A/N: This is from Jughead's POV. I wanted to get inside his head and see the situations from his point of view for a little change, I hope you like it!


I had come to terms with the way my life had turned out. At seventeen I walked away from the love of my life, hoping to make hers better. I had thought that was what she would want. I had thought that I was trying to do her a favor. I had thought that she would think back years later and thank me for letting her go. I had thought wrong. Instead I felt like I'd let her down.

The day after she left, I used the ladder hidden in the bushes outside her bedroom window. I had taken the grey crown beanie off my head and placed it on a bed post at the foot of her bed. I had hoped that if she came back someday she'd have a reason to find me. She knew that I was never seen without the stupid thing, I knew the person that she was. She would try to return it to me, and maybe I'd have a chance to apologize for my behavior. The first time Archie saw me without it he had looked at me weird the whole time. The kind of look that makes you feel like you've grown a third eye in the middle of my forehead. He never asked me about it though, he seemed to know, however; that I was trying to just rid myself of everything that reminded me of her.

After that, I did everything I could to pretend I had never met Betty Cooper. I found one of her jackets in my closet at the trailer when I was packing and moving out. I found that black plaid shirt she'd borrowed and I never realized she'd given back. I found a pair of her earrings in my bathroom, and a tube of her lipstick in my bedroom. I stopped working on the novel I'd been writing. Even looking at my laptop that we'd used for research all those years, was too hard. It felt like a death. Whether I was mourning the loss of our child or the loss of her may never be known, even to me, maybe it was both. Our lives had been so tangled and carefully basket weaved together that the only way to undo it was to cut us down the middle.

Staying sober had been what pushed me to finally finish the book about the Blossom murder. Once a publisher picked it up I took my advance and moved into a small house on the outer edge of the north side of town. It was what I needed at the time, a quiet place away from the prying eyes of Riverdale where I could concentrate on putting myself back together.

Then, out of nowhere, the hurricane that is Betty Cooper rolled back into town. In the three months since her return, we finally talked about all those uncomfortable topics that we'd avoided. We talked about the loss of what could have been a beautiful little eight-year-old child. We talked about how we both tried to deal with the loss of each other and that is what led us to this moment. We weren't ready for this, even though we were older, I wasn't sure that we were ready for this. I wasn't sure that we were ready to be standing here the way we were staring at a small white stick in the bathroom.

Betty paced nervously next to me, wringing her hands and trying to breathe. I leaned against the bathroom sink with my arms cross tightly across my chest. I wondered about how we'd ended up back here again, despite how careful we'd been. Despite being eight years older, and having the money to take care of myself and Betty, I was still nervous. I knew we both needed it to be negative, we were still trying to mend our relationship from the first time this happened. I didn't want this to tear us apart all over again. Still though, there was a small part of me that wanted it to be positive. There was a small part of my heart that wanted to see a little tiny Betty running around the house. There was a part of me that really wanted that.

"I can't look." She said as the timer on her phone went off.

"Me either." I said honestly looking at her.

"At least you're here, I didn't like doing this alone the first time." She said picking it up with shaky hands. She looked down at it, and took a deep breath before she handed it to me. One small pink line.

"I have no idea what that means, Betts." I said honestly.

"It's negative, Juggie." She said smiling. I nodded my head and stared at it for a minute. "Jug…are you disappointed?" She asked me in an almost teasing voice as she narrowed her eyes.

"No, not at all. There's no way we can handle that right now. I'm fine, Betts." I said handing it back to her and walking out of the small bathroom. I took a deep breath and started pulling my boots on. Archie and Veronica had invited us over to dinner. It was the first time we were actually leaving the house as a couple and going somewhere…as a couple. Betty sat down next to me on the couch and kissed me on the cheek.

"It's ok, Juggie. You don't need to pretend you're not disappointed." She said smiling at me, "I'm a little disappointed too." She said before standing up and grabbing her bag. "Let's go. I have a feeling V won't be happy if we're late."


A few hours later and dinner was done. We were sitting around the old dinner table pouring over old yearbooks and wondering what happened to some of the other people we'd gone to school with.

"I actually ran into Reggie in New York one time." Betty said trying not to laugh, "he's quite the hipster now."

"Reggie, Reggie?" Archie asked completely confused.

"Reggie, Reggie." She laughed out loud, "He had the cuffed jeans, button down, long hair, and even the beard. It was so strange. I guess he owns a restaurant up there now."

"Wow." I said slowly. The thought of Reggie with a beard was the hilarious. He'd always been the clean-cut football quarterback.

"Josie is working as a producer in LA, the last I heard. She and the Pussycats still do some small gigs around town. We're friends on Facebook." Veronica said as she flipped through our senior yearbook. Towards the back there were candid pictures of seniors. There literally in black and white was a picture of Betty and I. We were sitting on the bleachers looking like the antithesis of a typical high school couple. She sat there with her hair pulled back in her River Vixens uniform, and I sat with my arm around her shoulders wearing ripped jeans, black jacket, and the old crown beanie that never left my head. She had her hands on my arm under her chin, and I had my head bent down and pressed against hers. We were smiling like we didn't have a care in the world.

"Wow, we looked like an odd couple, didn't we?" Betty said looking closely at the picture.

"Yeah we did." I joked next to her. "But not any weirder than those two." I said pointing to a picture of Archie and Veronica after a football game. Archie was in his football uniform while Veronica was in her River Vixen uniform. It looked like it was after the game since he was covered in mud and his hair was sticking up all over. He had his helmet in his hand and the other arm around Veronica.

"Ha! They're so boring looking." She joked as Veronica snatched the yearbook away and looked for herself.

"Hey!" She said loudly laughing with Freddie in her lap. She pointed to the picture of them and Freddie put both small hands down onto the page. He giggled loudly and exposed the two small teeth he had on the top of his mouth. She pointed to the picture again and he started pointing to, still not sure what he was pointing at, but he was having fun.

"Jug?" Betty asked as I came back to.

"Huh?" I said, not sure what I had just missed.

"Didn't you say you heard something about Chuck?" Archie asked again.

"Oh yeah, I ran into him at my book release party last year. Still not sure why he was there. I guess he's a sports announcer now, got injured playing in college I think."

"It's crazy how things change over time." Veronica said shaking her head. "Hey, Jug, your birthday is coming up, isn't it?"

"No comment." I said putting my hands up in front of me and leaning back in my chair.

"Aw, Juggie! C'mon! It's your first birthday since I've been back! We need to have a party. We can get the whole gang together!" Betty begged as she gave me puppy dog eyes. She knew I had a hard time resisting those, I tried my best to not look her in the eye.

"Do you remember the last time you tried to get the 'whole gang' together for my birthday?" I asked with air quotes as I crossed my arms and looked at her sarcastically.

"Sure, I do. It was so awesome you got a tattoo to commemorate it." She threw back trying not to laugh.

"No, the tattoo was about you, not the birthday party from hell. You know that. I didn't want a party then, I really don't want one now." I said shaking my head and looking at Archie for help, but he had the same mischievous look that Betty did. "You guys are doing this whether I want you to or not, aren't you?" I asked giving up.

Maybe it would be a chance to learn to like my birthday for once in my life, a fresh start. I still had to make one last ditch effort to stop it. "They still do double features at the movie theatre you know. We could just go to that."

"Nope. Don't try to get out of this Jones." Veronica said shaking her head smiling. "We're doing this!"

"Someone save me." I said under my breath as I put my head in my hands and laughed to myself.