A/N: Howdy 'yall! :D Can't believe I've written so much! And to everybody who has either commented, subscribed, or favortied, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! I'm serious!
Chapter 25
Katniss POV
The next morning, when I wake up, the door to the terrace is open. The sunlight is filling the entire room, and it's already warm out. I can hear the waves crashing on the beach outside.
I close my eyes, and try to fall back asleep. I'm wide akwake though, listening ot the sounds of waves, seagulls, people talking, children playing and laughing on the beach. It's surprising how early people are out there in the morning, because of how late I see some of them out there. Maybe they just live on the beach.
I wouldn't mind living on a beach. I think. I mean, I practically lived in the woods. It's warmer here, too.
It's ridiculous, thinking of living on the beach. I take a deep breath, just listening again. I hear children arguing over who gets to use the sand pail. I hear the voice of an older woman, their mother perhaps, telling them that neither of them get the pail, because they were fighting over it.
What would I tell my kids? I ask myself. Woah! Where did that come from? What kids? You don't want kids, Katniss. But Peeta does. And you promised him you'd try.
Suddenly, I feel a kiss on my shoulder. I turn to see Peeta, and he smiles.
"Good morning." I scoot closer to him, and kiss him.
"Good morning."
I hug him close, and we lie there for a while.
"What should we do?" I ask.
"Well, I defintaely want to go swimming again. And, if you look at the brochure, it says there's a small carnival a while up the street."
"Carnival." I say, testing the word. I recognize it, but can't quite figure out what it is. Suddenly, I snap my fingers. "Oh! It's one of those things with all the games, and the strange food, and the..."
"Rides." Says Peeta, and amused look on his face.
"Rides!" I exaclaim. "That sounds like so much fun!"
"Well, we could head down to the beach, then head to the Carnival afterwards?"
I smile, and kiss him.
"Sounds perfect." I say. I go to get out of bed, and for the first time today, realize I am naked. I shriek, and pull a blanket over me. I grab clothes, and run to the bathroom.
He laughs, standing outside the door.
"Everything okay in there?"
"Yeah, fine!" I yelp.
I put on a bathing suit, an orange now, not blue. I pull on white demin shorts, and a light, meshy shirt. When I walk out of the bathroom, Peeta is shirtless, in swim shorts.
"Ready to go to the beach?" He asks.
"Yes!" I say, and we head down.
The water is warmer today than yesterday, and we dive right in. After swimming for a minute, we have competitions to see who can stay underwater the longets, who can swim the farthest, etc. After that, I try balancing on Peeta's knees, but fall backwards several times. I have water up my nose, but I'm laughing like a madman anyways.
We lay on the warm sand to dry. I flip around, laying my cheek on my arms, I almost fall asleep, but I feel water at my toes.
"Wow." I say, sitting up. "The tide rose fast."
"Either that or we've been laying here for a long time." He says with a laugh, and we stand up. I try to brush the sand off myself, but fail.
"Before the carnival I need to take a shower." I say.
"Me too." he says, and we walk back up to the hotel.
I pull off my shirt, and throw it in the hamper, standing in the large bathroom in the bikini top and shorts. Oddly, I feel comfortable this way.
"Hey," I call to Peeta. "You said you needed to take a shower?"
"Yeah, could you hurry up, I don't want to get sand ll over everything."
"Well, you chould shower now." I say.
I open the bathroom door just a crack.
"That's if, you wouldn't mind me being there, too. We'd save time, and water..."
But he's already in the bathroom, and is carrying me to the shower, me laughing the whole way.
Aftr the shower, I get dressed back in the whte shorts and shirt. We head to the carnival, and the first thing I see is a giant metal wheel, with small circular cars on them.
"What's that?" I ask, pointing.
"It's called a ferris wheel." He says.
"How do you know so much?" I ask, taking his hand.
"Lots of books around as a kid, I guess." He says with a smile.
We walk through the carnival, looking at the rides and games, and stopping by one of the food stands for ice cream cones.
We eat them as we ride on metal horses on something Peeta calls a merry-go-round. Then, we go over to the games.
There's a large tank of water, and when you throw a bal at at target, the person sitting in the tank falls into the water.
They ask for volunteers to sit in the tank, and noticing how few people actually got dunked, I volunteer.
I climb up a small ladder, and sit on a ledge. The man who runs the game yells for people to come try to dunk me. I sit there, smiling, hamming it up. A few people in the crowd recognize me, but most don't, probably because of the hair.
Peeta steps forward, and mays the man. He is handed three white balls, ans he stands on a line. He throws them at the target missing each one. I stick my tongue out at him, and he buys another round of balls. He throws the first one...
Miss.
The second one...
Miss.
"Ha!" I yell. He looks at me, and winks. Then, he draws his arm back, and the ball hits the center of the target. It takes a split second before...
Splash!
The ledge I was sitting on ives out, and I find myself in cool water. It's not salty, and not pleasant. I stand up couhing, and I'm helped out by the big man.
"A round of applause for our lovely lady!" He booms,a nd the small crowd that has gathered starts clapping. Sopping wet, I walk over to Peeta, and hug him. He wraps his arms around me in return, then we walk out of the center of attention, back towards the rides.
We walk in a small building with a sign that reads "Haunted house". The wall are lines with pictures of creepy people, monsters, and pictures of people who's eyes follow you as you walk by.
I step on a board, and it bends under my weight. A loud foghorn sounds, and I jump, but Peta's right behind me, laughing.
We walk through the rest of it, the walls getting closer and closer together until we finally stumble out.
"That wasn't that scary." I say.
"You almost peed your pants when that loud horn went off."
"Did not!" I say, slapping him playfully.
"Did to." He says, and we walk back over to the food. We get a large plate of fried potato strips, or, 'fries' for short. We eat them, and finding them very salty, Peeta goes and buys a water. We share it, and we quickly finish the pototoes.
After that, we go ride small cars, and the point of the game is to run into other cars. It's really fun, and I spend most of my time driving away from Peeta. But, after a while, I turna round, and start chasing him. After that, we go ride the merry-go-round again. At one of the games, Peeta wins me a giant teddy bear. It's ginormous, and hard to carry around, but I manage.
The sun is settign, and we get on something called a roller coaster, leaving the bear outside the gates. It looks sort of like a small train. They sit Peeta and I up front, and he as a mischevious look on his face. They fasten us in, pulling large bars over our laps. Then, it starts moving. We're climbing a super steep hill, and I get a nervous feeling in my stomach.
I grip Peeta's hand, and look down. Big mistake. We musi be hindreds of feet in the air. I see the bear, looking miniscule.
We're at the top of the hill, with an amazing view of the sunset over the ocean. Then, we're fallign down so fast it doesn't even register for a minute. I scream, half-laughing. We;re going very, very fast, my hair blowing back. I hold on to the bar on my lap as we make sarp turns, and loop upside down, and sideways. Then, it's all over.
I get of, dizzy, and my legs feel like they're made of butter. Peeta helps me out, and we walk back outside. I grab my teddy bear, and clutch it close. We go to the small, obviously man-made pond, and pedal around in small boats, driving slowly.
When we get off the boats, I look up at the ferris wheel. It's lit up with brightly colored blinking lights. We walk over to it, and we're sat down in a large seat. I scoot close to Peeta, and set the bear on the seat next to me.
It's dark out now, and we slowly make our way to the top of the ferris wheel. We stop, frozen up there, and suddenly, pops of bright color appear in the sky.
"Fireworks!" I say, and we watch them for a while. They're beautiful.
We can see the whole carnival from up here, and the enitre place in completely lit up. There are lights overywhere, blinking, flashing, twirling in patterns. After a long time, but it still feels like too soon, we're slowly lowered down.
We leave after that, slowly walking back to the hotel, hearing the carnival behind us. We're carrying our shoes. Walking along the sand. There are a few fires here and there on the beach, with groups of people sitting around them. Some are laughing, and some singing. Some sre just sitting there, leanign against another person, staring at the fire.
We get back to the room, and I set the big bear on the chair, and collapse on the bed.
"Tired?" he asks, laying down next to me. I grunt in reply.
He turns my face, so he can kiss me, and pulls me close.
"I'm so tired..." I mumble, and curl up inot his chest.
"Goodnight." I hear him say, but he sounds so far away.
"Good..." But I fall asleep.
A/n: Sorry I didn't update until late! I'll have either more than one chapter tomorrow, or a really long one! PINKIE PROMISE!
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