"I love you—more than I thought possible. Will you marry me?"
Peeta kneels down on one knee, his bright blue eyes looking up at me with hope as I stand in the middle of the kitchen. Shit, the ring his huge!
"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!" I chirp, trying to sound as giddy as possible. "I want you to pound your tiny dick into me, every day, for the rest of my life!"
Peeta's eyebrows furrow, and he stands up, looking at me with serious eyes—but his mouthed is morphed into a grin. "Kat, seriously, I have a giant pole." His face flushes at his joke. He's never really says anything "dirty."
"How would I know that?" I ask, raising one of my eyebrows, giving him my patented "just try and fight me on this one, Mellark" look.
"Because we've gone skinny-dipping like a hundred times together!"
"Well, I never checked you out." I shake my head, laughing silently. Then I pause. "Wait, did you check me out?"
He grins, manically, his face still red. "You have a mole on your ass." He grunts loudly when my fist connects with his left bicep.
"It's a freckle!" I yell.
He rolls his eyes. "But all penis jokes aside, did you think that was good?"
I nod my head. "Oh, yeah. It's just gooey enough, without being too over-the-top, which you know is something you have a tendency to do." I smirk at him, and he gives me a small smile, his cheeks redden even more as he scratches his head in embarrassment, his blonde hair flopping around on his head. "I'm sure Madge will love it."
His blue eyes shimmer at me. "You're sure?"
I roll my eyes. "Peeta, yeah. I'm sure. Go relax somewhere before your big dinner. Maybe jack-off so you aren't all hyped up and nervous."
He grimaces at me. "You are one weird girl. Who suggests that their best friend should go wank himself?"
Peeta and I have been friends, best friends, for almost five years. We met our first year at Capitol University during a stupid baking class my sister convinced me to take—since I was living alone, and couldn't hunt like I used to when I lived in the country; Peeta taught the class. He's only a year older than me, but he's extremely mature for some reason, and acts like a thirty year old most of the time. But sometimes, I can get him to act like the 23 year old like he is. However, I couldn't make him act his age when it came to this engagement—I mean, no 23 year old guy wants to get married. He wouldn't budge. He wants to marry Madge, his girlfriend of almost two years, and I can't stop him. I understand that she makes him happy, but for some reason, my gut is telling me that he shouldn't go through with it. So I haven't brought it up to him since the first time ended with a huge fight that lasted almost two weeks, and avoiding someone you live with is so fucking complicated and difficult. I've tried to be supportive, tried being the operative word; I'm not very good at "support." I'm not really good at anything involving "emotions."
I shrug my shoulders. "Me, I guess. And you might as well get used to it. I hear the sex goes as soon as the honeymoon is over. So your left hand shame might be the only action you get."
He shakes his head. "I repeat: you are a weird girl. But you're right in one way—I should try to go relax." He walks over to the fridge and grabs a bottle of water out of the fridge. "I'm gonna go lie down. Try to take a nap or something." He nods his head at me, and exits the kitchen. I give him a half-smile.
Shit, he should not do this.
Peeta left for the restaurant around five, after I inspected his attire. He looked quite handsome in his grey blazer and blue button-up tucked into his deep brown corduroys, and I nodded my approval; he gave me one of his knee-weakening smiles.
It's not until 11:00, six hours after Peeta left that I hear keys turn into the lock as I lay on the couch, watching reruns of Saved by the Bell. I furrow my eyebrows; I wasn't expecting Peeta home tonight. I figured he and Madge would be knocking boots in celebration of their engagement.
But that thought flies right out of my mind when I see Peeta. His shirt his untucked and rumpled, his hair is sticking up all over the place as if he had been pulling on it and he's only wearing one shoe; his face is etched in sadness—desperate, heart wrenching sadness. I jump up off the couch and run over to him as he stands in the doorway.
"Peety, what the hell happened?" I set my hand on his chest, and look up into his eyes; they're dark, almost black. Oh, shit. The last time I saw his eyes like that, his childhood dog had died.
"I love it when you call me Peety," he mumbles, his voice garbled with spit. It's my nickname for him—I'm the only one allowed to use it. But I only use it in extreme cases.
"What happened?" I repeat. "Did she say no? Tell me, please?" My voice is so desperate I barely recognize it.
He shakes his head. "I didn't propose."
"I'm so sorry, Peety. I know you wanted to do that. Maybe another night?"
He shakes his head again. "I saw her."
"Saw her what?"
He moves away from me, out of the foyer and plops himself down on the couch, rolling himself into a ball on his side. I turn off the TV and sit on the floor next to him, my face a few inches from his.
"I got there early, because I was so excited—almost a half an hour. And I used the key she gave me, like always, and I saw her." He takes a shaky breath as a tear seeps out of his left eye and trails down the side of his nose until it falls to the red cushion of the couch. "She was on the couch, her legs open and he…" he trails off, and more tears fall down his face.
My heart clenches for him. He doesn't deserve this. He is the kindest, gentlest, greatest man in this entire fucked up planet. No one is good enough for him. I clench my teeth, ready to punch Madge and everyone she's ever met. "Who?" I ask, interested in why his tone changed when he said "he," like he knew him or something.
His removes his gaze from the white carpet and locks eyes with me. "Gale, Katniss. She was fucking Gale."
My breath hitches, and the entire world get fuzzy as my vision blurs. Gale? My ex-boyfriend? My ex-boyfriend I dated for three years, and only broke up with a few months ago?
Abruptly, I stand up and run into the kitchen, heading straight for the counter below the sink. I shift around the half-empty bottles until I find our emergency bottle. It's an unopened bottle of Irish Whiskey. Whiskey is the one alcohol Peeta and I have in common—it gets us both completely fucked up. Like make-embarrassingly-personal-speeches-at-weddings fucked up; it was our friend Rue's and Peeta had drunk a gallon of it before pouring his soul about the first time he felt up Delly Cartwright in the 9th grade. I grab two shot glasses out of the counter above the sink and run back to him.
I set the shot glasses on the floor and fill them to the brim. Peeta slinks off the couch, moving to the floor, resting his back against the couch and gratefully accepts the shot, tossing it back—his Adam's apple moving rapidly as he swallows. I drink mine too, and then hurriedly pour us another. And then another. And another.
"I never thought she'd cheat on me. I mean, I thought I satisfied her enough." He shakes his head, the alcohol setting in both of us. "Katniss, I'm a great lay. You don't even know. Many women have told me it. Hell, they've screamed it!" He tosses back his fifth shot. Drunk Peeta is always a revealing Peeta. He always leaks personal information he would never do sober.
I raise my eyebrows. "Many?"
"Well, I don't know about 'many.' Six. Is six many?" He drags the back of his hand across his mouth, wiping away the whiskey as he looks at me.
"I don't think that's many. I think it's got to be at least double digits before you can say many."
He nods. "How about you?"
"Me what?"
"How many guys?"
"Oh. Three." I take my fifth shot as Peeta takes his sixth. He ripped his shirt and jacket off between shots three and four, and now rubs his left hand up and down his bare stomach, his skin flushed from the alcohol. I'm sure I look the same; my face always gets extremely red when I drink. He unbuttons his cords and removes them, pulling them over his one shoe. My eyebrows perk up again. "Peeta, how did you lose one of your shoes?" I giggle escapes me, and soon he's joining me.
"I ran…so fast…that my…shoe flew…off," he pants between laughs. He falls down on the floor, rolling around as his hairless chest jumps with each breath.
"That's fucking crazy!" I yell mid-laugh. "Who does that?"
"I don't know!"
We laugh for what feels like hours, and eventually I look at the clock: 3:30. Shit, I have work tomorrow. I move to get up off the floor, but Peeta pulls me back down. I glare at him.
"Kat, don't leave me alone!" he calls, chuckling slightly, but I see the truth behind his glazed, drunk eyes.
"I have work in a few hours! If I show up still drunk, they'll fire me. Nurses can't take care of people while they're drunk." I've been a nurse practitioner at Alternative Medicine clinic for a few months now, and I love it, even though that wasn't my original life plan. I wanted to sing for a long time—but that doesn't pay the rent. So I went back to school, tending bar on the side; but now I love my job, oddly enough. My sister Prim always wanted to work in the medical field—not me.
"Fine." He huffs out a large breath. "One more shot?" His blue eyes twinkle at me, and before I even realize that I've been nodding my head, Peeta hands me my shot glass.
"Cheers?" he asks.
"Cheers."
And I toss it back.
My alarm blares, waking me up from a deep sleep. I groan, and smash it with my fist as hard as I can, not even caring if I break my hand. Stupid alarm—mocking me with the way it blinks the time over and over again: 8:35, 8:35, 8:35. I roll out of my bed, throwing of my teal colored sheets, reluctantly starting the day. It's not until I'm standing in front of my closet that I realize I'm completely naked. I frown, looking down at my olive, bare skin. I don't remember taking off my clothes, or getting into bed even, but here I am. I shrug my shoulders, ignoring it, and quickly pull some new underwear and my uniform: black slacks and white button-up. When I'm dressed, I turn back around to begin to look for my bag, when I see him. Peeta.
He's lying on his stomach, his head facing the direction opposite of me. I stop in my tracks, my mind wiped blank of reasoning. My sheets are pulled so low on his body, revealing his nakedness. I never checked him out while we were swimming, but I can't help but check him out now: his ass is perfect. But I discard those thoughts immediately, shaking my head, and try to remember how the hell he got here. Then I freeze as I put the two pieces together.
I was naked.
He is naked.
Fuck.
I had sex with Peeta last night.