CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: Baby Fever
As the weeks pass by, Betty's pregnancy progresses and she continues to grow as her baby does.
Now at almost six-and-a-half months pregnant, Betty's beginning to feel at risk of exploding long before reaching full-term. In fact, she's not sure how much more her body can expand before she quite literally pops.
It has taken a long time for the movement from Betty's baby to feel like anything other than butterflies that were rumbling from within her. However, just over the last few days, she had begun to feel harder, more distinctive kicks and she's feels sure that she can distinguish where and how her daughter is positioned within her.
Despite both Jughead and Veronica's countless attempts at trying to catch a feel of any movement every time that Betty announces that she can feel her baby moving, neither of them have been able to feel a thing yet. However, they both insist on at least trying each time, but Betty is not all that surprised by their unsuccessful efforts, seeing as it has only been in the last few days that the kicks have felt any harder at all. Consequently, despite both her boyfriend and best friend's initial enthusiasm, after all their failed attempts to feel a single thing, Jughead and Veronica are both beginning to think that they're never going to feel a kick...
#
It's after school one Thursday afternoon when Jughead and Betty are spending the afternoon hanging out at her Cooper-family's house, enjoying the solid couple of hours of alone-time before her parents are expected home. Jughead is set up at the kitchen bench of her home, typing away furiously on his laptop while Betty cuts up an assortment of fruit to make them a fruit salad.
"What are you writing, mister?" Betty asks, glancing over to her boyfriend as she slides the freshly-cut mango into the larger bowl.
Peering up from his laptop to look at his girlfriend, a little smirk settles on Jughead's lips. "Mm, that's for me to know."
She just rolls her eyes. Quite a lot lately, he's been typing away madly, failing to give her a straight answer when he's probed about what exactly he's working on. Her boyfriend's behaviour has Betty perplexed to say the least and he knows it. So, she fails to give him the satisfaction of her curiosity, just sending a shrug his way.
Then, placing the chopping board down as she walks away from the kitchen bench to fetch a banana from the fruit bowl, Betty stops in her tracks. She quickly reaches out to hold and clutch onto the kitchen bench, trying to steady herself as she feels an unanticipated impact from within her.
"Betty? Betts... What's wrong?" Jughead asks, his head instantly darting up attentively after hearing her stop walking on the spot. His blood runs cold as he's filled with concern.
However, looking up and seeing the smile on Betty's face after her initial feeling of surprise does the world of good to alleviate Jugead's concerns.
"That was a kick! A proper kick! Quick, Juggie! Quick! Come over here, give me your hand!"
Jughead flies out of his seat at the island bench, racing around the corner to be by his girlfriend's side. She quickly snatches up his hands, pressing his open palms to her rounding stomach. Then, the couple waits in anticipation, standing there silent and still...
After what feels like an eternity, two faces light up at the same time in reaction to the thumping kick from within Betty's womb.
"Can you feel it, Juggie?! Can you feel that?!" Betty asks, filled with excitement.
The mother-to-be eagerly looks up her boyfriend after posing the question to him. The look of amazement and wonder on Jughead's face adequately answers Betty's question, without him saying a single word.
"She's kicking..." Jughead eventually states with a grin. For a few moments, the teenager feels a little too dumbfounded to expand beyond his initial, obvious comment, feeling struck with awe by the feeling. He's not crying, but the moment has definitely touched a nerve, having an impact on his emotions as Jughead's blue eyes begin to become glazed.
After a few solid kicks in a row, the movement slowly begins to die down for a couple of minutes. However, both Betty and Jughead continue to stay still and silent, glued to their spots, with their hands smothering her stomach. Then, right when it's starting to seem like the moment is over, Betty's baby launches into round two, more enthusiastic than before. The kicks elicit little gasps of excitement from the two teenagers and Jughead chuckles at the feeling that goes unparalleled to any other.
"Hey bubba..." Jughead says in a low voice, looking down to where both he and Betty's hands are sprawled out over his girlfriend's nearly six-and-a-half-months-pregnant baby belly. "Thanks for finally letting me feel you. For a while there, I thought that you were gonna get stubborn like your mum."
Jughead's light-hearted, teasing comment earns him a swat in the arm along with a poorly-executed attempt at Betty pouting with annoyance that only widens the smile on Jughead's lips. Try as she might, she can't stay annoyed with her boyfriend -not even a little bit- as he rubs her burgeoning baby belly, while both of them wait for another kick.
"Honestly, I kind of expected feeling a kick to be a bit of a hyped up thing. Cool and all, but a bit overrated. But, this is incredible, Betts. Bubba's incredible... She's actually a little person in there, interacting with us. She's more than just a cute little 2D blob on ultrasound pictures."
Betty's smile in the moment is only emphasized as she looks to Jughead, revelling in his enormous, genuine smile that has been plastered on his lips by her daughter. Once again, she is reminded of his love for her unborn child as much as for her. Then, glancing up at her, Jughead catches her eyes that are filled with love and adoration, looking down at where he's lowered himself a little towards her belly. His open lips purse shut, not sacrificing the smile that just radiates through his beaming eyes and cheeks instead.
Just moments ago, Betty had been the first to look at Jughead and be enraptured by the enormity of his heart, only expanding her love for him. Then, Jughead had seen her own look of love for him, unaware it had been inspired by his own love for her and her baby. Looking at each other, adoring one another, the couple shares each other's smile that says so much more than their words could in that moment.
Although her boyfriend's hands are still pressed to her baby belly, Betty's own hands move away from where they had been pressed to her sweater-clad stomach and relocate to cup Jughead's cheeks in her hands. Then, with her gentle hold, she gently draws his face closer towards hers until their lips meet halfway between one another, uniting in a euphoric kiss to match the moment and the joy they are sharing with each other over feeling Betty's baby's first proper kicks.
When the couple finally musters up enough self-control to pull apart from the kiss, aided by Betty's pregnancy-induced breathlessness, they don't stray too far from one another as they hug. Their heads are nestled into one another's shoulders which is where Jughead whispers the four, simple words into her golden locks, swelling Betty's heart.
"I love my girls."
#
Jughead stays to have dinner with the Coopers that evening. It's something which has slowly been becoming a habit, him joining them more dinner often than he does not. In fact, Alice doesn't even bother checking if he's eating with them or not anymore. Instead, she has fallen into the habit of cooking enough for another person (or three, considering Jughead's appetite) and automatically setting a place for him at the dinner table.
After their dinner of tuna mornay that evening, the young couple has wound up cuddled on the lounge together, watching a TV show that Betty has been binge-watching in her free time as Jughead half-heartedly finishes his reading for tomorrow's chemistry lesson.
As Jughead feels Betty shift a little from beside him, it's only as he glances down at his girlfriend when he notices the reflection of the TV screen in her glazed eyes, where a few tear drops have just fallen; coming from the only illumination in the dark room.
"Betty? Hey, hey, Betts... What's wrong?" he asks softly, instantly putting his textbook down in order to comfort Betty. With one arm wrapped around her, rubbing her back, he pulls her closer into his chest as his other hand strokes her hair.
Looking at her intently, it suddenly becomes quite clear to Jughead that Betty has been crying for far longer than he has noticed, judging by the redness of her eyes and the glint of tears that have already fallen and had time to roll further down her cheeks. His heart sinks over the fact that she had been silently upset to the point of tears and he hadn't even noticed up until then. In short, he feels terrible.
"I'm sorry, Juggie. It's so stupid because I was so happy earlier today and now look at me, I'm just a crying mess..."
"I believe the term is hormones, Betts. It's okay... It's normal. You're twenty-five weeks pregnant – you're right on cue. But, has something upset you? Did I do something?"
Two big, green, damp eyes look up at Jughead, breaking his heart well before her whispered words that follow it have a chance to.
"I wish she was your daughter, too, Jug... I wish that bubba was half of you."
Jughead doesn't admit that more than anything else, he does too. But, instead and in response to her words and her upset, he just holds her closer and tighter, pressing comforting kisses into her hair.
Most of the time, it's easy to ignore. It's easy for Jughead to fall into playing happy families with Betty, acting as if their circumstances are normal. It's only occasionally, when everything stops or slows down and it's only in some of the quiet moments when he's forced to remember the truth; that try as he might to fill that slot as the father of Betty's daughter, he's not. He never will be, at least not in the full sense of the word. That baby will never be his instead of Chuck's.
It doesn't change his resolve to raise her with Betty. It doesn't lessen his love for bubba. But, he knows what Betty means. Like her, he just wishes that it was different...
"I know, Betts. I know... But, in every way that counts, she is my daughter. You know that."
Betty sniffles into her boyfriend's chest, his words apparently doing nothing for her hormonal, pregnancy-induced emotions.
"Jug, you're amazing to be doing what you are for us. But, you're not her father and that fact is always going to haunt me, haunt us. I don't like lying to our friends and I don't like having to keep something so enormous from them."
"Do you want to tell the others everything, Betts? Is that what you're saying?"
"No..." she says in a low wail. "It makes it easier to forget the truth..."
Betty sighs, swiping her reddened eye with the sleeve of her sweater, doubting herself as she continues on to second-guess her initial answer.
"But, then again, we're not going to be able to keep the truth from them forever. Everyone, not just our friends, will start realising that things don't quite add up after she's born. So, I don't know... While I want V and Archie to be used to the idea and accepting of you being bubba's dad, they still deserve to know the truth. They're our friends... I just don't know what to do, Juggie."
"How about we try and keep the act up for as long as we can. Then, just before you're due, we sit down and tell them that she's not biologically mine. That way they'll know the truth, but they'll have considered her as being ours for so long that when she's born, it shouldn't be that hard for them to accept that she is still ours, but there's just a little more to the story."
After a long silence, Betty snuggles a little deeper into her boyfriend's side. He can feel her hesitant head-nod against his chest in response to his proposal as a compromise between the rock and the hard place that they are stuck between.
"I know that none of this is ideal, Betts. I know that our circumstances are bound to make things harder. But, we're going to make this work. It doesn't matter if she's my daughter, it doesn't matter if there's technically a 'step' in front of that word and it doesn't matter who knows it. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter because we're a family... The three of us are our own little family. That's what matters."
This time, the little tears that are threatening Betty's eyes are tears of happiness, rather than tears of upset.
"We're a family..." she repeats his words that have an enormously positive impact on her as a smile begins and then spreads across her lips at his reassurances that cause her to dissolve into his arms, into his comfort.
With Betty now significantly calmed down from her upset state, the couple returns to cuddling as they turn their attention to watching the show together that had been playing in the background, just until another distraction arises...
The next distraction proves to be Betty's parents as Hal and Alice seem to suddenly emerge into the doorway of the lounge room.
At the sudden presence of the elder Cooper's, Jughead instantly creates some distance between himself and their daughter, lessening the embrace that they had been entangled in while they were alone. Then, looking to the her parents, both teenagers are quick to read the smile on Betty's mother's face along with a more curious, unreadable expression on her father's.
"Polly just called... The twins were born tonight! She had a little boy and a little girl..."
Although she had been in tears just minutes earlier, Betty instantly erupts with joy at her older sister's news and Jughead can't hide his smile at seeing her excitement, prompting him to whisper to his girlfriend who is nestled beside him:
"Congratulations, Aunty Betts."
I know there quite a few of you that were looking forward to Jughead feeling a kick, so I hope you liked that. But, reality hit for poor, hormonal Betty who's still struggling with her baby's paternity. Also, does anyone have any idea what Jughead could be possibly working on writing?
Also, 100 reviews?! Thank you so, so much to everyone who has contributed to that number. I really appreciate the ongoing support. Special thanks to As-Long-As-I'm-Around (x2), GiddyGirl4Books and Nicole for reviewing the last chapter. Also, thanks to everyone who has followed onto my new story and read/reviewed 'What You Left Behind', too. I hope you all continue to enjoy both stories.
Next chapter: It's the calm before the coming storm... Jughead joins the Cooper family to visit Polly and her babies, feeling paranoid that he's being assessed by Mama Coop.