Part Two

Chapter Eight

Johanna's been at Esselon for years and kind of does a little bit of everything as long as it minimizes contact with the patrons. But the customers have become so accustomed to her personality that she's seen as an endearing fixture instead of the crass woman she is. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't find her lack of a filter almost refreshing…I envy her honesty and if she would allow it, I'd probably consider her a friend.

I place the notebook in my lap and Peeta quietly asks, "So what do you mean by envying her honesty? I know that there isn't a Johanna inside of you, dying to get out."

"How do you know?"

"Well I hope not an exact replica! This town isn't big enough." He chuckles and I join in. It helps diffuse the tension a little.

"Even though Jo is crass and crude and cranky, I am jealous that she can so easily say what she's thinking and feeling. It doesn't always come out in the right way, but she lays it all out there in a really unapologetic way."

"And you don't feel like you can do that?"

I shrug. "Not without disappointing people. I don't want to channel my inner bitch or anything, but I've learned to be really good at saying what will make other people happy."

"At the expense of your own happiness. So really, you're giving everyone an edited version of you."

"Yes and no. I would never say something that is an outright lie and I wouldn't compromise my morals. I just try to tone down what I really want to say, or sometimes I get a sense of what someone wants me to choose, so I try to appease them."

"Like when I ask you if you want Fudge Brownie or Pistachio Pistachio and you choose Cherry Garcia because you know I love it?" He smirks and I smile back but lower my eyes. The guy knows all of my tricks.

"That sums it up fairly well." I take a sip of water and continue. "In a way, it's like choosing between two perfectly fine options: my own and someone else's. But when I know that choosing for someone else will make them happy, how can I not pick that option?"

"Yeah, but isn't that like deciding that you'll always come second? I'd rather occasionally have Fudge Brownie knowing that it makes you happy. You being happy makes me happy, too." Peeta raises one palm at a time. "It isn't all about me. It isn't all about you."

I nod. "50-50."

"Nah, 100-100."

"What?"

"100-100. I read that once somewhere, that relationships aren't really 50-50. Or maybe it was on 'Oprah'." I quirk my eyebrows but he continues, "Either way, when both people give 100 percent they end up being much more content. Happier. I want you to give me 100 percent Katniss. I want to give you 100 percent Peeta without feeling like it's an affliction or hindrance."

"You aren't an affliction. I'm sorry if I ever made you feel like you were." He nods, motioning that he understands. "I just got so used to taking everyone else's problems and shouldering them myself."

He rubs the back of his neck, trying to explain. "I never wanted you to take on my problems. I wanted to feel like they mattered to you, that's all. I probably didn't make the difference very obvious."

"You have to remember that I'm kind of defective emotionally. I even fly off the handle on occasion, if you can believe it." That earns a smile. "Peeta, I want to stop tiptoeing around who we really are. I just need you to remind me every once in awhile. Maybe help me out if you notice it?"

"I can do that."

…

Annie says that the more I love my decisions, the less I'll need others to love them. Why can't it be both?

Maybe I'm making this more complicated than it has to be.

How can you be so sure about everything? About us?

"So you want to know how I was sure about us?" Peeta grabs an apple and starts to eat.

"Sure." I myself grab the Cheetos. Like there's even a contest.

"Simple. I loved everything that you never saw. I loved that it didn't occur to you how smart you were, and you never had to work at being a good person. It was just part of who you were, without even trying."

"That has nothing to do with us—."

"It has everything to do with us! You said that your flakiness probably drove me crazy, but Katniss it was a relief for me not to be so hung up on every. Little. Detail. God, I exhausted myself sometimes. You changed that without even trying."

"You make that sound like a good thing."

"You are a good thing. I imagined every first being with you. And I wanted that, regardless of how hard or irrational it was at the time. I never had a moment where I imagined life without you, even when it was work to be together."

"So you just knew."

"Yup." He balances the core on the table, leaning back on his elbows.

…

Looking back, I never once asked you why you seemed so indifferent about the UW. I never thought to question why you didn't quite care about college as much as the rest of us. You could have made a million friends, been active in student groups or intramurals, gone to games or hung out at the Union. The whole campus could have been yours. But you didn't seem to care. You seemed unimpressed.

Something shifted between high school and college. Whatever it was, I overlooked it. Tell me what I missed. Tell me what bothered you.

I look up at Peeta and ask again. "What did I miss?"

"Me being jealous."

My eyes are wide with disbelief. "Excuse me? Jealous of what?"

"Everything. You. Gale. The whole fucking campus. It was one thing to be your boyfriend among a couple of hundred teenage guys. But I started to worry that so many options—school, clubs, work, parties, life—would make you realize that you'd made a choice before you knew that you could have had anything. You were forced to make a choice too soon."

I look at Peeta with narrowed eyes. What? "You know I suck at social situations. But regardless, I wanted you. How could you doubt that?"

"I tried everything I could think of to make you choose me. I wanted to spend every waking minute with you, just to make sure you wouldn't forget me."

"Gee, that's heartfelt —."

He shoots up and sits at the end of the bed, tapping my knees. "God, no, that comes across as so wrong and possessive. I wanted to spend time with you. I was just totally irrational in the way I went about it."

I pause. "You know what the crazy thing is?"

"Hmm?"

"I spent years wondering why you chose me. You spent years worrying that I'd find something better. We probably could have spent years just being blissed out that were that lucky."

He squeezes my knees. "I was pretty blissed out anyway."

I smile. "Me, too."

…

When you first woke up, I saw your eyes. Not filled with sadness or anger, but concern for me. Concern for what you assumed I must have thought of your new reality. I thought you were perfect.

After that, your eyes were guarded and cautious but mostly I saw disappointment reflected in them. Disappointment in me. You always wore your heart on your sleeve, and you always betrayed every emotion in your eyes. I could get lost in them. I often did.

You said that you were broken, but you were wrong. You're beautiful.

"There was a tiny part of me that thought that my accident would bring us closer together, you know. I knew that we had a messed up sense of balance and that things had been uncomfortable for awhile, but I thought that maybe this would be the thing that would bring us back."

"I'm sorry—."

"No, it was irrational to think that. I know it was. Then I saw your face and I knew it wasn't about my leg. It wasn't even me. It was us."

I lower my head into my hands, my face screwing up with the cries I try to hold in. Peeta crouches down in front of me, his hands on my thighs. I plead with him, "As selfish as it sounds, at that point I didn't even think of trying to fix it. I was so far gone, so far past knowing what to do. And then that woman, the one with the crazy outfit, she wanted to talk to me about our future—."

"Wait, what lady?"

"I, I don't remember her name. Crazy jewelry everywhere lady. She wanted to talk to me about how I was holding up, as if I was the one fighting for my life or something." A new wave of sobs wracks my body and Peeta waits for me to continue. "She made me feel exposed—not on purpose or anything—and it freaked me out even more. I swear she saw through me."

"Effie Trinkett."

"Huh?"

"Her name is Effie Trinkett. She ended up working with me after the accident, sort of as a counselor. She's not too bad. She means well."

"What kinds of things did you talk about?"

"You, mostly."

I look at my hands in my lap. Fresh tears leak out. "God, I'm so—"

"Katniss, stop. I didn't say it to make you feel worse, I said it because we're being honest here. We talked about the loss of my leg. How it felt being back at home. She helped me through a lot…opened up my eyes to things I didn't really want to see." He smiles, before continuing. "She encouraged me to come out here with you. That's something, right?"

My eyebrows shoot up with the new information and my breath hitches, the after effects of crying. "I should thank her."

…

I wish I had asked you more about your family life. Inherently I knew that things weren't perfect and rationalized it by thinking that no family was perfect. I knew that we spent more time at my place than yours. I heard the things she said to you. Why didn't you tell me?

"It was a relief to not have to think about my mother or talk about what she was doing. Besides, by the time I was in high school it had lessened to verbal jabs and offhanded comments. She was passive aggressive and that was an improvement."

"What do you mean, 'an improvement'?" The weight of his words sits in my stomach. "Peeta," I say lowly, "what did she do?"

He shrugs. "She hit us. All of us. Pretty bad, too." Staring at his hands he continues, "There was always a reason, you know? We were too loud, too stupid, too careless. By the time we met, the most she ever did was smack the back of my head if I messed up somehow."

My mother wasn't award-winning by any means, but she never hit us.

"But growing up, why didn't anyone do anything? Your dad—."

His face snaps up, indignation plain in his eyes. "Don't you think I've been asking myself that same question my whole life, Katniss?"

"What I meant—."

Peeta's exasperation comes out as a shout. "My whole damned life I've been asking 'Why didn't someone notice and do something?' I don't know. I don't know! If I saw a kid with bruises, I'd sure as hell do more than look the other way. I'd be there for that kid. I'd—."

"Peeta," I whisper. I move from the chair and join him on the bed, hugging him tightly. He's wound tight, a fist of muscles.

"Katniss, you were the first person who came into my life and told me to my face that I was worth something. You were the first person who made me feel like I mattered." His words are muffled deep in my shoulder. I feel the tears that dampen my skin.

"You matter to me."

…

I wanted to marry you. I wanted our engagement to be about us, but it slowly became a spectacle of families, parties, planning and acting. We left parties in silence, exhausted by the whole affair. We seemed to forget the whole point of being engaged.

We're lying side by side on the bed now, facing each other. "I wish I had proposed differently. The whole proposing-after-your-girlfriend-takes-a-pregnancy-test-thing wasn't exactly how I envisioned it."

"So why'd you do it?"

"I wanted you to know that I was serious. That I would have been there for you and our baby, had there been one. And I meant what I said. I didn't think it was about being too young or it not being the right time in our lives. I loved you and wanted to marry you. I just would have gone about it in a different way."

I nod. "I wanted to marry you, I just wanted to keep everything quiet for awhile. I thought we'd spend time celebrating, just the two of us. Then we started talking about the reception, houses and children. It seemed so fast, so fabricated. We were focusing on how the marriage would make everyone else happy. I didn't expect that."

"People were excited and it got out of hand. I guess I saw the finish line—being married—as the goal and I just wanted to get there."

"I just wanted you."

He reaches over and holds my hand.

…

You tell me to take this slow. You tell me to be patient. Well isn't that wonderful, because this is the result of slow and patient. And it sucks.

Do you still love me? I don't know. How would I know? You haven't said those words in months so I just keep telling myself to be patient when all I want to do is get in your face and ask you. Do you love me?

We're always in 'fix it' mode, trying to be the perfect partner for the other. And I'm trying so hard to be what you need. In case you were wondering, I'm failing. Fix it mode is exhausting.

"What is it that you think I need?"

"I don't know," I shrug. "Every day I try something different. I try asking questions, not asking questions; being available, giving you space; showing affection, easing up."

Peeta laughs, rolling onto his back. I laugh for a bit but then get agitated and nudge his shoulder. "What? I'm trying!"

He rolls again to face me, smirking. "Welcome to my life. I feel like that's all I've been doing, trying to figure out how to be who you need me to be."

"Huh? How so?"

"Katniss," he gently places his hand on my arm. "I needed to know how to be the guy you wanted again. The guy that you wouldn't run from. Tough, resilient, a little indifferent. I didn't want to be so needy."

"But I need you!"

"Sure, but in what way?"

"That's ridiculous!"

"Is it?!"

"Yes!" I yell. "I need you! Sensitive, strong, confident, direct, planning, anal retentive, baking, artsy shit everywhere, passionate, witty, smart, dorky you! You, you jerk!"

"Oh. Well that's good." He pulls me close. "I need cranky, fiery, brainy, frantic, intense, quick-tempered, loving, sassy you." He squeezes me tighter. "Jackass."

"I'm not sassy."

"Yes you are."

I pause. "But you like that?"

"Very much."

…

Peeta,

I wrote these letters with every intention of giving them to you when I was ready. You kind of ruined that.

The truth is, I don't think I ever really would have been ready. Not without being pushed. I would never willingly put myself out there to be embarrassed, judged or ridiculed. I'd never be ready to wear my heart on my sleeve and bare it all, not really. I'd never tell anyone what really was going on. Doing that leaves you vulnerable. It makes you an easy target. It lets people sneak up on you.

I hate feeling that way.

But then I realized that, well, it was you. It was always you. You've always pushed me just enough to make me better. It wasn't about making me look weak…it was about making me strong.

I love feeling that way.

And I want that for you. I want to be that for you. Not because it's the right thing to do, and not because it's some crazy obligation I've made up. But because that's what you and I do for each other.

We're at the top of my list. I'll keep pushing you if you keep pushing me.

Katniss

I quietly ask, "Deal?"

"Deal."

…

I've written this particular note a few times but have conveniently skipped over it all night. I suppose it's time I read it aloud. It feels like the right time.

Peeta,

I love you. I don't know what else to say. But maybe that is enough.

Katniss

He doesn't say anything and so I just look. Peeta holds my gaze until it makes me a little uncomfortable and I focus on his collar, the sheets, anything. I've said "love" in a variety of ways tonight, but he hasn't prompted me to expand upon it. It's hanging out there like an awkward penguin and not once has he mentioned it.

Not once since my reappearance has he said those words to me. He's never even repeated them with an obligatory "I love you, too."

I can't hold it in anymore. "Well, say something."

He whispers back, "Keep reading."

"That's the last letter."

"Keep reading."

Author's Note: This is what I fondly refer to as "the jerk chapter." Thank you, emarina for saying "dude, something is off" after draft one and then following that up with "are you kidding me?!" after draft two. You are my spirit animal.