Snakes and Ladders - Falice

Bad Habit

Look at you walking up and down the hall, I say please. You say you want it, but you can't get it in. You got yourself a bad habit for it.

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It could be argued that distance makes the heart grow fonder. If that were true, then Alice's tactics for staying as far away from FP as possible surely just wouldn't work. She hardly let herself wonder if she was being successful, the whole point of it all was to keep him off her mind once and for all. But, when FP is practically reincarnated into a small, dark-haired boy the same age as her prim and proper daughter, Alice finds herself at an unexpected loss.

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Since the crucial phone call from Alice Cooper to FP Jones, their interactions became rare and distant, but savoured as if they were the sweetest delicacy either of them would ever know. Younger Alice had been hoping her lingering feelings for FP would be minimized by the fact that once they both graduated, they would go their separate ways and hopefully not bump into each other too frequently. This worked for about fifteen years. He lived on the Southside, she lived on the Northside, the events that they frequented were never similar, they were completely void of each other. That was how Alice wanted it, that was easiest.

But, of course, their children were born on the same year. And, of course, when they came of school ages, Betty and Jughead immediately formed a close friendship along with Fred Andrew's young son, Archie. The three of them were inseparable, and every time Alice saw her youngest daughter in the company of FP's son, it sent a shiver through her whole body. It was all too easy. To her everlasting relief, it had always seemed to be Archie that caught Betty's romantic eye. Still, she could never be too careful.

With the friendship of their two children now in place, Alice and FP began to see more of each other than they had in many years, even if it was only five minute telephone calls to set up play dates, brief conversations at each other's front doors as they dropped off their children, running into each other at school plays, and fleeting eye contact at PTA meetings back when FP still had the sense to keep up with his son's school life. It was bittersweet. Forcing Alice and Hal Cooper to experience brief interludes with FP and Gladys Jones would forever be awkward, they had all gone to high school together, they all kept up with the rumour mill that was Riverdale. The past was in the past, but it was far from at bay.

There was still built up anger and borderline hatred not for each other but for the decisions that they'd both made, but things had shifted into more of a casual irritation. Alice would say something snarky and FP would fight back with a dig only he would dare to use against her, Alice would roll her eyes and look away while FP chuckled and that was that. But, even if these miniscule moments were not amicable and even if they were observed by the watchful eyes of the other parents, not to mention both Alice and FP's spouses, they were nonetheless treasured.

PTA meetings became something that Alice looked forward to all month because she knew that, if she were lucky, Gladys would drag FP along. Hal was not oblivious to this, but him and Alice both knew that there would never be anything he could do about this. His marriage to Alice Cooper was bestowed upon him like a gift, the fact that she chose him to be what she always deemed perfect was nothing short of a miracle. Because of this, Hal worshipped the very ground that she walked on. He would be a damn fool if he ever walked away from her, or so he was told. Hal came with security, but FP came with a safety unlike any other Alice would ever experience.

Hal may have been an idiot, but he was not stupid. He observed Alice's mood as it went from measured and dull in the weeks in between and became excited and altogether pleasant around the time of every PTA meeting.