**For mrspeetamellark based off the prompt:

"I've been wearing my boyfriend's hoodie around the house for the last week. I tried to give it back last night.

"That's not my hoodie." Realized with horror I've been wearing our builder's hoodie. In front of our builder."

The house remodel lasted longer than my relationship.

I inherited the house after my mother passed away. The summer after my senior year of college I took a break before enrolling into graduate school after my mother fell ill. That illness turned out to be stage 4 cancer, inoperable.

She was gone before Prim and I could even process the diagnosis.

Honesty I was surprised she held on as long as she did. My mother had always been half present, mentlly and emotionally, ever since our father died 14 years ago.

One thing she did have the presence of mind to do years before she ever fell ill was to get a really great life insurance policy. She had obviously learned from dad's mistakes.

So, at 25 I found myself a homeowner. Although it wasn't much of a home. Our ancestral dwelling had been considered a fixer-upper back when my parents initially bought it. Almost 30 years ago. After my father's death we never really got around to fixing the place up.

It was Gale's idea for me to use part of the life insurance money we got from mom's death to remodel the house.

Gale was around a lot after I moved back home. He helped with the funeral arrangements, the paperwork for filing the life insurance claim, he helped me with Prim. It took both of us to convince her not to change her plans to go back to school after mom died and finish her medical degree. But we did it.

Somewhere along the way our friendship shifted from platonic to not so platonic and before I knew it we were taking on the idea of remodeling the house to make it ours.

It should have been a happy ever after to my sad hallmark movie life.

Girl moves back home due to tragic circumstances, reconnects with long lost best friend, cue the mood music and relationship montage. Then the picturesque ending with them settling into their new home and new life together.

Except my reality didn't include a Nicholas Sparks ending to a tragic story. Not at all.

The first problem was that I had inherited the fixer-upper from hell. We went through 3, no seriously 3 contractors in the first 6 months. Every time we'd get one thing fixed we'd find another problem. Which meant more time, more money, and more STRESS for Gale and I.

Somewhere around the nine month mark, just like a pregnancy coming to term, Gale and I's relationship issues that we had both been trying out best to ignore came to a head.

"Look Gale, I'm sorry things didn't work out. But I'm just not ready to get married right now."

"The thing is Katniss, I am. I'm more than ready. But if you aren't, there's nothing I can do about it."

"Maybe we should take some time off."

"That would probably be a good idea. I'll stay at my mom's house tonight and come back to pick up my stuff in the morning."

"Okay. Um, do you want your hoodie back?" I ask in a small voice.

I didn't really want to give it back. It was soft and warm and smelled deliciously male. I had been wearing it all week in an effort to remind myself about some of the things I liked about Gale. Like the way his hoodie smelled.

Comforting and slightly sweet with hints of wild herbs and cinnamon.

Gale gives me a strange look when I unenthusiastically peel the oversized orange hoodie over my head and offer it back to him.

"That's not my hoodie." Gale tells me.

"Of course it's yours. I grabbed it from the coat closet a week ago. I've been wearing it since then." I tell him, hugging the maligned hoodie against my chest as if to shield it from Gale's denial. Then I sniff it again lightly for good measure.

It still smells wonderful.

"Wow, Catnip. I can honestly say now that I'm surprised we lasted this long. I mean, you don't even know your own boyfriend's clothes from the contractor's." Gale says with a slightly amused snort.

"WHAT?" I squeak, my voice reaching several octaves higher than my usual range,

At the comical expression on my face Gale begins to belly laugh. Loudly. He almost doubles over from his own hysterics.

I am silent in my humiliation. But I don't let go of the damned hoodie. Instead I hug it closer to me, my last defense against the glaring truth that I am a shitty girlfriend.

"Katniss, I'll always love you. But let's promise each other to never try to be more than friends ever again ok?" Gale says after he recovers.

I nod numbly at him as I watch him go to the coat closet and pull out his black leather jacket. The one he always wears, and has worn for years.

My cheeks are tinged pink with embarrassment.

"See you, gorgeous." Gale says finally before offering me a sad little wave and leaving out the front door.

I offer him a half hearted wave in return.

I hear the sound of his pick up start, and drive away. That'd when it hits me that that's it, we're over. Our relationship hadn't even survived longer than the remodel.

Just as I feel a wave of tears coming on I hear a loud clatter coming from the hall.

"Shit!" I hear a familiar voice curse quietly.

If I was embarrassed before, now I am officially humiliated beyond all reason.

"PEETA? What are you still doing here?!" I demand when I find our blond, good natured contractor struggling to pick up a vase he dropped on the floor.

"Um….its Friday….so I was supposed to give you this week's invoice and take your payment...but then I heard you both arguing and decided to wait a bit...and yeah…" He trails off, looking sheepish and slightly embarrassed.

So, he heard everything. The argument, the break up, and then that incredibly shameful exchange about the hoodie.

Crap.

THE HOODIE.

I still had his hoodie.

I looked down at the offending garment in question, and then back up into his handsome face.

And then promptly burst into tears.

"Here! Take it!" I sob as I shove the hoodie at him.

"What? No, no. Katniss, you don't have to give it back. Honestly, keep it." He says as he offers it back to me, a gentle expression in his eyes.

Great. Now the cute builder feels sorry for me. I think to myself with a mounting sense of self loathing.

"No, it's yours. And I took it by mistake. I'm so sorry! Here let me just go get my check book and then you can be on your way." I tell him, grabbing a hold of my wild emotions and shoving them down deep as I can.

I march back to the living room, grab my purse, and dig around for my checkbook despite my watery vision. I finally find it and lean over on the coffee table to write out the check.

I sniffle a few times, but ultimately get it done. When I turn around I find Peeta waiting with that same abashed expression on his face. I had always thought he had a nice face. Almost too beautiful for a man in his line of work, what with the manual labor and all.

"Here," I tell him, thrusting the check out to him and looking over his shoulder so that I don't have to see the look of pity in his gorgeous blue eyes.

"Thanks." He mutters, as his hand reaches out and grasps the check before folding it in half and tucking it into his back pocket.

"Yeah. No problem. See you Monday?" I say the last word with a cringe worthy amount of uncertainty. I didn't know if he'd ever want to come back here. This house was a death trap. His client was a nutcase who stole his clothes. The pay wasn't all that great either.

I wouldn't blame him if he high-tailed it out and lost my contact information. The other contractors had run for the hills after putting up with much less.

"Katniss. Pardon my intrusiveness, but is there someone you'd like me to call for you? A friend or relative?"

I snorted at his concern.

"I'll be fine. I'm not the first girl to get dumped on a Friday night. And I'm sure I won't be the last. Go home Peeta, to your wife or girlfriend or whoever and forget about your pathetic client." I tell him with a roll of my eyes.

The bravado feels good coming out. I've always done better with masking my feelings than giving into them.

"I don't have anyone to go home to." He says as he runs his large calloused hand through his messy blond waves. He gives me another sheepish smile.

"I got dumped this past Tuesday, so I guess it's my turn to officially welcome you to the club" He adds, and now his cheeks are blooming with color as I stare at him open-mouthed.

"Who in their right mind would ever break up with you?" I finally ask, flabbergasted.

Peeta's been our builder for months now. He's a catch, by no stretch of the term. He was not only fit as a damn thoroughbred, he was a genuinely good guy. Polite to a fault, easy-going, and considerate. Most of all he was genuinely sweet and kind.

I forgo all subtlety with my remark and his intensely blue eyes zero in on me.

"I could ask you the same question, except I've seen the idiot who let you go. And sorry if it's too soon to say this, but good riddance." He tells me with a slight edge to his voice and I couldn't be more surprised if someone had slapped me.

"We're better off as friends. I don't know what we were thinking, trying to be a couple." I mutter, turning away from his intense gaze.

"At least you ended things pretty amicably." He offers the comment in consolation.

"I guess. Oh, I'm sorry you said you got dumped too! That really sucks." I tell him looking back up again.

"I don't know. I'm starting to think maybe I'm better off. There's no point in investing yourself in a relationship that has no spark, no real connection." He says in a curious tone as his gaze slides away from me after lingering a beat too long.

I gulp.

"Yeah." I agree, thinking about how things had been almost too comfortable with Gale. We had all the spark of a couple who had been married for 50 years, even at the beginning of our relationship. Funny how I never realized that.

Peeta smiled back at me, in that gentle way of his, and I felt a warmth stir inside my chest.

"Would you maybe want to order a pizza and um, hang out for a while in recently dumped solidarity?" I blurt the words out before I can stop myself. I watch his mouth go slack in reaction to my forwardness, and in the next moment I wish for the ground to open and swallow me up.

"I mean, not that you have to. You probably have plans! I shouldn't have asked you that-" I backtrack furiously, and I babble.

He places one large warm hand over mine to stop my ranting.

"Hey, hey. Katniss. I would really like that." He says and I feel myself relax.

"Ok." I tell him, a small smile peeking out, despite the evening's vastly dismal events.

"Ok." He agrees, and we move to the kitchen to find some take out menus.

Six Months Later

"Katniss, have you seen my orange hoodie?" Peeta calls from the master bedroom that he finished remodeling single handedly one month ago.

"Have you checked the coat closet?" I call back, with a smirk.

It had been five months since we started dating, and three weeks since we'd moved in together. This time around there was no question whether there was a true connection or spark between either of us. After Peeta had diligently fixed up every room in the house we'd celebrated by making unrestricted and unabashed love on every available surface.

"Yes! I already checked there!" He calls back, voice growing more annoyed as I heard him double checking the hamper and swearing to himself.

I lower my head and snuggle deeper into the collar of the hoodie in question, inhaling its owner's scrumptious scent.

"Well, check again!" I call out with a wicked grin, knowing that he'll have to pass by the kitchen to get to the coat closet by the door. Last night he had finally broken down and admitted why he never corrected me 6 months ago when I walked around for a whole week wearing his jacket even though I was dating someone else.

He had had a crush on me from the moment he laid eyes on me, and when I took to wearing his hoodie, the crush had deepened into something more serious.

He said he had this recurring fantasy of walking in one morning to get started on the remodeling work, only to find me sitting in the kitchen wearing his orange sweater with a cheeky grin on my face, and my bare legs propped up on the table, just waiting for him.

So now, I'm in position, and eagerly anticipating his entrance, knowing that when he finds me wearing his favorite orange hoodie (and nothing else) we'll finally get the chance to turn his fantasy into a reality.

It's funny how little things can bring two people together.