Love is All Around

They don't want a long engagement, but life, school, and work get in the way. Longer engagement – more money for a wedding.

That is until FP's mom – bless her soul – passes away and FP sells her house. For the first time ever, he's sitting on more money than he needs to get to his next paycheck. Mary knows the idea of all that money scares him. And then Fred chimes in with an idea. It comes out so fast, Mary's sure the boys have been discussing it for a while and now is merely the time to get her on board.

Go into business for themselves. Start their own company. Andrews-Jones Construction. They know half the guys on the team would follow them if they left. However, this would mean giving up their own savings – their wedding money.

Mary agrees full heartedly. It's not about the wedding, it's about the marriage. And owning a business is an investment in their future. They cancel the hall they've rented and decide that a modest wedding in her parent's yard that summer will do just fine.

One Friday during her last semester, as marriage, graduation, and the bar exam all tiptoe closer and closer, her car breaks down outside a bar and grill in Greendale. She goes inside to use the phone and orders a gin and tonic while she waits for Fred to pick her up. The place has live music, a lone girl sitting at a piano singing. When she starts her rendition of Allentown, Mary takes a good look at her and almost spits her drink out.

Gladys Cohen, all grown up and returned to Riverdale. Well, Greendale at least.

Gladys takes her break and she and Mary huddle over a back table, exchanging stories and catching up. Last she saw Gladys was six years ago – freshly turned 15 and crying as her parents dragged her to Toledo and away from the small life she'd made in Riverdale. Now nearly 21 and out in the world on her own. She bites her nails as she gives Mary the low down. The depression. Having a little "accident" with sleeping pills her senior year. Spending a few months in the hospital and then dropping out of school because she already missed enough and wasn't about to repeat the year.

She takes Mary's hands and smiles. Gladys was never much of a smiler and the look is strange on her. She tells her about therapy. About wanting to get better and how getting away from her over bearing family and being independent was helping. How she headed back towards Riverdale way six months ago because, damn it, she just liked the air upstate.

Six months? Mary asks her why she hadn't looked up FP in all that time. She shrugs.

They exchange numbers and Mary tells her FP lives with them. She goes home and fills him in, expecting him to revert back to his 18-year-old self and sweep the girl off her feet.

He shrugs.

Mary goes two days in a state of agitation. On Monday morning, she wakes up to Gladys, shoes in hand, trying to sneak out of their apartment without making any noise. Mary squeals so loudly she wakes up both boys and the four share a hug in the hallway.

Their wedding falls on an impossibly hot day at the end of June, so they pass out paper fans to everyone. Even the sweat can't ruin their day. Gladys plays all the songs for the ceremony and a few for the reception. FP's already a little drunk by the time he needs to make a speech. He talks for nearly twenty minutes, but has the crowd in hysterics for most of the time. Both sets of parents go up and present them with a key and piece of paper – together, they've placed a hefty down payment on a house on Elm Street. A fixer upper, but nothing Fred and FP can't handle.

Her dad puts on Joan Jett's cover of the Mary Tyler Moore theme during the reception and their family and friends form a circle dancing around her and Fred as it plays. They laugh so hard they start crying.

The Coopers attend, Alice with a baby bump proudly displayed under her dress. Every time Mary glances their way, Alice, Hal, or a passerby seems to be rubbing her belly. In typical Alice fashion, she beams and eats up the attention. Mary ignores it. Fred can't wait to be a dad, so she knows it'll be her turn soon enough.

The Lodges do not attend and send their regards in the form of a crystal punch bowl from Tiffanys.

They move out of the apartment and into their new home on Elm Street, located right next to where Hal's parents live. As the boys patch the roof and repaint, they make jokes about how funny it will be to watch the couple visit with all the hell spawn they plan on having. God help us all if those kids wind up anything like little Allie.

Mary pointedly reminds the boys that they were no angels when they were young either. The jokes don't die and they get a birth announcement in November when round-faced little Polly is born.

The first miscarriage happens right before Christmas. The second in September, around Mary's birthday. And the third right after New Years.

The doctor assures them these things happen. The important thing is she's able to get pregnant.

Andrews-Jones Construction is thriving and she's doing great at the small firm she works at downtown. The house has shaped up and even though they want a baby, they take a break from trying. It's become exhausting.

In April, Gladys calls her in tears telling her she needs to talk. Mary finally feels like she's found a best friend in Gladys. Her childhood friendships with Hermione and Alice felt like a whole lot of give give give without getting much back. She and Gladys are equals. It doesn't matter if Mary is a college graduate and Gladys is a high school dropout – they understand one another.

When she gets to the old apartment, Gladys pulls her into the bathroom and hands her a pregnancy test. It takes Mary a few minutes to gather that Gladys isn't just upset about the surprise pregnancy. She feels like she's taken something away from Mary by getting pregnant. How can they have a baby when she and Fred want one so bad? But then, how can she not have the baby when people around her are trying so hard? And geez, what will FP say?

Mary's heart both swells and breaks when she realizes she knows about this baby before FP.

She waits until she's home before she lets the tears flow. Fred finds her curled up in bed with a pint of melting ice cream on the bedside table. They'll keep trying, they decide. The Andrews aren't quitters.

What does surprise them both is the next day when FP and Gladys announce they're getting married. Gladys is all smiles and FP looks so proud and, while Mary has a funny feeling about the whole ordeal, she decided to keep her mouth shut. FP is miles from the playboy he was in high school (the playboy he was even two years ago) and Gladys is stable and healthy and damn it, Mary supports her friends.

They get married in the courthouse before Gladys is showing and have a small party in backyard on Elm Street. Gladys sets up her keyboard and FP pulls his out-of-tune guitar from the grave and they play a rendition of Leather and Lace.

FP must really love her, she and Fred decide, if he'd sing a Stevie Nicks song for her.

She finds out in the summer Alice is pregnant again when old Mrs. Cooper next door mentions how another miracle is coming into the family, and yes, maybe another mistake, but a miracle all the same. Alice never calls her to share the news.

Mary throws up once at the end of summer and Fred runs out to by a pregnancy test. It's positive and this is the one. They both feel it.

Gladys gives birth to little Forsythe in the beginning of October, just as Mary's being told she needs to go on bedrest. Five months in bed with Gladys and the baby at her side. She sees the quietness come back to Gladys, the sullen girl she was in high school. Mary casually asks one day if she went back to taking her antidepressants, but Gladys snaps at her and Mary brings it up to FP in private next time.

I think that's her own business, Mare.

He comes in February. A day that's bitterly cold and snowy and wet and the exact opposite of their wedding. He comes into the world quiet as anything and Mary's heart almost stops when she takes him in her arms for the first time, Fred clutching her side and kissing her forehead and telling her how much he loves them both.

Their little Archibald. Their Archie. Their son. She's always known love but this is another level entirely.

Fred and FP are ecstatic. Two men, two sons, a set of built in best friends.

Mary goes back to work after four months and Gladys watches Archie during the day. The two couples slowly shift from overwhelmed-new-parents back to normal. Or as normal as you get with two little boys running under your feet. At least we're all doing it together.

Fred is the picture perfect father. He does diapers, midnight feedings, playtime. All of it with her. She could do this another five times if it meant seeing her husband in dad mode.

Only the doctors don't leave her a lot of hope of getting pregnant again. She was lucky to carry Archie to term and even he came nearly a month early. Pregnancy was hard on her body.

But they have their family. Smaller than they might have hoped, but a family nonetheless.

Gladys and FP fight a lot more. Never in hushed whispers either. While Gladys may have once been quiet, she's as much of a screamer as FP is when she's angry. They step outside, they argue. About money, about home, the baby, their families. When the boys are two, she hears FP call Forsythe Jughead. Gladys slaps him and takes the screaming toddler to the car, wounded husband in tow.

Fred tells her later it's a name for people who're slow and maybe their pediatrician said Forsythe's development may not be at what it should at his age.

But the name sticks, to Gladys's annoyance. Jughead, Jug, Juggie. Anything is better than Forsythe, after all.

By the time the kids are four, Mary is shocked how they've become two little people. Archie is tall and loud and impulsive and any worries doctors may have had about Jughead's development are unfound because he's already learned to read under Gladys's watch. She tries teaching Archie, but in vain. Her sticky-handed son would rather dump buckets of sand over his head than look at a book.

That same year, the Coopers retire from the Riverdale Register and plan to move to Florida. Fred's mom is still the best realtor in town, but they don't list the house because their son and daughter-in-law are finally moving back to town to take over the paper. Alice and Hal, back in Riverdale at last.

The Cooper girls, Polly and Betty, are two golden-haired angels. Mary just assumed all kids were rowdy and loud, but comes to a realization that maybe it's just their kids that are like that. The girls can't come over to play without Alice watching over the fence and Fred asks Alice one day if he should just tear it down all together so she doesn't have to crane her neck all the time.

They settle into a bit of a routine, Mary and Fred. Archie goes to school, they go to work, come home for dinner, repeat. It's not the glamourous life she dreamed of as a kid, but she has a good job (if not all that challenging) and a happy family and that's what matters. Right?

Gladys comes to the house with Jughead in the middle of the night just before kindergarten begins. They settle Jughead to sleep in Archie's room and Gladys tells them she's leaving, packing her bags, going back to Toledo to be with her parents. She won't take the drinking anymore, the late night jobs.

Fred raps his knuckles on the table a few times and leaves. FP shows up the next morning and Fred lightly pushes Gladys to give her husband another chance.

They fight that day, her and Fred. They go to the garage while Archie's playing a video game and, even though neither of them are yellers, the screams don't stop. Mary wants to protect her friend, but so does Fred. They've known FP forever, Gladys is practically new.

In the end, it's not their marriage. They have no control over what other people do.

Two months later, the Jones's announce they're expecting another baby. The smiles return to their faces and Gladys seems less sullen. Maybe it was just a bump in the road. Little Forsythia is born eight months later. Jughead tells everyone who will listen to him that his sister's name is actually Jellybean and it sticks.

Archie demands a little sister as well. They ponder explaining the technicalities of it all, but wind up just getting him a dog instead. Vegas.

Routine over takes them again, only their family now involves an over-active labrador retriever to match their over-active redhead son.

When Archie is in third grade she asks Fred at what point they stopped referring to time by years or ages and instead by what grade their son is in. Fred doesn't think it's as funny as she does.

When the kids are in six grade (and Jellybean kindergarten), FP gets arrested. Mary stays with the kids while Fred and Gladys go to the police station. They come back in the early hours of the morning. Gladys mutters a thanks to Mary without looking at her. She takes her sleep deprived kids by the hands and sticks them in the truck.

Fred buys FP out of the company and doesn't give Mary much in the way of details. She pries a few times, but that just leads to snappy comments and Mary is above that. Fred is too.

She thinks it makes her a bad person, but sometimes she spies on Hal and Alice when they fight. They always head out to the backyard and it's not until Fred catches her one day, with the kitchen window open and the curtains closed, that he points out the girl's bedrooms are in the front of the house. They probably can't hear from there.

Kids don't need to hear, Mary thinks. They tend to just know.

She sees Jughead's grades slipping in school, but Gladys chalks it up to middle school and that apathetic attitude all preteens get. Mary goes out of her way to talk to Gladys, who now balances her job at the bakery in the morning with bartending at night. FP, she promises Mary, is making money one way or another. Part of her wants to tell Gladys to leave him, but she knows it's not her place and, as much as he's messed his life up, FP is still her friend.

Whenever she brings up FP at home, Fred gets in a mood and after a while, she just stops bringing him up together. Jughead still comes over for Archie, but they tend to go out more now that they're older. She's grateful Fred doesn't take out any of his hostility on the kid.

On a whim, when Archie is in the 7th grade, Mary emails a firm she interned at in Chicago when she was an undergrad. They offer her a position at a higher rate than she's been making her fifteen years in Riverdale.

She holds off telling Fred. Fred, who is so Riverdale he almost bleeds plaid and maple syrup. Fred, who's only ever gone as far as Chicago because of her. Fred is the very life of Riverdale, the heart and the soul. She knows he'd probably go to the end of the earth for her, but it'd break his heart to leave this place that is so him.

She brings it up when the offer has been pending for weeks. He isn't mad and he isn't surprised. He just sighs.

You're so much bigger than Riverdale, Mary.

It isn't goodbye, but she knows he won't come with her. He chased her to Chicago once and she could never ask him to do it again. They sit Archie down and lay all their cards on the table. It's entirely his choice and no one will be upset by what he decides.

Mary knows they don't even need to have a talk. It's not about choosing Mary or Fred, choosing Mom or Dad. It's about choosing Chicago or Riverdale.

Archie is just as Riverdale as Fred. He eats, sleeps, and breathes Riverdale. Chicago doesn't stand a chance.

The summer between 7th and 8th grade, Archie and Fred load up a rented U-Haul with her stuff. The firm set her up with an apartment and she just has to survive the eight hour drive in one piece. Her son stands at the end of the driveway, waving her away in the rearview mirror. He doesn't chase after her because she told him not to.

Fred stands with his hands in his pockets, sad smile on his face. This isn't divorce. This isn't even forever. She came back to Riverdale for him once, there's no saying she won't do it again.

At one point life became less about her and him and more about everything else. She spends the first half of her drive trying to pin point that one moment, but can't. She turns on the radio instead and fiddles with the dial until a local station comes in clear.

Joan Jett sings This world is awfully big, this time you're all alone.