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He holds up his palm, and a watery smile. He has long fingers, thinks Veronica, writers’ hands. There’s a dull silver ring on his pinky. She matches her hand against his — her shorter, slimmer fingers against his, her velvet-dark nails starkly contrasting the pale skin of his palm. Their elbows rest on the cold acrylic of the counter, on opposite sides of a divide that was never quite completely defined for them.
They are alone in the diner. The moonlight filters through the blinds, casting long shadows on the checkered floor, and his hands don’t shake. He stares resolutely at her, outlined in neon red from the DINER sign and the warm glow of the lamp behind the counter. They stay like that, hands pressed together, breathing imperceptibly, searching each other’s eyes for something .
In the dim glow of the diner, his eyes are grey. She watches the sweep of his eyelashes as he blinks, still holding his gaze.
Veronica curls her hand into a fist. Presses it into his palm. Blinks twice, and then—
“This won’t work.”
—
They don’t tell him, and she knows, she knows , and God that just makes her as bad as them, right? She knows that the only girl he’s ever had eyes for stole his heart and then his college seat and then the boy he might've been half in love with from the both of them, and then anything he had left to live for, she knows—she knows. She wishes she didn’t.
And they still haven’t told him, because Betty’s pale pink manicure is still digging into the sleeve of his denim jacket, because Archie still swings his arm around his shoulders and calls him bro , and Veronica knows and that makes her just as bad—no, it makes her worse.
Jughead seems to glow under the attention, though, his smiles more real than sardonic, like sunshine on a rainy day, like a happily ever after is real, like this could last forever— the milkshakes and the music and the magic that exists at the beginning of summer. The confession burns in her throat, hidden behind heavy layers of burgundy lipstick.
She knows . She knows and it’s killing her, because for all that he puts up a tough exterior, Jughead still trusts far too easily. Sweethearted, lovesick Jughead, in love with his girl-next-door and his boy-next-door, believes that they would never betray his trust like that.
She doesn’t want to know.
—
Veronica’s dress that night is blue. She had been considering her signature purple — she’d gone back and forth between purple and blue, hair down or hair up. In the end, she decides on blue, and pins her hair back and her father tells her through tears that you look beautiful, mija.
She thinks she looks like a fairy. That this evening is something out of a fairytale, like a ball at the end of a particularly difficult quest, thrown by the monarchs of the kingdom to celebrate their safe return.
(Cheryl and Toni are there onstage, so technically she’s not far off.)
Fairytales have happy endings. Archie leaves Veronica crying until she can’t breathe.
—
Summer feels like it’s over once Archie’s a retreating figure at the back of a bus driving away into a bleach-blue sky. The milkshakes don’t taste the same, and all Veronica can see ahead of her is a dusty road leading nowhere.
(“ I just kissed him,” cries Betty into her shoulder, “I just kissed him quiet. Ronnie—he looked so heartbroken, like, like, I was someone completely different, like, like he and I hadn’t been in love for years,” )
She packs quickly. All her novels, her sophisticated dresses, her favorite lipsticks. Hermione is due to leave in two weeks on vacation; when she does, Veronica will go with her.
( “Vee,” says Betty, “It was a mistake. Just a stupid mistake, oh God, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to—we were just caught up in everything, and it was just— a mistake, Vee, it was nothing more than that time you and Jughead kissed in the hot tub— just a mistake, I swear—”
“I believe you, Bee,” says Veronica, thinking about her vow in sophomore year to be a better person. “Just a mistake.” )
Summer starts and ends on the same day. Summer feels like a rubber band left in the sun, brittle and dry and ready to snap when stretched. Summer is everything, and summer is nothing.
She sits on her suitcase, staring at the meager possessions she’s left out for use over the next few days. Summer has started. She just has to wait for it to end, now.
—
She sits on the roof of the Pembrooke sometimes, staring at the stars. She thinks about space, about galaxies and supernovas and the cosmic vastness of the universe. Who is she, Veronica Lodge, legacy outsider to Riverdale, to stand in the way of the universe’s grand machinations?
Archie and Betty were meant for each other. They always had been. It was them at the start, and now them at the end (of something. Not the end of everything, just the end of something.)
She invites Jughead up to the roof one night. It’s a spur-of-the-moment decision — her silk sheets feel like quicksand, heavy and suffocating. She doesn’t want to talk to Hermione or Hiram or Hermosa — so she calls the only other person she has left. The only other person who would understand.
He comes by the Pembrooke at two in the morning, sans motorbike. He’s fully dressed, carrying his shoulder bag, his fleeced denim jacket around his shoulders despite the temperate air. She remembers that Archie told her once, in sophomore year, about how when Jones Sr.’s drinking got bad, Jughead took to being homeless.
Veronica wonders if being homeless is preferable to sharing the childhood bedroom of the girl he’s still in love with when said girl kissed his best friend.
They sit quietly. Neither of them brought alcohol to ease the awkwardness or dull the edges of never being enough, and the warm air is silent enough that they can hear each other breathe. Still, the companionship is comforting, even if she feels underdressed next to him, barefoot and barefaced, in just her silk pajama top and shorts.
“I was thinking about Greek myths,” says Veronica, unprompted, leaning back on her palms. Jughead looks at her, silently asking a question. He looks like a shade in the dark, blinking at her soundlessly.
“Well,” she clarifies, “I was thinking about constellations. How they’re all based on Greek myths, and then I remembered the one about soulmates.”
“The one where all humans were created with two heads and four arms?” he asks. His voice is rough from disuse.
Veronica tugs her bottom lip with her teeth and nods, looking up at the sky. “Yup.” She pictures Archie’s head next to Betty’s, on the same body, and snorts.
Jughead must be reading her mind, because the corner of his mouth turns up slowly and he says, “Then it’s not on us for not being enough. Fate is literally working against us.”
Veronica chuckles. “I guess it’s not on us. Although if anyone could argue against the universe’s grand plan, it’d be you and me.”
“Except it didn’t work, did it,” he points out, and she looks at him, smile fading. “I realized later what you were trying to do, Veronica. To keep the peace before it all fell apart at the end.”
“I never pictured the summer of senior year being this depressing,” says Veronica, changing the subject, avoiding his gaze. “It was supposed to be a sort of happily-ever-after, you know?”
“Greek myths aren’t meant to have happy endings, Veronica,” he says, and it has a finality to it that rings true.
Neither of them says anything after that.
—
“I think I poison people,” she says, taking a swig from the bottle.
They’re in the infamous sex bunker, hiding from the rest of the world. This time, Veronica remembered to bring the alcohol — one of the last few bottles of maple rum she had left. Jughead watches her drink, seated across from her at the table, one elbow resting on its corner.
“I think you’re giving yourself too much credit, Lodge,” he says, a smirk in his voice, holding his hand out for the rum. She passes it to him, and he takes a measured drink. “This town—and all the people here—we were all fucked up long before you got here.”
“That’s not what I mean , Jughead.” She flaps her hand at him, and then runs it through her hair. “Betty did- Betty did to you, to me— twice , by the way—what I did to my friends back in New York. Archie—the same. And I tried-was trying-still am— to be a better person but I was learning that from Betty so what if shelearnedtheoppositefromme.”
Jughead frowns at her, his eyebrows drawn together in skepticism.
She runs her hand through her hair again, and sighs.
“It doesn’t work like that, Veronica,” he says, and it isn’t snarky. It’s barely just exposition.
—
In the end, she leaves. It’s without fanfare, without adoring air-kisses from crowds of friends and heartbroken yet joyful lovers, without waving a white handkerchief from the deck of the metaphorical yacht transporting her to the future.
In the end, it’s just her and her mother, getting into a black cab in front of her once-former home. Smithers loads their suitcases into the trunk, and clasps each of their hands with a wordless, fond smile, and then they’re gone. Gone like they had arrived; one hot day in August, dressed in black, silently mourning the lives they’d left behind.
She thinks she sees a figure in the rearview mirror as the car pulls away from the Pembrooke, a tall-boy-shaped shadow wearing a shapeless old jacket and holding the strap of his bag like it contained his whole world in it.
She blinks, and he’s gone. She never looks back.
—
Jughead looks away. His hand doesn’t move from hers, but in profile, outlined in neon pink-red, he looks a thousand miles away.
“I know,” he says, and they stay like that until the sun rises.