A/N- This chapter is all about Katniss and her friends. No Everlark loving in this one, but the next one there will be :)

My girlfriends couldn't understand that I didn't actually leave Gale for Peeta. I was going to try one more time to explain it to them and after that, I was done. I shouldn't have had to explain anything, but it seemed rude seeing as they had only known me to ever be with Gale.

"So, alright, Brainless, what's your "explanation"? I would just stick with going with the hot, younger guy, but you get so testy when I say that." Johanna, my best friend of about a decade said as she took a big gulp of her beer.

I rolled my eyes, but looked at the three women I was with tonight. It was my first real girls' night out since mine and Gale's divorce. I had seen them each individually but not altogether. It was going to be interesting to say the least. They all wanted to know about Peeta, how Gale reacted or didn't to be more accurate, and what it was that Peeta was doing to make me so much happier than I'd been in years. "Ok, first of all, yes, Peeta is very good looking, but Gale was too, they're just different. Secondly, age had nothing to do with it. I'd known Peeta back in high school, we had a couple of classes together and I only found out he liked me when we ran into one another, what eight months ago now? Yeah, about that."

"Oh please, he's a better fuck and you know it, Brainless." Johanna says again, earning a slap on the arm from Madge.

"Johanna! She's trying to explain to us what happened, stop being such a bitch about it." The blond reprimands our friend.

"What I don't understand is why do you care anyways, Johanna? Katniss and Gale hadn't been happy for a while now." Our other friend, Annie mentions after taking a sip of her fruity drink. She raises her green eyes to Johanna's. "I mean, it was obvious when we had the Christmas party last year, to me anyways."

Johanna looked down at her drink, oddly quiet after Annie's question. So Madge picked the conversation back up. I wasn't worried about Johanna, she always liked Gale more than me, and they had known each other back in college right before I met him.

"Alright, so it isn't age or looks or his bedroom talent. You said something about trying counseling?" The blond, blue-eyed beauty asked.

I nodded, "Yeah, I mean, I had already been seeing Peeta, but I wanted to see if I could fix whatever was wrong with me and Gale and when someone only shows up to one out of five sessions, that's a pretty good indicator of it not working out, right?"

"Pretty sure fucking someone else was what was wrong, Katniss." Johanna mumbled under her breath.

"Seriously, Johanna, what the fuck crawled up your ass?! I know you were friends with Gale first, but he didn't want me long before I started seeing Peeta. Long before. The Christmas party was just the first time I think anyone noticed it." I defended myself. "Do you know how many nights I spent alone in our room, waiting for him to finish up with some meeting with contractors or while he was in his office, busy making new designs? I tried, Johanna, but he didn't care enough of a fuck to try and find out why I was leaving him. It's like he couldn't have given a shit at all."

"Watch, he was cheating before you did." Madge said absentmindedly with a small chuckle. But it wasn't what she said that bothered me; it was Johanna's brown eyes going wide that caught my attention. I watched her for a moment more, all of it making sense when her eyes caught mine finally.

"It was you." I said my voice loud enough for her to hear, but not knowing for sure if the other two women had heard.

Johanna shook her head, her red highlights in her brown spiky hair catching the lights. But she couldn't look me in the eyes, choosing instead to focus on the beer bottle in front of her, peeling off the label.

"What did you say, Katniss?" Madge asked me, looking at me and then at Jo. Her brows furrowed with confusion but it didn't take her long either, noticing Jo's odd actions. "Jo? Do you know something? I'm not actually right, am I? Did he cheat on her too?"

Jo took a deep breath and looked up, directly at me. "It wasn't me, but he was seeing someone. And I did know about it and I did tell him to cut it off. Thought he had too because it never came up again. But I knew, I knew the ass hadn't stopped anything when you two were acting so weird at the Christmas party."

"You knew and you didn't tell Katniss?" Madge all but yelled at her. "How could you do that to her? She's our friend too; he could have given her something!"

"Look, I thought he was done with that shit when he had met her back in college, alright!" She took another swig of her beer and slammed it back down. "He cheated on me, that's why we had broken up, but when he met her, he seemed different. I barely saw him look at any other girl let alone think that he'd hook up with someone else on the side again."

"What? He told me you broke up with him because you two were fighting all the time." I replied, this news too overwhelming since I had already confessed to cheating on him.

"Yeah, we did, but it was when I caught him fucking some dumb ass platinum blond named Glimmer, of all the fucking names in the world, in his dorm room that really broke us up. I forgave him after a while, but like I said, that was because I thought he had changed. And he had for a whole decade it seems. He was so in love with you Katniss, he never looked at me the way he looked at you and that's okay, it didn't bother me. I mean, why would it? We barely got along as a couple, which is probably why he fucked her in the first place, but we were good friends." She explained, nervously tapping her fingers on the empty bottle in front of her.

"But I don't get why you didn't tell Katniss? I mean, isn't there some kind of code out there that says you should warn your friends about your ex's, her current boyfriend's nasty habit?" Madge spit out. She was more furious than I was and I wasn't even that mad about it.

"I don't know that it had been a habit, Madge. He did it to me, once for all I knew, and like I said, he was a different guy when he got with Katniss. I thought he had changed, we were all of twenty when this happened, I mean, c'mon, it's not like he couldn't have." I felt bad for Johanna. Here I was, having cheated on Gale and her having been mad at me and it turns out it was because of something she had been through before. "Look, Katniss, I would have told you if I had thought he was still seeing whoever he had been seeing. But he told me he would stop and I gave him that benefit of a doubt, which I now see was wrong, but that's my own fault. I should have said something as soon as I knew."

I put my hand over hers, patting it. "How could you have known? It was a long time ago and by all accounts, maybe she was the first since what he had done to you. I'm not much better though, am I? I mean, I cheated too."

"Yeah, but he didn't seem happier about whoever he was fucking, you look better than you have in a year." She says with a laugh. "I mean, you love Peeta, right? That's the whole reason why we're here, why you're trying to explain to a bitch like me why you cheated in the first place?"

I can't help the giggle that escapes my mouth and Madge seems okay with where the conversation is going while Annie has sat quietly watching us. "Yeah, I do love him. It's different than what it was with Gale. I mean, I know I loved him at some point, but when you can't see any kind of future anymore and like I said, when he only showed up to one of the five sessions I had set up, I just knew that it wasn't him I was supposed to spend forever with. I just hope that whoever Gale is fucking is at least thinking she's having fun with him right now, before he cheats on her too."

All of us laugh at that. I thought I was going to feel worse, having just found out that my husband of nearly eight years had been cheating on me. That I was just as bad of a person for having done it myself, but I didn't. At least what I had with Peeta was stronger than anything I had ever had with Gale. At least what I felt for Peeta didn't come from thinking that we just "fit" together. Peeta was everything I needed and wanted; optimistic, cheerful, even when I didn't want to be, funny, talented in so many ways, respectful, trustworthy, so many things that I didn't have with Gale. I thought about him more than I ever remember thinking about Gale and that had to mean something, right?

"So, when do we get to meet him? I mean, I know you two are probably still in that lovey dovey, wanna touch all the time crap, but we do get to meet him, right?" Johanna asks, while Madge and Annie both nod their heads.

"Yes! I agree, we need to meet the man who has taken your happiness to an all new level." Madge says overexcitedly, almost knocking over her drink.

I laugh at them, "Soon. We've talked about it already. He wants to make sure you guys don't hate him for being the "other guy" and all that."

"We can't hate someone who's made you this happy, Katniss. It's a wonder we aren't about to go over to Gale's and kick his ass right now." The usually quiet Annie mentions. "I could have Finnick beat him up for you."

I almost snort out the liquid in my mouth. "Nah, he doesn't need to do anything. At least not on my behalf. I know you'll tell him everything, which is fine, I expect that of you. You have what I think Peeta and I will have, what Gale and I didn't."

"Alright, no more talk of him! Let's get another round of drinks and talk about something profoundly girly, like guys' asses or something." Johanna blurts out. We all laugh and she hails down our waitress.

In the span of just an hour, I found out my husband, who I had tried to mend things with, cheated on me before I did on him. Found out that he had done it before to one of our best friends. And I found out that my friends knew much more than they were ever going to let on. I guess that's just what you did when you see something's wrong and aren't sure how to approach it.