be a whisper in the busy high school hallway.

Betty’s face contorts into annoyance, frustration, and then that expression of hurt again. She doesn’t reply back and instead turns toward her locker again, searching through it for something again.

Veronica feels herself start to panic. This isn’t how it should be happening. This isn’t how they should be with each other. She cannot imagine what would have changed in the span of the last week for this to start happening. Is Betty finally fed up with Veronica? Has she finally put together all of the pieces, the kisses, the touching, the everything ? Veronica’s stomach tightens with anxiety, and suddenly the thought of hot chocolate makes her want to throw up.

She gets abruptly shaken out of her thoughts by Archie’s face sliding into her view. His nose is red, like he’s just come from outside, and his letterman jacket is boxing in his torso.

“Hey,” he says, standing directly in front of her view of the window. He’s holding onto his backpack tightly, like he’s a second grader walking into his first day of class, and he’s looking at her nervously. He watches his Adam’s apple as he swallows.

“Oh,” Veronica says, arching an eyebrow up with tenacity, “Hello, stranger.” Archie flushes red at the comment.

Betty doesn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary though, and she smiles at him. “Arch! Are you ready for the game tonight?” She seems happy for his intervention.

Veronica thumps her head back against the metal locker. The feeling of her skull throbbing at the back of her head is more interesting than this conversation.

“Oh, yeah,” Archie says, like maybe he just remembered he was on the football team, “We’re undefeated this season, so I’m sure it’ll go fine. Reggie’s been freaking out for days, though.”

The two of them chit-chat with a familiar ease. Veronica idly wonders what invisible wall built itself up between Betty and Veronica overnight for Betty to be able to have a more natural conversation with Archie than she can with Veronica.

Archie’s voice breaks through the thoughts in her head. “Ronnie.”

Veronica tips her head back down to look at Archie expectantly. “Yes?”

“Do you want to do something with me before the game?” Archie’s question hangs in the air, waiting for Veronica to rise up to it.

Veronica considers this for a moment. Even though Archie is dutifully trying to hold eye contact with her, she can tell by the way his hands are squirming in his pockets that he’s nervous. She knows he came here for the express purpose of seeing her, to somehow make up for the past few weeks of absolute silence between them. But part of Veronica is still scared and waiting for Archie to be mad at her and for her to lose one of her best friends in the whole entire world.

There’s only one answer to this question, though.

“Sure, Archie.” She says, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “We can hang out at the Pembrooke.”

Tension noticeably leaks from Archie’s shoulders as he lets out a big breath. “Cool, cool,” he says, and then the warning bell rings. “Oh shit, we should get to class. I’ll see you in the parking lot?” He asks Veronica as he starts walking away.

She nods her head, fiddling with the straps on her backpack as she watches Archie fade into the crowded hallway. Veronica looks over to her side to say goodbye to Betty, but Betty’s eyes are glued to her phone. Her hands are flying around the keyboard, texting someone furiously. Veronica manages to catch that the contact"s name is Jughead, and her stomach drops on instinct.

Everything feels like it’s falling apart around her, but Veronica can’t pinpoint exactly where the crumbling started or how to stop it. She walks to class without saying goodbye, and Betty doesn’t seem to notice.

For some reason, the Pembrooke is freezing cold when her and Archie step through the door. Veronica, who has just taken off her winter coat and is now in a very, very short skirt, is displeased at this turn of events. The winter version of the Vixen uniform only adds on thick tights that don’t keep that much heat in, thank you very much. 

They only have an hour to kill until they have to get back to school, and Veronica doesn’t know what they’ll do. The drive here had been nauseatingly silent, both of them unsure what to say. Veronica opted for being on her phone the whole time, mindlessly scrolling and scrolling as Archie fiddled with the music.

As Veronica furiously stabs at the thermostat, silence still spreads across them. Archie wanders around the living room and kitchen like a familiar ghost. She’s not paying attention until he finally speaks through the silence, “It’s… so dumb, but I’ll miss this. Like, I’ll miss this house and being in it with you and I’ll miss Smithers and the fancy soap in your kitchen.” He pauses and turns toward her. “I’m sorry we haven’t talked.”

Veronica doesn’t say anything in response and she doesn’t move from her position across the room.

Archie scratches at his head. “I’m… well, I’m a real dick. My best friend came out to me and then I didn’t talk to her for weeks because I’m stupid.” He walks toward her.

Veronica feels the anxiety that Archie was going to disown her unfurl in her chest. She goes to meet him in the middle of the room. “Archie –”

“No,” he says, and holds up a hand to her. “I can tell that you’re about to apologize and you shouldn’t be the one who’s sorry. I didn’t put two and two together until recently when I thought about how hard that must have been for you – to walk in on Betty and Jughead, even if nothing really happened between them after that.”

Veronica crosses her arms across her chest just so she can have something to hold onto. “It was – honestly, it was fine. I was just being dramatic. You know how I am.” She tells him and then rolls her eyes at herself.

Archie vigorously shakes his head back and forth. “I hate that you always do that to yourself. Veronica, you don’t have to… what you feel matters. It matters to you, it matters to me, and it matters to everyone else around us, too.” His face is struck with pain. “You told me something really important and I didn’t listen hard enough.”

Veronica opens her mouth, but her thoughts are empty of what to say. Archie always manages to make her feel small somehow. He always manages to reduce her to her softest form, to dig under the layers and layers of dirt she’s packed around herself and rip them apart to find the child that resides at the heart of her body.

“It’s okay, Archie.” She says, looking at him, “It’s really okay.”

But Archie still looks upset with himself. “I should have been… I don’t know, kinder about the whole thing. I should have reached out to you to talk, but I was so caught up in my own bullshit that I dropped the ball.”

“Archie,” Veronica interjects, “I have to say sorry too… about the Jughead stuff –”

Archie overtakes the conversation immediately. “I – yeah,” he says and then squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, like he’s overwhelmed, “I actually –”

The door of the Pembrooke bursts open at that moment and out comes Hermione Lodge in her most untimely entrance yet. Behind her is a trail of people in crisp suits and sleek dresses who laugh loudly. Hermione doesn’t seem surprised or displeased that Veronica’s home, but when her attention turns to Archie, her face lights up with a smile. She darts her eyes back to her daughter, and Veronica can see the scheme starting in her eyes.

“Oh, Veronica!” She calls and then gestures to the group of people behind her, “Oh, everyone meet my daughter,” she smiles then and looks up to Archie, “and her boyfriend.”

Veronica can imagine that they look like the perfect coming-of-age couple with her in her River Vixens uniform, a little ribbon tied in her hair, and Archie with his matching letterman.

The crowd practically coos at them and Veronica feels her stomach tighten. “Mom, I –”

Archie tries to protest too. “Oh, Mrs. Lodge, we’re not –”

“It’s so wonderful to see you around here, Archie.” Hermione says as she walks up to hug her daughter and then pat Archie on the cheek lovingly, as if he might be her child too.

Veronica curls a fist in her hands. She feels like she might cry. She feels stupid. “Mom,” she grates out, but Hermione takes no notice. 

She turns back to the group. Veronica thinks they must be investors or something; certainly people her mother wants to please. “Veronica and Archie have their last football game of the season tonight, so I didn’t think they’d be here or I would have let you all know.”

Various people in the group of investors chirp about how it’s no problem. A man with a deep voice says, “I’m glad to see such wonderful, bright kids who represent the face of Riverdale.”

Veronica’s tired of this shit. She touches Archie lightly on the arm. “I think you should go.” She wants nothing more for him to be gone and this problem to disappear.

Archie looks down at her with concern. “How are you going to get back to school?” He says in a low voice only she can hear.

“Archie, I’ll figure it out, you just need to leave –”

“Veronica,” Hermione chides, putting on whatever kind of firm, motherly voice these people she’s trying to please expect from her. Veronica’s so tired. “Don’t push the boy out. Archie is always welcome here and he should know it.”

Archie looks down at Veronica, panicked and waiting for instruction. She nods toward the door and pushes him at it with a hand at the small of his back. “I’ll see you at the game, okay? We’ll talk more later, right?” She asks up at him.

Archie nods, but his eyes are nervously darting from Hermione and then to Veronica. “Yeah,” he says, looking down at her finally. “Of course.”

The door shuts and Veronica turns around. Hermione has already started to bring her posse of people into the living room, offering drinks and snacks. When Veronica approaches her, she says, “Veronica, can you go turn up the heat? This apartment is so cold.”

Veronica just looks at her and says, “Can we talk in private?”

Hermione hesitates. She has a bottle of champagne in her hand and she’s in the process of pulling out several glasses. She leans into Veronica and says in a quieter voice, “I have guests, mija.” She gives Veronica a pointed look.

Veronica thinks she could upchuck right there in front of the guests. “It’ll only take a second.” She assures Hermione.

Hiram’s study still remains largely intact. They took down the very large portrait of Veronica (Thank God.) and many of the mementos that were Hiram’s or reminded them of Hiram have been since taken away, but Hermione still uses it as a study. It had become her at-home political office when she became mayor, and Veronica only goes in it when she had a particular desire to fetch one of the books from the bookshelf or to ask something of her mother. 

Sitting in it now, with the smell of old, cracked leather and printed paper, Veronica is still reminded of her father. She’s reminded of the anxious, paranoid fear she still has sometimes that he’ll show up at their doorstep and ruin their lives once again.

She tries to push it out of her mind as she and her mother sit down in chairs across from each other. The fireplace isn’t turned on, so this room is as cold as the rest of the house, if not colder. Veronica wraps her arms around herself as her mother watches her patiently for a moment.

“You sound like Daddy when you talk about Archie.” Veronica tells her. “You use him like Daddy did.”

Hermione furrows her eyebrows together. “Veronica, what do you mean?” She sounds both genuinely confused and genuinely annoyed.

“I don’t like it –” Veronica stops, biting down on the words before trying different ones, “I don’t think it’s fair that you get to decide which parts of my life you think are worthy enough to be on display. First of all, Archie and I haven’t been dating for months, and –”

“Oh, Veronica,” her mother says, rolling her eyes, “You always say that, and yet he always reappears, doesn’t he? I get it, I used to be that way as a kid, too – and with Fred Andrews, no less – but you can’t get mad at me when I call it how I see it.”

Hermione describes it all so matter of fact. Veronica blinks at her, astounded.

“But you don’t call it how you see it – you call it how you want to see it. You use the parts of my life that look best for our family, for your image as mayor, for who you think I should become. I’ll admit that my relationship with Archie has been complicated and flimsy, but –”

Hermione flings her arms up in defeat, exasperated. “I just don’t see why this is such a big deal! Why it’s a big enough deal for you to interrupt my very important time with some very important people.”

Veronica sucks in a breath through her teeth. “Because there’s so much more to it that you don’t want to talk about, and I won’t stand here and have you see me as only an accessory to whatever goals you’re trying to accomplish! You don’t get to ignore everything else.”

The air between them is thick. Hermione clasps her arms together in her lap and looks at Veronica. “And what do you mean by that?”

It sounds like a threat to Veronica. It’s this kind of sentence that has stopped this conversation from moving forward every time. It’s this sentence that has made Veronica want to keep herself locked away as long as possible from her mother.

Veronica laughs, ruefully. “You know what I mean. We’ve both known for a long time, and ever since I can remember you have always tried to push it down or push it away in a corner where it won’t be talked about."

Hermione looks at her with a level gaze, like she’s daring for her daughter to back down. “I don’t believe I understand what you’re accusing me of, Veronica.”

On the outside looking in, someone might think that there is a lot that goes into the seconds before a confession like this, that there must be thoughts flying around frantically, gearing up for whatever is to come.

But honestly, Veronica’s mind is completely static as she says, “Mom, I’m gay.”

It doesn’t feel like a dam breaking open with water like she thought it might. It doesn’t necessarily feel like a relief. Instead, all Veronica feels is fear, pure unadulterated horror at the way her mother might react and what it means for their relationship.

Hermione doesn’t even flinch. She sits there, still as a statue, and watches Veronica like she thinks there is more to come. Instead there is silence. Laughter drifts in from the living room where Hermione’s guests are, and both of them abruptly remember that life is going on around them still.

Hermione clears her throat. “Well,” she says, but the word drifts off and silence over takes them once again.

This is somehow worse than what Veronica was expecting. At least if there were words she could argue against them, but what can she do with pure silence?

Veronica feels her eyes start to well up. Her heart is beating in her chest wildly, and she thinks it might explode. “Mom…”

The visitors’ uproarious laughter slips through the walls of the study again, and this seems to kick Hermione into gear. She stands up immediately and brushes nonexistent dirt off her pencil skirt. She looks down at Veronica. “We’ll talk about this later.” Something about her face softens just a fraction, like she feels pity toward her daughter. Like she’s sorry. “Okay?”

It’s the voice of Mayor Lodge, the voice of a business woman who is so far-removed from the conversation that you have to agree with her because she is presenting you with no other option. It is not the voice of Veronica’s mom.

Veronica barely watches as Hermione walks out of the room and closes the door silently behind her. Veronica barely thinks as she does the same thing, rushing through the busy living room, only stopping to grab her backpack before she quickly walks down the hall and to her bedroom. She can’t bare to look at her mother in the living room with her disciples.

All she manages to do is sit on the edge of her bed, hugging her backpack tightly against her chest for a while. Veronica’s brain is full of shock and fear, but most of it is taken up by a static that refuses to let her have any coherent thoughts. The only thing she can hear is her heartbeat pounding through her entire body, and it takes a concerted effort to breath.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, her muscles tense and her body doubling over into itself, but she does so until her phone buzzes from somewhere in the depths of her backpack, not once but twice.

Veronica sucks in a breath that she didn’t know she’d been denying her lungs. She scrambles to find the pocket where she last left her phone. When she pulls it out, she taps on it a few times before it responds.

The first text, oddly, is from Cheryl from a while ago, and all it contains is a winky face, the lipstick emoji, and then a rose emoji. Veronica is too frazzled to decode what it means, so she dismisses it. The next text is from Archie about a half an hour ago.

[4:47] Archiekins: hey r u ok?

[4:48] Archiekins: sorry abt ur mom. does she know about everything?

[4:50] Archiekins: let me kno if u need me to pick u up

After that are two missed calls from Betty, followed up by a series of texts.

[4:59] B❤️: V!!!!!!!! ANSWER MY CALLS!!!!

[5:05] B❤️: I’m too excited I can’t wait for you to call me back!! I GOT INTO COLUMBIA! EARLY ACTION!

[5:05] B❤️: Veronica I’m losing my MIND! I need you here to celebrate with me!!!! What the fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!

And then several minutes later are the texts that alerted Veronica.

[5:21] B❤️: Hey where are you? The game is about to start.

[5:22] B❤️: Archie’s here, but I can’t find you.

As Veronica is staring down at the texts, her heart shattered at the bottom of her stomach and feeling nauseous, her screen changes. Betty’s calling her again. The phone buzzes in her hand and Veronica just cries. She just cries and thinks about how terrified she is of everything. She cries and thinks about her mother in the kitchen, the way she might storm into Veronica’s room any minute and pull her out by the scalp, showing the investors the way she’d struggle and cry. What a failure of a daughter. She cries and thinks about the wonderful life Betty will live in New York City next year, which she completely deserves, but which will leave Veronica alone and jealous. She cries and thinks about the loneliness she"d felt last year without Betty by her side, and all she wants is to never feel something so awful ever again. All she wants is not to feel awful, not to feel like a failure of a girl for not being able to kiss boys with complacency like every other girl does. All she wants is to not feel any of this.

She takes a shuddering gasp of breath in and has a moment of clarity. She needs to leave. She just needs to leave.

She calls a number on her phone without thinking about it. Smithers picks up with a cough, and then a, “Yes?”

“Smithers?” Veronica hiccups.

“Oh, dear,” he goes, “What’s wrong, Miss Veronica?”

“Could you drive me – somewhere?” Veronica bites out through her tears.

“Of course. I can have the car out front in five minutes. Where to?”

Veronica sits there for a moment, clutching her phone. Everyone’s at the football game. She has nowhere to go, no one to go to.

Then her breath comes back to her. She blinks rapidly and excess tears fall down her cheeks. “I – it’s on the other side of town. Is that okay?”

Smithers sighs, but it sounds sad. “Of course.”

When she knocks on the trailer door, a part of her is sure no one’s home. For a moment, she thinks that she’ll have to call Smithers again,  tell him to turn around, and take her back home with her tail in between her legs. But, miraculously, the door squeaks open and it reveals the only person in this entire town who wouldn’t be at a Friday night football game. 

Jughead looks down at her and blinks, both like he’s just woken up from a nap and like he’s confused out of his mind that she’s there. She bets both are true.

“Veronica?” He asks, his voice entirely unsure.

She can’t imagine what he must be thinking as he looks down at Veronica, who is still in her River Vixen uniform, a stuffed duffel bag thrown over her shoulder, and her face puffy and red from crying. God, she’s so sick of crying.

“Hey,” Veronica says, her voice lacking any sort of life, “Can I come in?”

Jughead draws his eyebrows down in curiosity, but he steps aside to let her through. “Yeah.”

Veronica can count on one hand the number of times she has been in the Jones’ trailer. Maybe twice with Archie and Betty in sophomore year. Once with her father. One more time after that, the one time she came here to get Betty for an emergency. All of these were very brief visits, so quick that Veronica didn’t have time to assess any part of the trailer fully beside the way Jughead always looked at her uncomfortably, like he was ashamed that she had to be there.

Veronica looks around it for the first time now and all she can see is all of the moments Betty must have had here over the years. She can imagine Betty perched on the kitchen countertop perfectly in an old shirt of Jughead’s, laughing as he made breakfast and leaning down to kiss him. She can imagine the two of them doing homework, night after night, on the wobbly kitchen table. She can imagine Betty wrapped securely around Jughead as they slept cramped on the couch. She can even imagine her laughing with Jughead on the floor as they played board games with Archie, the three of them as awkward freshman.

She steps around the place timidly, seeing the ghost of Betty’s presence everywhere as she tiptoes through the kitchen. Jughead clicks the door shut behind them and Veronica peers into the living room. The couch bed is fully folded out and is in a complete state of mess; a thick blanket has been messily thrown to the side, a couple pillows are all piled together like they were being used as a backrest, and the T.V. light illuminates the half-eaten, half-melted pint of Ben and Jerry’s that has a spoon stuck into it. The T.V. is paused on an old movie that Veronica’s sure she’s seen somewhere before.

Jughead has the decency to seem at least a little embarrassed, and he steps over to clean up the trash on the table. As he walks back into the kitchen, putting the ice cream back in the freezer and licking the rest of what was on the spoon, he looks up at Veronica.

“So,” he says, “What’s up?” He tries to seem nonchalant, like Veronica just casually drops by here every day after school to have a little chat.

She bluntly replies, “I didn’t really want to be at home, but I didn’t really want to be at the game either, and you’re the only person in this entire town who would rather eat ice cream than go to the Friday night game.”

Jughead smiles, his cheeks dimpling. “You got me there,” but then he looks up at her concerned, “Is everything okay? You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”

Veronica sighs. “I told my mom I was gay. I don’t think she liked it very much, and even though I was expecting that, it still freaked me out.” She looks toward him with a raise of her eyebrows. “Which, by the way, I’m gay.” She puts her bags down on the kitchen table. “I’ve been making the rounds and trying to find the time to tell you, but coming out is exhausting – it never really stops. I should have held a big coming out party like Cheryl did when her and Toni started dating.”

Jughead laughs, his teeth showing. “Toni hated that.”

“It was a little much, but I would expect nothing less from Cheryl. The rainbow cupcakes were great.” She points out.

Jughead smiles at her and then his face turns a little softer. “But, uh, yeah, I know about you being gay. Archie told me.”

Veronica rolls her eyes, but she feels a bit of relief. “I should have figured as much.”

“I’m sorry about your mom,” is all he says. He does sound rather sorry.

“Yeah,” Veronica replies absentmindedly, staring down at the pale wood of the kitchen table, “It’s fine.” Her voice betrays her and cracks in the middle of the sentence. She sighs and closes her eyes. It’s fine. “Could I hang out here for a couple hours?”

She cracks her eye open to gauge his reaction. He eyes her duffel bag for a moment, but turns back to her with a kind, accepting gaze. “Of course, Veronica.”

Veronica nods her head awkwardly. “Thanks.” Silence, only the crickets making noise outside. “Betty got into Columbia.”

Jughead saunters over to the table. He plops down in one of the chairs. “Yeah, I know. She called me.”

Veronica thinks, Of course, but tries not to let it show. She follows his lead and sits down in the chair opposite of him, pulling her duffel bag to the ground. “Yeah, it’s great.”

Jughead raises his eyebrow at her. He leans back in his chair until the back of it hits the wall. “You don’t sound so happy about it.”

Veronica’s too raw to have this conversation, but goddamn if she won’t rise up to meet the bait. She’s Veronica Lodge, after all. “I fucking hate college,” is what she tells him, sudden fury apparent in her voice, “I’ve wasted so many hours in the last six months applying to schools all around the country, and I’m not even sure if I want to go to any of them.”

Jughead raises his eyebrows in an expression like this is news to him. “Betty always mentioned to me that you wanted to go to Columbia.”

“I don’t fucking know what I want, I’m eighteen.” She says, “I’m eighteen and I’m afraid of losing my best friend to the city I grew up in, but I’m also afraid of going back there – of going anywhere – and I’m afraid that makes me a failure.”

Jughead blinks in surprise. “Ah…”

Veronica rubs at the bridge of her nose. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to come here and have you be my therapist.” She feels uncomfortable in her body at that moment, uncomfortable in the trailer, and uncomfortable in her weird kind-of-maybe-not friendship with Jughead. She doesn’t know where they stand anymore and she thinks she might just be making it worse.

Jughead shakes his head. “No, it’s alright. I just… I didn’t know, I guess. I mean, you’re Veronica Lodge, you can do anything. You can go anywhere. You can be anyone.”

Veronica could cry again if she let herself slip, but she won’t. She can’t look him in the eyes, but she does give him an empty laugh. “Boy, do I wish.” Her nail scratches against a groove in the wood and residue comes up. “How are you, though?”

“I’m alright.” There’s a beat. He lets the chair fall back on all of its legs. “Well, I don’t know. I kind of feel like you. I’m scared about college. I’m happy for Betty, but also insanely jealous. I’m…” he sighs, his gaze flickering toward her for a moment, “I feel like kind of an asshole that Archie was the one who had to tell me you were gay. I feel like kind of an asshole that I didn’t know you were so stressed about college. I just feel like kind of an asshole about everything in my life, for so many reasons I can’t even begin to explain.”

Veronica gives him a weak smile. “I feel like kind of an asshole, too. For so many things.” She wants to whisper to him about how sorry she is about every way she treated him because he was Betty’s boyfriend, but she doesn’t have the guts to do it yet. “I feel like kind of an asshole for the fact that I think this is the longest you and I have ever hung out together outside of school.”

Jughead smiles at her, but it seems sad. “Yeah. We all kind of fucked up on that front, didn’t we? You know, Ethel was talking to me while I was dropping off some photos at Yearbook Club for her the other day, and she said something about how she always looked up to our friend group as the ideal of what she wanted out of high school. Like we were Greek Gods or something.” Jughead stares up at the ceiling for a moment, like maybe Zeus and Hera will come down and impart wisdom on him. “I wanted to be like, ‘Are you talking about me? Are you sure?’ and I wanted to tell her how I’d never felt lonelier than I did this year.”

Outside, somewhere in the trailer park, Veronica hears someone yelling and the joyful noises of laughter, maybe a distant crackle of a bonfire. Outside, the sun is sinking lower and lower to the horizon line, making a smooth transition into night. Outside, all the way across town, Betty is cheering her heart out with pom poms secure in both hands, her high pony bouncing to the music, while Archie runs across the icy mud, taking the Bulldogs to another undefeated season.

And here Veronica and Jughead are, sitting in the painful silence of their shared sadness underneath the yellow lamp of Jughead’s kitchen that buzzes noisily with electricity, the T.V. illuminating the living room blue behind them.

She looks across from him in the low light and says, “I just wanted one year where we didn’t fall apart.”

His face twists at the words, like they’re unbearable for him to hear. “Yeah.” His voice comes out as a raspy whisper.

Jughead looks sallow and small under the harsh lights of the trailer. He looks to the side for a moment, pondering, his mouth screwed up in thought. His hair is still all fluffed up from when he got up and out of the bed, but the bags under his eyes tell Veronica that he probably wasn’t sleeping. He clears his throat and rubs at his collarbone for a moment. When his hand falls, the low scoop of his shirt collar shows a bruise.

For a moment Veronica has a panicked thought of, Oh God, did he get in a fight? and then she realizes with a different kind of alarm that it’s a hickey. Veronica studies it for a moment with wide eyes and then looks up at Jughead. He’s distracted by something out the window of the trailer, cracking his knuckles aimlessly, and doesn’t notice her alarmed gaze.

Veronica scours his face, like some part of his frown or shallow cheekbones will give her the answers she searches for. She can’t imagine anyone in Riverdale who might be sleeping with Jughead except Betty, and she’s sure Betty isn’t. The only person left is –

She eyes the hickey a moment more before Jughead shifts and his shirt covers it up. No, Archie wouldn’t be, either. His vehement reaction was enough to convince Veronica of that.

“God, we should do something beside mope.” Jughead looks at her, “Do you want some dinner?”

Veronica is still shaken up from this hickey discovery, so she says, “Yeah,” without really thinking about it.

Jughead splits a can of Spaghettios between them, which delights Veronica so much she shakes herself out of her thoughts.

“I haven’t eaten these since I was a kid.” She tells him excitedly.

He laughs, scooping a spoonful into his mouth. “I’m glad I could offer you the best of the best. Here, let’s watch some T.V.” They walk into the living room, and he picks up the remote to unpause the program he was watching before Veronica came in. “Have you ever watched The Outsiders ?”

Veronica hums through a mouth of Spaghettios. “I read the book in freshman year.”

He grins at her excitedly and rewinds the T.V. “Oh, you’ll love the movie.”

In the last several hours Veronica has done nothing but sit on the fold out couch, finish the whole bowl of Spaghettios while watching T.V., change into her pajamas, and is now having a heated debate with Jughead about who Johnny from The Outsiders is gay for. 

“See, I feel like there was a lot of lowkey romance between Johnny and Dally. Like – Dally cares about that kid so much. He really went out on a rampage suicide mission after Johnny dies for no reason beside the fact that he can’t stand being in a world where Johnny doesn’t get to live.”

Jughead rolls his eyes at her. “Okay, sure, but how can you look me in the eyes and not tell me that Johnny loved Ponyboy the most? We can both agree that there’s a lot of homoerotic feelings throughout the whole thing, but on his deathbed, Johnny asks for Ponyboy to read to him. Johnny literally gives Ponyboy his last words, which are about him –”

She points a finger at his face. “Listen, Smughead, I’m gay and I know what I’m talking about –” Veronica’s response is cut off early by her phone buzzing loudly on the table. It’s not the first time it’s done it in the past two hours, but it’s the first time it’s seemed so loud.

They both look at it. “You know, you’re going to have to answer it sometime.”

Veronica gives a frustrated sigh, and swallows down the guilt and shame and fear that has mashed itself into her stomach. “I know.” She says, touchy as ever, and reaches for it.

Betty’s contact flashes up at her, but Veronica lets it go to her voicemail. Her notifications are on fire with messages from just about everyone she knows, including her Mom. Veronica blocks all of them out of her mind and taps out a quick message to Betty. Hey, I’m okay. Sorry about the radio silence, will talk to you tomorrow. She drops it back on the table with a thump.

“Do you want to stay over here tonight?”

Veronica looks over at Jughead sheepishly. “I mean, is that alright?”

He just smiles at her. “Yeah, no worries. My dad will probably be back sometime in the middle of the night – Fridays are when he stays out late at the Wyrm just to check in on everyone – but I don’t think he’d mind either.”

Veronica looks at him with a frown. “What about your Serpent duties?”

Jughead shrugs. “I haven’t been doing much lately, thankfully. My dad has taken over some Serpent stuff since it’s senior year and all that, you know.”

Veronica looks across at this boy and is baffled, for the hundredth time, that he is in fact the leader of a gang. “What’s it like? Being the Serpent King, or whatever it is they call you?”

“You know, that nickname kind of stops sounding cool after you turn sixteen.” Jughead laughs for a moment and then lets out a sigh. “What’s is like? Well, stressful is an understatement.”

Veronica hums and watches him for a moment. “What are you going to do when you go to college?” She asks, and then adds on, “I mean, if you do want to go to college?”

“If I can afford to go to college somehow, I’d like to.” He looks up at her and seems so moon-eyed and young. He’s playing and twisting with the strands of his hair. “I’ve always wanted to be a writer, as you know. I don’t think you can be both a writer and a gang leader for the rest of your life. I mean, I love my friends and I love who I’ve become because of the Serpents, but… I don’t want to be stuck here, like my dad was.” Jughead shrugs like it’s nothing, but Veronica knows this is a decision he’s been thinking of for months.

She nods back at him. “I get that. I love Riverdale and it’s charm, and I’m so often scared of what the future means when it’s somewhere else, but I don’t want any of us to somehow end up back here again like our parents did.”

The truth rings out into the silence of the trailer, the only thing echoing back is the sound of the infomercials on T.V. Jughead nods in agreement with her and then lays his head down on the back of the couch and yawns.

Veronica smiles fondly at him. “Ready for bed, little Jughead?” She teases.

He only has time to halfheartedly stick his tongue out at her before he yawns again. He raises his arms above his head, stretching, and then stands up. “I’ll go get some extra blankets.”

He comes back a minute, his arms full of another pillow he found somewhere and a thin little strip of fabric. She expects him to drop it all onto the bed, but instead he drops it onto the floor next to the bed. He searches for the remote to turn the T.V. off, and after he’s done so, he lays down on the blanket on the floor.

“Oh my God, Jughead,” Veronica says as she sits up in a huff, “Get in this bed right now. You are not sleeping on the ground.”

“Veronica,” he says through a yawn, “It’s fine.”

“Jughead, ” she says, baffled, “Get up on this bed right now. ”

Jughead sighs, but he rises from the floor and brings his blanket along with him onto the mattress. The bed squeaks as they both settle into their respective sides, fluffing up pillows and getting under the covers. There’s only the moonlight illuminating the room, but as they lay down, facing each other, Veronica can just make out half of Jughead’s face in the dark.

They look at each other for a moment, and Veronica’s not really sure why, but her chest twists at this image of them, at the silence of this moment, at the experience of the whole night. She reaches across the empty space between them and places a hand in the middle.

“I’ll miss you when we’re all gone,” she says, suddenly overwhelmed with a rush of sadness, “You know that, right?”

She feels very vulnerable in the quiet of the trailer and under the blue of the moonlight, but she supposes Jughead does too. He reaches across and lays his palm on top of her hand, intertwining their fingers for a moment.

“I’ll miss you too,” he says in a whisper. He squeezes her palm and then lets it go. “We should get some sleep, V.”

She moves her hand back toward her and cradles it against her chest. It doesn’t take her long to get to sleep; she finds the ambient, natural noise of the trailer park around them to be more comforting than the silence of suburbia that she’s gotten used to at the Pembrooke.

Veronica wakes up to a disgustingly loud banging noise 

She cracks an eye open. Light is streaming through the windows and the slats on the front door, illuminating the dust in the air to make it sparkle. She looks over; Jughead is still asleep beside her, wrapped up in most of the blanket. His hair is skewed all around his face, and his cheek is smashed into pillow.

Someone pounds on the trailer again. Veronica stretches, groaning as she does. Someone pounds again, this time harder and for longer. Veronica sighs and Jughead shifts beside her as she gets up, walking toward the front door. She takes a moment to dig the boogers out of her eyes before she reaches for the handle.

She opens the trailer door to a strained chorus of “Veronica! ”

Betty and Archie are staring at her wildly, like two fish out of water. When Jughead comes up sleepily behind her and casually rests his arm on her shoulder, they just about lose it.

“What are you doing here?!” Archie asks, alarmed. His eyes are so wide, Veronica thinks they might fall out.

Betty’s no better off. Blood vessels are bursting out of her forehead. “We came all the way over here to ask Jughead if he’d heard from you or seen you anywhere, only to find you here, in his trailer –”

“Looking like the two of you just got out of bed ?” Archie stares directly at Jughead, like he could put a bullet through him if he stared hard enough. Archie’s voice goes so high on the word bed that it breaks. It has Veronica burst out laughing.

Jughead smiles smugly from behind her. “The two of you are ridiculous. Come on, come inside – just talk a little low, my dad’s still asleep.”

Betty takes this memo as well as she can; she decides to whisper scream instead. “Veronica Lodge, I have something to say to you,” Betty whispers angrily with her hands on her hips. Veronica can’t take her seriously because she looks like a grumpy kindergartner. She giggles and Betty’s face gets even redder, “I was going to talk to about it last night, but I couldn’t since you literally disappeared off this plant and had me worried sick!”

“You had us both worried sick!” Archie chimes in; his voice is a little louder than Betty’s. He points a finger at Jughead. “And you! You knew where she was, but didn’t even have the decency to call us!”

Jughead blinks sleepily and puts his arms up in defense. “Easy there, Archibald. I am not Veronica’s keeper, but as far as I was aware, she sent Betty a text stating that she was fine.”

“Jughead, ” Betty says, annoyed, “We’ve had murderers threaten our lives, we’ve had kidnappings happen to people we know! I’m sorry that a quick ‘I’m okay’ text wasn’t good enough to placate my sanity!”

“Jeez, jeez, okay,” Veronica says, catching Betty’s hands that are gesturing wildly. “How about the two you take a deep breath in, and then you, Betty, can tell me what you wanted to last night?”

Betty’s hands are warm and soft in Veronica’s grasp, and the action seems to calm her down immediately. Her shoulders drop without anger, and her breathing levels out. She seems to look at Veronica with a different kind of wide-eyed gaze then, something that’s more embarrassed and nervous.

Betty looks back at Archie. Archie looks at Betty and gives her a look that Veronica doesn’t understand. Betty turns back to Veronica.

“So,” she starts, and then looks toward Jughead, “Well, I didn’t really want to do this in such a public forum.”

Jughead scoffs. “Betts, this isn’t a public forum, this is my private property –”

Betty rolls her eyes. “Jughead, stop –”

Archie groans in frustration. He butts in with, “Betty, just do it.”

Betty screws her eyes shut and sucks a deep breath in. She opens them and stares at Veronica. They’re a dazzling green this morning, Veronica thinks. There’s an iridescence of something in there, maybe a little bit of blue.

Betty squeezes her hands a little too tight for a moment. “So, I was talking to Cheryl yesterday and she helped me out with something I"ve been meaning to tell you for a while.”

That sentence alone makes Veronica want to shrivel up and die, but also gives her ultimate nervous butterflies in her stomach. What else happened recently that this might be about?

Veronica remembers something then and goes, “Oh, congrats on Columbia by the way.”

This seems to pause Betty momentarily. Archie groans again from the back and goes, “Veronica. ”

Betty just smiles at her though and giggles a bit. “Thanks,” she says, and then continues with, “But we’ll talk about that later. There’s something else more important.”

Veronica can’t imagine anything more important than Betty getting into her dream school, but she just goes, “Okay…” her tone suspicious.

Betty looks at her. Just looks at her, wide eyes and all. “Well, I – I –” she starts and stops, her throat unable to let out the words she wants to say. “I guess I just…” Betty wanders off, her attention only on Veronica. She’s closer than she had been before, Veronica realizes. She’s not sure when Betty had stepped toward her, but suddenly their hands are hanging, conjoined, in the space between them, when they had to reach across to each other before.

And then, in the next moment, Betty does something Veronica never thought she would do in a million, gazillion fucking years – she leans across and kisses Veronica, closing the gap between them.

Veronica is so shocked she doesn’t do anything. She just stands there, like an idiot. When she comes to, Betty’s already pulled away and is looking at her, waiting. Veronica can hear her heartbeat in her ears. She takes a millisecond to appreciate it’s ironic parallel to yesterday when she felt the same thing, sitting in her room, all alone and afraid out of her mind. But this feeling is different. She has so much adrenaline shooting around her body that her brain doesn’t know how to process it, but she knows she feels so unbelievably good that she could buzz out of this world.

She looks back to Archie, who is grinning and giving Veronica two thumbs up, and then she turns back to look at Jughead, who does nothing but burst out laughing at the expression on Veronica’s face.

“V,” Betty’s saying into her ear, “Veronica.”

Veronica turns back to Betty and looks at her. “I’m – hello? What?” She asks.

Betty grins at her sheepishly. “I just kissed you.” She says. Veronica thinks that the mixture of embarrassment and excitement makes Betty sound so cute.

“I know,” Veronica tells her, a grin slowly crawling up her face, “I know.” She says again, like she just can’t quite believe it.

She grabs Betty by the jaw and smushes their lips together like a girl who’s never kissed anyone before. It’s not really a kiss because Veronica can’t stop laughing, which in turn makes Betty giggle, and so they stand there, not really kissing but instead mostly clinking teeth together, laughing into each other’s mouths, and it’s certainly not the position Veronica thought she would be at ten in the morning on this fine Saturday, but she has no complaints.

Veronica pulls back from her. “I just don’t understand,” she says, dumbfounded. She can’t process any of this; half of her is sure this is a fever dream she’s having while still lying on the Jones’ fold-out couch. “How is this happening?”

"Veronica ,” Betty emphasizes like it"s painful for her,  “I literally spilled my heart out to you in Central Park and told you I would practically die without you in my life. If that’s not the gayest thing I’ve ever done, then fucking sue me.”

Veronica splutters. “I – I thought it was platonic! Betty, we’ve kissed before and you acted like it was no big deal!”

“That’s because you acted like it was no big deal!” Betty takes a moment to catch her breath, and her expression turns softer. The grin on her face falls a little bit, and she looks at Veronica seriously. She whispers, “When you kissed me, the first time, at the day of tryouts, I thought for sure there was… something.” Betty’s eyes search her face, “but you were so preoccupied with Archie –”

“I was a mess,” Veronica blurts out, desperately wanting to cure the sadness from Betty’s face, “I’m still a mess, but… I think I’m getting better at this gay thing, at least.” Betty’s grin rises again and she looks at Veronica like she might start laughing again. “What? It’s true.” She whispers to Betty.

“Yeah, maybe.” Betty agrees. "I thought you hated me until Cheryl talked me out of it yesterday. I thought you realized all of my hints and every time I was trying to come onto you, and you were trying to subtlety reject me. Cheryl told me a different story, though."

"Cheryl is very right," Veronica tells her aggressively, "Cheryl has never been so right about something in her entire life."

 Betty cracks up in another series of giggles. "Well, I"m glad she is."

“I can’t believe you like me.” Veronica says, her voice full of awe.

She drags Betty into a real kiss then, the kind that happens in fairy tales when the evil is defeated and everyone gets to go home and live their happily ever after. The kind that looks whole and purifying from the outside. The kind that is whole and purifying.

Jughead and Archie clap as quietly as they can manage behind them, and when they pull apart, Veronica looks at the boys and comments, “This is so weird.”

Jughead shrugs. “To be honest, this is not the weirdest thing that has ever happened to us. In fact, this is one of the least weird things. One time, when Betty and I were dating, we found out that our parents birthed a child together. Now that’s fucked up.”

Betty leans into Veronica’s grasp and closes her eyes as though in pain. “Jug, please don’t remind me.”

“If anything, I’m glad we broke up just for that,” he says and they"re all glad that they can laugh at the abnormality of their stories now, the ridiculousness of their lives. “Anyway, more importantly: is anyone else hungry? Because I"ll die if I don"t eat something in the next thirty minutes." Jughead asks, abruptly switching subjects.

The girls laugh at him, but Archie grins at him. "You know it, bro."

Jughead cringes. "Arch, someday you"re going to have to stop calling me bro."

They bustle around the small kitchen, forgetting to be quiet in the wake of trying to make a cohesive meal. Nothing’s changed about the four of them and yet everything’s changed about the four of them. They get along like they always used to, bickering and squabbling and teasing, except this time Veronica has a feeling that there will be no relapse. She doesn’t have to worry about making sure to appreciate the memories before they’re gone, because she’s feels secure in the fact that this will happen again. And this time, she gets to look across at Betty and think, She’s my –, her head yet to fill in the blank because she and Betty haven’t talked about it all, but she knows it’s coming. This time, in between Jughead and Archie bickering about the best way to make scrambled eggs, Veronica gets to look over at Betty and kiss her, as simple as that, and it’s the sweetest fucking victory Veronica has ever known.

She and Betty sit close together on one side of the table while Archie and Jughead sit on the other. Betty holds her hand throughout the entire meal, and although both of them struggle to cut up and eat pancakes with only one hand, they don’t complain and they certainly don’t do anything about it. Veronica keeps zoning out of their conversation and looking over at Betty, openly admiring the smile she gets on her face right before she laughs, the way her hair curls messily around her face, the way her cheeks flush pink when Archie teases her about something. When Betty looks back at her and their gazes connect, it’s like thousands of fireworks go off inside of Veronica’s chest, lighting up all of her organs to make more space for love.

Honestly, Veronica feels a little bit like she’s about to have a heart attack, but a good one. A good, gay heart attack.

Archie and Jughead are in the middle of a story about something trivial – something they did together over winter break (Which momentarily surprises Veronica, because when they did actually start hanging out again?) – when FP comes tumbling out of his bedroom, a cigarette already perched in his mouth and a lighter secured in his hand.

He stands in the doorway of the kitchen and looks at all of them warily, his signature Jones eye bags gracing his face. His gaze falls on how close Betty and Veronica are sitting and their conjoined hands.

“Well, that’s new,” FP comments as his eyes flicks up to meet Betty’s, “Does your mom know?” Then he looks over to Veronica, “Does your mom know?”

Veronica goes, “Uh, not about this part.” and points to her and Betty.

“Is that why you stayed here last night?” Veronica doesn’t have the courage to say any words, but FP levels her with a look. “Listen, you can stay here as long as you like, and if your mom says anything – well, I know it’s been a long time, but I"d like to think I still remember Hermione pretty well, and I’ll talk to her if you need anything.” He looks back at Betty again. “Same to you, but you know that already.”

Betty smiles at him, relieved and amused. “Thanks, FP.” 

Jughead snorts and looks up at his father. “Wow, Dad, you’re really gunning for a ‘Father of the Year’ award from the whole town, aren’t you?” Jughead also has the deceny to look a bit sheepish, “Also, sorry we were loud, but you can eat any of the food you want.”

FP waves him off. “I’m old now, I never sleep well anyway. I sure as hell don’t mind waking up to a nice meal for the cost of some noise.” He takes the unlit cigarette out of his mouth to slot a couple pieces of bacon in. He gestures between Archie and Jughead, his fingers still slick with grease. “Does this mean that you two are gonna start dating now?” He teases.

Jughead and Archie laugh immediately with the eagerness of someone trying to please. Veronica looks between the two of them, and all of a sudden notices the manufactured distance between their chairs. She thinks about the hickey on Jughead’s collarbone. She looks at Archie and she finds his gaze darting over to Jughead nervously, in between laughing off FP.

As FP goes outside to light his cigarette, Betty has moved onto something else, engaging Archie in conversation, but Veronica looks at Jughead. When their gazes catch, her eyes widen. He raises his eyebrows for only a moment, a silent gesture that makes Veronica suspicious.

Before she has any time to think more on what that might mean, her phone buzzes in her lap. Veronica looks down and sees several texts from her mother.

[9:40] Mom:  Veronica, please come home, we have a lot to talk about.

[9:40] Mom: I"m sorry about how I reacted.

[9:42] Mom: I promise I"m not angry or disappointed or sad, I was just shocked when you told me last night. I wasn"t expecting it, but everything you talked to me about was true. I don"t want to become your father and I don"t want to lose you. I want to be a better parent to you than my parents were to me. I want to be a better parent than your father was to you. I want to be a better parent than I"ve been to you. That"s important to me; I don"t want to mess that all up just because there"s a part of your life I don"t quite understand yet.

[9:42] Mom: If anything, just let me know you"re safe xxx I love you

It"s such an unexpected chain of texts that Veronica doesn"t know what to do with herself. It feels like her chest is a balloon that"s just been poked and all the air and tension is leaking out from it slowly, deflating her entire body.

She types out, "I"ll be home sometime in the next hour. I love you too." And shuts it off before she overwhelms herself.

Betty places a hand on top of hers. She"s looking at Veronica with a concerned face. "Is everything okay?" She whispers.

Veronica gives her a wobbly smile. "Yeah," she says, "I think it will be."

In the next moment, Betty’s warm lips are on hers, covered in leftover powdered sugar and coated with the sweetness of maple syrup. It zaps Veronica’s mind completely dry of any coherent thought.

On the way out, after they’ve eaten all they could, after FP’s had his cigarette and come back again to finish off the bacon and pancakes, after the five of them have finished laughing about Jughead’s baby stories, Jughead catches Veronica by the elbow.

Betty and Archie are steadily making their way to the Cooper minivan, laughing with each other so hard that they haven’t noticed Veronica is lagging behind.

“I’m okay with you dating her, you know.”

Veronica looks up at him and automatically prickles in defense. “I don’t need your blessing.” She says, even though it had been an anxious thought cycling through her head for the past couple hours, about what she would do if he started hating her now just as everything has seemed to fit back into place.

All Jughead does is smile at her, like he can read her thoughts. “I know,” he replies, “but I just want you to know that you have it anyway."

She nods up at him. "We should get Pop’s sometime,” she says, “Just you and me.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, smiling wide, “I’d like that.”

The spring dance is a 50s theme, and while Veronica thinks that it leaves a bit of a bad taste in her mouth, she will be damned if she won"t got to a high school dance with her girlfriend in the last months they have here. 

Veronica thinks that there is no better way to ask Betty to the dance than by having Archie unfurl a huge banner from the second floor of Riverdale High that says, “BETTY COOPER, WILL YOU GO WITH ME TO THE SPRING FORMAL?” in sparkling glitter glue as Betty is waiting outside for Veronica after school.

Veronica gives Archie the go ahead over text and watches from around the corner of the building as the banner falls down. Betty’s face turns bright red as she reads it, and then she’s doubled over laughing, looking around to figure out where Veronica is. Veronica comes out with a bouquet of red roses and a grin spreading all over her face.

When she gets close enough, Betty looks at her and chokes out a, “Yes,” in between her laughter. Betty takes the roses out of her hand before she places a hand on Veronica’s cheek and kisses her deeply. When they pull apart, Betty smiles at her. “Do you know what this means?”

“What?” Veronica asks, laughing.

Betty smiles even wider. “I get dibs on Prom.” She says, her eyes lighting up, and then pulls Veronica in for an even longer kiss.

A couple people clap around them and honk their car horns at the dramatic display, but the person who cheers the loudest is Cheryl. She gets so excited that Toni has to lean over to her, while filming the whole thing on her phone, to tell Cheryl that she has to stop screaming so loud or it will mess up the sound in the footage.

Hermione drives Veronica to the Cooper house on the night of the dance and the two of them, plus Alice, make small talk in the kitchen as Betty finishes getting ready upstairs. Hermione and Alice share a bottle of wine and duck their heads together to chat, occasionally letting out a burst of laughter, and Veronica watches them do so, popping a grape or two into her mouth every once in a while. Veronica is dressed in an old dress her mom had in her closet that she found at a thrift store years ago. It"s white, long, and flowy, with sparkles that caught in the light. Hermione had worn it on her very first date with Veronica"s father.

Veronica plays with the pearls sitting on her neck. They"re a weight she"s not used to anymore, since she hasn"t really worn this necklace ever since she first moved to Riverdale, but it"s appropriate for the dance and her outfit.

“Mom?” Betty calls out distantly from upstairs. “Where are you guys?”

“Oh!” Alice says excitedly, and then grabs both Hermione and Veronica to drag them out of the kitchen. “Let’s go see what she looks like!”

They walk into the living room and see Betty standing on the stairs, looking like something straight out of an old comic strip. Her hair is curled, but not in a ridiculous way, and she has a beautiful pink dress on with even pinker lipstick to match. There are white buttons that make their way down on the front of the dress, starting at the white peter pan collar at Betty"s neck and ending at the white belt at her waist. She smiles down at Veronica with a dazzling grin and Veronica’s breath is taken away. She"s everything Veronica has ever wanted.

Betty steps down the remaining stairs carefully in her white high heels, and then reaches out to Veronica. Her hands immediately go to the pearls around Veronica’s neck. She looks up at Veronica, amused. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen these guys. But I like them.”

“I like you.” Veronica tells her, wholly consumed in Betty.

Behind them, Alice is snapping blurry pictures on her phone. Veronica leans into kiss Betty, and Alice gasps behind them. “I love it!” She says and loudly snaps another picture.

Veronica turns around to grin at her. Hermione is standing next to Alice too, and while she doesn’t have her phone out like Alice does and she isn’t excitedly jumping up and down, she’s smiling at the two of them over the top of her wine glass. It’s more than Veronica can ask for. It"s more than Veronica ever thought she would get.

They pose for a couple photos and Betty almost falls down from balancing on her heels a few times, but soon enough she picks up her car keys and they say goodbye to their mothers.

Veronica walks toward Hermione’s open arms. They hug and then pull back from each other. Hermione cradles the sides of her daughter’s face and leans into kiss her on the forehead. “You look beautiful, mija.” She says, looking down at Veronica.

Veronica feels so much younger then, like she’s ten years old again and sitting at her bedroom vanity as her mother brushes out all the knots in her hair.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Cheryl’s red hair is as glossy as ever, even under the dim candlelight of Thistlehouse. She flicks part of it behind her shoulder. “No, Sweet Pea, you can’t come over,” she’s saying loudly over the phone. “Because this is a gay sleepover only! And last time I checked, you got very mad at Toni for even suggesting that you and Fangs would look cute holdings hands, which means you are not even an ally.” 

“Babe,” Toni says and reaches out for the phone. Cheryl hands it to her with a huff. “Sweet Pea, shut the hell up and go kick something or whatever you do to exhaust your testosterone. I’ll see you tomorrow. I hope you had fun at the dance.”

Betty giggles into Veronica’s neck as they watch Toni hang up the phone. Toni leans over and pecks Cheryl sweetly on the lips.

“Gosh, they’re so cute,” Betty tells Veronica. She tries to whisper it, but it does not come out as such. Veronica shushes her, which only causes Betty to drunkenly giggle. Betty’s latching onto Veronica like if she lets go, she’ll die, or maybe like she’s trying to suck the soul out of Veronica.

There’s a half-empty bottle of vodka sitting on the floor in between all of them that was leftover from Cheryl’s New Year’s Eve party. All of them have thrown their high heels off onto the carpet and are in various states of undress. Their vintage dresses had been cute for the dance, but scratchy and uncomfortable for anything more than that.

Veronica doesn’t know what time it is because there’s no clock in Cheryl’s room, but she thinks it must be late. Exhaustion weighs down her body; the alcohol doesn"t help.

Veronica cards her hands through her girlfriend’s soft hair and peers down at Betty’s head that"s resting in her lap. “How are you doing?”

Betty smiles up at her drunkenly. “I have never been better, Veronica Lodge, love of my life, fire in my loins.”

Veronica rolls her eyes as Toni and Cheryl laugh and coo at them. Somehow, Cheryl and Toni have migrated up onto Cheryl’s bed. Veronica is scared about what that means for her and Betty, and so she lifts Betty up as they stands up. They say goodbye to Cheryl and Toni once before they leave the room, wishing them sweet dreams, but the two suddenly seem much more caught up in kissing each other.

“That’s my favorite thing about you.” Betty says into Veronica’s ear as Betty leans her weight too hard into Veronica and they stumble into the guest room, falling onto the bed. Veronica pillows some of the force of the landing for Betty, who just cuddles right up to Veronica again.

“What?” Veronica finally asks, looking up at Betty, who is laying on top of her.

Betty smiles down at her. Her fingers are tracing Veronica’s face like she’s trying to memorize it by touch. The pad of her pointer finger drifts over the jawbone of Veronica’s face and then up and onto Veronica’s lips. “That you say ‘sweet dreams’ to people.” Betty whispers back to her, gushing down at her with a goofy smile.

Veronica smiles and Betty’s finger follows along with the movement of her mouth. “That’s the lamest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Veronica whispers and they laugh.

They fall into a silence for a moment. Veronica really thinks they should sleep, since it’s getting late into the night and the two of them are probably more drunk than they expected to be. 

Betty doesn’t seem to be on the same page though. Her thoughts wonder completely, “I think a part of me thought I didn’t deserve you.” Betty says, “I think that’s why I didn’t try to chase you when we first met. A part of me always thought that I would wake up the next week and you’d have moved onto being friends with someone else, someone better.”

Veronica wants to laugh and cry at the same time. “Betty,” she pauses, “Every day I wake up knowing I don’t deserve you.”

Betty frowns. “I hate when you say things like that.” Before Veronica can argue something about how it’s true, Betty is hovering above her, saying, “Kiss me.”

Veronica does as she’s told. She leans up as Betty leans down and they meet somewhere in the middle, a collision of soft lips and warmth. Betty sighs into the kiss and Veronica has to stop herself from doing the same.

Betty pulls away from her and instead nuzzles her face into the warm crook of Veronica’s neck and lazily kisses her there. It tickles Veronica, so she giggles.

“Betty,” she says, “B, we have to sleep.”

Betty sighs. “Lame.”

Veronica hums in what might be agreement and runs her hands up and down the skin of Betty’s back, her fingers trailing idly along her spine. “Come on,” Veronica says into her ear, “Let’s sleep.”

“I like you.” Betty says abruptly.

Even with the weight of Betty on top of her, Veronica manages to laugh. “I like you too.” She says cheerfully.

Betty leans back to look at Veronica with a dopey smile. “I"m so glad.”

“Betty,” Veronica laughs out, “Sleep. ”

“I want to marry you.”

Veronica holds Betty’s face in between her hands. She squishes her girlfriend’s cheeks together. “You are very cute and I want to marry you too, but only if you get off me and let us get under the covers of this very nice and expensive bed.” Betty’s lips look like a fish. Veronica squeezes her cheeks together even more and laughs at how they make her lips move.

“Ugh, fine,” Betty mumbles, her voice muffled by Veronica still squishing her cheeks together.

Five minutes later, Veronica comes back from the bathroom to find Betty almost asleep under the covers, her dress fully discarded on the floor. Veronica smiles and leans over to push some of Betty’s blonde hair out of her face. This rouses some sort of consciousness out of her.

Betty sleepily lifts up the covers for Veronica to get under. “I feel sad without my little spoon. I"ll die if I don"t get to cuddle with you.”

“God,” Veronica mutters as she settles under the fine, satin sheets in her pajamas, “You are so dramatic.”

“And you are so cuuuuute,” Betty croons into her ear.

“You’re going to be so embarrassed when you wake up tomorrow.”

“Only because sober me will know I was speaking the truth.” Betty smiles at her and lets out a laugh.

They lay facing each other on the bed, and Betty drapes her arm lazily around Veronica"s waist. Veronica"s hand goes up to caress her cheek. Her thumb swipes back and forth, a soothing gesture on Betty"s skin, and they just watch each other breath in and out, blinking tiredly.

In that moment, Veronica feels nothing but happiness. Nothing outside of this room exists for them. It’s just their two soft, gentle heartbeats and the feeling of their legs entangling under the sheets. Veronica leans into kiss her and Betty moves to card her fingers through Veronica’s sleek black hair, her nails scratching nicely against her scalp as they kiss.

Veronica goes plaint under her as Betty climbs on top of her and kisses down the column of her neck, biting here and there as she goes. Veronica laughs when Betty gives her a hickey, crying out about how it tickles, and then Betty giggles too.

There’s still so much they have to figure out, so many things about the future that Veronica needs to think about, a few college acceptances to get, and then prom and graduation to attend. But as she lays there with Betty sitting on top of her waist, pinning her down before she leans down for another long kiss, Veronica can’t help back to what she thought of in New York, only so many weeks ago.

The girl I used to be wouldn’t believe I was here right now.

For right now, it feels like enough.