Chapter 7
Authors note: THIS IS THE LAST CHAPTER. Get ready to be comfortable with the word aptitudinal. I don't know how it happened, but it was used a lot in this one for some reason.
I'm standing right outside her house. Which, I know, sounds like the premise of a horror movie. It's not all that creepy I swear! She did invite me after all.
She did invite me. I try to convince myself.
I tried to stay at the Twilight, I really did. But as I looked around the room all I could think of was the night when she had sat in that chair, and looked out of that window and had her feet on that stool. The room has been warmer in a non-heat related way since that night. I could visualize the exact look of concentration she had had and her tired eyes. When I tried to think of something else I eventually would slip back down the rampage toward her again. Much like graffiti I am permanently marked with her tag, or rather, essence.
Yet her essence is not enough, so here I am. Standing behind the tree outside her house. Again, not like a creep! She did invite me. The reason I'm behind the tree is because, even though I have made the whole journey over here, I am still not quite sure if I will take her up on her offer. Normally I wouldn't come, merely out of not wanting to seem desperate, but facts faced: I am desperate. Truthfully I really don't want to stay a second longer than I have to in that projector room. It feels like I am sleeping in someone else's house; it's a shelter, yet not quite comfortable enough. Although I guess Betty's house would be someone else's. But Betty isn't someone. She's Betty. And she actually really seemed like she wanted me to come. And also, I really want to come.
I would climb up to her window but I don't want to be one of those so-called "romantic" creeps in movies who climb up a girl's house uninvited and knock on a her window. Not cool. So I send her a text.
I'm outside your house. The text reads. I try to ignore the creepy undertones as I wait for her reply.
She did invite me. She did invite me. She did invite me.
Scared she'll invite me in, scared she won't I wait behind the tree. That's when I hear it. Her voice. "Jughead!" She calls as silently as she can. After seriously contemplating staying behind this tree for the remainder of the night I step forward. It's the thought of returning to the solidarity of the Twilight that forces me to emerge from the shadows.
I see her leaning out of her window, her room being the only source of light.
"You're going to have to climb." She says in a not so hushed anymore voice. It's a challenge, I can sense, and I smile a smile that I'm not sure if she detects.
"Are you sure about this?" I ask while giving the rose trellis ahead of me a sceptic look.
"I don't mind. I guess it's up to you whether you think you have the aptitude." Her tone is nonchalant, it's teasing. She doesn't think I can do it.
"I reckon it's less about aptitude and more about whether the lattice will hold me." I grab onto it to try and make out its stability. The fact that it's made of wood doesn't comfort me at all. "Here I come." I say loudly enough for Betty to hear me but not to wake her family. As I make my way from one plank to the next, reaching for another something to grab hold of, I think of Betty's room. I try to imagine it, but I find it kind of hard to. What's harder to believe, is that I'm going to see it for myself as soon as I've managed to climb this thing.
"How's it going?" Betty's voice can be heard from the upside of the roof. There's still that annoying challenge to it and I wonder if she's even worried for me. Because I'm starting to worry for real and my heart is beating fast. The problem isn't so much the climbing anymore and now it's the fact that I'm presumably supposed to make my way over the edge of the roof, which doesn't seem very likely in my head at the moment. But then, in my moment of despair, when I'm just about to seriously consider making my way down again and leaving this town for good, an angel appears. I look up to see Betty now sitting right above me on the edge. My eyes go wide at the sight of her.
"What are you doing?" I say a little too loudly.
"Shhh! Let's not raise our voices Jug, I'm right here. Anyway, it's okay, I'm out here all the time." She whispers reassuringly.
"Oh, okay. It's just with you being on the edge you are way too near the edge in my opinion." I wonder if she can even detect the intended humour beneath my exasperation.
Betty laughs and hoists herself up to a standing position, only to squat down again. She reaches her hand out for me. "You're going to need someone to pull you up."
I look at her and to my astonishment her expression is dead serious. So I guess I'm just going to have to do this. I run the thought through my head once: that, although it may seem dangerous, this is now something that I will soon do.
"Seems a little dangerous." I say with a shaking voice.
"To the untrained eye." Betty smiles. "Honestly, me and my cousin would do this on a regular when we were little. It's not a problem." She extends her arm once again for me, it seems she is ready to go. And honestly right now, the thought of falling on my back from this height is more soothing than the thought of folding and trudging back home. So I take hold of her arm in an iron grasp, and she pulls me over the edge to the safe haven.
The threat is terminated, but my heart still pounds loudly in my chest. The only thing I'm thinking of as I lay panting on the hard roof tiles is that missions often seem less intimidating while one has yet to actually embark upon them. This was one of those cases. I also wonder whether or not Betty can hear my heartbeat.
"Congratulations, you have now reached the safe haven. Your 72 virgins are just around the corner." Betty says while lying down next to me.
"You do know that haven in safe haven and heaven are two different words, right?" I ask her. "They're not even homophones."
"Still a funny joke." She retorts. "And by the way Jughead. That was pretty aptitudinal what you did just now."
A smile breaks out across my face as I stare upwards at the sky. "Oh, what? You're making up words now? This has gone too far Betty."
"First of all, aptitudinal is a word, look it up. Second of all, what happened to, and I quote, 'I don't subscribe to prescriptive grammar' end quote." She mocks me.
"Making up words is not really the same as not believing in prescriptive grammar." I retort although I can't seem to make my smile disappear.
Betty sits up and looks at me; thankfully her smile is still attached to her body as well. "Really? Because making up a word and ending a sentence with a preposition seems equally silly to me." She starts making her way back toward her window and I follow.
"I do agree however, that it was most definitely very aptitudinal of me. I reckon it almost measures up to your legendary kick-flip." I keep teasing as we climb.
"So we're on board with aptitudinal being a word all of a sudden? And yes, although I feel strongly that your work was aptitudinal indeed, I believe my kick-flip reaches the highest height on the Richter scale of aptitude."
When I get to the window she's already sitting on her bed. She suddenly looks a little insecure while I step inside as quietly as I can. She's in a t-shirt and a pair of soft shorts. Despite being the only source of light from the outside, her room is dark except for some fairy lights lighting the walls. Betty is quiet and I inspect her room without trying to make it seem like I am. The colours are dark, there are posters of bands I have no clue about and there are a lot of plants.
"You like plants?" I ask in a lack of other things to say.
She studies me for a second. "They clear the air … and I clear theirs." She says and picks up her nearest plant on her nightstand and breathes barely audibly on to it.
I try to smile but it comes out irresolute and she rolls her eyes.
"I don't name them or anything. It's just nice to have a little bit of nature with me as I escape to a highly mechanic indoor world." Betty still has that insecure tinge to her that erupted when we entered her own personal safe haven, so to speak. It's fun to see her not be the girl who skates around Riverdale High in her own world. Even if that is the girl I've had an interest in from day one.
"Well if you're not going to name them..." I tread cautiously toward one of the plants on her desk, eyeing her for permission.
"Go ahead." She says.
Most of the plants are just green leafs, I suspect some sorts of herbs. But some of them are actual flowers bursting with colours like lilac or yellow, giving some shades to the otherwise achromatic feeling this room has. "What's this plant?" I ask, smelling the leaf of a specifically odd looking one.
"I don't know. I don't usually bother learning about each plant, I just buy random seeds if I like their picture on the packaging."
"I see. So you plant them yourself?"
Betty smiles. "I do. Or I try at least."
I look around at the array of plants she has in her room, they are all placed randomly and there seems to be no thought whatsoever toward the layout. "Seems your attempts are paying off." Betty remains quiet while I further inspect her plants. "This one I will name … Abel."
Betty's eyebrows are raised when I look at her. "Off to a good start." She says.
I ignore the comment and move on to the next one. "You will be called Gabriel." I am seemingly now talking to the plants.
I circle the room, mostly looking at her posters while occasionally naming the plants I pass by. "You will be called Josef … and you are definitely a Maria … does this look like an Abraham or an Isaac to you, Betty?" Until I am left with only one plant left to name. I hesitate before I take a seat next to Betty on the bed. The atmosphere changes, time seems to move slower. My eyes drift to the plant she's holding on to tightly. It's a cactus. I take my finger to poke gently one of the thorns. "I shall name you … Elisabeth." This receives me a look from Betty.
"How come they're all names from The Bible?"
"I just realised that as well and I'm not sure why." I answer. Betty breaks out laughing. "It just sort of happened I guess." I add while laughing with her. We are both cupping our mouths with the intention of not being too loud.
When the laughter dies out Betty falls into a hesitant manner of being, leaving her exterior intriguingly abstruse. She looks at me with eyes as curious as my own. I find myself not having the faintest idea how this night will lead on. If I had been at the Twilight I would have been asleep by now, waiting for the next day, which would proceed to look suspiciously similar to the last. Instead a pair of intriguingly abstruse eyes are staring at me and I'm dying to find out why they are so.
"We should probably sleep." Betty says. She doesn't move a muscle. I look at her, uncertain of what to do.
"Right." This is the awkward part, the part I can't play off by giving her plants Bible names. We now have to be real about the cold truth of the situation, the fact that I'm taking refuge in her room. The fact that she is saving me, she's providing me a home in a way that the Twilight couldn't even try to. But I am an intruder still, upon ground that doesn't belong to me, ground that doesn't really have a place for me.
"As you may have noticed, there is no extra bed. Putting one in would obviously be a dead giveaway to my parents." Betty puts her cactus back on the nightstand. "So you can either sleep with me on my bed or on the floor. The bed is quite big so I really don't mind." She says without really looking at me.
I stand up, suddenly restless. "Yeah, but that's alright I'll just sleep on the floor. No worries." I say while looking around, seizing her bedroom floor since it's the place I'll be spending my next few hours.
"Jug." She interrupts my heedless scurrying, putting my motions to a halt. "You can sleep on the bed." She states clearly, making sure to pronounce every syllable.
I debate in my head what's best to do in this situation. Should I do what I want to, and sleep on the bed, or should I insist on sleeping on the floor? I don't want to do the wrong thing and I want to be a good guy, whatever that even means. But I find myself agreeing to her proposition none the less.
Silently she moves over to one side of the bed and lies down. The silence remains while I remove my shoes and jacket, I don't even bother removing my suspenders before I lie down on the opposite side. She turns the fairy lights off and it's pitch dark for a while until I can see her outline, and then her eyes and then I gradually have a more detailed perspective of her features. I watch her as she studies intently the palm of her hand.
"Remember that time at the party?" She asks quietly, like she's whispering to a small flower. "You took my hand in yours, but you never shook it. What was that?" Her eyes never once leave her palm.
"I wanted you to know that I was aware of your scars. Did I make you uncomfortable?"
"No, it was fine."
"My intention was only ever to be considerate, let you know that you are not neglected." I tried my best to choose my words carefully, but in the end I still felt like said the wrong thing.
"Yes, I understand. It did make me feel …less alone."
I keep staring at the back of her hand while she stares at the palm of it.
The night served to make our brains tired and thus it filtered less, leaving us with a pealed version of ourselves for the other to take part in. The darkness served to make our appearances less conspicuous, leaving a false sense of concealment for us to be relieved by. Possibly as a result of that, I found myself reciting Edgar Allan Poe, "And by strange alchemy of brain, her pleasures always turned to pain, her naiveté to wild desire, her wit to love, her wine to fire."* I feel a little silly, but I plough through and afterward she finally looks at me.
When she doesn't say anything, I proceed to tell her, "If you want to, you can try explaining how you feel. I am very interested."
"It's a mystery." She says.
"I love mysteries." I say.
She hesitates for a long time. But I know she will say something eventually, and it takes a little bit of will power to wait for her, yet I manage.
"I don't have any friends, no one seems to like me." To my surprise she doesn't sound insecure, she sounds casual.
"Are you sure that no one likes you or if maybe sometimes… you shun away from them?" I think of all the times I've tried to make our relation move beyond that of a professional one and Betty has seemed oblivious to my attempts, in her own little world like always.
"Why would anyone be interested in me? Have you seen the way I dress and have you seen the people at Riverdale High?" She asks frustrated.
"Then why do you dress that way?" I ask curiously.
"Because! It doesn't matter, I'm not like them either way." Her eyes are wet but her exterior doesn't falter, she's still hard as a rock.
"And how are you different?" I realise that I've become some sort of bot, I'm not so much here anymore, she's not even looking at me, she's talking to herself and I'm just the catalyst keeping the conversation going.
"They drink, they party, I don't– I've never felt… sexually attracted to anyone." She finishes, and suddenly I'm there again, in her room, right next to her. She looks directly at me for the first time since the conversation started, but I can tell she finds it hard to. "That's why no guy would ever be interested in me." She concludes. "That's why I wear what is comfortable rather than what is pretty. Because it doesn't matter, it won't make a difference." She stares at me and straight through me, if I moved her eyes wouldn't follow. "This is what straight girls would look like it there existed no boys to please."
I laugh at that. "I don't think that's true. Do you really believe they would go through all that trouble just to please boys? I think they do it for none other than themselves."
"Are you saying girls are selfish?" She jokes and I laugh.
"You're twisting my words." I smile.
"I'm a writer, get used to it."
"Right, forgot you're a professional word twister." I say sarcastically.
Betty manages a smile but I can see that she is somewhat emotionally drained. "You don't seem surprised." She says but realises subsequently that I have no idea what she's referring to. "About me being asexual." I can tell the words are new even to her when she says them and I can't help but wonder how she can be so confident in talking about herself and expressing her feelings, how she can be comfortable with using such a strong label.
"Well… I will begin by saying that I don't usually assume things about other people's sexualities. Although the idea… it hasn't not occurred to me." I pause to look for her reaction, when it doesn't come I continue on. "And now that I know it's clear… It's in everything you do. It's you." I finish, completely unhappy with my feeble phrasing.
"I've had these fantasies about getting drunk and doing it just to get it over with. I've thought I was gay and I've thought that it came from my insecurities and that if I would just learn to love myself then I would get comfortable with loving someone else intimately. But lately, very recently actually, I've learned to accept it. Not stopped wishing things were different, but accepted it." She blurts out all at once like a song.
My heart beats fast. I felt a rush at her words, or more precisely, at how well I identified with them. I want to tell her how much the same we are, but I find I simply can't. Stating something, which I have been supressing for so long, is too much for me in this instance. I am not prepared for this. I look at her, trying to telepathically mediate what I feel instead. But she is no mind reader. Of that I'm sure.
"But you." She begins. "You have a lot of… fans. Yet you never seem interested, why is that?" She queries.
"I guess it comes down to feeling like I don't have anything to offer them. This notion that I won't be able to give them what they want." I sigh.
"And what is it that they want, do you think?" She looks into my eyes, really looks for the first time, not letting go. I'm scared she will see through me and I don't quite hold her stare like I wish I could.
"I'm not sure." I finally mutter, but it's useless, she has already seen it in my eyes.
"Are you asexual?" She asks.
"No." I say before I have time to think.
The quiet paves an audial way to the wind outside.
"I just think that sex is stupid." I say. In retrospect the statement seems a little childish, but Betty gives me a doting smile.
"Then don't be asexual, just let us share that opinion an all be well." She says.
I briefly wonder about the time, but I soon come to find that that's not where my real queries are. Once I've mustered enough courage I ask, "Do you like kissing?"
Her mouth twitches. "I don't know. I've never tried."
"You haven't had sex either but you still know you don't like that."
"Fine." She smiles. "I believe I do like kissing." She covers her face in her hands fleetingly in an attempt to shelter herself from sheer awkwardness. The motion is small, but it sparks something inside me. The field of my vision slithers down to her lips.
"Would you like to try?" I ask in the darkness of her bedroom with a vulnerable tinge to my voice. I would be surprised by my own profoundness, but she isn't this distant goal anymore. She's a person, and we are on the same level.
"Okay." She says, but she looks scared. "But I don't know what to do." She further explains.
"That's okay." I say impatiently. I move toward her, my breathing is slow. The truth is I don't know either. I have no damn clue. But although missions often seem less intimidating while one has yet to embark upon them, only for you to find out they are a hell of a hassle, some of them are still worth pursuing and some of them you find out later to not be as intimidating as you thought.
When our lips meet I come to find that the latter is in this case true. What has for so long felt completely unobtainable, feels entirely natural with Betty. I take hold of her neck and she takes hold of mine and we pull each other closer. Her lips twitch into a smile, causing mine to do the same. We hold on to each other for as long as we can until we can hold our breaths no longer and fall back on our individual pillows, staring at the roof.
"That was good. But we have to try again." Betty breathes.
I beam at her. "Again you say?"
"I'm sorry, but we have to use tongue I think. Otherwise it doesn't count." She says like it's a matter of fact.
"Don't apologize to me." I say and lean in toward her again, there's a newfound craving inside me to be close to her.
Right before our mouths meet she stops me. "Just be careful though." She's got her hand on my shoulder, which I like. "Don't use too much tongue, it's just supposed to skim the lips I think."
I look at her lips while I whisper, "Fine." I've found out recently that it's my new favourite place of hers to look at.
She eventually releases her hold on my shoulder and I am free to lean in toward her, I do it as slowly as I can. I do believe that slow is key here. Sort of like a constructed pause in rhetoric's. And just like tea it is not the way she tastes when I kiss her but the way she makes me feel inside. Sort of like everything is tingling. The only sounds that are heard come from the wind outside and out mouths moving together, figuring out along the way, how much of our tongues are needed.
"And so being young and dipt in folly, I fell in love with melancholy."* I recite to her when we've drawn apart.
* The poem is Romance by Edgar Allan Poe.
8 June 2017