Chapter 2: Twenty Years of Friendship Tested
Mother and the Mellarks did not come back alive from the Third Quarter Quell. It left my younger sister Primrose and I as orphans; in order to save her from the Community Home and the arena, I agree to marry my hunting partner, Gale Hawthorne, when he proposes to me. We wed in my family's living room, and I wear the dress that my mother got married in.
It takes five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree to have children. But eventually, I lie with my husband and know him, going in to him to procreate. Within the next few years, I give birth to three daughters: Ella, Olivia and Tessie.
Primrose, meanwhile, grows up and survives all her remaining Reapings. She takes over our mother's Healing business, and when she comes of age, she marries Darius Pontipee, a kindly Peacekeeper. They have two children of their own.
Meanwhile, Steffan Mellark sadly passes away in the ensuing two decades. So, I resume my daily hunting sales at the Bakery with his son and heir, Peeta Mellark.
We were acquaintances, Peeta and I, though we did not speak at all when we were younger. He saved the life of my family once, when he tossed some burnt bread to me in the rain when Mother and Primrose and I were starving.
But now, that he is the only Baker I can do business with, I open up with him, developing an easy banter with him that I once shared with his father. Overtime, we become really good friends.
One day, I beat my husband Gale out of the woods after a hunt and make my trade with Peeta. The young Baker always pays a handsome price for my squirrels. With a book in my satchel, I decide to wait in the back of the bakery until Gale arrives with the felled buck we also promised Peeta - for meat to go in some of his wonderfully bready sandwiches. On a break from a lull in customers, Peeta watches me read.
"This is one of my favorites: An Affair to Remember! Have you ever read it?" I ask.
"No," he smiles.
"Why don't you read it to me?" And I push the book towards him. Peeta resists unusually strongly at first, until he weakly, sadly admits:
"I can't."
I stare at him, blinking. "You never learned to read?"
"Only a little and long ago. Mother never approved of my brothers or I going to school; she always thought there was more valuable work to do here. Never reading just reminds me of what an oddity I am in the Merchant sector. Merchants are supposed to be well-educated, you know."
I stare at him, feeling a pang of sympathy. And also kinship. "We have something in common, you know."
"What's that?" Peeta blinks.
"Where I come from in the Seam, being a largely independent woman for so long, hunting while also helping to raise my kids... people think I'm odd."
Peeta gawks. "You?"
"So I know what it feels like to be different, and I know how lonely that can be."
The heat in the back storage room of the bakery seems to have suddenly heated by several degrees as we sit together. I feel Peeta leaning towards, and I shock myself when I sense that I am leaning into him to. The rational part of my brain is screaming at me to stop, reminding me that I have a husband and three children who love me, but... I just want to know what it's like to... kiss... this... gentle... man...
Our lips are only a hair's-breadth apart when a sudden tapping at the back door breaks us from our spell. I leap up, the potentially romantic moment broken. "That will be Gale with the buck!"
Gale and I make our trade with Peeta. But as I go home with my husband's arm linked through mine, I can't help but feel a little... sad.
And also uneasy.