Chapter Text
EPILOGUE
(Three Years Later)
If anybody had ever asked Jughead to willingly enroll in a Zumba class before today, he probably would have thrown a drink in their face. In the past, his one and only attempt at participating in an exercise class resulted in a swift exit from the studio room and an hour spent getting brain freeze at the gym’s smoothie bar. If he couldn’t handle one spin class, how would he be able to endure a six week program flailing his way through Baby Zumba?
The things he was willing to do for the women in his life apparently had no limit.
Archie was late, which had not been typical for him A.V. (After Veronica), but Jughead could excuse his friend’s flakiness; it’s not like Jughead had it at all together in the last month before his own child arrived.
A small pair of hands grappled onto Jughead’s shoulders for balance as ten tiny toes dug their way into the meat of his thigh. His daughter, Katherine, clumsily pressed her forehead against his mouth. “Kiss Katie.”
He smiled against her silky hairline and planted a noisy kiss there. “Good?”
Neglecting to answer, she turned sideways to look toward the door, almost sliding to the floor before he caught her around the waist. “Archie not here.”
Jughead reached out and secured the elastic that was in danger of falling off the end of one of her braids and nodded. “Not yet, but he will be. Maybe the rainstorm is holding him up?”
“Bad.” Her lips pursed in an expression of disapproval that could rival Alice Cooper’s, then she flopped into his lap in a strop.
“She’s precious,” a woman purred, her voice cutting through the din of restless toddlers.
Jughead lifted his head to thank the speaker. The woman, with a carefully cultivated yoga body and holding a child around Katie’s age on her lap, was gazing heatedly at him.
“Thank you.” Jughead cleared his throat, sat up a little taller and peered expectantly at the front door. He hoped the woman would pick up on his distraction and leave him alone.
“Are you two here...alone?” She asked, not getting the hint, as she unsubtly tried to catch a glimpse of Jughead’s left hand. “I’m alone.”
He internally groaned and continued staring at the door, wishing for the millionth time he had the power to turn himself invisible while in one of these classes. “No. We’re just waiting for my—”
The door flew open, and Archie rushed inside, face flushed, clothes with patchy with moisture and a broken umbrella in hand which he unceremoniously tossed to the side as he entered.
“I know, I know,” Archie said between gulps of air, bracing his hands on his thighs to catch his breath. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, emphasized even more by the dark circles rimming them. “I’m sorry I’m late. Ronnie couldn’t get close enough to the cabinet to reach something and needed my help.”
Katie leapt out of Jughead’s arms and threw herself at her uncle, who picked her up with one hand. “Hiii!”
“Hiii!” Archie parroted back in the same excited tone, before tossing her into the air.
Jughead tried in vain to snatch her from his arms. “Arch, come on, she just ate. You know you can’t jostle her like that right after she’s eaten or she’ll get a stitch.”
“That’s just a myth,” Archie cooed in a baby voice to Katie as he tossed her in the air again, clearly egged on by her wild laughter. “Isn’t that right, Katie?”
“Our living room rug would beg to differ,” Jughead shot back, disgruntled.
“You two look like a fun couple.” The yoga mom piped in without invitation. She inched slightly closer and lowered the volume of her voice. “I think our kids would play nicely together, don’t you think?” Her hand lazily brushed over her son’s blond mop of hair, like a Bond villain stroking a cat as she gave Archie an excruciatingly slow once over. “I could organize a special playdate for the three of us…if you boys are interested?”
An elderly couple sitting adjacent with their granddaughter, looked over at them, scandalized.
Jughead and Archie exchanged an amused look, before Jughead turned to address the mom. “Yeah, uh, thanks for the kind offer, but we’re all booked up.”
Archie shrugged, trying his best to feign innocence. “I don’t know, Jug, you did say you were looking for more special playdates.”
The woman pointedly angled her head in Jughead’s direction again.
“My--he’s mistaken. Sorry.” At this point, Jughead wasn’t even bothering to aim for a contrite tone. “Fully booked in the special playdate department.”
She shrugged, cutting her losses, and turned to the dad sitting on the other side of her with a feral smile.
Archie settled with Katie on the floor next to Jughead, but his expression remained mischievous, prompting Jughead to lean forward and hiss, “You do that again and I’m going to fu--freaking smother you to death--”
Katie glanced up at Jughead with sad eyes.
“--with love,” Jughead added, with a tight smile. “And hugs.”
“Well, you do give great hugs.” Archie waggled his eyebrows.
“Daddy hug.” Katie snuggled up to Jughead and he wrapped his arms around her, enjoying her easy affection. His baby wasn’t even three years old and he already couldn’t remember what life was like before her.
“Whelp, gotta jet.” Archie gently tugged the end of one of Katie’s braids and pushed himself to stand in one fluid, acrobatic movement that only served to remind Jughead just how little he’d been exercising since Katie entered his life. “Class is starting.”
“Don’t pull a muscle,” Jughead grumbled, as he watched Archie walk toward the front of the room, a sea of toddlers and caretakers parting like the Red Sea to let him through.
“Who is ready to ZOOM today?” Archie shouted into a wireless mic, arms thrown into the air with manufactured enthusiasm. “On your feet, party people!”
The opening strains of Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop the Feeling! flooded the room as Jughead begrudgingly stood and placed Katie on the floor in front of him. A chorus of nearby toddlers shrieked with happiness, their parents looking less engaged but still singing along to the music.
Jughead closed his eyes and tried his best to have an out-of-body experience as the crowd around him appeared to swell as they echoed Archie’s moves.
“Aww, I know from experience that you can move your hips better than that,” a familiar voice chuckled in his ear.
Jughead looked over his shoulder with a pained grin. “Any later, and I was contemplating serving you divorce papers.”
“You say this every time, and yet, you never do,” Betty crowed, hip checking him lightly out of the way so she could kiss their daughter’s head.
“You could at least give me the dignity of pretending to believe me, couldn’t you?”
“We both know you’re not going anywhere.” She leaned over and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, her lips sliding across his cheek as she danced in time with the music. “Plus, you’d never miss this class. You can’t pass up a weekly opportunity to annoy Archie if you’re not here, flaunting your lack of participation in the face of all of his high energy.”
Jughead reeled Betty back in for a proper kiss, not enough to attract attention, but enough for her to feel it. “Smartass,” he whispered against her lips.
“The smartest.” Betty winked, then lifted Katie into her arms and the two of them began mouthing the words to the song together.
Jughead looked around the room at the different types of families, hailing from a wide spectrum of cultures and circumstances, and wondered if any of the other parents had grown up the way he had, rudderless and desperate. Did they also suffer existential crises trying to parent when they had such a poor personal experiences growing up? It was still unbelievable to Jughead that the doctors let him walk out of the hospital with an actual human being in his arms.
Katie snorted a laugh as she twisted her hands into her mother’s hair.
During the early days with Katie, Betty often calmed Jughead’s nerves by telling him that all parents were winging it, that even people who had experience growing up with good parents didn’t have an inside track on how to raise kids perfectly, because it was just as important to know what not to do as it was to have quality people to pattern yourself after. She said they could learn from their parents’ mistakes without repeating them, and tried to comfort him with the idea that that even on their worst days, they would still be better parents than Woody Allen.
Katie reached for Jughead’s hand, and his insides melted like spun sugar on a hot day, a faint, giddy feeling occurring every time he remembered that this was actually his life and he would get to keep it.
He allowed his daughter to pull him closer, even forcing himself to sway in place to please his girls.
Betty’s eyes lit up with delight at his effort and she smiled softly, continuing to sing, “I can’t stop the feelin’...”