When in doubt, lie your way out.

It’s what he did every time he woke up still sprawled between a woman’s legs, his face buried in an unfamiliar bird’s nest of hair that smelled like some fruit or herb he had a better chance of guessing the name of than the chick he’d been balls deep in only hours earlier. Every morning he’d wake up like this he would lift his head and make eye contact with Random Score From the Night Before, and he’d smile and say he’d had an unforgettable night (he couldn’t even remember what positions they’d fucked in), that he couldn’t wait to see her again (maybe he’d introduce her to the dog he didn’t own), and that he’d definitely absolutely, without a doubt call her later (he’d already blocked her number in the Uber over to her place).

Then Finnick would grab his pants from wherever he’d ditched them on his way into her bed, hastily throwing them on one leg at a time, his toes anxiously tunneling their way down the fabric, his fingers moving at lightning speed to zip up his fly, and, as he pulled his shirt back down over his head he’d flash Random Score a winning smile and tell her she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.

But the truth was, nine times out of ten, Random Score wasn’t even the most beautiful creature in a room that had just the two of them in it.

It’s how he got out, by lying.

Look, there was no sense dragging out relationships that weren’t going to go anywhere—not with the past being what it was, and with all the secrets and lies he had to tell piling up like they always did. But there was no sense leaving a girl feeling any worse about that than he had to. He’d bend them over, make them come, and, in the seconds before he ran away from them, he made them smile too. All with lies.

****************************************

The Beta Bro: Peeta

He’d spent half an hour talking about knives with Clove Kurpinski, pretending to weigh the pros and cons of German versus Japanese steel, before the thought occurred to him that maybe she wasn't looking to invest in knives for cooking but other, less savory extracurricular activities instead. Once the idea came to him, it’s not like he could unthink it.

He got away from her as quickly as he could, a specific part of him immeasurably glad to remain intact.

After that he'd been roped into a conversation with Cato Taylor, who had insisted on waxing poetic about the glory and might of Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers. This was followed by an interminable sales pitch by David Marvel about the necessity of a comprehensive life insurance plan so that he wouldn't leave his nonexistent wife and their equally nonexistent children to fend for themselves in the event of his untimely demise.

Frankly, the whole night so far had him looking forward to an untimely demise.

Peeta would steal occasional glances at Katniss— according to his phone, which he periodically pulled out of his pocket to consult, approximately once every fifteen minutes.

Okay, that was bullshit. It was more like once every ten. Regardless, Peeta was making a concerted effort to play it cool and not to stare, even if his eyes rebelled against him at regular and increasingly frequent intervals.  

Katniss seemed to be having an okay enough time, nursing the same cup of beer she’d clutched in her hands all night while chatting with their friends. The expressions her face made fascinated him: the two little frown lines that appeared between her brows whenever she really concentrated on listening, the way her smile reminded him of a sunbreak— of clouds cracking apart for the light— whenever she laughed, the constant vacillation between amusement and annoyance that subtly shifted every one of her features, not so much changing them as painting them a new shade.

She’d braided her hair tonight, two plaits delicately pinned up in the same way they’d been the first time he saw her, back in the eighth grade, when he’d transferred to Seneca Middle School. She hadn’t altered much over the years, hadn’t grown any taller or much curvier, but something about her had become softer, gentler. Whereas time had the tendency to sharpen and harden most people, it seemed to have the opposite effect on Katniss Everdeen. She still scowled plenty— was known for her sharp tongue when she chose to speak at all— but some sort of vulnerability had crept into her that hadn’t been there before.

Her forest green shift dress fell to mid-thigh, the smooth olive skin of her legs remained bare. Through the lace sleeves of her dress he thought he could see a tattoo on her wrist, something that looked like an arrow, maybe, but he couldn't be sure. And he wanted to be sure, to see it and know it. He envied the ink that had gotten under Katniss’ skin.

It was already after eleven when he finally plucked up the courage to talk to her. He didn’t want to have some shabby “Hey, how’ve you been?” “How’s work,” “So how about that weather, huh?” conversation. He could have that conversation with anyone— had, in fact, had that identical conversation with about twenty anyones tonight. He wanted to know her, wanted to be known by her. It didn’t seem so much to ask, but it was the sort of wish that could cost him everything. All it would take from her was one word, one leveling stare, to reduce him to rubble. He felt his guts brace for the impact of rejection. Because, as far as he knew, that’s what happened when you put yourself out there to the person you’d always wanted: they destroyed you.

He had no fucking idea what he was going to say to her.

Through the thick crowd and the crush of bodies squeezed together— laughing, sweating, dancing, and, in Gloss and Cashmere’s case, overzealously dry humping against the knotty pine wall— he spotted her. For the first time all night, she was alone, making her way to the long card table set out for appetizers and punch. Her saw her ladle out a portion of the pink, foamy punch and take a sip, chuckling to himself as she grimaced at its overly liquored taste. When she’d covertly deposited the still-full glass behind an artificial tree, he forced his legs to move. They felt like dead tree trunks, mouldering stumps bogged down by moss and muck, stubbornly clinging to the ground by roots that had long since ceased to serve any useful purpose.

“‘Sorry, I’ll… uh… yeah. Later. I’ve... uh… there’s one thing,” he bellowed over the music, making some sort of stammering half-apology to Annie Cresta, the girl he’d been sitting next to on the shabby sofa for the past twenty minutes. In his panic, through the anxiety mingled with equal parts excitement and dread, he’d forgotten how to speak in complete sentences.

“No problem, Peeta.” She rubbed his knee reassuring and smiled benevolently at him like he was a guileless child and she could follow the direction of his thoughts, a trail of breadcrumbs leading straight to his heart’s most ardent desire. She knows, he groaned inwardly. The whole damn room knows.  

He pushed his way through the crowd, angling his broad shoulders to squeeze between people too drunk or oblivious to notice he was trying to get by. A few people smacked him jovially on the back, hooting “Hey Peet,” or “‘Sup, bro,” but he could barely hear them over the thundering in his ears, could hardly acknowledge them through the constriction in his throat. The closer he got to her, the quieter the rest of the room became.         

By the time he finally reached her the room had fallen silent, the chittering and chirping of the other guests swallowed by the hush of anticipation. Everyone was frozen around them, or perhaps they had vanished altogether, lost in an earlier era, another time. The time before this. It felt monumental, like this was the fulcrum upon which something in his world had just tipped.

Her back was turned to him, the smooth skin of her shoulder visible through the lace of her dress. Reaching out, he touched her there, allowing himself to relish for a second the sensation of her cool skin against the heat of his palm, the feel of her dress’ coarse fabric on his flesh.

She whirled around, her dark gray eyes widening at the sight of him.

“Peeta?” she said, or at least he thought she said. He couldn’t be exactly sure. Her right cheek was puffed out, pocketing something inside of it like a chipmunk. Her right hand shot up to cover her mouth, her left still clutching the ants on a log she’d been eating. The edge of the celery was serrated from her teeth, a small dollop of peanut butter smeared on the delicate web of skin between her thumb and index finger.

Peeta couldn’t help it, but there was something so absurd about this moment he had to laugh. Here they were. He’d finally worked up the nerve to talk to her, and he’d caught her plowing through a kid’s snack, mouth full and glued shut with peanut butter.

Christ, he was so gone for her.

At the sound of his laugh, he noticed a pink flush creep up her neck, delicious, candy-colored mottles and splotches he wanted to taste. She looked down at her hand, abashed, scanning the table for somewhere to place the half-eaten snack, finding nowhere except the tray she’d taken it from. She kept in her hand; three raisins stupidly perched on a bed of peanut butter.

“Hey, Katniss, good to see you.”

He didn’t know who had said that, some self-assured bastard who couldn't possibly have been him but who seemed to have his voice.

He shifted his weight awkwardly, unsure what to do next, wanting to hug her but not sure if would make things better or worse.  

“It’s good to see you too,” she said, the tone of her voice, its warmth and gentle cadence, making his mind up for him.

He’d hugged her once before, at high school graduation, years ago. That had been different, just a casual sling of arms, two shapeless bodies in robes as baggy as trash bags, the cheap synthetic fabric of their regalia crinkling noisily from the pressure. It was a hug of two acquaintances saying goodbye and good luck and “it was nice almost knowing you.”  

It was nothing like this.

This hug was the press of her ear against his as he leaned down, the heat of her breath fanning over the nape of his neck. It was the bones of her shoulders, delicate and fragile under his hands, five nearly agonizing currents where the fingers of her right hand connected with his spine. It was brief. It smelled of peanut butter. He might actually have peanut butter now on the back of his shirt. But he didn’t care because it was perfection.

So that was what it felt like to hold Katniss Everdeen.

He pulled away regretfully, already missing the press of her body against his.

“How’ve you been?” she asked, popping the rest of the celery stick into her mouth, chewing aggressively, as if to be done with it.

Peeta grabbed one off the tray for himself as he answered so that Katniss wouldn't see the look of disappointment in his eyes, the dreadful conviction that this conversation would go the same way as every other one they’d ever had.  

“Good. I’ve been good. You?”

She nodded as she chewed like she’d been asked to describe in five words or less what the meaning of life was. Her hand rolled in front of her in a circular fashion, over and over, willing her jaw to work faster. When she finally spoke, it was what he had expected and feared. “I’m good.”

So much good. Too much good. A lie. That answer was almost always a lie, a detour sign in the middle of the road forcing you to take another route. It didn’t care if you ever found your way back to where you wanted to go. It just wanted to send you on your way.  

There was a pause, a fraction of a second in which neither of them spoke and just stood there, smiling at each other in a pantomime of social interaction.

Before he could find the right words to ask her what he wanted to say, she chimed in. “So, uh, how’s work been for you?”

He was an art teacher.

He loved his job.

He didn’t want to fucking talk about his job.   

“Um, yeah, it’s good,” he replied, feeling impatient at the niceties, wanting to get to something real. He could ask her about her job in return; she was a forest ranger. And as much as he wanted to know about her job— about how many cups of coffee she had each morning before she could drag her ass away from her desk; who her work husband was, what his deal was, why that jackwad couldn’t find his own girl; how many hours a day she spent tromping through the woods or on well-blazed trails; if her boss was a dick; if she aspired to run the National Park Service someday, something he could totally see her doing— what he really wanted to know was if he could take her out for a cup of coffee sometime, if he could kiss her, if he could fuck her until it was his name, his name, only his name that she was capable of thinking.

He pointed to the discarded plastic cup on the floor and smiled crookedly at her, his grin widening as her smile involuntarily matched his. “Not feeling like much of a pirate tonight?”

She glanced down at it, clearing her throat in disgust. “Ugh... no. I’m driving. And besides, who needs that much rum anyway?”

“Well, Delly and Thom aren’t exactly known for their subtlety, are they?” he asked with a self-conscious smirk. Like he was one to talk.

Katniss laughed, a rare, sweet melody he knew note for note, each one lodging itself in a cavernous place deep inside him. “Tell me about it,” she groaned, looking over her shoulder to make sure neither host was within earshot. When she looked back at Peeta, she leaned in conspiratorially, so close to him he could see the white ribboned flesh of an old scar winding a path down the side of her neck. “I mean, did you see what they did to their house? There’s an iceberg-melting number of lights on it.”

Peeta laughed, trying not to dwell on her scar or where it came from. “I bet airlines have been using it for navigation. ‘Trying to get to Buffalo? Head due north from Thom and Delly’s house.’”

She grinned wordlessly in reply, two dimples appearing on the right side of her cheek. He’d never noticed them before, but now that he knew about them he wanted to see how often he could make them appear. He could make that his life’s mission, if she’d let him.

“Well, I guess we should be thankful they haven’t insisted we start wearing ugly Christmas sweaters to these things.” She crossed her arms against her chest at her words, the swell of her breasts rising slightly above the low neckline of her dress.

Yes, he was thankful. So very, very thankful.

“Wait, they didn’t?” he mock frowned, looking down to pull at his dark maroon sweater. It was close-fitting and wool and also currently smothering the life out of him.

He felt so corny and cliched, ineptly trying to flirt with her, that he didn’t know how she could stand it. But the sound of her laugh brought his eyes back up to meet hers, and he didn’t care if she noticed the surprise in them or their blatant adoration of her.

“Sure,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Like you couldn’t pull off an ugly sweater.” Her eyes darted away. Peeta noticed her biting the inside of her cheek, the way it became concave as she tried and failed not to smirk as some thought crossed her mind.

Maybe it was the heat of the room or his Wookie-of-a-sweater suffocating him, but he felt flushed and clammy and in desperate need of a drink of something— anything— even Delly’s toxic punch. Maybe it was the foolish hope that Katniss was thinking about pulling off his clothes.

He was just about to compliment the way she looked tonight and ask her to go grab a drink over by the bar when a droll, harsh voice barked at his back, its owner wrapping an arm flirtatiously around his waist. “Well if it isn’t the light of my life.”

He looked down at the impish girl who had attached herself to his hip. Her dark eyes gleamed devilishly, dangerously up at him. There could be no doubt about it: Johanna Mason was up to shit.

She looked between Peeta and Katniss, feigning innocence. “What, am I interrupting something?”

Peeta noticed a dark look, something a shade less severe than a glower but nothing so sweet as a scowl, work its way onto Katniss’ face. Her gaze fell to Johanna’s hand and where it rested around his waist.

Johanna didn’t wait for a reply before she stepped between them, her arm still wrapped around Peeta, and used a plastic cup from the nearby stack to scoop a healthy measure of punch into it, foregoing the ladle altogether. She threw her head back, downing the punch in an unbroken series of chugs, and then refilled her glass the same way. From what Peeta had heard, germs, backwash, and hygiene weren’t words in Johanna Mason’s vocabulary.

Smacking her lips in satisfaction, she turned to Katniss. “So, did Darius finally get all his crap out of your apartment?”

She was never much one for the social graces either.

Katniss scowled at Johanna, the flush crawling up her neck again at the mention of her ex. “Yeah,” she mumbled, staring down at her shoes.

“Dumbass took long enough.” Johanna’s fingers squeezed Peeta’s waist, and he fought the urge to squirm away. They felt like daggers, little blades stabbing him to prove a point.

Katniss was barely audible over the din. “Guess he finally got the idea it was over.” She pried her eyes off the ground and gazed absently at the flickering television screen mounted on the opposite wall, over Peeta’s shoulder. “Had been for a while,” she added as an afterthought. She briefly looked at her friend before her attention was drawn back to the screen.   

Johanna seemed uninterested in pursuing the topic, apparently having heard all she wanted to know about it. She took another swig of punch. “So what were you guys talking about?”

“Not much,” Peeta answered casually, using his newfound desire for booze as an excuse to disentangle himself from Johanna’s grasp. “We were just commenting on Thom and Delly’s... excess... of holiday spirit.”

“Ohhhhh,” Johanna mused. “You mean the inflatable Thomas the Tank Engine on their lawn that looks like a massive dildo?”

Peeta spluttered, nearly choking on his drink. The three of them burst out laughing, the suddenness and force of the outburst drawing curious looks from the other guests around them.

“I hadn’t noticed that before,” Katniss frowned, the lines on her forehead appearing as she considered it. “But those inflatable lawn decorations do look a lot like blow up dolls.”

“Speaking of blowing,” Johanna quipped, not missing a beat before going in for the kill, “you here alone again, Mellark? Because don’t tell me you’re having a hard time getting laid.”

She batted her eyelashes at Peeta and shot him a saccharine smile that looked remarkably like the Cheshire Cat. It was all teeth and mischief, self-satisfaction and gums.  

He swallowed thickly, feeling the blood rush to his face. Fucking Johanna. For as long as he had known her, she had never been one to miss out on the opportunity to make a situation as awkward as possible. It was like she thrived on tension and pregnant pauses— like her favorite food of choice was freeze-dried fun. And she was about as subtle as an ax to the skull. She thought she was doing him a favor, he had little doubt of that. But what she was actually doing was annihilating what slight chance he might have had of being able to ask Katniss Everdeen out on a date.  

Because no— to answer her question— he didn’t have a particularly hard time getting dates. Or laid. Historically speaking, anyway. But he’d never been even remotely tempted to bring a date or girlfriend to Delly and Thom’s party. It wouldn’t have been right when the only thing he’d be able to think about the entire night was how to get near Katniss. As the years had gone on, his desire had bled into the weeks leading up to and following the party. It had infected him, day by day, week by week— the anticipation and anxiety of seeing her and then the disappointment of seeing her leave with someone else. It was to the point where he didn’t feel right dating someone within a two-month window of the party. Because what kind of dick would do that when they knew something fundamental within themselves belonged to another person? And, however hopeless his case might he, he was undeniably, comprehensively hers.

Katniss snorted at Johanna’s words and shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Christ, Johanna. Rude much?” She shot her friend a look that held all the focus and firepower of a ballistic cruise missile and then turned to Peeta. “You don’t have to answer that. Really.”

When her eyes locked on his, Peeta’s stomach recoiled at what he saw in them. Concern. Solicitude. Or was it pity?  He could never tell what they expressed or concealed. That had always been the problem with her.  

Was she protecting him? Did she think he was a broken thing, some reject from the island of misfit toys? Did she know about his feelings for her? Did she somehow know he couldn’t bear to touch another woman while the image of her was still fresh in his mind? Was she sparing him the misery of admitting he kind-of-sort-of-completely-hopelessly loved her?

Johanna pressed on, undeterred and putting on a pisspoor show of innocence. “What? All I’m saying, Peeta, is that if you find yourself alone at midnight, I’m more than happy to scratch that itch for you.” She glanced around the room, gesturing vaguely to the other women she saw around them. She pointed to everyone, it seemed, but Katniss. “I bet half the women here would be happy to be your special friend tonight.”

He didn’t care about half. He only cared about one.

Johanna flashed a wink Peeta’s way and reached over to scoop up more punch into her cup. “One for the road, so to speak,” she said, moseying along on her way like she hadn’t just dropped a category five hurricane into the middle of their conversation.

When she left, she took all sound with her. Whereas the room had been blissfully, magically silent before, just Katniss and Peeta held fast in a world spinning around them, now the silence was between them. It was the pall of a devastating embarrassment, the awful stillness at the eye of a storm.  

He couldn't look at her. She was too bright, too radiant, so he chose instead to focus on his hideously pink punch.

“Well,” Katniss said, clearing her throat after several mortifying seconds. She looked longingly toward the beer pong table, where Finnick was trouncing Brutus and putting on a merry show of it.

“Well,” Peeta replied, smiling at her apologetically. That’s it, then, he thought, feeling deflated.

There was always next year, he consoled himself, ignoring the gnawing fear that by then there would be a new smarmy boyfriend, another creep in a long line of not-good-enoughs and what-the-fucks.

He put on a brave face and hoped she didn’t notice he was half the man he had been a few minutes ago. “It was good seeing you again,” he told her, never hating that word more in his life— that vapid, facile word, unparalleled in its meagerness.

Whatever good was, it wasn’t this. It wasn’t crushing loneliness or pining across space and time. It wasn’t knowing what Katniss felt like in his arms and not being able to have that every day of his life. Good wasn’t flying near the sun and getting your ass incinerated.

This was terrible. But it could have been great.

“Yeah, good seeing you too.” She nodded, seeming to consider saying something else but then reconsidering. “Take care, all right?” She didn’t wait for Peeta to reply. She pressed her lips into a thin line and darted away, her slight frame disappearing into the crowd.

And just like that, he lost her.   

Peeta slinked back to the couch, dodging the pats on his back and the hoots and hellos, to claim the still-empty spot next to Annie Cresta. He landed heavily, the weight of his body causing the wine in Annie’s glass to slosh dangerously close to the rim.

“So that went pretty much how I expected,” he admitted, rubbing the sweat from his palms onto his pant legs. He spoke the words out loud, mostly to himself. He didn’t care if Annie heard because, of course, she already knew.

She sighed and put an arm around his shoulder, squeezing supportively, and sipped from the glass of vino veritas. Her face was flushed a bright pink, and between its color and her uncharacteristic handsiness, Peeta considered confiscating her drink so that a creep like Cato wouldn't try to take advantage of her. Where were her wingmen?

“I don’t know, Peeta,” she mused, her voice an ethereal air that somehow managed to carry through the din of the room. “She seemed pretty happy to be talking to you.”

“Oh?” he asked, staring straight ahead, not really feeling comforted by Annie’s hollow words. “How so?”

She patted his shoulder like a mother burping a baby, firmly and with intent. After searching for an answer for several moments she offered, “Well, she didn’t scowl that much.”

Peeta huffed out a half-hearted laugh. “I guess that’s something.”

But it didn’t feel like anything.

He watched as Gale shambled up to Katniss and slung an arm around her shoulder, leaning in to whisper in her ear. He knew his friend was shitfaced, could see it in his gait and in the way his eyes squinted like Clint Eastwood preparing for a shootout at high noon.

His friend would never make a move on Katniss. At least, not in the cold light of day, not when he was sober. But New Year's Eve comes with its own set of rules and imperatives. No one wants to be alone at midnight, to stand there awkwardly with one hand jammed in their pants playing pocket pool, the other clutching a flute of cheap champagne that tastes like some unholy blend of rubbing alcohol and toilet water. It’s a human instinct to seek out a companion, someone— anyone— to share a fleeting kiss with at midnight. It’s an innate desire to feel someone’s breath on your lips, the heat of their body igniting hope for the next year. Everyone needs someone to hold onto when they greet the unknown.  

As Peeta sat there, watching his friend make a move on the girl he’d always loved, he could feel the knot of jealousy binding itself in his gut, coiling over and over until it hurt to be made of blood and intestines and bone, until the mere act of breathing physically pained him. There were holes in his lungs, gaping wounds where the air leaked out and abandoned him.

When it became clear enough to him that Gale wanted to kiss Katniss and that she wasn’t going to turn him away, Peeta stood up and stalked over to the bathroom, which was mercifully empty. He shut the door behind him and locked it, moving over to the vanity to stare at his reflection in the mirror above the sink.

Fifteen minutes.

He had to hide in here for fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes that would feel like a lifetime. It was, in fact, a lifetime he was saying goodbye to. The voices outside the door laughed and hollered, sang and squealed and yelled good-natured obscenities, and while they carried on, oblivious to his torture, he looked in the mirror and bid goodbye to his youth and naivete and every childish dream and fantasy he’d ever had.  

Peeta breathed deeply, his hands clutching the edge of the sink, and looked at himself in the mirror to anchor him to reality.

Here was what was real: Katniss would never love him. She would never be his. She was destined to be someone else’s— or no one’s at all. She might even be Gale’s.

But there was no universe in which she would ever be his girl.  

As he gazed in the mirror he made his New Year’s resolution. It was simple. It was impossible. It was this:

He wouldn’t do it again. He wouldn’t come back next year hoping this is the year that everything will change. It would never change, and he had to find a way to accept that and live his life, to actually live it and not exist in this holding pattern on the off-chance that there would come the day when Katniss might finally notice him. His resolution was to find a way to live without the hope of her.   

There was also the bitter tang of betrayal in his mouth, a sour, acrid taste that lined his throat and threatened to gag him. He had to wonder what friendship was worth.

Finnick’s code was full of shit. There was no such thing as bros before hoes.

Life, real life, was each man for himself, each man scrabbling and clawing and fighting to win whatever little piece of happiness he could for himself. That was the game every man played, and loyalty didn’t get you anywhere.

Through the door he could hear the countdown to midnight, loud voices yelling out of sync.

10…9…8…

He looked at his phone, considering sending a text to someone, anyone, to wish them a Happy New Year. But he had no one that needed to hear from him.

7...6...5…

Dropping his phone back in his pocket, he backed up to the door, sliding down its length and landing on the floor, his knees tucked up to his chest.

4...3...2...

He was at a party surrounded by friends, and he had never felt lonelier in his life.

No one needed him. And there was no self-pity in the realization, not really. It was resignation. A hard truth best learned sooner rather than later.

He was on his own.  

1…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Noisemakers pealed, the ebullient sound so cruelly at odds with the way he felt. He heard his friends wishing each other a Happy New Year and the drunken strains of Auld Lang Syne. The tune was horribly off-key, but no one seemed to notice or care.

He listened for her voice one last time before making himself forget her.

If she sang, he couldn’t hear her, and while that was probably for the best, the knowledge that he’d never hear Katniss Everdeen’s voice again was almost more than he could take.  

Peeta didn’t know when it would be safe to exit the bathroom, at what point the kisses and well wishes would be over and done. He’d prefer to spend the remainder of the night in there, sitting on the cold slate floor, counting the sterile-looking subway tiles lining the walls, but he knew that eventually someone would need to use the bathroom.

A few minutes past midnight he heard a tentative knock at the door, as if the person on the other side wasn’t sure if this was a bathroom or a storage closet.

“I’ll be right out,” Peeta called, standing up and walking over to the sink to take one last look at himself— to make sure that whoever was standing on the other side waiting to use the bathroom couldn’t see how wrecked he felt. He didn’t want anyone other than Annie Cresta to know he’d hidden in the bathroom— or why.   

He took a deep breath to steel his resolve and opened the door with a purposeful swing, not knowing what scene to expect on the other side and trying not to care. For all he knew, Gale would be making out with Katniss on the couch. He prepared himself for that, for the worst-case scenario.

Of all the people he might expect to see standing on the other side, she wasn’t one of them.

“Hey,” Katniss said, her apprehensive gray eyes as wide as saucers, her fists clenched at her sides.

He knew the expression on his face matched hers. Like a starving man, his eyes soaked in the sight of her, supping every last ounce of nourishment he could to prepare him for the lifelong drought ahead.

“Hey.” He didn’t know why he was smiling or why his heart was hammering so violently in his chest if he could still remember the exact second he had felt it die.

“I… uh.” She bit the inside of her cheek and knocked one of her fists lightly against her thigh.

Peeta wanted to take her hand and kiss her wrist, that mysteriously tattooed wrist, and coax her to relax. What could really be so awful?

She was going to have the best life. Someone would give her that.  

“You need to use the bathroom?” he supplied, stepping aside to let her pass.

“No.” She shook her head adamantly but said nothing else. She just stared at him with her unnerving gray eyes—  those piercing eyes that were looking at him in a way he hadn’t seen before.

He looked over his shoulder into the empty bathroom, beginning to feel stupid and lightheaded for hoping that the reason she’d knocked on the door was to talk to him. There was no chance of that, none at all. She must have been looking for someone else.

“You were… uh… looking for someone?”

She nodded her head and swallowed thickly. “Yeah.”

Her hair had begun to fall from her braid, the soft, dark strands perfectly framing her delicate face. Peeta resisted the urge to reach out and touch one, to tuck it behind her ear so that he could know what Katniss’ hair felt like in his hands.

Exhaling heavily, she added, “You.”

Three minutes into the New Year, and Peeta had already broken his resolution. The second Katniss uttered that word— you— he felt his chest cracking open and hope rushing back in.

“Me?” He could barely speak the word through the tightness in his throat. “Why?”

He hoped. Yes, he hoped. He waited and prayed and hoped, and what the fuck were resolutions for but to be broken and smashed and immediately forgotten?

Her voice was a whisper he couldn’t hear. He read her lips, her luscious, beautiful lips as they told him, “I forgot to wish you a Happy New Year.”

Then her lips, the lips he had dreamed about kissing a thousand times, were on his.

She didn’t kiss him like an old friend.

She didn’t kiss him like an acquaintance.

She kissed him like she needed him, like he was hers and she was his and that was all there was to it.

Peeta’s arms wound their way around her waist, pulling her body close to his, relishing the way they fit together. Katniss’ hands crawled upward, along his arms, his shoulders, his neck, until her fingers grasped the roots of his hair and pulled, pulled him down closer and deeper.

She pulled, and he pulled, and they pulled at each other until there was no space left between them and no time in which they hadn’t been exactly like this.

Her lips were soft and sweet, the taste of her even sweeter, and as their tongues touched and traced and tangled, Peeta groaned, his hand caressing the curve of her spine. Katniss Everdeen tasted like peanut butter and celery and beer— sweet and fresh and bitter all at once. There was no one else whose taste compared to that.

Worth the wait... she had been worth every minute and hour and year, and if Peeta had to wait another ten years to kiss her like this again, he would do it without a second thought.  

They kissed until it seemed like there was no oxygen left in the room and their lungs would collapse from the strain.

She broke away, panting, her flushed face shining up at his. “Since when?”

He shot a quick look over her shoulder toward Annie, but if Annie had snitched she gave no indication of it. Finnick had taken up residence on the couch beside her, the two of them sitting next to each other in silence.

“Annie?” Peeta asked, searching Katniss’ face for the answer. Wanting to know, after all this time, how she knew. His thumb stroked her waist, drawing circles over and over across the fabric of her dress, desperate to touch the bare skin beneath.

She gave a small smile and shake of the head. “No. Gale.”

He was such an asshole for having doubted Gale’s friendship. He knew that. But he’d never been happier in his life to be an asshole. Peeta looked down at Katniss, a boyish grin on his face. He’d been wrong. So completely fucking wrong. Because if hope and love and loyalty got you nowhere, then what was Katniss doing in his arms?

“Peeta,” she said, her hands framing his face, her soft skin on his stubble calling his thoughts  back to her question. “Since when?”

He shrugged. Wasn’t it obvious? He didn’t need to think about his answer. He was surprised she had to ask. “Since forever.”

She gasped at the words like he’d just dropped a bucket of ice water over her head. Her hand fell to his chest, and she began to push him back.

She pushed him back but not away. Because as she pushed, she followed.

Back and back. Into the bathroom. And as they stepped into the room, she closed the door behind them.

And then she locked the door.