a / n : 

thank you all so much for the positive feedback on this story so far!  i had a rough week and seeing your comments on this story has helped to cheer me up!

here's a character aesthetic of sadie! she's fabulous and i love her and  i'm going to have so much fun writing her interactions with colin AAAAA I'M SO EXCITED 

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t w o

"HERE."

Sadie looks up at Colin's outstretched hand, taking, it seems, a while to focus on the canned soda he's holding out to her. Eventually, she takes it and sniffles. "Thank you."

The sound is unfamiliar to him. Sadie doesn't sniffle. She never fucking sniffles. Colin's still trying to find his footing with this new Sadie around, half convinced that this isn't actually Sadie. Or that she's only pulling his leg and that this is some kind of elaborate prank.

After that hug they shared, something Colin can only describe as awkward and unsettling, Drew and Perry immediately bailed out on him.

Well, it wasn't that they bailed out, really. His two friends stood there watching him get—assaulted by Sadie, and when he looked to them for help, they just made these vague gestures with their hands before inching back a few steps and sprinting away before Colin could stop them.

we went ahead to jeremy's text us if u need anything :-), texted Drew.

And so Colin was left alone with Sadie Reynolds. Well, not really alone, because they were standing on a busy sidewalk with a bunch of people brushing past them. He knew it looked like a bad case of PDA, with Sadie hugging him and all and him deciding whether he should place his hands on her back or her head or her shoulder before finally settling with just letting them awkwardly hover around her. In any case, it was embarrassing.

Sadie's face was hidden from view, but his stuck out, and he flushed every time somebody caught his eyes, feeling as though they were all judging him.

"Why don't we—um—head over there?" he eventually asked Sadie, even though at the time, he had no idea where "there" actually was. All he knew was that he wanted to leave the crowd and go somewhere more quiet.

When he stepped back from Sadie and broke out of the hug, she began wiping her eyes furiously, and Colin couldn't really watch her, for some reason feeling like he was intruding on her.

So he turned his back and grabbed her wrist, pulling her along with him. He could hear her sob every now and then, the sound tugging uncomfortably at his gut, and every now and then he'd look over his shoulder as if to check if she was still with him.

Which, of course, she was, because he was holding her wrist and pulling her along for fuck's sake.

It took them a few minutes of walking before Colin finally found a spot that seemed okay enough for them to stop. They were near his neighborhood now, farther from the food joints and shops, so there were considerably less people here. He brought her to this little public garden where he knew there'd be benches.

He let her sit on one of them and she was still sniffling. It made him feel things he couldn't even begin to describe and he didn't want to be there, seeing her press her wrists against her eyes, her shoulders shaking.

The sight made his stomach clench and he couldn't stand it.

"I'll be—um—I'll be back," he'd blurted out before dashing away, half-tempted to leave and follow his friends to Jeremy's already.

And he could have.

He didn't like Sadie, not even a little bit. After all the infuriating things she'd done to him back in high school, why the fuck was he supposed to look after her crying ass?

Colin can still remember the day Dexter announced he'd found the love of his life.

Dexter was one of his closest friends in high school. They were seatmates for a class freshman year. Colin has never been particularly talkative, and he wasn't one to strike up a conversation, but Dexter was the exact opposite. He made making friends look easy, and Colin almost immediately warmed up to him.

Dexter had also introduced him to Henry over lunch break that day, and Colin just... fell into their friendship.

The three of them were in sophomore year when Dexter met a girl and somehow convinced himself he'd found the girl.

"We're sixteen," Henry tried to reason with him. "You're not supposed to find the love of your life yet. Unless you're just saying that because she let you go all the way."

Dexter was undeterred though. Colin couldn't care less about his friend's crush, to be perfectly honest, thinking it was probably harmless. Soon enough, Dexter was introducing them to Hadley over the loud chatter of the school cafeteria.

Of course, Colin didn't really need the introduction. He already knew who Hadley was. Her parents own a candy shop and his parents own the grocery store. Her mom struck a deal with his mom so they could buy ingredients in bulk from the grocery and get a discount.

But that wasn't the only reason why he knew her.

Hadley Collins, Aanya Patel, and Sadie Reynolds were a trio. They've been friends for as long as Colin can remember.

Hadley and Aanya would sometimes send him apologetic looks whenever Sadie's pranks went too far.

Like the time she pressed some chewed up gum in all five of his school-issued textbooks, the ones they had to return to the library by the end of the school year. It got him in trouble with his homeroom teacher and the super strict librarian that every kid in school was deathly afraid of.

High school had been a massive improvement. He vaguely remembers Sadie apologizing to him on the last day of middle school, but Colin can't remember much of what she said, really. He was too busy trying to figure out what trick she was trying to play on him.

(He was more freaked out about the fact that he'd left unscathed, spending the next two weeks with his guard up.)

Freshman year was mostly quiet. Sadie didn't seem particularly interested in making fun of him anymore. Some days, though, he would catch her gaze and she'd give him a smile so mischievous Colin's convinced she's about to do something terrible to him.

It was the same smile she gave him the day Dexter introduced them to Hadley, inviting them to share the same table for lunch.

"Hi, Colin." She sounded amused, and excited, like she'd just been presented a new toy. She took the seat across from him and held his gaze. "This should be fun."

But now here she is.

He was so tempted to leave her alone to cry, but the farther he got away from the garden, the heavier his feet became, so he eventually backtracked and made his way back, picking up two cans of soda from a vending machine along the way.

She was still crying when he came back.

He stands there, pretending not to look at her. The whole thing is made even more awkward by the fact that they're pretty much surrounded by couples making out in the shadows of the garden.

Sadie doesn't say anything either. Colin begins to sip his own drink, sitting on the other end of the bench. He won't look at her, so instead he studies a leaf from the nearest plant to keep himself busy.

He finds it hard to believe that the girl sitting on the other end of the bench was the same girl from his less pleasant memories

After a while, he sneaks a peek at Sadie.

He instantly regrets it. Sadie's already looking his way. She put her feet up the seat and was hugging her knees to her chest. She was staring at him, crying, as if she needed to make this all the more uncomfortable for him. Colin feels his ears heat up and immediately looks away.

"What?" he spits out.

She doesn't reply.

"Are you ever going to stop crying?" he asks instead.

She sniffs once, then seems to stop. Colin looks over discreetly.

Sadie's focused on wiping her tears. Her lips are pursed, like she's struggling to keep herself from crying. The sight annoys Colin even further that he nearly hurls his soda at her, wishing it could knock some sense into her.

Or he could hurl it at himself because why the fuck is he stuck on a Friday night with the person he'd spent two years avoiding?

Why couldn't he have just walked away? He should have pretended he hadn't seen her crying. Or he could have left before Drew and Perry had the chance to shove him forward. Hell, he could have pushed her away when she hugged him.

But he hadn't, so there he is, sitting on a bench with a prominent scowl on his face.

"Sorry," Sadie says.

Colin ignores this and instead says "Are you done?" without bothering to mask his irritation.

Sadie nods.

He looks down at his watch. They've been together for half an hour and he wonders, briefly, what his friends are up to now. He runs a hand through his hair and stands up. She isn't crying anymore, so Colin doesn't see any point in lingering longer.

"Aren't you going to ask me what happened?" she asks him.

"What makes you think I give a shit?"

Sadie's brows furrow. "Well, you're here, right?"

Colin feels his face burst into flames. He hopes it's dark enough for the shadows to hide his reddened cheeks. "I don't, okay? Give a shit. Like, at all."

"Then why did you help?"

"I'm not—I wasn't—" Colin stammers, his face growing even hotter by the second. "Your face was annoying me."

Sadie blinked back at him for a moment, and then she let out a sound that seemed like a cross between a sob and a laugh. Fresh tears spring to her eyes and Colin panics. He looks around, like he's expecting someone to help him and take responsibility for this.

She's crying again, but not like before. She's laughing, shaking her head as she wiped her tears with the sleeve of her hoodie.

He doesn't know which weirds him out more.

"Can you please stop that?"

"'That'?"

"This." Colin gestures at her face. "That. Whatever you're doing!"

"You mean crying?"

He narrows his eyes at the teasing lilt to her voice. "Whatever," he says, even though she's not just crying. She's also... making him feel uncomfortable. And stupid. And annoyed. And weird. And angry. It was confusing and that only pisses him off even further. "Just—stop."

He's not sure, but he thinks he sees her the corner of her lips lift, just slightly. "I thought you didn't care."

"I don't."

"But you're still here."

"Well," Colin says, "I'm leaving. Right now."

Colin immediately starts walking, feeling silly and dumb and tired.

"Wait!" she calls out behind him, but he keeps on walking, quickening his pace even further. He feels her following him, and he tries his best to put as much distance as possible between them, but then he's suddenly yanked backwards.

Sadie holds onto the back of his shirt, keeping him in place. "Wait."

He jerks away from her grip and turns to her. "What?"

Her eyes are wide and watery, but her gaze doesn't waver. "Thank you."

Her voice is uncharacteristically soft. Her expression open, almost innocent, and grateful. There's something warm about the way she looks at him, and it makes something in in his chest stir.

He immediately snaps his gaze away.

"Yeah," he replies, swallowing past the lump in his throat. "Whatever."