5 Years On | Bughead

Eleven

Standing over the garbage bin Jughead said bitterly, "I wish I could burn them."

"Jug –" Betty started.

"But it wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be fitting. They belong in the trash."

And that's where they went.

Now that the booze and the cigarettes were finally purged from Jughead's trailer, Betty turned to him and said, "Do what you need to do to not fall back into those bad habits, okay? I'll be here for you and I love you, Jug, so, I'll support you, but I won't enable you. You need to do the work."

What she said gave him pause. "You say you still love me, Betty. But do you really - after all these years?"

"Of course I do. What kind of question is that?"

"Well, senior year – it seemed pretty obvious to me that you had stopped." The corners of his mouth pulled down into a frown. Despite everything, that old pain was still there. The pain from when it all started - from when she had let their relationship wither and die. It surprised him how much it still hurt. And it made him very insecure all of a sudden.

"Juggie, I wasn't acting like myself –"

"I know."

"Stop. Listen. You don't know. I hated myself then, Jughead. HATED. I was so numb . . . at least on the surface." She hung her head. "But in my brain I knew how I really felt. I knew I was starving Hot Dog, neglecting you. It was killing me to know that these things I was doing were bad, but to not be able to feel them, not be able to act in order to fix them. Do you understand?"

"I don't know." Jughead shrugged his shoulders hopelessly.

She touched his cheek, softly.

"I LOVED you Jughead. I never stopped. Not even to this day. I was just hurting so much after what happened with Polly I couldn't access those feelings. They were there, but I couldn't reach them, and I couldn't reach out for the lifeline you were throwing me."

She reached out, took both of his hands, and shook them lightly. "I'm so glad you tried to be there for me back then, Juggie. I'll never forget it."

She teared up a bit and Jughead tried to hold back some of his own tears. He was successful, but still, his voice cracked when he said, "But it didn't matter if I was there for you or not, Betty. It didn't change anything."

"Not then, no," Betty admitted. "But knowing that you had still loved me through all of that . . ."

"Yes?"

"It gave me the courage to come here. To see you again."

"Just to break my heart," he said with irony and a wry little smile. They were past that, he knew, but he still felt the need to dig it in.

"No, to set things right between us. I just didn't realize . . ."

"Realize what?"

Her lip quivered a bit. "Just how much I still love you."

There was a long silence between them. He looked at her very carefully before making a decision.

Finally he said, "I think I need to show you something."

He led her to a hall closet in the trailer and took down a box. He was shaking.

"Jellybean?" Betty guessed.

"Yeah, her sketchpad is in here. And . . ." He turned away from her.

"And?"

"And something else."

"Can I see the drawing?" Betty asked quietly.

Jughead fiddled with something before turning back to her.

"Sure," he said. He sounded a little nervous, but handed her the burnt sketchpad, clutching something else tightly in his fist.

Betty opened it carefully, getting soot on her hands.

"That always happens," he said.

"That's okay." She easily found the page with Jughead's 'fantasy family,' herself included, and her eyes welled up, but not with sadness this time. "It's beautiful, Juggie. Jellybean was really talented."

"Yeah, she was." He smiled softly at the memory of his sister constantly drawing something, anything. Like she was possessed with the most insistent muses. Even at the tender age of eight when she got in trouble at school because she couldn't stop doodling on her desk. "Jellybean gave me something I thought I could never have at that point."

"What's that?"

"A happy future with you."

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

"Okay, this is going to sound a little bit weird, and probably a lot creepy, but please bear with me."

"Okay."

"I only did this because I was hurting so much – because I missed you so much."

"Go on," she said.

"When the insurance money came in for the house after the fire, and I was the sole heir to the 'Jones fortune' . . . " He chuckled. ". . . I purchased something very specific. The money wasn't enough to buy a new home and we still owned this trailer outright, so I moved back into it, dilapidated though it was."

"Okay."

"And I took part of that insurance money and had something made. Something that felt permanent – because you had been so ethereal. I had no one. I was alone. I needed something to hold on to. And I loved you. . ."

"What was it?"

He hung his head. "You're going to think I'm a fool, Betty."

"Never," she said softly.

He opened up his palm slowly.

She gasped.

"It's pink because you always wore pink."

She pulled it out of his hand to inspect it. "Is that a topaz?"

"No it's a diamond, Betty."

"What?" She almost dropped it.

"I wanted to marry you, so I bought the ring." He took it out of her hands and just stared down at it for a bit. "Even though I never gave this to you, in my heart I did. I wanted you by my side for life."

"I don't know what to say."

He looked back up at her, serious as a heart attack. "Say yes, Betty."

FIN