Author's Note-So I realized I never posted my PiPs from the last round. Whoops.
Thanks to iLoVeRynMar, streetlightlove, and HGRomance for reading and advising, and to misshoneywell for her tireless efforts surrounding PiP. This round was a lot of fun to write for, and so many great stories came out of it.
Plunk.
The pebble hits the water, a series of concentric rings rippling out from where it sinks. I sigh and lob another pebble into the lake. It too lands with a satisfying plop, sending more ruffles skidding across the surface. I glance down at the little arsenal I had collected and frown. Only two left. Have I really been throwing rocks that long? There were a good 50 or 60 pebbles in the pile I had scooped up on my walk to the meadow.
I swat at an errant mosquito that whines past my ear and toss my braid over my shoulder, swinging my legs through the air below me. It's hot. My tank top clings to me like wet tissue paper, damp with perspiration from the sticky summer air. It's ungodly hot; the country has been blanketed by a heat wave for eight days now, with no relief in sight.
Well, no relief but the cool, enticing waters of the Panem Country Club pool where Glimmer Devane is, at this very moment, celebrating her twelfth birthday.
She had been yakking about her stupid party since the beginning of June. Not that I ever made a point to deliberately listen to anything that came out of Glimmer's sticky pink mouth. Our lockers were arranged alphabetically, and therefore only three kids separated me from her, so every morning when I'd reach my locker I'd be greeted by her haughty voice, punctuated with squeals from her dumb little minions that were so loud that I swear only stray dogs could hear them. (Once I tried to get Madge Undersee to trade lockers with me. As usual, she was too much of a goody-two-shoes to risk getting in trouble. Locker switches mean automatic detention—but only if you're caught.)
But suddenly three days before school let out the halls were buzzing with drones of conversation about Glimmer's party. The invitations had gone out and started to arrive in mailboxes.
I don't know what made me think that I should have ever had a shred of hope in me that when I reached my driveway that afternoon and went for the mailbox that I'd see a creamy embossed envelope with my name on it. And I felt angry and irritated with myself for the whorl of disappointment that eddied in my stomach when it was not among the stack I pulled from the mailbox.
What's worse is that I actually let that faint beam of hope flicker again the next day. And the anger burned hotter when the mail held nothing but a couple of bills and a Valu-Pack coupon bundle. No invitation.
By the last day of school I had come to the bitter realization that I could keep hoping and looking and seething but nothing was going to make that fancy envelope materialize in our mailbox like a magician's rabbit. That morning when I stalked to my locker, head down, eyes focused on my shoelaces, I heard that voice. That voice, gloating about how amazing the food was going to be, and how incredible her new bikini was going to look, and how awesome it was that her father hired a real band to play instead of using an iPod for music. And then she raised that voice a couple of notches and twisted her neck in my direction and announced how it was going to be the party of the summer and everyone was going to be there. She had invited the entire sixth grade class.
The spark caught. The hope was back. I had lifted my eyes and met her icy blue gaze, and a cruel smile played on those candy-pink lips. "Well, almost the entire class," she had said, glaring right at me.
It took all my willpower not to spin around and punch her lights out. I could have done it too. Instead, I had squared my jaw, walked to my locker, gathered my things and my pride, and counted the minutes until the final bell rang and sixth grade mercifully ended.
That was thirteen days ago. I won't have to see those bitches, or any of my other classmates, until September.
I launch the penultimate pebble as far as I can into the lake. I throw it so far that I can't see the disturbance it creates in the water; I can only hear the thwack of it smacking the surface.
As I pick up the last small rock in my hand, the slight rustling of leaves whispers past my ear, and I feel the branch that I'm seated upon sway and dip momentarily. Pebble clenched in my fist, I turn and frown before twisting back to face away. I skim the pebble across the water, counting one, two, three skips before it sinks. Definitely not my personal best.
"Thought I'd find you here," he says, easing himself over the branch to sit beside me.
"Here I am," I reply sullenly.
I hear his breath coming in ragged pants, and when I cut my eyes down to the right, I can see his bare chest moving like a bellows, in and out, in and out. He wears those aqua and black swim trunks that always make his eyes appear bluer, and his towel is slung over the branch a few feet away from him. I don't know why he's breathing so hard, and I tell myself I don't care.
"I knew I'd find you here, but I figured you'd be in the water. What are you doing up here?" He peers at me, his blond waves flopping into his eyes. He needs a haircut. He always wears it really short in summer. But I know all the girls think Peeta looks cute with his hair longer.
"Didn't feel like swimming." I lunge my left leg out, drawing invisible circles in the air with my toes, rolling my ankle around and around. "Shouldn't you be at Glimmer's party?"
"I was," he replies softly. I feel a tickling on my leg. I glance down and see Peeta's hand resting on the branch in the space between us, his fingers probing the bark. Occasionally they wander too far and graze my bare thigh below the hem of my shorts. "I left."
My head barely bobs in response, and I stare out over the water. He probably expects me to ask him why.
But Peeta has never been one to stay quiet when he has something to say. So I know sooner or later he'll crack and tell me why he left.
I start playing with the bark on the limb, peeling back a fat chunk of it until it snaps off in my hand. It's a poor substitute for the pebbles, but I'll take what I can get. I throw it into the water and repeat the process. Peel, snap, throw. Peel, snap, throw.
The next time my fingers find the rough edge to peel back, warmth covers my hand and stills it.
"Before you strip the poor tree of all its bark," Peeta offers in sheepish explanation. But he doesn't move his palm off mine. There's a tingling on the back of my mind that spreads to my wrist and leeches up my arm, and I shiver in the stifling July heat.
His breathing has finally leveled out, his chest rising and falling in a more predictable rhythm as we fall into silence again.
"I didn't know she didn't invite you," he murmurs. "Why didn't you tell me she didn't invite you?"
"I don't want to talk about it, Peeta." I shove my best friend's hand away. He shifts on the branch to regain his balance.
"All the times I brought it up, and you said you didn't want to go," he continues. "Why didn't you tell me the truth?"
I look down quickly. I will not shed a single tear for that selfish bitch Glimmer Devane. I will not. The hot pricks at the corner of my eyes blur my vision, and I toss my head, my braid lancing back and forth.
"I never would have gone, Katniss."
I roll my eyes. "But you did."
Peeta sighs. "I did. Because I thought you just didn't want to go, and you were okay with me going. Everyone was there."
There's a boulder trying to lodge itself in my throat. I swallow down, pulverizing it into pebbles that rain down into my stomach, weighing it down as they pile up. I know everyone was there. I don't need to be reminded.
I never wanted to go to Glimmer's stupid party in the first place. But it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt being excluded.
"Katniss, look at me," he says gently. Reluctantly, I lift my eyes and gaze at the boy who has been my best friend since we were in kindergarten.
I know everything about this boy. I've looked into those blue eyes a thousand times over the years. I know he double-knots his shoelaces. I know he hates sweet tea and never puts sugar in his iced tea either. I know his favorite color is orange, and he would rather sleep with his window open than have the central air on, even on a hot night. I know that when he's been out in the sun like today, the constellation of freckles that speckle his nose almost looks like Orion if you squint just right.
But right now I don't know the boy gazing back at me.
A strange feeling creeps into my bones. It reminds me of watching one of those lame horror movies that scare the shit out of both of us but we can't not watch them, when the dumb girl figures out a second too late that she shouldn't have opened the door.
Because at the moment, I'm just like that dumb girl and I only realize that Peeta's lips were on mine when they're no longer on mine. He pulls back, his cheeks stained pink and his eyes wide with wonder.
My fingers fly to my mouth. Another delayed reaction.
Peeta just kissed me.
I've never been one of those girls who've lain around, giggling with her friends about boys or fantasizing about her first kiss. I've never given much thought to either—boys or kissing. Peeta and I have been friends for years, and I've easily ignored the taunts about him being my boyfriend. Why the hell can't a boy and a girl ever be friends without it being something more?
Except now it is. Isn't it? Why did he kiss me?
I can't get my mouth to listen to my brain and demand an answer from him. We just sit on that tree branch, gaping at each other, with the hum of the dragonflies and the swish-swish of the leaves above our heads rising into the stagnant air.
Peeta is the first to break the silence. "Katniss, say something."
"Why did you do it?" I croak.
He licks his lips, and I watch his tongue circle the bow of his mouth. I've seen that tongue lick soft-serve ice cream cones and popsicles and his greasy fingers after eating fried chicken at Sae's. I've never paid much attention to Peeta's tongue before.
"I've wanted to kiss you—"
"Not the kiss," I hedge. "Why did you leave Glimmer's party?"
"Oh," he says, and he sags a little. More freckles litter the slope of his shoulders. I could make quite a picture connecting them if I was half the artist he is.
I prod him more. "How did you know I wasn't invited? If you just assumed that I didn't want to go and that was why I was the only one not there…"
His mouth twists and he looks tense, as if he's bracing himself for something, like waiting for the hot pinch of the needle when the nurse jabs it into your thigh.
"I heard her. Bragging about it."
The revelation is like a fist to my gut. Glimmer has never hid her disdain for me, but she also doesn't care about half the people in our class. What could I have ever done to her to make her hate me so much to exclude me and then brag about it?
"As soon as I heard her say it, Katniss, I was out of there. I climbed out of the pool and grabbed my towel and wished her a happy birthday and told her I was going home."
"I bet she was thrilled." I kick one leg out, then the other.
"I don't care. I wasn't staying at a party where my best friend wasn't welcome. I told her that too. And I left. I ran all the way here. I knew you'd be here."
I let his confession wash over me, try to absorb what Peeta had done. He had to have really pissed her off, because everyone knows that Glimmer has been trying to snag Peeta as her boyfriend since the first day of middle school.
And then it hits me. It hits me so hard that I nearly fall backwards out of the tree.
That spiteful bitch left me off the guest list because she's jealous of me. Me! Peeta left that party for me. He came looking for me. He kissed me.
Peeta loves me. And I love him. We say it to each other all the time; not out loud, just with a silly little hand gesture that we invented when we were seven, a secret code that only the two of us know. The three middle fingers of one hand pressed to our lips and held out to each other. But it's a very different kind of love, and it's ours.
But I've never ever considered that he might love me. I feel like the wind's been knocked out of me. Which funny enough he's managed to do one other time, when we were playing flag football with his older brothers and he tackled me so hard that he was practically in tears when I lay there on the Mellarks' front lawn, dazed and bruised.
"You really wanted to kiss me?" I ask shakily.
He doesn't really answer, but reaches for my hand instead. "There's nowhere in this world that I want to be unless you're there," he says shyly. "You'll always come before anyone else."
My head swims, and I feel like a thick fog has descended on me. I can't think straight, and I don't really want to think about how this might change things between Peeta and me. Do I want things to change between us?
Peeta's fingers skim mine again, and I realize that he's now straddling the branch, preparing to drop into the lake, like we've done a hundred times since we were kids. His hands release from the tree limb, and he drops like an anchor into the water. He surfaces a moment later, tilting his head back to rake his hands through his wet hair. He grins up at me.
"What are you waiting for?" he calls, his hands like oars slapping the water, as he floats on his back.
What am I waiting for?
I peel my tank top over my head and lift my butt off the limb to shimmy out of my shorts. I lay them over Peeta's towel, and I rise to my feet and curl my toes onto the limb to get my balance. Bending my knees I spring off the branch and sail through the air, landing with a massive splash next to where Peeta's paddling. My feet find purchase with the bottom and I shoot up to the surface again, sputtering. He looks at me; the droplets clinging to his eyelashes glint like jewels. I close the distance between us and mash my lips to his. This kiss isn't much longer than the other one, but at least I'm aware this time.
"You'll always come first to me, too," I whisper, earning a smile from Peeta.
And then I smack the water, sending spray arcing into his face. He mock howls at me and splashes me back, and we're swimming and horse playing like we always have, unspoken implications of love and kisses and anything more carried away on the ripples skating across the surface.
But one thing I am sure of: I don't need anyone but Peeta.
And that will never change.