Too Late ➳ Bughead

chapter one

betty

He was everything to me. But I was nothing to him. I would always just be the best friend, never anything more. I couldn't help but think this. Every week he had a new girl as his arm candy. He would go on and on to me about them every Wednesday, after school, at out booth at pops, and I listen. Sometimes, I zone out, fantasize about our future together. We would live in a 4 bedroom house, in Riverdale of course. Our two kids, Grayson and Emma, would have a playhouse in our backyard, just like Archie does. They would have dirty blonde hair, just like me, and deep brown eyes, just like him. But sadly, it would never happen. The next week he'll have a new girl on his arm, always skinnier and always prettier than me.

archie

I'm so sick and tired of dating so many girls. None of them care about me. All they care about is my abs, which are pretty nice if I say so myself, but that's besides the point. I just want one girl out of the countless I've had to care about me. Why doesn't anyone feel this way about me?

and so the two head off to school, side by side, oblivious to one another's feelings

betty

I walk in to school. The first day of junior year, Archie by my side, as always, but as my best friend, not what I wanted him to be. Will he ever love me? My thought was interrupted by a boy, walking straight into me. Jones.

"Watch out Jughead, god."

"Oh so you think I meant to bump in to you?"

"Just watch where you're going for once, how hard is it to look forward. Maybe it's that stupid beanie of yours, blocking your vision."

jughead

All I do is walk away. God, I hate that girl. She's always in my way, and always pining after Archie, like another one of his brainless companions. He's just about the only person who can't see how in love with him she is. The bell rings for 1st period, AP english for me. Betty, gets seated right next to me.

"This is gonna be a long year." I say

"Tell me about it"

As the day passes, I come to find out, I have all the same classes as Betty, even our free period. She sits next to me in three out of seven of them. To be honest, I tend to forget why we hate each other sometimes. But when I remember, it's like the same rage i felt on that day resurfaces once again...

We were both 12, and couldn't have been better friends. All four of us, Archie, Betty, Veronica, and I were supposed to hang out that windy fall day. I had a lot to fill them in on, my mother had left town and took jellybean with her just the night before. It became apparent to me they weren't showing up after my second hour of sitting in our booth at Pop's all alone. "Maybe something had happened and they couldn't make it," I had thought at the time. On my way home, I took the usual route past Twighlight Drive In, and saw them there, all three of them, in the back of Archie's dad's truck. They were watching Rebel Without a Cause, my favorite. I tried not to cry but the tears welled up in my eyes. I sprinted home, back to my trailer, back to my home, to find my father drunken on the couch. I needed them that day, and when I avoided them the next day at school, none of them asked me why, or even looked hurt for that matter. It was then, that exact moment I made eye contact with Betty, and she looked away, running to catch up with Archie and Veronica, I realized, I wasn't enough, and I never would be.

Just thinking about that day made my blood boil. Archie and I had made up since then. He apologized to me the following week, explaining it was Ronnie's idea, and he was reluctant to go along with it, until Veronica told him she would give him a kiss, his first, if she agreed to go with him, so naturally, the 12 year old boy filled with hormones, agreed.