SO, since I have no life, whatsoever, I wrote this. And started on the next three in the series, as well as a couple from further in my list. I should post at least once a month, but I'm a procrastinator and have a dreadful memory, so don't expect it to be very regular.
Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns THG. Lil Wayne owns How to Love, the inspiration behind the title. BTW, most of the titles of these little ficlets will be from songs. What can I say? I can't write without music on.
commence
She starts drinking at fourteen. Clubbing at fifteen. She starts sleeping around about a week after the first night in a club. And she doesn't mind the fact that she always wakes up alone one bit.
XxXxXxX
When he sees her standing at the bar, elbowing some jackass who keeps trying to grope her, he smirks. She's feisty, and he likes that. The majority of the girls that come into his bar are weepy heartbreakers, who have no problem in being totally dependent on a guy until he starts expecting something in return. He doesn't think she'll be like that.
So, he pushes through the crowd confidently and slides in next to her, completely blocking the creep from her view. She flashes him a smirk and mumbles, "Thanks," before returning to her drink, some hard liquor with a lime on the rim of the glass in an attempt to pretty it up.
She looks familiar, and he can't quite place it.
She tosses her drink back, then another, and another, going through them like they're tissues, and he has to wonder what's got her so desperate for an escape to be in a dive like this place. He asks over the din, "Can I buy your next drink?" Her eyes flash with something recognizable, something that punches him in the gut – pain, he thinks, running deep beneath the thin veneer of calm – and she nods.
It's not ten minutes later that they're stumbling downstairs, to his basement apartment.
Later that night, he realizes she's much younger than he had once believed; her face childlike and vulnerable in sleep, mouth slack and eyes closed, her brow furrowed as she fights her demons.
He thinks that, if he were a better person, he'd like to take care of her, keep her safe from the creeps like him in the world. He thinks he'd like to protect her. But, he's not. So, he won't.
And he leaves, in the middle of the night, when she's completely and totally asleep.
He thinks she'll be better off on her own.
XxXxXxX
The first one is probably in his early twenties, with brown hair and brown eyes, completely nondescript. She lets him run his hands over her hips, lets him kiss her, lets him have her, because, honestly, he's a better option than any of the other creeps in the bar.
XxXxXxX
He sees her at the keg, just outside a group of girls around her age, and he can't help but think of her as a lost little lamb, looking for a place to go. She's on her seventh drink – yes, he's been counting – and she's not showing any sign of being drunk.
He wanders over to her and she glances up from her drink, her eyes wide and guarded. He thinks she's pretty, maybe verging on beautiful, but he'll save that label until he sees her without her clothes. Her eyes are dark, maybe black, with these insanely long lashes that she's peering out from under at him.
Her pretty little red lips quirk up into a flirty smirk as he asks, "You been here before?"
She bites her lip and says slowly, teasingly, "Don't think so."
He leans against a table and says, "I swear, I've seen you before, though."
Her smirk disappears, and her lips twist into a frown, panic flitting across her face before immediately being replaced by a look of calm that he can tell has been carefully practiced.
He smiles and says, "I guess you just have one of those faces. Do you want a drink?"
She nods.
The next morning, before the sun rises, he rolls out of her bed quietly, and as he's pulling on his pants, he glances over at her small, still figure, curled towards the wall, away from him, from the world.
For the rest of his life, he wonders what made the girl from the bar so…broken.
It is only when he is seventy-three, and it's the whatever-eth anniversary of the revolution and his wife has the seventy-fourth Games on that he makes the connection. And his heart hurts for the girl he didn't care about.
XxXxXxX
She doesn't remember many of the guys from ages fifteen to seventeen. Their faces blur together, their bodies mostly the same, and it's not like any of them are particularly adventurous in bed. One boy stands out, with his blond hair and green eyes, and the look of concern that he flashes her when she downs her fourteenth drink.
XxXxXxX
She's dancing, up on the bar, and the other guys are cheering and leering as she shakes her hips and turns, her dark curls falling out of the ponytail she had and sticking to her sweaty face.
She gorgeous. More than that. She's hot. Really hot, in that 'couldn't-give-a-shit' way.
She sees him watching and smirks at him, dances her way down to his end of the bar, the mass of guys following her. As the song ends, she falls to her knees, then swings her legs over the edge and leans down to look at him, eye to eye.
Her breath is bittersweet with wine and harder liquors as she whispers, "Want to get out of here?"
He's suddenly really glad he didn't wear his ring tonight. And, yeah, he knows who she must be related to, 'cause she looks too much like her to be anything other than her daughter, and yeah, he figures she's probably way messed up, but his wife's a bitch and his kids have been particularly annoying this week, so he helps her off the bar counter and leads her to his hotel room, upstairs.
Later, much later in his life, he feels so entirely guilty; he can't even put it to words.
He hopes she got a happy ending.
He hopes she lost that broken, empty look in her eyes.
He hopes she stopped being so willing to follow strange men out of bars.
He hopes she's okay.
XxXxXxX
She remembers him, the man with dark hair that was sticking up in every direction, giving him a perpetually rumpled look, because he has her on her eighteenth birthday. She also remembers the picture of a woman and two little kids in his wallet, left open on the bedside table of the hotel room.
She sees the ring sitting next to it, and –god– it all clicks. He's in the bathroom when she leaves, her dress on backwards and shoes in hand. She wonders, later, as she's standing in the shower, scrubbing herself of his touch, if his wife will ever know.
She hopes she will, eventually.
No one deserves to not know.
XxXxXxX
She's sitting, alone, at the end of the bar, with what has to be at least three empty glasses in front of her and one half full in her hands. He thinks it's perhaps one of the saddest things he's ever seen.
He slides into the stool next to her and asks, "Bad night?"
When she looks up at him, he sees an unexpected fire in her eyes, and he thinks he ought to back away slowly, but it's drawing him in, pulling him into the flames. He opens his mouth to say something, but she seems to be wasting no time, and she cuts him off with her lips. The heat is practically unbearable. And he thinks that she ought to be dubbed the real-girl-on-fire.
At the end of the night, he asks quietly, "What's your name?"
And he is only slightly surprised when she rolls out from under his arm and whispers, "Nothing important."
She falls asleep facing the wall, curled in on herself, and he almost want to draw her back to him, make her realize that, yeah, he thinks her name is important. But she flinches when he brushes her shoulder with his fingers, so he rolls in the other direction and goes to sleep.
XxXxXxX
The last one before Forte, he seems to want more than she can give. That's what stays with her. Not how gentle he is with her, not how he asks her name, but the fact that he seems like her wants a relationship, and all she wants is a warm body in her bed.
She doesn't let him hold her.
He's gone in the morning.
XxXxXxX
Looking back, she thinks she's always been the one to push away. And, well, she is. Always.
fin
I hope you enjoyed, and you know what to do!