Chapter 12: Repairs
Gale spent the morning of Christmas Eve putting new tires on his mother's car, with Rory's half-assed assistance. Rory was torn between wanting to learn how to change a tire and bossing around their younger cousins in the all-day gaming tournament he and Vick had arranged. Gale's aunt and uncle and their three kids were visiting for the holiday, which was fun but made the small house feel even smaller. Rory had only partially paid attention to Gale's instructions about the tires, and after they'd gotten the new tires on and used the jack to lower the car, Gale finally released his brother back to the tournament. He could do the final tightening on his own. And he wanted to be alone, outside for a little while. He'd get into the Christmas spirit later, but out in the yard by himself with the cars he could indulge in what he truly wanted to do: brood about Katniss ignoring him.
"The tires look good," a voice said. His mother stepped onto the front porch, tugging one of her multi-colored, hand-knit shawls more tightly around her shoulders and looking approvingly at the tires. "I wish you'd let me pay for them."
"Christmas present," he reminded her as he gave the lug nut one final yank. New tires hadn't been in his spending plan, but he'd changed his mind after seeing how worn the treads on his mother's car were. It made him queasy to think of her driving around on the steep, icy mountain roads on those things.
She stepped down into the yard and joined him in the driveway. "You're spending too much on us," she said quietly.
They'd been over this. Multiple times. The kids all needed things, too—clothes for school, shoes—and he had more money now than ever before. It wasn't that he was eager to spend it, but when they needed basics, how could he not help? But instead of rehashing all those arguments, he simply picked up a rag that had fallen to the ground and tossed it back into the toolbox on the truck's bed.
"Blame Dad. You know how he was about tires."
His mother smiled at the memory. One of Gale's father's favorite rants was about proper tire maintenance.
"Well, thank you. From both of us."
His mother reached over to hug him and Gale felt a prick in his throat at the idea of his father looking down at him from heaven, being grateful that Gale was carrying on the Hawthorne dedication to tire safety.
After a minute, Gale pulled out of the hug and started circling the car to make one last check of the tires. His mother stayed in the driveway, watching him. He could feel her wanting to speak, working up to it. She'd been like this a few days ago, when she pestered him about frittering away so much of his vacation indoors reading the online newspapers rather than getting outside like he used to. He'd started looking at Madge's father's campaign website and had been sucked into an endless series of links. Translated, he knew his mother meant: was he ever going to start running again? To get her off his case, he'd switched his focus to outdoor household chores, but still hadn't hit the trail.
Pausing at the front right tire, he looked back at her. He might as well get it over with; she never let up when something was on her mind. "What's up, Ma?"
"I haven't seen Katniss around," she said in a voice that was straining too hard to be casual.
He grunted in response and turned his attention back to the tires.
"Everything all right?" she asked.
He shrugged. He wasn't about to get into this with his mother of all people.
"You haven't seemed like yourself since you two went to that party. Something happen?"
She was fishing. Gale gazed back at her, trying to gauge if he could wait her out. Not telling her anything would just cause her to seek out other sources of information, like Rory, who was in Prim's class at school. The last thing Gale needed was his brother and Katniss's sister getting involved in... whatever was or wasn't happening between Gale and Katniss.
"I said some things I wish I hadn't," Gale finally said. He hoped the vagueness would be enough to get her off his back.
His mother shook her head in disappointment. "Gale. Your temper..."
"No, it wasn't that," he snapped, aware of the irony only after speaking. All right, so maybe his temper had been somewhat to blame for his poorly timed, poorly thought-out confession. If Katniss hadn't been so eager to think the worst of him, maybe he'd have held his tongue. It wasn't like he actually wanted to start dating her—he wasn't blind, he'd seen how she was infatuated with that blond kid with the weird name—so why had he bothered telling her that he'd wanted to be more than friends? If he'd been thinking clearly, he'd have realized how much it would freak her out and that he was risking their friendship by speaking up. But he wasn't used to editing himself around her. He'd opened his big mouth, and now his confession was out there, like a bomb that had exploded and wrecked everything in its range.
His mother watched him closely, no doubt trying to guess the root of the dispute, which Gale definitely did not feel like explaining to her. He went back to checking on the tires. By the time he rounded the car and returned to where his mother was standing, she'd decided what she wanted to say.
"You should talk to her," Hazelle said. "Clear up any misunderstandings or ruffled feathers."
"I've tried," Gale said, irritably. "She won't return my calls, and she wouldn't even talk to me at the store when I went to see her there."
"Talk to her when she's ready to talk," Hazelle continued, fixing a scolding look at her son for his rude tone. "Harassing her before she's ready is probably not winning you any points."
"I'm not harassing her," Gale said. He couldn't just leave things the way they'd been after the party; he needed her to know he wasn't pining for her, that his feelings were a past tense issue. So he'd sent one text, which she ignored. Then when he'd been at the mall anyway doing Christmas shopping, he'd stopped by the store but she'd still seemed skittish, pointing at the long line of pissy customers and saying she couldn't talk. It felt like a million years ago. He was starting to feel more angry at the way Katniss was shutting him out than he was at himself for being honest with her about his feelings. Former feelings. Feelings he'd been second-guessing ever since walking into Katniss and Madge's dorm room on his drive home from North Dakota.
Which made the whole thing that much worse: if he didn't actually have the feelings for her that he thought he did, why were they in this situation? If she would just talk to him, he could explain that.
"Well," his mother said, "you can't do anything but give her the time she needs. You just need to trust that your friendship is stronger than this bump."
Talk about unsatisfying advice: she was telling him to do what he was already doing. Waiting.
"I don't have a lot of time left," he groused, absently kicking the tire he was standing near.
His mother put her arm around him and patted his shoulder. "I'm all too aware of that, hon. So why don't you come inside and help Posy and me make the pies for tonight?"
He pulled away and nodded toward the salvaged wood piled up next to the shed. "I'm going to take care of this first." The chopping, that is. He knew once he went inside that he wouldn't be able to resist the infectious, pre-Christmas frenzied enthusiasm of his siblings and cousins. He wasn't quite ready to let go of his dark mood and wanted to direct whatever bad feelings he had toward the wood rather than any innocent relatives. The firewood needed to be split sometime, anyway.
His mother smiled knowingly and left him to his chores.
#
He didn't recognize the car, slowly driving down his family's street, headlights illuminating the early dusk. He stopped chopping when the vehicle stopped across the street from his house, and let his axe rest on his shoulders, in a pose that he was very aware could appear threatening. The neighborhood was starting to deteriorate and he didn't know all the neighbors anymore. Rory had told him about a big bust a couple of months back just one block over, where the house apparently looked like a science lab.
A few seconds later, a familiar dark-haired head emerged from the vehicle, and as it drove away Gale found himself looking at Katniss. She was wearing the same brightly colored winter jacket she'd worn to Madge's party, though now he could see the maroon collar of her work uniform's polo shirt showing at the neck. She must have gotten a ride home from the mall from someone else stuck working on Christmas Eve. Katniss looked tired, and also uncomfortable, which seemed to be her standard reaction to Gale these days. She was holding a large shopping bag, so laden with boxes that Gale worried she might topple over.
"Hey," she said, rooted to the patch of gravel in front of the neighbors' house.
"Hey back." Gale set the axe down next to the shed and walked across the yard, while Katniss hesitantly crossed the street. They met at the edge of the Hawthornes' property, in the gravel driveway near Gale's truck. Neither spoke. Gale wasn't sure how to just dive into the heavy issues between them. They had a lot of practice talking about all sorts of things, but their track record on this particular topic was pretty poor.
"Work busy?" Gale asked, mostly for something neutral to say.
"Terrible," Katniss said, clearly relieved to be talking about something other than the weirdness between them. "Last minute shoppers are the worst, and Joe was all stressed out about his in-laws spending the holidays with him and Sherri for the first time." She glanced toward Gale's house, brightly illuminated and with condensation on the windows from all the cooking and warm bodies inside. "Your cousins here already?"
Gale nodded. They visited from upstate every year, which Katniss knew. "Got in last night. It's so crowded it's hard to breathe." All the beds and couches were occupied, and even the floor spaces were covered with scattered kids in sleeping bags. It actually reminded him of the first place he'd crashed in North Dakota.
Katniss kept her eyes on the Hawthornes' home, long enough that he suspected she was avoiding looking at him.
"So," Gale said, drawing her attention back. "Thanks for stopping by."
"I don't have long," Katniss mumbled, looking down at the gravel. "I have to get home and change for church. But... I've been meaning to call you. I just... Joe gave me extra shifts and it's been crazy busy and... I wasn't sure what to say."
"Just listen, then," Gale said calmly. Katniss peered up at him and he could see how much she'd been dreading this conversation, adding extra fuel to his certainty that he shouldn't have said anything to her about his feelings. He needed to tread carefully to avoid freaking her out again. She was still clutching her shopping bag as though she might have to flee.
"Katniss, I should never have said anything to you," he said. "If had the power to rewind and erase that conversation, I'd use it in a heartbeat. But I don't." He scratched his head through his wool hat while he searched for the right words. "Things have been hard, between my knee and moving to North Dakota and coming back home... I got pretty lonely out there," he admitted, finding himself able to put into words the feelings and thoughts he'd only vaguely understood before. "It's all guys, all the time. I get so sick of the macho BS, the posturing... I missed having a girlfriend, I missed you... I got it mixed up in my head that those weren't the same thing."
He thought he saw a hint of hesitant relief on Katniss's face, though her shoulders were still tensely hunched.
"Really?" she asked. He heard a skeptical note in her question.
He nodded, and stuck his hands in his pockets.
"So that's me," he said, "but what I don't understand is... you seemed jealous. About Ashley, and then Madge. I get it that you don't like me in that way, but it's been confusing."
Katniss sighed and set her shopping bag down. Then she shoved her hands into her own jacket pockets and kicked the gravel, sending a few pebbles flying. He waited for her to find whatever words she could piece together. Finally she swallowed and spoke.
"I was a little jealous," she admitted quietly. "But not of Ashley or Madge." Looking up at him, she said, "It's always been so easy for you. In high school, we both ran and trained and worked all the time, but you still found time to date. You always had a girlfriend. You were never flustered, never awkward. I... It took so much of my energy when I liked someone, energy I didn't have to spare. So I just ran and kept running and figured I'd deal with boys later... Somehow. But in college now, I guess I was wishing I could be more like you. Not date a lot of people, just one is all I want, but... The longer I put it off, the more anxious I got and now, I just really can't..."
She exhaled in frustration. "I make everything awkward!" Then, scowling at him, she added for emphasis, "Like this. This is awkward now."
Gale laughed, mostly out of relief that Katniss didn't have a bigger problem with him. Her anxiety about her dating inexperience he could totally handle. "You do have a special gift for awkward," he said with a teasing smile.
Katniss kept talking, frowning as she recalled, "Someone asked me out last semester and I didn't even know it until Madge told me afterward. I'm terrible with boys."
"What about that blond guy?" Gale asked. "Are you awkward around him?"
Katniss shook her head. "He's a friend. So he's all right."
Gale felt a pang of jealousy. But it occurred to him that it could be jealousy in the same way he sometimes felt about Madge—jealousy of another person's friendship with Katniss, an awareness that she had other friends and other people in her life now, and that that was a good thing for her. But he still wasn't sure about that blond guy, Peeta. Did Peeta realize that befriending Katniss was probably the best way to win her over? Gale wouldn't put it past him; the guy seemed pretty sharp. But if Katniss still insisted that Peeta was a "friend" after him giving her a ride home from Madge's party, it meant that Peeta hadn't tried to pull something when Katniss was feeling extra confused and vulnerable. So maybe the guy wasn't a total scumbag.
Katniss pulled her phone out of her pocket and glanced at it. "Sorry," she said when she realized he was watching her. "Just checking the time. I need to get home soon. Prim has a solo in the service and we want to get good seats."
"I'll walk you," Gale said, nodding toward the street in the direction that led the few blocks to Katniss's house. As they started walking, he said, "You know, just because I dated a lot in high school doesn't mean that's what was right for you."
Katniss made grunting sound, as though she was willing to consider that possibility.
"You have to do what feels right for you," he said. "And not to sound like I'm the world's expert on this or anything, but if it didn't feel right to you to date during high school, maybe you weren't ready. Like you said, you were focused on other things." And now, possibly because of the appearance of Peeta in her life, she was feeling ready for... more than just school and running.
That was disconcerting, Gale thought to himself. He didn't like thinking of Katniss making out with that blond guy, but clearly she'd been thinking about it—and possibly more—since she seemed to have developed this heightened sensitivity to her own inexperience. He felt suddenly protective of her, in the same way that he didn't want Posy to so much as hold hands with a boy until she turned 25.
They walked quietly past a few houses, and Gale was relieved that Katniss's silence felt more comfortable than, for example, their drive to Madge's party. It gave him hope that they could get back to their old easy friendship, and at some point leave this incident behind. Maybe his mother was right—this could be just a bump.
"So," Katniss asked hesitantly, "How do you do it?"
"What? Sex?" No way was Katniss ready for sex.
"No!" Katniss blushed furiously. "God, I'd never ask you about that. I meant, how do you keep from turning everything awkward?"
"I don't know, how do you run? How do you explain it?"
"I don't," she huffed. "But that doesn't help me with this."
Gale let out a heavy breath, the air clouding before him. Had he really gone in less than a week from thinking he wanted to start something with Katniss himself to giving her advice about how to hook up with someone else?
But Katniss, well, she did need help.
He tugged his knit cap lower on his head while he thought. "Well, it shouldn't feel like a lot of effort. If it's the right person. That's what's hard to figure out—you're getting to know someone, and if you like what you learn then you learn more. I mean, if you're going to be in a relationship with someone, you're going to be spending a lot of time with them, so you should like hanging out."
That happened to be his own stumbling block and why most of his previous girlfriends hadn't lasted long.
"What if I already know that about someone?" Katniss asked.
Gale stopped walking and watched Katniss as she stopped a few feet later and turned to look back at him.
"This is about that blond guy, isn't it?"
Katniss stared back, not denying it.
"I don't know, Katniss," he said wearily. Giving her general life advice was one thing, but he wasn't sure he was ready to actually deliver her straight into that Peeta guy's arms.
"I don't want to lose him as a friend," Katniss said quietly. "I thought I'd lost you and it was horrible."
Gale exhaled loudly again. She'd hit upon exactly why it was so hard for him to give her advice about this guy. It was more than a little awkward for her to be asking him about this when they hadn't gotten out of their own friendship/relationship quagmire.
He shrugged helplessly. "I can't say I have a lot of success with this type of thing."
He raised his eyebrows at her and she smiled sheepishly in return. They both started walking again, not in quite as companionable a silence as before. Gale was thinking about how if Katniss was agonizing this much about Peeta, and Peeta was taking his time to be so careful about not pressuring her into a relationship before it was obvious that she was completely ready, maybe they would actually be good together. And then where would Gale fit in? He was already struggling with losing out his Most Valued Friend slot to Madge. He and Madge both might get knocked out of their positions if Katniss ended up with a boyfriend with staying power...
But that was life, wasn't it? It's not like he was even around, living in exile in North Dakota. Katniss should have other friends. Needed to. She deserved to move on, even if he was stuck.
When they reached Katniss's house, Gale saw Mrs. Everdeen wave from the living room window to him and, for Katniss's benefit, jab her index finger toward her wrist. Mrs. Everdeen was already dressed in her holiday clothes and was clearly anxious to get to the church. Katniss nodded and started up the stairs, but paused half-way and started pawing through her shopping bag.
"Here," she said, shoving a shoe box at Gale.
"You got me a present?" he asked warily, keeping his hands in his pockets. They didn't do gifts. They very explicitly had agreed freshman year to never exchange Christmas presents.
"No," Katniss said firmly. "This pair didn't sell, even on clearance, and Joe was going to donate them. They're last season's model, your brand and your size. I couldn't pass them up. He said you could have them."
Gale watched her closely to try to figure out if she was lying or not. Joe gave them discounts, and even occasionally let them divert unsold merchandise from the donation box, but he'd never seen his brand in there before.
"I swear, Gale," Katniss said in an exasperated tone, which was wonderful for its familiarity. "Ask Joe yourself." She pushed the box into his chest and released, forcing him to hold the box or let it fall. Then, digging in the shopping bag once more, she pulled out a few wrinkled sheets of paper and shoved them toward him as well.
Frowning, he accepted the pages and scanned them. Several outlines of human figures lined each sheet in neat columns.
"Stretches?" he asked, recognizing the printouts as resembling the homework he used to get from the physical therapist he'd been working with after his knee injury. Before the insurance jerks had said he'd maxed out the number of covered sessions.
"Stretches, and some strengthening exercises," Katniss clarified. "I think you're right that you're probably fine, since your job is so physical. But if you want to be sure, it wouldn't hurt to do these. You want to be positive all the little muscles and tendons around your knee are strong enough to keep everything stabilized when you run."
Gale looked down at the exercise sheets again, realizing that Katniss must have printed them out before going to work today. Which meant she'd been thinking about him and planning to give him this stuff—before he'd even had a chance to explain everything to her.
She'd still been concerned about him, and probably still considered him a friend even through the weirdness.
"Thanks," he said, looking up at her and feeling oddly emotional. He didn't usually get sappy over things like this. Maybe all those Hallmark Christmas movies his mom had been watching were getting to him.
"Anytime you want to hit the trail, just shout," she said earnestly. "Or if you want some help with any of the exercises—I see the other trainers on the team teaching people these things all the time. I could help you."
If he'd let her, she left unsaid.
Mrs. Everdeen rapped on the window, prompting Katniss to grab her shopping bag and bolt up the rest of the stairs.
"Hey," Gale called as her hand reached for the doorknob. "Merry Christmas."
"You too," Katniss called back with a grin before disappearing inside the house.
Waving through the window to an antsy-looking but smiling Prim, who'd poked her head around the curtain to wave at him, Gale carefully folded the physical therapy printouts and opened the shoe box to slide them in. The tangy rubber scent of new running shoes wafted out, hitting him with a wave of nostalgia for how good it felt to slide on a fresh pair of shoes, their cushioning still so full that he could imagine he was flying as he ran, their surface not yet married by any specks of mud. He loved the mud—dirty shoes were a badge of honor—but there was something special about that small window of pre-mud beauty.
He smiled as he turned back into the dark street to walk home, aware that Katniss knew all this about him, having heard him wax poetic over many a pair of running shoes over their friendship.
Getting your best friend back was a pretty damn good Christmas present.
A/N: I know a lot of people have been annoyed at Katniss, but hopefully her confusion makes more sense now. She didn't handle the situation perfectly, but that's one of her weaknesses, hopefully outweighed by her being a good friend in other ways. We didn't get to see much of her non-Peeta, non-Gale friendships in the books, though she did start to develop more friendship skills as the series progressed—spending time with Madge during CF, leaning on Finnick in CF and MJ, and going out of her way to help Johanna during MJ (I love that moment with the pine needles). I think of her as frustratingly clueless about a lot of things, but with a good heart and instincts. Anyway, you all can think of it as a gift to start the clearing away of the Gale/Katniss baggage, making space for GADGE. (Who will be featured in the next chapter.) Thanks for reading!