She dreams about him. In her dream they're on a beach, and despite an overwhelming sense of looming danger, she feels safe; knows that he will protect her. And he's kissing her again. That same fluttering sensation starts in her middle and radiates, warming her entire body. She could stay with him like this forever. Everything else fades away…
And then she's jolted awake by her alarm.
Katniss groans, reaching for her phone to silence the alarm and check for any missed calls or messages while she was asleep. One missed call and one text message. The call is from Joanna—only Joanna would call someone at 11:45 on a work night and expect them to answer. She didn't leave a voice mail so it must not be important.
The message, of course, is from Peeta. It simply says, "goodnight Katniss," in response to her previous text from last night. She had turned her phone off as soon as she sent him the dismissive message. He probably sent this only moments later, but seeing it now, after her vivid dream only serves to remind her of the conflicting feelings tangled up in the confines of her mind.
She's torn between the way Peeta Mellark makes her feel and what she knows is the right thing to do: not get involved.
She never meant to get attached to him. Getting too close to someone is never a good idea, because inevitably that will be taken from her — snatched away by some horrible fluke accident, like her father…like her sister. More likely Peeta will walk away on his own accord, once he figures out how messed up and incapable of honest emotion she truly is now. That's why her own mother left, so why would he stay?
Thinking of her sister only steels her resolve. It doesn't matter how many pleasant dreams she has, or how much her body yearns to be wrapped in his arms again—she simply can't get any more wrapped up in whatever is happening between she and Peeta.
Katniss finishes off her braid with an extra tight knot at the end and heads off to the lab for work, all traces of her dream and the kiss in the rain the previous day firmly pushed to the back of her mind. Right where she plans on keeping them.
…..
"Where were you last night? Out on a hot date?" Joanna pounces on her before she even has time to shrug on her lab coat.
"Jo, you called at midnight. I was asleep!" Katniss retorts.
"Sorry, I forgot you're like eighty years old," Joanna responds, laughing at the sour expression Katniss is wearing. "Anyway, I was calling to tell you that we have plans tonight."
"We?" Katniss says unenthusiastically.
"Yes, 'we' brainless. We're going out. I need to get you drunk so I can get you to spill about this bread boy you're so hung up on," Joanna says matter of factly.
"I'm not hung up on him," Katniss says, and even she recognizes that her voice is a little too defiant.
Joanna eyes her curiously. "Why so defensive, Kit Kat?" she finally says, leaning back against the countertop as if she's intends to continue this conversation for a long while.
"I just…Jo I don't want to talk about this right now," Katniss finally says.
"Precisely," says Joanna. "That's why we're getting you drunk tonight." She flashes Katniss a wicked grin and saunters away.
….
Peeta is at least smart enough to back off and give her space. That's what she wants, isn't it? But if that's true, then it doesn't explain why Katniss checks her phone at least two dozen times during the day to see if there is a new message from him. And it certainly doesn't explain the odd, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach when a message never appears.
Katniss relents to going out with Joanna—it is Friday, after all—but only if they go somewhere other than The Hob.
"No way," Joanna retorts. "I already told Gale we were coming and this way we kill two birds with one stone."
"What does that mean?" Katniss says, her displeasure coming through clearly in her tone.
"It means I get to catch up with Gale and you at the same time. And besides, he needs to be in on this. No sense in you having the same conversation with both of us at two different times," she says.
"Who said I was going to have ANY conversation with either of you?" Katniss says irritably.
….
The Hob is busy, even for a Friday night, and Katniss silently prays to the universe that a certain someone is not among the large crowd in the brewery. A careful glance around the parameters of the main room does not reveal any blond curls or infectious smiles, so she considers herself momentarily safe.
"Looking for someone?" Gale teases her from his place behind the bar.
"She's looking for lover boy," Joanna quips, throwing her oversized purse across the bar top and scooting into one of only two open bar stools. "Stash that for me, will ya?" she directs at Gale, indicating that he should put her purse behind the bar so she doesn't have to hang on to it. "It's better if Peeta's not here," she continues. "If we want to get anything out of this one." She waves her hand in Katniss' general area.
Katniss slides onto the next bar stool and sighs. "I told you, there's nothing to tell," she says.
"That's not what you said," says Joanna. "You said, 'I don't want to talk about it right now'—there's a difference."
….
Five amber beers later Katniss is officially lubricated enough to spill her inner thoughts. She's still not sure why she agreed to drink so much, especially since she knew Joanna's plan from the get-go. But it's Friday night, and it's been a long week and she definitely needs the release of tension that several potent drinks naturally bring.
She's not completely trashed—only hard liquor can make her completely inebriated, but she's lost much of her filter and she feels warm and much more trusting than she usually does. Joanna doesn't even need to bring up the topic herself; Katniss does it for her.
"Oh shit!" she exclaims suddenly, around 11 pm.
"What?" Gale smirks. He's still working behind the bar, going in and out from the back room and stopping by the spot where Joanna and Katniss sit whenever he has a moment to breathe.
"I can't run," Katniss says, as if that says it all.
Joanna and Gale share an amused look.
"Yeah, highly recommend that you don't run right now," Joanna says, smirking.
"No, no," Katniss waves her hand at Joanna as if she's swatting away an imaginary fly. "I mean I can't run in the morning. We run together on Saturday mornings. And I can't."
"Why can't you?" Gale asks.
"You run with bread boy?" Joanna asks, at the exact same time.
"Not anymore," says Katniss, a gloomy tone taking over her entire demeanor. "He ruined it."
"You'll be too hung over to run tomorrow morning anyway," Gale says dismissively, walking away to tend to another customer who has been trying to gain his attention.
Joanna turns to face Katniss, her entire attention focused now that she sees her opening. "How did he ruin it?" she asks. "What happened?"
"Nothing!" Katniss is trying to sort out her thoughts and keep certain ones to herself, but it's not working quite the way she wants. Damn Gale and his overly potent craft brewed beer! "It was just the rain…" she adds, trying and failing to steer Joanna off track.
"And…" Joanna pries. "Did you get wet?" She laughs at her own joke.
Joanna is expecting Katniss' trademark scowl to be the answer to her crude, lame joke, but she surprised when she looks back at Katniss to see her eyes wide and her face blanched.
"We kissed," Katniss says quietly. "We kissed in the rain and I can't stop thinking about it. But I have to. I have to stop." Katniss tries to straighten on her bar stool to indicate how serious she is, despite the fact that she is slurring her words slightly.
Joanna smiles down into her beer glass, satisfied to have gotten this much out of Katniss. "Why?" she asks, pausing to take another drink of her beer. "This is good Katniss. You need this. You don't have to stop anything."
Katniss is shaking her head softly from side to side. "No," she says. "I have to stop him from making a big mistake. I'm not who he thinks."
Joanna finishes off the last of the lager in her glass and turns to Katniss, placing her hands on Katniss' shoulders. "Look, I know you're scared because you think anything good that comes along will be taken from you," she says, giving Katniss a significant look. "But you deserve to be happy. And this bread boy seems to be doing just that. You've been practically a ray of fucking sunshine since you met him—up until today, that is," she finishes.
But Katniss pushes away from the bar, simultaneously pushing away all hope of having anything with Peeta. "No," she says, and she seems suddenly much more sober. "You don't understand."
Joanna shakes her head, weary of going round and round with Katniss. She should have known that Katniss would build up walls so tall and thick no one could bring them down. "Fine," she says, dismissively. "But I think you're making a big mistake."
"I'm tired," says Katniss. "I'm going to head home."
"You can't drive right now," Joanna points out, correctly.
"I'll walk," Katniss says.
The air has started to turn cooler at night with the approach of autumn. By the time Katniss arrives home after her brisk walk she is almost completely sober and even more determined than ever. She and Peeta can just be friends and nothing more. He will just have to understand. They will both have to forget that kiss in the thunderstorm and go back to the way it was before.
If only it were that easy.