Chapter Text
Betty thinks that's what she misses most. Waking up with Veronica.
Honestly, the order of what she misses most about Veronica changes daily...hourly. But waking up with her? Always in the top 5.
It happened kind of fast. Their junior year ends, they spend the whole summer wrapped up in each other and then, mere months into their senior year and it's over.
"I can't. I can't do this right now." Veronica's tears catch the neon light of Pop's, glinting pink and red.
"Veronica, please. Please don't do this." Betty's trying to stay calm, trying to keep from falling apart right there in front of Veronica. Her fingernails dig into her palms for the first time in a long time and she's just trying to remember how to breathe.
"I'm sorry, Betty. I love you. I love you so much. I just...I can't be B&V right now." The click of the passenger door handle puntuates her sentence. "I'm so sorry." She's wiping at her face and getting out of the car and Betty can't breathe, can't get the words out of her mouth, can't say: Wait! Stop! Please! Baby, we can work this out. We always work things out, please. I need you.
Winter Break comes as a blessing. Not having to see Veronica makes things a little better (but a little worse too, Betty misses her so much).
Betty's aware that this breakup is going to do what breakups always do in their little group: make things weird for a long time until they can sit down and have a milkshake together again.
Right now, Betty can't imagine having a milkshake with Veronica without crying. She wishes she could be stronger during this. She knows she should be more independent, that she should suck it up, wipe her tears away and say "that's life." but she can't. She can't.
-*-
Betty throws up when she finds out Veronica and Reggie are dating. She barely makes it into the bathroom stall before she's losing the breakfast her dad had made her that morning. Her phone lands on the linoleum next to the toilet hard, clattering. When Betty looks, there's a crack across her screen, across the photo of Veronica and Reggie grinning for Instagram, hearts adorning the picture. She would think it was fitting, her phone breaking, maybe, if she weren't hit with another wave of nausea, sending her coughing and gagging again.
-*-
It's been a few months and Betty thinks she's ready. She answers Veronica's text and the day is planned out.
They meet at Betty's apartment.
It had taken some convincing and a little bit of pitting her parents against each other, but finally Betty's 18th birthday came and a few weeks later she had the keys to her apartment. It's tiny, one bedroom, one bathroom, and a living room that usually had Archie and Vegas asleep on the couch.
When Veronica walks in, Archie pales, looks at Betty and picks up his backpack. Vegas is already leashed, which clues Veronica into the fact that he had already been informed that she was coming and to make himself scarce. He rubs his face, smoothing the beard he'd been trying out. It made him look more like his dad.
"I'll see you later, Betts." He picks up the end of Vegas' leash. "Ronnie."
-*-
"I brought back your cardigan." Betty thinks it's that sentence that breaks her. She keeps the tears back, just barely, but she has to sit down and focus on breathing, and that doesn't go unnoticed by Veronica.
"Betty...please."
"I'm fine." Betty waves her off. She picks up a bag sitting next to her bed and offers it out to Veronica. "Here's your stuff. I still have some more of your clothes at my mom's, I'll drop them off at your place when I can." Veronica nods. Her jaw is tight, the muscles next to her ears flexing, Betty can tell she's tense, mulling something over.
"Do you wanna watch a movie together?" She asks after a few beats of silence.
"Veroni-" Betty starts.
"We said we'd try to be friends." Veronica cut her off.
"And then you didn't try to be anything with me for months, Veronica." Betty snapped. Veronica looked down.
"I'm sorry." She says, and Betty is just kind of sick of hearing that.
"I know." Betty says coldly, folding some of the clothes Veronica had returned to her.
"It's just been hard." And Betty can see Veronica regrets saying that, phrasing it like that.
"Tell me about it." Veronica doesn't think she's ever heard Betty sound so...hurt.
-*-
Betty doesn't know how they got here. Sitting on Betty's bed, a foot of space between them, a movie playing on her TV, and silence.
Them a few months ago would be kissing, Betty's hand under Veronica's skirt, hickies trailing up and down Betty's neck, way too close to each other.
She doesn't know how they got here and she hates it. She hates it so much.
"Veronica..." Betty starts when the movie ends.
"Betty..." Veronica puts her hands up, to stop whatever Betty was planning on saying. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, okay? This has all been really hard for me and I'm sorry."
Betty sighs, "I know..."
"I know you know. I just...I love you. I love you so much and it kills me that I hurt you. I want to stop hurting you. I wanna make things better, baby." Veronica scoots closer to Betty, slowly takes her hand, as if she thought Betty was gonna pull away if she moved too fast. "I can't really explain what I've been going through, and I'm sorry I've been dealing with it like this, but I wanna make it up to you. I wanna fix things. Do you think we can still fix things?"
-*-
"You two look like you're doing better." Cheryl says, straw leaned against her bright red lips as she scrolled through her phone sitting on the counter next her.
"Two burgers, a vanilla milkshake and a chocolate milkshake, please." Veronica leaned over the counter, smiling brightly at Pop. He nodded to her. "Yeah." She said as she looked at Cheryl. "We're really good now."
"No more Reggie?"
Veronica laughs. "No, no more Reggie. I'm never dating a drug dealer again"
"Soooo..." Cheryl swirled her straw around in her milkshake.
"Not yet." Veronica says, glancing over her shoulder at Betty, sitting at their booth, smiling out the window. "But we're getting there. We're fixing things."