The New Guy (Bughead)

Part Nineteen: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

"Wait a minute, you want to go right now?" I ask Betty, as I watch her begin to pack up her things. She closes her computer and puts it into her bag. 

Betty picks up her backpack and slings it over her shoulder, saying, "no time like the present, Jug," she shoots me a silly smile, her tongue between her top and bottom teeth, as she walks over to me. Her hand brushes gently against my shoulder while she walks past. I spin to keep her eyes in mine. 

"What makes you so sure that this is going to work, though? For all we know, she could be dead. Or maybe she just doesn't live here anymore." I stop at these two possibilities, although the variables are endless.

Betty shakes her head at me, her silly smile having evolved into more of a sly one -- her eyes hold a thinking spark. "Nobody leaves this town."

I swallow. "I did."

I can see her jaw clench a little and she looks down momentarily, before peering back up into my eyes, hers a little narrowed, like green crystals through her thick lashes. "You came back, though."

I did come back, I think, biting down on the inside of my cheek, and I still can't give you a real reason why.

But right now, I'm looking down at a real reason to stay. 

Releasing my breath having been held in my chest, I roll my eyes -- she's won me over... Like always. "Right."

She tilts her head to one side, in humble pride at her little victory, and starts to turn to leave, beckoning with her fleeting eyes to follow. "Can we stop at Pop's first, though? I need some fuel."

* * * 

Though being with Betty is worlds and universes away better than being in my house with my dad and that stuffy public defender, I can't help but feel like there's an elephant sitting on my chest as she opens the door and climbs into the passenger seat of the truck I less-than-borrowed from my dad when I left him and his asshole-ery this morning. She tucks her bag in the footwell as she shuts the door with her free hand. I look at her briefly, just to catch a glimpse, as I buckle my seatbelt. I swallow in tingles when she smiles at me. 

"Something up?" She asks sweetly, settling into her seat. She tightens her ponytail at the back of her head.

"Nope," I say, nervously flipping switches and turning dials on the dash, not thinking about what they do, pretending to be preoccupied.

She doesn't believe me, I can tell. She doesn't say anything but her gaze doesn't fall from me. I flash a little smile at her as a lie, a distraction from my obvious discomfort that I really suck at hiding. And it's not like she makes it any easier. 

I stay quiet through most of the drive, though it is a short one. Listening close to the rattling of the old truck as it barrels over potholes on the near-empty morning weekend roads, I try to distract myself from the clamminess starting on the palms of my hands, or the dryness in my mouth. I wish the sensations were reversed -- or, maybe just that, I wish I wasn't so nervous. She makes me so nervous. And I guess that she always has... But now, that I realize that what I feel for her is, in fact, real feelings and not just some twist in my stomach that I thought the phase of the moon was responsible for whenever she walked into the room, it's a new kind of nervous. Part of me wants it to stop. I'm awkward enough without having an impossible crush on the person I spend almost all of my time with. 

"God, I am so hungry," Betty says before the truck even comes to a full stop in the parking lot. She is already unbuckled and opening her door, looking back at me, "come on, come on!"