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Papers, binders, plastic milkshake cups, and VHS tapes littered the bunker floor around them. Evidence of perhaps the nastiest, most vile fight they had ever had. All Betty can remember is the pounding in her head and the stinging in her chest as he hurled verbal daggers at her. She wasn't innocent in the matter. Her rebuttals were coated in a layer of pettiness that was a new low even by her standards. Every second of it was torture. An out of body experience. It was like she was trapped in a slow-motion car-crash but couldn't close her eyes. The trembling of her fingers was the only thing preventing her from outwardly wincing at her words and his.
Betty had never seen Jughead so angry. So unhinged. Correction-she had never seen him so outraged towards her . One more word, and she swore he would have just screamed. Screamed into the voids of the 4x4 sex/murder board bunker.
It's not like she didn't deserve it. She had just single-handedly confirmed all of Jughead's insecurities. The ones he swears he has grown out of, but Betty's wise enough to know an emotional front when she sees one. After Jughead's disaster of a birthday sophomore year, she promised herself never to make Jughead feel that way. But that was years ago. They were young, wide-eyed, and naive. Navigating love's turmoils together, as two woefully lost teenagers. Now they were older, self-assured, and have endured a lot more than a rowdy kegger.
So as Betty sits in her room in the wake of their most heated fight, she wonders: How did they end up right where they started?
--
Moments, maybe minutes, or even hours go by. Betty isn't watching the clock. Instead, she has thrown herself into next week's calculus homework: a typical Cooper coping method- and definitely not a healthy one. Most of the assignment is left bare, though, as her thoughts won't stop seeping in and clouding her concentration.
She needs to talk to him. Make things right. But what exactly did she do? Was wanting her boyfriend to pass his classes the most heinous thing a girlfriend could do? Deep down, Betty knows she probably overdid it. She always does.
The feeling is gnawing at her. Betty picks up her phone and gently slides her window open.
--
Her steps echo throughout the empty bunker. He doesn't budge. His eyes remain glued to the loose key on his laptop as he tries to maneuver it back into place.
She walks up to the table and stands in front of him. Gingerly she pulls out a chair and sits down, cautiously gauging his reaction with every move.
An awkwardness has now filled the space. A feeling that has been a stranger to Betty ever since they started dating. She's unsure of what to do with her arms, so she decides to pick at her nails. Her eyes dart across the bunker, scanning every crevasse just to avoid looking at Jughead.
Looking past all the wreckage from earlier, which appears to have been somewhat tidied up, Betty notices Jughead's beanie crumpled in the corner. It's wilted and collecting dust. Without hesitating, she picks it up, shakes it out, and places it on the table in front of him.
"You dropped this." She says in a voice so small and meek. One would wonder how Betty Cooper could actually be talking to Jughead Jones in a tone of such cowardice.
For the first time, Jughead's eyes lock with hers, "When are you going to realize that I don't need you to take care of me all the time?"
"Maybe when you realize that you are someone worth taking care of," Betty countered.
Jughead dropped the key he has been fiddling with and exhaled in frustration, "Don't. Don't do that."
His voice began to waver, "You don't get to come in here and play the savior card with me. We're better than that- you're better than that." He hesitates. "At least I thought you were."
All Betty could do was scoff. She couldn't contain the absurdness of the fact that he was mad because she cared too much.
"I'm sorry you're right. Just sit here in your self-made pool of misery." She didn't even realize she had stood up. "All I wanted to do was support you . Be there for you . I apologize if having aspirations for us is crossing some arbitrary line of yours."
She stepped closer to the bed at the edge of the room,
"My bad for thinking that after all this time, you would finally be able to stop pushing me away."
With that, she had sat down on the bed, hunched over with her arms across her stomach. Gaze affixed at her feet, "Looks like we both have misjudged the trajectory of our personal growth."
Then silence ensued. Both of them sat in the musk of Betty's latest observation. And while maybe the two haven't matured as rapidly as presumed, Betty still had some sliver of hope.
And apparently, Jughead did too, as Betty could make out the slight sound of his steps coming towards the bed.
She could feel the mattress dip down as he sat next to her. Their shoulders brushed up against each other, their breathing steady and in sync—neither looking at the other.
"Betty, I spent my whole life in the outskirts. Practically a shadow."
She turned to look at him as he ran his hands through his hair, still not able to face her.
"And it was more than just being from 'the wrong side of the tracks.' No one expects anything from me. Yet, this town breathes down my neck anticipating the moment I screw up-"
"Like the fire incident in elementary school," Betty interrupts.
"Did you know that it was Archie who had brought the matches and Reggie who lit them?"
Betty shook her head slightly, heart aching at the way this wretched town had treated him.
He mustered a chuckle, "When every single person makes you feel like a burden, like a mistake, it becomes really tempting to block out the world that resents you. After all, if you can't trust others, not even your father, at least you have yourself.”
He paused to steady his breathing once again, “But then you start going down the path you promised you wouldn't succumb to. Descending deeper into the isolation, that seemed inevitable."
Betty reaches over and squeezes his hand gently, "Jughead, your father, came around. He's proud of you and the things you have done for the Serpents."
Jughead drops her hand, and his eyes jolt to hers. "Is he? Or is he just relieved that I'm not downing half a bottle of whiskey every day like he was at my age?"
Betty had thought she had known all his inner demons, the trauma that kept him up at night, that was embedded into him; she had accepted it all. It had now seemed that some scars cut so deep; even she couldn't heal them.
Jughead stretched his arm out to grab hold of his beanie on the table in front of him. He ran his fingers over the smooth thread.
"Jughead, do you want to graduate?"
Jughead sighed, "Of course I do. Walking across that stage, diploma in hand, as one big final f-you to this town. But-"
"But?"
"But, then I died. I was hit in the head with a rock at a prep school I thought I was attending based on merits after being accepted into an Ivy League school. An acceptance that everyone around me-including you- was skeptical of. In one brutally swift motion, I had tasted the double-edged sword of new-found success and the defeat I had lived with my whole life."
Her insides recoiled at that last sentiment. Jughead just stared straight ahead at the rusting side of the tin can they were in. He was numb.
"Do you know what the most painful part of ‘dying’ was?”
Her stomach churned in preparation for his answer.
“It was the fact that I didn't."
Betty's eyes grew wide with horror, "W-what is that supposed to mean?"
"Betty, for two weeks, I had to sit underground and watch Riverdale move on. I got a front-row seat to life without Jughead Jones. Sure, there was mourning for a day. A locker shrine that barely lasted through the 8th period. Even after accomplishing feats that most people here would dream of, I was still just an afterthought. Merely a 'gone too soon' on the back page of the newspaper."
Tears were now running down her flushed cheeks accompanied by sporadic sniffling, "Jug, you know that's not true. You mean something to the people that matter like FP, Jellybean, our friends, and me ."
She caressed his cheek, forcing him to look at her; his eyes were glassy and stoic.
"Oh, trust me, it was the icing on the cake to see how much better you would be dating Archie."
Betty dropped his face suddenly and was filled with momentary anger, "That's not fair! It was part of the plan-your plan! I thought we were past that, Jughead."
He retorted back, "Well, when your girlfriend spends more time shoving a 5lb binder in your hand and doubting your future together than she does asking, 'hey how are you doing after narrowly escaping death' old points of conflict have a way of bubbling up to the forefront."
The weight of those final words hit Betty harder than anything he had spewed at her all night. There was nothing she could say to make things better. He was right. The finality and the simplicity with which he had just summed up his frustrations was glaringly obvious. Her father is somewhere in his grave grinning with joy at the fact that Betty really is incapable of love.
"Betty?" Jughead is now the one facing her, watching her flatten her palms against her jeans in an attempt to prevent her internal spiraling.
In a whisper, she says the only thing she can, "I'm sorry."
She grabs Jughead's hands, "You have to know that I want nothing more than a future with you. And only you. A glorious one, filled with all the triumph that you Forsythe Pendleton Jones the Third deserve."
Her grip loosens, and her stare unfocuses from his eyes again, "But old habits die hard, and I wanted to be in control again. To take my life back from the grips of my twisted past. And in doing so, I hurt everyone around me and the person I care about the most. Because that's what I do, that's Betty Cooper for you, trapped in a cycle of self-sabotage." A slight laugh escapes her lips as her eyes fall back down into her lap.
The silence that follows is long and painful. Two now young-adults forced to confront reality. Surrounded by a world that seemed to hate them, they were being pushed to embark on the next chapter of their lives.
Betty felt Jughead nudge her foot with his, and his hand firmly interlaced with hers "maybe if we're lucky history will repeat itself."
They climbed out of the bunker, letting the cool metal of the ladder guide them into the night sky.