It started without a hitch. They stopped in Midvale to catch the fireworks and drove on through the night. All the rest of the cities were a blur. Landmarks and quirky facts. If Jughead Jones was any other teenage boy, this would be the highlight of his summer, and in some ways it was, but at this point it was less a trip about some sort of "bro bond" and more about seeing the missing person from their trio. He had admired Betty his whole life and how she put up this façade of being some perfect girl-next-door archetype. She was so much more than that, though. He noticed the cracks, the momentary lapses. It was why he was willing to put up with his flakey friend for the long drive to LA.
Before he knew it, they had arrived. 3 days 14 hours and 12 minutes since they had taken off. It went in a blur but he knew that's how long it had been. He was getting agitated with the ginger driver and ran ahead of him up the stairs to the level he knew Betty was interning on.
He stepped into the room and a smirk instantly graced his lips. With the shuffling of his feat, she made a turn and they were frozen just like that. She had the most beautiful eyes and the few strands of frizzy hair could not detract from her perfect she looked. It wasn't the Alice Cooper's vision of Betty as perfect kind of perfect but one all it's own. One that didn't actually require perfection at all. In that moment his chest clenched and he felt like he could just waltz up to her and pull her face to his. There were no thoughts about Archie or even Betty's feelings for Archie. It was just Jughead looking at the girl who had been secretly filling him with both butterflies and bees much more often then he would ever willingly admit. It had almost always been that way, but it wasn't until this exact moment when he started realizing just what these feelings were. So he did it. He went up and kissed her. It was an experiment to make sure this wasn't a misattribution of his emotions. Those were the one thing he didn't always feel confident in. They melted into each other. All of a sudden they're on a movie set and Betty is smiling up at him. It's some modern film noir which everyone knows he's extremely into. Something feels off, though. There's a gunshot and everything is going blurry.
What happened on the Fourth of July? What happened to Jason Blossom?
And just like that, everything went back to normal in the office and the girl next door looked at him like she was worried, but also that he was her world.
"I've been put in charge of planning a Toni Morrison book release party," this feels familiar, "if you stick around, maybe help me plan it, I'm sure you can meet her. Maybe it will... Inspire you, as an aspiring writer." Her eyes sparkled as she looked at him and her hand found his.
Before he knew it, he was trailing behind her with a large stack of books. With a thump he placed them on the table where the signing would take place at the party.
"They asked me to get some coffee, you know, usual intern stuff. Since you so chivalrously carried the books for me, your drinks on me. Let's go." She pulled his arm and they walked out of the overly large bookstore and down the street to a small hole-in-the-wall coffee shop. It was the kind of place he wanted to find on the traveling part of the roadtrip long forgotten, well before Betty became ever so much more important. She held out a coffee for him.
"Black right?" Of course she knew his order. He suppressed a chuckle at her vanilla milkshake awkwardly placed between coffees in one of the two drink trays she carried. He rolled his eyes and grabbed one from her after downing a sip of his drink. For some reason it didn't taste like anything, just sensation, like the sensation of drinking coffee. He followed the swaying ponytail and prepared to get overcrowded. Normally he avoided being around too many people when he could, but he was here to support Betty, so he would pull through and watch her with a vigilant eye in case she needed him from the safety of the wall.
It was magical, watching how she filled the role of party organizer so effectively, like she was in her element and would probably do this sort of thing for a living one day. She laughed at something someone had said and threw a breathtaking glance his way. Like she felt he belonged there, despite being some weird outsider.
"She's really something, huh wallflower? You should tell her how you feel. Life is a series of moments and if you blink, you'll miss it. Plus, she throws an excellent book release party. Definitely in my top 5, and I mean that as a compliment as I've written a lot of books and they don't usually push it on an intern." Toni chuckled. "So it's either that she's special or I'm just washed up. Don't dignify that with a response." She walked away and then everything went black.
He freaked out. What about the party? The one he shouldn't have been enjoying, but was? Shit. I was dreaming.
He clenched his eyes shut and took deep breaths, hoping to step back into that dream before it was too late.
She was holding him and they were alone. "Thank you thank you thank you for coming! Having you there with me really gave me the confidence to pull it off. This has been the best part of summer, maybe even my life. You're the best, Juggie!" She pulled his face to hers and planted a quick peck on the lips. Kind of a I'm so happy I could kiss you but he noticed that he liked it this time too, as fast as it was. From there on out, he stopped dreaming and was just caught up in a happy daze until his alarm woke him up to get ready before anyone noticed he was not coming from home these days. Thank god even with the friends he now had, nobody seemed to go there looking for him.
It hit him in a calm sort of way as he jogged to Pop's for breakfast, thankful that it was a 24 hour restaurant. I think I'm in love with Betty Cooper.
The End?