CHAPTER THIRTY SIX – Holding Back
Jughead arrives at the mother and daughter's home a few minutes earlier than Betty had asked him to. He didn't want to start the day off on the wrong foot by arriving late to spend the day with his daughter seeing as Betty had offered for him to care for Bailey while she was at work, rather than taking her daughter with her as she usually would.
"Hi there, daddy" Betty says with a bright smile as she answers the door in her Pop's uniform, immediately stepping away from the door to allow him to pass and walk inside after her. "Thanks again for doing this, Jug."
"Don't thank me, I'm not babysitting. I'm just looking after my kid. Thank you for letting me."
She loves how grateful he is to have absolutely any role in their daughter's life. And, while she doesn't want him to necessarily feel as though he is at her mercy to be involved in Bailey's life, she does appreciate his appreciation for being in their little girl's life and the way he doesn't take even a moment with her for granted.
"So where's our little human?" Jughead asks, looking around the open kitchen, living and dining area of Betty's apartment with no three-year-old in sight.
"She's just playing in her room. Barbies, I think" Betty explains to the man beside her before bellowing out over her shoulder and into her small home. "Bailey! Come and have a look at who's here to see you..."
There's a brief silence before the pitter-patter of little feet are heard racing along the floorboards and through the apartment.
"Daddy!" Bailey squeals, launching herself into her father's arms as she catches sight of the familiar raven-haired man who holds his arms out and open to her.
"Hey ratbag" Jughead smiles as he holds his daughter's body in his arms while they cuddle each other.
"I'm Bailey" his daughter corrects, suddenly bolting up from their embrace and looking him straight into his blue eyes with her own that are an identical shade as she hooks her hand over his shoulder to keep her in place as he holds her in his arms.
Jughead chuckles at Bailey's reminder, forgetting that to a three-year-old being called anything other than your own name warrants the belief that your name has been forgotten.
"Sorry, Bay... Have you been good for mummy?"
Bailey's golden locks that Betty had tied up into to a high pony tail bounce around as she nods her head at her father's question, wearing an earnest expression to match her gesture.
Interrupting the father and daughter, Betty reappears in front of Jughead and Bailey once again, holding her handbag and looking ready for work.
"Look, seeing as you're here early, I might race off a little earlier if that's okay with you?"
"Yeah of course that's okay..."
In her voice and her body language, Jughead can sense Betty's anxiety levels skyrocketing as she stands there in front of them, her eyes darting around the room, checking that she's not forgetting anything as she goes over everything on her mind. The young mother is a little nervous about leaving Bailey on her own with him for only the fourth time and Betty is discreetly trying to ensure that she's relayed all the information to Jughead that she needs to for him to care for their daughter while she's at work.
In order to try and relieve even just a little bit of anxiety, Jughead speaks up, putting a hand on her shoulder to cut her worried thoughts short and focus her attention on looking at him to stop the cycle of nervousness.
"What time do you usually have your lunch break?"
"Usually half past twelve. Why?"
"Well, if you'd like, you might just get some company for your break today..." Jughead replies with a contended little grin. "If it suits you, I can bring Bailey into Pop's and we can have lunch together."
Exhaling a frazzled little breath, Betty smiles in relief at the suggestion, grateful for the idea of seeing her daughter during her lunch break with Jughead's idea being just the distraction that Betty needs in that moment.
"That would be really nice, Juggie... Thanks."
Betty exhales another breath, however this time it is more akin to a sigh of relief than one that indicates her pent-up distress. Then, she smooths her uniform over and moves a little closer to Jughead and their daughter in his arms.
"I better go. Bye you two. Have fun!" Betty smiles as she gives Jughead a quick hug and a kiss on his cheek. Then, she shifts her attention to the little girl in his arms, giving her a bigger, longer hug, before pressing a kiss to the little girl's plump cheek that is a light olive skin tone like her father.
Then, blowing kisses on her way out the door, Betty leaves her apartment and ignores her slight apprehension that comes from leaving the new father with their daughter.
#
After Betty left, Jughead and Bailey played tea parties for far longer than Jughead himself may have liked to as he endured each of his daughter's toys and stuffed animals having 'coffee' slowly and gently poured into their teacup, followed by serving the little pieces of toy food that wasn't real enough for Jughead's liking. But, watching his daughter's delight over the activity pulled him through until she too had finally had enough.
Then, after grumbling that she was hungry, Jughead prepared a little snack of cheese and crackers for them both despite the irony of having spent almost an hour playing with faux food. Not long after nibbling her snack and just about siphoning the water in her sippy-cup, Bailey plonked herself on the lounge, content with Jughead's suggestion to watch a movie and requesting to watch 'The Lion King' today.
However, after putting the disc into the player, Jughead runs into a spot of trouble when the older TV refuses to change to the disc from the panel on TV itself. Jughead has no idea where minor things like remote controls for the TV are kept in the small apartment that is still not quite familiar enough for him just yet.
"Where's the remote for the TV? Do you know where that is, Bailey?"
"I fink mummy puts it in there."
Bailey points from where she's sprawled out on the lounge lazily, directing Jughead towards the cabinet and drawer that is just a little too tall for her little arms and legs.
"... I'm not 'lowed to play with it."
Given the mischievous little grin that Bailey gives her father following her last words, Jughead seriously doubts that that detail stops her.
So, he follows his daughter's suggestion and he begins to lightly rummage through the drawer uncomfortably in what feels like a bit of a privacy invasion.
However, the remote control is not the thing that he finds as he fumbles with a large collection of tri-folded papers instead, with some of which still in their envelopes while others have been pulled out. All of them share a common denominator and one mutual link; the big, red words 'OVERDUE' or 'FINAL NOTICE' that are plastered all over them...
As he realises more about the extent of Betty's struggles and the weight that has been loaded onto her shoulders to carry alone, Jughead utters two words under his breath with a sigh, feeling his heart break for her.
"Oh Betts..."
#
After Betty had offered if Jughead wanted to spend the day caring for their daughter while she worked, he had checked what time she typically has her lunch break, arranging for himself and Bailey to meet up with her for the three of them to have lunch together.
It's approaching noon when the little, blonde three-year-old races into Pop's with her father trailing behind her. Betty is on the other side of the room, offering refills when she catches sight of the father-daughter duo entering the establishment.
"Bay! Wait for me!" Jughead bellows out as Bailey rushes into her mother's workplace, her second home.
The little girl enthusiastically races over to the counter where she decides that she wants to sit, making the decision on behalf of herself and her father as she stands by the stool and waits for him to help her up onto the seat that she can't quite reach on her own.
As Jughead catches up and reaches the booth that Bailey is waiting at, she throws her arms up and out to him, signalling that she wants to be picked up and placed onto the stool that she's a little too short to pull herself up onto.
"Thanks!" Bailey grins as Jughead quickly picks her up and places her onto the stool with a kiss to the top of her blonde locks, checking that she's okay up there and doesn't think that she'll fall off.
Meanwhile, as she floats from table to table, slowly making her way over to the counter in the center of the diner, Betty watches their interactions from afar, noting how comfortable her little girl is with her dad. It's almost like she's known him all her life.
After settling Bailey on her seat, Jughead takes his own on the stool beside her. Then, he leans over to his daughter as he pulls his wallet out of his back pocket, planning to buy lunch for them both and order something for Betty.
"Now what would you like for lunch, little miss?"
"My name's Bailey! Not little miss!" Bailey protests with a little pout that Jughead can't help but smile at, reminding him so much of her mum.
"I'm sorry, Bailey. Now, what would you like for lunch?" Jughead clarifies, enunciating his daughter's name for emphasis this time with a little smirk.
After he utters the same question again with the key difference, Bailey brightens up cheerfully, forgetting that she'd been a little annoyed with her father just moments ago as she answers his question.
"I want chicken nuggets and chippies, please" Bailey requests, receiving a nod from her father as he waits for Pop Tate to finish taking the order of another person who is seated further down the bench before trying to catch his attention to take theirs.
However, just as he goes to glance around the room, looking for Betty as they waits, Jughead's attention is caught by the woman who he hadn't noticed on the stool beside him, but the woman distracting him from trying to spot the mother of his child.
"Your sister is adorable."
Jughead gawks for a moment, looking at the girl on the stool beside him, then turning in his daughter's direction to check if she had been looking beyond him and talking to someone other than him but no, no she had not.
"My, uh, my-" Jughead stutters as he tries to wrap his head around the misunderstanding, whilst juggling his answer to it as he looks between his daughter on the stool beside him and the woman with bubble-gum pink hair sitting next to him.
"Uh, thanks, but she's not my sister... She's actually mine. As in daughter-mine, not sister-mine."
The woman chuckles as she witnesses a clearly stumped Jughead sitting beside her, trying to make sense of and rectify the misunderstanding.
"Well, she's still beautiful... Takes after her dad in that case."
This time its Jughead's turn to chuckle as he scratches the nape of his neck uncomfortably, glancing back over to his daughter as he continues to speak. Meanwhile, across the room, a certain blonde watches on intently, crossing her arms in front of her. She fails to suppress her scowl as her blood begins to boil and her stomach churns from within her.
"Thanks, but I can't take credit for that. She definitely got her beauty from her mother. As for the poor girl's nose, ears, scowl..."
Listening to Jughead, the other girl pauses for a moment, smiling after he trails off. Then, she holds her hand out in front of him, strong and confident.
"I'm Toni."
"Hi... Jughead. And this is Bailey."
There's another brief silence before Toni smiles once again, as if she'd been pondering something before making her mind up.
"Look, would you be interested in having a drink together? With your little girl, too, of course, and in that case, I mean a milkshake."
Jughead chuckles as he witnesses Toni being the one to babble this time. Then his expression begins to turn as he slowly shakes his head, wincing.
"Thanks for the offer, but I've actually got plans for lunch" he replies, nodding in the direction of Betty who is standing across the room, stalling uncomfortably as she watches on and witnesses the interaction between Toni and Jughead. However, upon noting two sets of eyes that are glancing over to her, Betty forces a rigid smile that couldn't be further from genuine.
"Girlfriend?"
"Uh, Bailey's mum. It's complicated."
Toni nods slowly, beginning to pull some money out from her bag and place it on the table, preparing to take her leave after being knocked back, while Jughead glances beside himself to check on Bailey who is engrossed with examining the salt and pepper shakers that are sitting in front of her.
"I'll leave you to it in that case. It was nice to meet you Jughead."
Jughead acknowledges her, saying goodbye before his focus is captured by the other woman standing just a few metres away. He notes the fact that she is watching their interaction with her arms crossed in front of her as she slouches against a bench. Looking over to Betty, Jughead nips at his lip to suppress his smirk that is wanting to break through after he notes the exact same pout on Betty's lips as Bailey had worn just after they arrived at the diner.
Then, in a final, quick exchange before Toni walks off, Betty trails over with her arms still crossed in front of her tightly.
"Would you guys mind if we have lunch in a booth instead of at the bench? I get customers asking me for orders and refills during my lunch break when I'm sitting in my uniform, in the middle of the room."
While Betty's talking more so to Jughead, she is looking straight at Bailey, Her daughter opens her arms out to her with a delighted smile as Betty walks over and picks her little girl up, hugging her before Bailey settles on her hip, nestling into her.
"Missed you, mummy" Bailey mumbles as Betty presses a kiss to the top of her daughter's golden locks, giving her a warm smile and a tight squeeze from within her arms.
"I missed you too, baby" Betty replies softly, speaking gently into her daughter's hair as she carries her across the room and into a quieter corner. She takes a seat in the most concealed booth with Jughead following suit behind them, taking a seat across from the girls as Bailey sits cradled in Betty's lap, cuddling into her mother.
Then, noting Bailey's marginal sleepiness as she rests in her arms looking quite subdued, Betty turns to her daughter's father, asking him about the morning that he had spent with her.
"Hey, did she have a nap this morning, Jug?"
The raven-haired man shakes his head in response to Betty's question.
"Nah... I thought she was going to conk out during 'The Lion King' but right as she was dozing off, that stampede part started. That upset her a bit and she wanted cuddles."
While it had hurt him seeing his little girl upset, a little smile settles on the corner of Jughead's lips. After all, it had turned out to be a bittersweet experience for the young father as he remembers his daughter nestling into him, hiding her face into his chest and clutching onto the edge of his 'S' shirt as she squirmed and winced at the scene while he juggled comforting her with failing to use Betty's remote to skip past the scene.
"By the time that she calmed down after that bit, she seemed to have caught her second wind and didn't seem interested in sleeping."
Looking down at their daughter with a little smile, Betty leans down and presses another quick kiss to Bailey's forehead, knowing her three-year-old's distress in what is still one of her favourite movies.
"She really does hate that bit."
"Doesn't everyone?" Jughead retorts with logic that Betty can't argue with, nodding as she succumbs to his argument. However, she is simultaneously trying to fight back her little smile at his remark, reminding herself that she's not impressed with him,
Then, rather than give him the silent treatment and force him through guessing games, Betty comes right out with what else is on her mind, spewing out her frustrations with Jughead.
"I can't believe you used our daughter to flirt."
"I didn't..." Jughead retorts, firmly, looking the woman sitting opposite him straight into her enchanting emerald green eyes. "... Toni used our daughter to flirt."
Betty watches him intently for a few moments as she studies him and his expressions that she knows so well before she feels convinced of the truth and continues speaking.
"What did she say then?"
"Apparently Bailey's beautiful, like her dad."
As Jughead smirks to himself, Betty glances up at him and there he sees it again, the return of that pout. Their pout... Betty and Bailey's pout.
"Well, I could have told you that..." Betty mumbles softly, barely loud enough for him to catch what she's saying. She dodges his glance as the smirk pricks on Jughead's lips.
"That's funny. Because I actually told her that she got her beauty from someone else..."
Betty's eyes flicker up momentarily, catching his kind blue ones for a mere moment before she glances away again. The smallest of smiles is unable to be hidden from her lips as her cheeks flush pink.
Thankfully a moment of respite comes as Pop Tate strolls over, taking the order from the man who had been his best customer throughout his teenage years, along with his waitress who is on her break.
Jughead orders a burger with a double side of chips, before ordering Bailey her request of chicken nuggets and chips. Meanwhile, Betty requests a chicken Caesar wrap and the two girls get milkshakes while Jughead orders himself a black coffee.
After Pop Tate leaves their table, Jughead and Betty sit in silence for a few brief moments before he exhales a heavy sigh, feeling the weight on his chest and the guilt of what he needs to discuss with the woman sitting opposite him who is holding his daughter.
"Betty? I wasn't snooping this morning, I promise. Bailey asked me to put a movie on and I asked her where she thought you kept the remote so I looked through a few drawers that she told me that she thought that it was in..."
Betty flinches, glancing away uncomfortably, nervous about any direction that this conversation could go in as she bites on her bottom lip.
While the bills that were plastered in red words were new to Jughead, Betty on the other hand knows them all too well. In fact she can't remember back to a time when her bills haven't been adorned with fierce, red reminders.
The load that she's carrying on her own had intensified just a little more lately, too. After all, when she had a boyfriend working at the bank, without engaging in anything dodgy, Casey had often been able to wrangle Betty generous extensions on her loan repayments to buy her a bit of time to juggle her other bills. However, since their breakup, that is something that Betty most certainly had not felt at liberty to mention to her ex.
As he exhales another heavy, guilt-ridden sigh, his glance on her softens, a little sadly, before he lowers his voice gently and empathetically as he reaches out to her.
"I saw the bills..." Jughead begins, remembering all the flashes of red that he'd seen across the bundle of unpaid bills. "Why didn't you tell me you were having financial problems, Betts?"
"Because it's my problem. Besides, it's nothing new. I can't remember not having to play leap frog with overdue bills and debts."
Jughead looks down guiltily before his blue eyes return to her green ones earnestly.
"Because you've had to raise my kid on your own for the last three years and since you were in high school."
Betty opens her mouth to begin to counter his argument, knowing that while it may be the truth, Jughead is beating himself over the head with it. However, he jumps in first, holding a finger up to signal at her to remain silent as he jumps back in and continues speaking.
"Doug left me money... I want to clear your debts. I want to support you and Bailey financially, Betts. In the very least I owe you three-and-a-half years worth of child support. You shouldn't have to be working two jobs while juggling raising Bay in order to not even get ahead but just to stay afloat and stop yourself from drowning."
Betty watches the man on the other side of the booth in silence for a few moments, rocking their daughter within their arms before she eventually speaks up with a small smile.
"Thank you, Jug... That's a very kind offer. I'll think about it, okay?"
Betty's question is presented with an answer that she hadn't been expecting as he shakes his head at her.
"I owe you child support for Bailey, Betts. That's non-negotiable. But, I do want to make life just a little bit easier than that for you, too. After everything, that's the very least that I can do."
Betty glances down and away from Jughead's intense gaze, intimidated by the idea of having to accept help.
"Thank you, but I'm not a charity case... Bailey and I are coping. So, just let me think it over, okay? We'll talk about it."
Jughead is about to reiterate his responsibility to her and tell her that no one thinks of the strong young woman who had to grow up so much faster than her peers as a charity case. However, Jughead's attention is snatched up and torn away from what he had been about to say as he draws Betty's attention to the very same thing that has stolen his.
"Hey, Betts... Look at that" Jughead remarks, looking over to the three-year-old who has just fallen asleep on her mother's lap and as Betty too follows his gaze, her face erupts into a smile at the sight of their daughter fast asleep in her arms.
"See... When you see that, when you see her, it's all worth it... It's all worth it for our baby" Betty explains, exhaling a sigh as she gently runs her fingers across Bailey's cheek, stroking her skin ever-so softly.
The young parents share a smile before Betty breaks it, reading the clock in the corner of the room to check on how much time she has left of her shift before reaching across for her milkshake glass.
After taking a brief sip, Betty exhales a little sigh in the silence between them, slowly adjusting the sleeping three-year-old in her arms as she shifts in her seat a little. However, as she does so, Betty's feet move a little as she readjusts her whole body to find the most comfortable way of holding her daughter.
However, in doing so, beneath the table of the booth that they are sharing, Betty and Jughead's feet accidentally touch. Both of them have the option of quickly shifting their feet away with an apologetic smile at the simple mistake, not knowing where the other person's foot had been beneath the table that they are sharing. Both of them could do that, yet neither of them do...
Instead, their feet stay there, lightly rubbing against each other's shoes and playing footsies as the exes share the smallest smile across the table from each other, reveling in the secrecy of the little moment and the discreet touch.
"So who exactly thought that holding back was a good idea?"
"It's the right thing, Jug."
However, despite her reminder to him, Betty fails to withdraw her feet that are touching his. After all, their legs aren't the only thing growing romantically entangled...
Don't worry, I won't pull a season 2 episode 5 on you guys! Toni starts and ends right about there. Really, there was a couple of people that requested to see Betty get jealous so I was just pulling that in for a chapter. I hope you liked seeing Jug trying to find ways to support Betty as well as the two of them struggling to hold back from each other. I'd love to know what you thought of the chapter!
Now, thank you to everybody who read and reviewed the last chapter. When people take the time to leave me feedback, it absolutely makes my day, so thank you.
Next chapter: More secrets! A simple question from Bailey leads to Jughead discovering a painful secret, further distancing him from someone. Also, there's another flashback!