The Restaurant - A Bughead Story

Part Six - The Restaurant

           

Jughead had forgotten to call ahead for a table. For a Tuesday night, it was incredibly crowded. They had to wait fifteen minutes in the lobby to finally get a table. Jughead could see Betty's shoes were hurting her feet. 'Of course, she didn't dress to stand a quarter of an hour in the damn lobby!'

When they finally got the table, Jughead almost forgot to pull Betty's chair. In the rush of doing so, he hit an old man sitting behind them with his elbow, right on the back of his head.

Jughead wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, but he refrained the urges and puckered his lips. It was one disaster after the other.

They ordered their drinks. She asked for tomato juice, and he asked for a tall glass of water. His throat felt like sandpaper and his heart was racing so much he was starting to get dizzy. 'Damn that Betty Cooper and the ways she makes me feel!'

He could see she wanted to make small chat, but he was too nervous to talk. He knew if he did, it would come out sarcastic or slightly mean, and Kevin and Archie had made a point to get into his thick head that that was a no-no. So, if he didn't talk, he couldn't be mean, so that meant he was nice, right?

'Right.'

After they ordered their meals, Betty got up to go to the bathrooms. Rushing to get up with her, he moved his hands like a chicken on steroids. He knocked over his half-full water glass and it came crashing down on the dark marble in a million pieces mixed with broken ice cubes and the rest of the water.

One. Disaster. After. The. Other.

The thing that was worse about all that is that it happened because he was too nervous.

---

The waiters had just finished cleaning up his mess when Betty came back from the bathroom. This time, he didn't get up with her – damn his gentlemanly ways, those rules were starting to get on his nerves. They didn't help in any way.

Their meals arrived. They were still not talking.

In his haste of doing something, Jughead ate his pizza too fast – it burnt his tongue and the cheese slid down his dress shirt.

"Fucking shit!" he muttered. He was decidedly having the worse date ever. Not one bad date of Archie's could beat this one.

"Here." He looked over to Betty. She wasn't smiling, but she was handing him a tissue.

'That's it. She hates me. She doesn't like me anymore. Or maybe she never did? Maybe she was doing me a favor? Oh, she still thinks I'm a rapist! This is the worse date ever! We'll never be together! I can't believe I'm that dumb!'

"Thanks." He mumbled.

"Listen..." 'That's it. She's telling me it's over before it even started.' "This is not going well."

"It's going the opposite of well."

"Yeah... I don't think this is going to work. I really wished it would, you have no idea. I like you a lot... but you're not talking and you keep doing those weird things... it's like you don't even want the date to go well." She asked for the waiter put her meal into a doggy bag. "Did you mean what you said in the office?"

'YES!' But he didn't say anything. His tongue was in knots.

He was uncomfortable in his nice clothes. He actually hated the pizza he was eating (and that meant it was really, really bad pizza). His hair was all tangled up from the ride in Archie's car and he dreaded trying to run a comb through it. He tried being a gentleman, and failed it in the worse ways possible (hitting an old man and making a horrible mess with his water glass).

Maybe he just wasn't meant to be dating.

The basket case.

The girl next door.

It just wasn't supposed to happen, and that was the universe telling them.

So he watched her get up with her bagged meal, nod at him with tears at the corner of her eyes, grab her jacket from her chair and walk out of the restaurant with the rest of her dignity.

And the rest of his heart.