"Are you growing your hair out?" Stephanie asked.
"Nah. I mean, I'm not trying to," Sadie said. "I've been meaning to get it cut again, but I keep putting off calling my stylist."
"I hope this doesn't sound crazy rude, but I never really thought you were the type for that."
Sadie laughed. "I'm not, but I have this friend who owns a place and I like to support her business." She paused, Stephanie did likewise as she leaned down toward lines of tiny bottles of blue paint. "I'm looking for a tone called, 'Azure Medley.' I've only used it once and I've tried to find it, like, three times. It was definitely at this store the one time, so I want to make sure it isn't here today."
The time Stephanie spent with Sadie was, perhaps poetically, most comparable to her interactions with Cassandra for the months after she first came out. Stephanie reassured her constantly that the situation wouldn't do anything to affect their friendship and there wasn't anything wrong with how she felt. Though Stephanie would never admit it, it was a relief for her when Sadie entered the picture. It was helpful to know Cassandra's romantic feelings could be elsewhere.
Her friendship with Sadie was stuck in a similar cycle of reassurance. They didn't need to preserve contact, Sadie had other friends and didn't like thinking she was being pitied. But no matter what she said and no matter what she meant, Stephanie was not sticking for pity's sake.
Stephanie leaned over the aisle they stood in and squinted. "Can't you just mix something a little lighter and a little darker and get most of the way there?"
"Yeah, if I was a chemist or something." Sadie laughed. "Oil paint is expensive and I don't have a girlfriend with a billionaire parent offering to buy me stuff anymore."
"If it makes you feel any better, all the money in the world couldn't make Tim any good with gifts." Stephanie smirked. "Or maybe I should take all the soaps and bath stuff as some kind of personal insult."
"I'll take anything you don't want," Sadie said. "Ha! There it is! At long last!"
There was a paint and craft store just a few miles from Sadie's house. It was a simple, family-owned establishment that got a lot of its business from elders buying birdhouses for their grandchildren to pound at. From across the street there was a constant buzz of heavy machinery and other obnoxious noises. A sign at the front of the shop appealed to the customers for patience and understanding while the Wellspring of Hope was in construction.
"You hear Batgirl cornered that radio preacher the other night?" The question had been on Stephanie's mind since she saw the sign.
"Yeah, I got a good laugh out of that," Sadie said. "That guy's an ass, I'm always up for hearing about him getting knocked down a peg."
Stephanie didn't smile as broadly as she wished she could. It was so nice to have at least someone's approval on that night.
"Maybe she could do something to knock out all the noise at that eyesore across the street." Sadie moved on from the blues past the purples and into the reds. "They're never going to get that thing done. I used to be able to tell you some slightly different detail almost every day, but it feels like they built that skeleton months ago and just forgot about it."
"Maybe they're working on the interior or something," Stephanie said.
"Maybe. I've seen electrical vans and stuff driving in and out of there, but I thought it was too early for that step? You know what, I dunno. I'm not an architect. Take it up with an architect." Stephanie opened her mouth to respond, but Sadie resumed before she could. "How'd Cassie take that?"
A tense chill ran through Stephanie's body. "I don't know. She's out of town right now."
"Oh. What, is she visiting someone? Or just on a rich personal sabbatical or something like that?"
In spite of herself, Stephanie cracked up. "I don't think that's what a sabbatical means."
"Well, whatever. She likes Batman, she likes that Gram guy for who knows why, guess she'll have to pick who she's going to root for when she gets back." After far less searching, Sadie slipped a bottle of red paint marked, "Chilean Sunset" from its place and set it in her basket. "Seems kind of weird though. Kinda thought Batman and the rest of his group would be too busy with all those kidnappings going on."
Stephanie had to bite her lip to keep from getting defensive and just said, "Yeah, guess that is weird."
Sadie took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as they walked toward the orange paints. "Is she doing okay?"
It took Stephanie a few seconds to answer. In their past conversations she tried to downplay the negativity. But after what had happened so recently, it seemed impossible to lie. "… I don't know."
Stephanie couldn't tell what, but there seemed to be something inauthentic in the way Sadie stopped in front of the orange paints. Even as she lifted a bottle for a better look with her face out of view, Stephanie felt confident she wasn't actually reading the label.
"Not knowing is the worst," Sadie said. "You know what I mean?"
"Um, I don't think so," Stephanie said. "Care to elaborate?"
Sadie stood up straight. The bottle of paint was still in her hand but she seemed to have no intention of setting it in her basket. "A lot of the time, bad stuff isn't the worst stuff. Yelling, laying around too much, crying. All of that stuff sucks, but you definitely know it's happening."
"Compared to what?"
"Things that don't bubble to the surface. Like hating yourself." Sadie's eyes seemed to glaze over, as if she'd closed them without blinking. "Thinking you aren't good enough to be loved. Punishing yourself because nobody else is doing it for you."
"… Ouch." Stephanie looked down, ashamed she hadn't thought of any of that. "Yeah, that makes sense."
"I know Cassie was finally getting over a lot of her baggage when she met me," Sadie said. "Is she still getting over it? Did I make everything worse?"
"You didn't—"
"I dated this one girl, freshman year. I still see her across the cafeteria sometimes," Sadie said. "After we split up, she looked me dead in the eye one day and said, 'You're the reason I cut myself.'" Sadie wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket.
Stephanie flinched. "That's so messed up."
"I'm scared," Sadie said. "Maybe it's not supposed to be my problem anymore, but I worry about her all the time." She paused and wiped at her face again. "I gave myself all this stress and I walked away from one of the best people I've ever met. Why? Because I was horny?"
Stephanie went red in the face as an elderly man at the end of the aisle turned with a look she couldn't identify. "Keep it down! Old people shop here!" That statement made the man flash a scowl.
"I'm sorry." Sadie breathed a heavy sigh. "I just don't know. What am I supposed to do? You and Tim have been dating since forever, does he want to marry you right now?"
Stephanie shrugged. "I told him he could ask me when he felt like it. He's rich, Bruce is pretty hands off with him. So I guess if he did, he'd have asked by now."
"Doesn't it bother you guys? Wanting different things like that?"
"We don't want different things. Not really," Stephanie said. "I want to be with him today. I want to sleep over at his place tonight. I wanna keep kissing him and going out on dates and just hanging out with him tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. Enough days into the future and maybe I will be ready for something else, but hopefully he will be too." She managed a small smile. "Today's not enough for a lot of people. But at this point, it's enough for me."
Sadie gave Stephanie a long look before she quietly said, "I guess you're just better than me."
"It's not about better," Stephanie said. "Listen, it seems like you both ended up putting a lot of pressure on one another. And pressure sucks for everyone involved."
"So what, you think I should just pretend like everything's fine?" Sadie turned around, slipped past Stephanie and headed toward the cashiers at the front of the store. "Nod and say, 'That's nice dear' if she starts talking about marrying me when I don't want to?"
"Understanding differences is the first key to working around them," Stephanie said. "As much trouble as Cassie has with some stuff, I don't believe she was actually thinking of you guys getting hitched anytime soon. If you still love her the first thing you've gotta do is let her know, and if you still want to be together you need to be willing to talk about what's bugging you, even when you want to just ignore it." The two exited the aisle in a silence that held a few seconds before she added, "And you may need to give it more time."
"I've got a scholarship to my dream school in Chicago," Sadie said. "I miss her, but I can't just keep hanging onto what was… if she wants to talk to me I'll listen. But you said it yourself, she's in a dark place right now. I'd really hate to make it any worse. For either of us."
In spite of her attempts to quiet her inner matchmaker, Stephanie carefully catalogued Sadie's statements into a corner of her mental inventory. "Some things can't ever go back to the way they were," she said. "But that doesn't mean they aren't still worthwhile."
