A/N - Keep in mind, still my first fanfiction. Still trying to work think kinks of this story out and make it flow the way I want it to. Will get better...hopefully...maybe...probably. :s

Chapter 2

They were on their way to their first party together in months, since the last one that had ended in disaster. They were the seniors now, however, and the party was being thrown by Marvel's best friend Cato, so they both knew they had to attend. She sighed comfortably and sat back in her seat beside Marvel in his car, allowing the air conditioning to chill her body, she was dressed in a pair of incredibly short shorts and a tube top with one of Marvels old band t-shirts that she pulled and stretched and cut to her liking so it would seem less slutty than just walking around in a tube top, but it still showed off her flat tummy and thin arms enough to be sexy.

They pulled to a stop in front of the elegant two story home. It seemed everyone was arriving at once. There were dozens of teenagers walking up to the home, the door was left open inviting the guests inside. Marvel covered her hand with his.

"We don't need to go in; we could just stay here all night." He said in a low voice.

She looked at him and smiled wickedly, "oh, and what would we do out here all night?"

"Something, nothing, everything, and whatever you want." He leaned over and drew her into a deep kiss, followed by trailing several down her jaw line and neck. She allowed herself to enjoy it for a few minutes before pushing him away.

"You know we need to go in, everyone is waiting for you."

"They're waiting for us, to see if we go in together or not." Marvel reasoned. She nodded her head, she knew this. Their friends knew they were back together. Johanna had been furious and told her that if Marvel had ever done something like that to her she would have gone for revenge, not forgiveness. Madge had understood and just said that as long as Katniss was happy and willing to forgive that was all that mattered.

"I know they're waiting. I really just want to go in there, give them their show, and enjoy the rest of our night."

"I won't leave your side at all tonight." He promised.

She shook her head. "Let's just be normal. I don't want to look like I feel the need to keep you on a leash. Let's forget about the last party, it never happened. We're solid right?"

He smile at her and pulled her in for another deep kiss. "I love you so much."

After another few minutes of relieved and confidence building making out they left the car and headed for the party. She had shown a brave face in the car, but walking into the party was terrifying. Her heart was beating a million times per minute and she forgot how to breathe for a moment. She saw dozens of people look at them as they walked in; it seemed that everyone was trying to get a look at them. She held her head and prayed that she looked as confident as she was trying to look. She looked at Marvel and was calmed to find he was looking only at her with adoration in those big brown doe eyes she loved. Her unease melted away and she smile back at him lovingly. They went inside and found their friends. His group of guy friends was around the beer table and cheered when they saw him. He had been the hero of the summer when his parents allowed him to invite all of his friends to their beach house two weeks ago for a week long summer vacation. His parents had gone on a trip to some island somewhere and wouldn't be using it anyway. Marvel had gone with his ten closest friends for guys week while she went camping with her sister and Haymitch. It had been a nice break, a week to themselves which she felt they both needed. She tried to leave to find Johanna and Madge but he held her hand tightly and wrapped his arm around her waist.

She fulfilled her duty of loving girlfriend perfectly. The right amount of PDA, dancing, and general partying necessary. It was getting late and she walked over to the drink table for a cup of some kind of spiked fruit juice and found herself standing next to Peeta Mellark. He was basically the male equivalent to Glimmer. Tall, blonde, blue eyes. At Capital High School if you weren't in love with Marvel, you were definitely in love with Peeta. They were two halves of the same coin in high school world, boys were different though, and they didn't compete for titles like girls did. The boys were practically best friends.

Katniss had been drawn to both boys. In fact, years ago in the eighth grade Katniss had actually been good friends with Glimmer. Their moms had been friends growing up and thus Katniss and Glimmer grew up playing together during their mom's coffee get togethers or mall trips. Glimmer hosted the first boy girl party Katniss had ever gone to at her house which was one of the first fun things Katniss remembered going to after her father's tragic fatal car accident. Katniss had arrived to Glimmer's house young and nervous. They played spin the bottle. Since Katniss' world had only just started to recover from being turned upside down and inside out from the accident nearly two years before this was her first real chance to see the shallow attention seeking girl that Glimmer was growing into. But Katniss knew Peeta Mellark would be there, and she just wanted to forget about home for a while, she wanted the chance to have fun the way a teenager should.

Peeta's spin landed on her, he gave a slightly shy smile and wiped his hands on his jeans. He looked at her and smiled genuinely, she looked deep into those deep blue eyes. His blonde hair was longish and shaggy in a way that was so accidentally cool it hurt. She stroked her braid nervously before they both leaned across the circle of kids who would mostly would grow to the friends she currently had in high school. Everyone hooted and whistled because they were the first of the couple to actually kiss and not chicken out and just hug or something lame. Her cheeks flamed red with embarrassment. Her turn was next and she hoped and prayed and spun the bottle accurately enough for it to land on Peeta again. This time someone declared seven minutes in heaven and they were whisked away to a closet where they were reckless enough to start an actual make out session, well, as capable a make out session as two thirteen year olds are capable of. Between kisses Peeta revealed how he was happy that the bottle had landed on her and no one else. She shared that the only reason she was at this party was for him. They were happy. She had her first boyfriend; they would walk down the halls of their junior high school hand in hand. They stole innocent kisses at their lockers, but, her mother's lifestyle prevented Katniss from hanging out with her friends the way a girl has to in order to keep up with the popular crowd. She had to turn down so many invitations to go hang out or to go to parties that eventually they stopped inviting her altogether. She and her mother fought, Katniss wanted to be part of her crowd, she wanted to be Peeta Mellark's girlfriend.

Peeta was understanding, he was the first boy other than her father to tell her that he loved her. She could see that she was holding him back, during school he would hang out with her, but she began to feel like an outsider from her own friends. He tried to include her, letting her know the origins of all the inside jokes, he really did try. Katniss, however, began to become withdrawn, jealous, and built a wall around herself so no one would see how much it hurt her to miss out. It hurt, but she pulled away from Peeta, sure that he was going to break up with her eventually anyway, this way, if she pulled away enough, it wouldn't hurt her the way she had seen her mother become a shell of herself when her father was gone. It's not the same, but the idea that you can wrap yourself around someone so much that you can't function and hurt all the time even when you pretend you aren't hurting was too much for Katniss to understand at her young age. The end of the school year played out, she was friendly to Peeta, but didn't return his kisses, didn't hold his hand. She just let herself drift away from him until he was nothing more than a friend. When high school started the following September she kept tabs on him. Saw that the core of her old friends formed the popular group at school, along with a mix of kids from other districts of their town such as Marvel, Johanna, and Cato. Peeta was a champ in their age group for wrestling, his brothers before him were also popular enough for the older kids to accept him and kind of adopt him into their groups as well. He was good looking enough to date girls a grade or even two ahead of him. He turned into a real player, never having a steady girl, a different girl around his arm each week it seemed. Katniss was glad that she had ended things with him; he was good looking in the way that made him arrogant, and that was a deal breaker with Katniss.

When Katniss started hanging out with her old crowd after Marvel had brought her in again she and Peeta had never really said much to each other. Which is why she was surprised to find him next to her now, as alone as two people could be at a party full of teenagers.

Peeta cleared his throat next to her, "I see you've forgiven him."

Katniss looked to Peeta, "um, yeah. There's not much to forgive, Marvel and I are solid. I can forgive a onetime mistake."

Peeta looked at her and back to Marvel across the room. Marvel wasn't paying attention to them; he was laughing loudly with Cato and talking to a couple of girls who had the courage to come up to them. "I just want you to know, that we never broke up…um…not officially. So technically you've been cheating on me for the past few months. So I know a lot how Marvel feels, and I just wanted you to know that I'm willing to take a page from your book and forgive you any time you want to come back."

Katniss coughed into her drink. "Did you really just say that to me?"

"Yeah, do you often have daydreams of me saying similar things to you?" Peeta laughed somewhat awkwardly for him. He was acting different, she could tell, she had hung out with him in groups of people enough to know that he never came across as nervous, which is exactly how he seemed now. She looked him in the eyes at the same time he looked into hers. Her heart did a little jump, just the way it did when she was thirteen. His eyes were a different kind of blue, solid and mesmerizing and they seemed to change shades with his mood. Right now they were dark and full of wondering and courage, same way they looked that night they first kissed. She shook the memories out of her head.

"No, I don't." She said rather coldly. She drank from her drink, her head a little dizzy and light from the alcohol in it. She thought she'd better stop while she was ahead.

He looked at her thoughtfully. "I could help you, you know."

"How?" she asked with ice in her tone again. She wasn't sure she wanted to talk to him anymore.

"Well you say that you've forgiven him, but how can you really. I think you'd generate more respect for yourself as queen of the school if you got him back at least a little, by…oh…let's say going upstairs with his best friend like he did to you."

Katniss laughed at that one. "What do you mean generate more respect? I'm not putting on some kind of show for the school, I love Marvel, and Glimmer has never been my best friend. If anything, she's jealous of me."

Peeta waited a few minutes before answering as the area of the room they were in suddenly got crowded. When it seemed he became annoyed and couldn't wait any longer he took her by the elbow and out the patio door that was a few feet away from them on their side of the room. Once outside in a less crowded area he looked at her again with a mischievous smile on his handsome face. "Glimmer was you're best friend once, or as close to having one as I've ever seen you have, and of course she's jealous of you. Glimmer's been Marvel's on and off again girl since forever, well…ok…not forever but since like freshman year. Haven't you ever noticed that she's the one he usually took to dances and stuff? They've never been official but he never was official with anyone until you came in and stole him for yourself."

"I did not steal him, he chose me. I really didn't do much other than be myself, it's not like I'm playing some game with him." She defended herself. Although now that she was thinking of it she did seem to recall that Glimmer and Marvel were once king and queen of some kind of junior sophomore dance, but really she hadn't attended any school dances before the winter formal the previous year. So she really wouldn't have known that they went together regularly.

"All of high school is a game Katniss. I know that you are new to the sport but think of it. You came in and stole your spot on his arm that Glimmer had been working for years to hold down. This was going to be her year until you came into the picture. I'm just saying you need to play the game along with everyone else. Marvel just showed everyone that he has the loyalty of the hottest girl in school, tonight was about him showing everyone that you're his no matter what he does. In this game that basically sends a message out to every guy to not to try anything with his girl, you're in it to win no matter what anyway. At this point you being with anyone else is social suicide for you and whoever else is involved." Peeta explained quickly.

Katniss was getting confused. "I think you're looking into this to closely. I just love him, and I'm willing to forgive him. That's really all there is to it, I'm not playing a game."

"You don't love him." he stated simply.

"Yes I do." Katniss laughed and nodded her head, rolling her eyes in exasperation at him.

"No you don't. I know what you're like in love, what you love with Marvel is being the centre of attention." Peeta said as he leaned down closer to her face. It happened quickly; her body reacted before she did. It was electric. She kissed back, wanting more for no other reason than she needed it to keep existing. She came alive, in that moment she allowed the broken thirteen year old within her relive her dream, with the added bonus that now as seventeen year olds they were both more experienced and they were able to both do this confidently. She forgot who she was, where she was, who may have been watching. Oh god, who was watching? She pulled away abruptly and looked around. They were in the shadows; no one appeared to be paying attention to them at all. She sighed with relief, and looked back at the slyly grinning Peeta Mellark. "If you want to play this game with me, you don't need to tell him. No one needs to know, but I know that we are good together. It could be fun, no one would know, no one would get hurt."

She could do nothing but turn and walk away, sure that the surprise and shame was written all over her face. She walked directly to Marvel, "I'd like to go home now." Marvel turned to look at her with concern on his face. "Please."

He pulled her under his strong arm "Are you ok?"

"Yeah Katniss, are you ok?" Peeta asked as he came walking up to the group, just the right amount of sarcasm in his tone so that only she would pick up on it.

"No, actually, I think there was too much alcohol in my drink. I'm not feeling well; I'd like to go home."

"Marvel, I can drive her home for you. I was just about to leave anyway." Peeta offered.

"No man, that's fine. I'll get her there." Marvel and Katniss said their good byes and left the party. Katniss looked over her shoulder before the left the house and Peeta was watching her, looking very much like the thirteen year old he used to be watching her pull away from her friends. It made her heart hurt for the boy in the memory.

They got in the car; she played the part of sick girlfriend very well, slumped down slightly with her head leaning against the window. She replayed the events of the night, but mostly the kiss. She allowed her fingers to trace her lips where Peeta's kiss had landed. It was confusing, she loved Marvel, but that kiss was electric. It made her shamefully want more; she looked over at Marvel who was concentrating on the road ahead of him. Was this how being with Glimmer had made him feel, is this the feeling he had tried to describe to her when he made that mistake. She loved Marvel; she tried to rationalize what had just happened. It had to be the rush of it, maybe Peeta had been right, and maybe deep down she wanted to follow Johanna's advice, she wanted to do something to get back at Marvel, at least a little bit.