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Johanna recoiled in shock and disbelief, widening her eyes at the horrifying sight before her. "Please tell me I'm hallucinating," she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. It looked like she'd just seen Clove and Cato making out on her kitchen counter (which was just ew…like, she ate there), but between all the booze and the fact that she'd been up for about twenty hours with no nap, she very well could have been seeing things.
She stared emotionlessly as Clove slid off the counter and smoothed down her tank top in an attempt to look less discombobulated, to no avail. Her brown hair was unkempt and knotty, her makeup slightly smeared. Getting caught sure did seem to sober her up a bit though, because she walked over to Johanna calmly and steadily, like she'd never had a drink in her life. "Johanna," Clove started, using the tone of voice she always used when she was negotiating with people, "you can't tell anyone about this, okay? No one can know about this except me, you, and Cato."
Johanna scoffed. Figures that she'd try to talk her into keeping this a secret. "No," she replied sternly, shaking her head. "You can't just hook up with whoever you want whenever you want when you're dating someone. Marvel deserves to know about this."
"Um, who said anything about telling Marvel?" Cato interrupted from where he was leaning against the counter in nothing but a pair of boxers.
Johanna folded her arms across her chest. "I did, asshole. Speaking of which, how could you do this to him? I thought he was supposed to be your best friend."
Cato sighed. "You think I don't know that? Believe me, it took every fiber of my being to resist Clove for as long as I did."
Johanna snorted. "Romantic."
"Look, we just…we can't tell Marvel. Not yet, at least," Cato insisted.
"Please, Johanna," Clove begged. "Please don't tell anyone."
Johanna sighed. "This is so wrong."
"Come on," Cato continued. "You're Johanna Mason. You don't care about things."
She shrugged. He had a point there. "Whatever," she submitted to their pressure to keep things quiet. "But don't mistake my not telling Marvel for approval of what's going on here. I may not be running upstairs to tattle on you two, but that doesn't mean I don't think you should tell him."
"Thank you." Clove let out a sigh of relief.
Johanna shook her head in amazement. "You know, Clove, I would've thought that you, of all people, would be above all of this cheating shit, given the whole situation with your mom."
"Leave my mother out of this," Clove snapped defensively.
"I've got a point, and you know it," Johanna said as she strolled over to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water. "Now, I'm going back to bed. So don't disturb me."
With that, Johanna turned on her heel and headed in the direction of the stairs, before turning back around to face them one last time. "By the way, could you not mention my name when you decide to fess up to Marvel?"
"What makes you think I'm ever going to tell him about this?" Clove asked.
Johanna almost laughed. "Because I know you. The guilt is going to eat you alive until you finally decide to confess, which is what I'm telling you to do right now, before things get any more twisted."
Clove pursed her lips in reply, knowing in her heart that her friend was right but refusing to accept it. She didn't want to tell Marvel ever, but she knew she'd eventually break down. Johanna saying it out loud only made it more real.
Accepting that she wasn't going to get a reply, Jo turned back around and jogged up the stairs quickly, her ponytail bouncing as she left a troubled Clove and tired Cato in her wake.
"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty, rise and shine!"
Clove rolled over in Jo's king-sized bed, burying her face in her pillow at the sudden burst of brightness. "Turn it off now," she groaned.
"Come on, Clove, you're the only one not up," Katniss complained.
Clove exhaled loudly as the events of last night slowly made their way back into her memory. The fight with Glimmer, hooking up with Cato, getting caught…
She was hit with a hammering headache as she slowly attempted to sit up. With a loud groan, she massaged her temples, immediately wishing she would have taken it easy last night. Katniss shot her an amused smile before tossing a bottle of water and two aspirins onto the bed.
"Thank you." Clove shot her a grateful smile.
"Uh huh," Katniss said with a roll of her eyes. "Peeta just cooked, and we're heading down to-"
"Wait," Clove interrupted her. "Peeta cooked?"
Katniss smiled. "Yes."
Clove lit up like a Christmas tree. "Oh, do I love that boy and his culinary talents."
"As I was saying," Katniss continued with a laugh, "we want to go down to the beach in a little while, so get your ass up out of bed or we're leaving you here."
"I'll be down in a minute," she mumbled, and Katniss took that as her cue to leave, strolling out of the bedroom carelessly. Clove almost sighed; she wished she could be that careless.
Pulling on a black string bikini and a sheer white cover up, Clove nervously ran her fingers through her hair, wondering what in the hell she was supposed to do about this situation with Marvel and Cato. Things with Marvel needed to be ended, she knew that, but she was at a loss with how to deal with Cato.
If she'd learned anything over the past couple months of being back in Beverly Hills, it was that feelings were fleeting and not to be trusted. So sure, maybe today she thought she loved Cato, but tomorrow morning she could just as easily wake up and want to be nothing more than friends.
Facts, she'd learned, however, were concrete, so Clove decided to do the one thing that always made her feel in control: she made a mental list of everything in this situation that was indisputable.
Fact 1: Cato had slept with at least two other girls – first that blonde bimbo at the hotel, and then her stepsister to be – within the three weeks that they'd been broken up.
Fact 2: Clove made out with Cato late last night, despite the fact that Cato was a man-whore and Marvel was her boyfriend.
Fact 3: She was an ungrateful idiot.
She plopped down onto the bed. All that this fact thing was accomplishing was making her feel incredibly guilty about last night. She knew making out with Cato was a mistake, but that didn't change the fact that it had happened and Johanna had seen. No matter how hard she tried to brush the events of last night under a rug, there was still a girl sitting downstairs with the power to end Clove's relationship with Marvel at any given moment. Not that Jo was the type of friend to promise one thing then do another, but it was unnerving nevertheless to know that there was someone other than she and Cato who knew about last night.
Clove, like the professional procrastinator that she was, took her sweet time combing her hair and brushing her teeth and applying her makeup, not because she cared that much about her appearance, but because every second that passed was one more second she could spend ignoring the problems that awaited her downstairs. Finally, however, when there was absolutely nothing else she could possibly do to waste time, she headed down to face her friends – Johanna, Marvel, and Cato, in particular – with one deep, slightly panicked breath.
"Took you long enough," Marvel called as Clove rounded the banister of the stairs, and Clove rolled her eyes playfully in reply.
Johanna swallowed the lump in her throat. She was trying desperately to look calm, cool, and collected, but on the inside, she was freaking out. She had walked in on two of her best friends making out last night, and she wasn't even sure if they remembered. After all, they had all been pretty drunk, and if she was being honest, Johanna was surprised that she herself remembered the incidents of the previous night.
She could feel Clove's anxious gaze on her, indicating that she must have remembered as well. "We need to talk," Jo mouthed, and Clove nodded curtly in reply.
"Clove," Johanna said aloud, "can you, um, come with me to, uh, get the stuff out of my car?"
"What stuff?" Katniss asked skeptically.
"Yeah, absolutely," Clove replied before turning to Katniss. "It's just some stuff we need for this AP Physics project we're doing together."
Katniss nodded in understanding, and Johanna silently praised Clove for her impressive ability to lie seamlessly on the spot.
"Don't miss us too much," Clove called as she and Johanna headed away from the crew and towards the four-car garage.
As soon as they were out of hearing range of their friends, Johanna started whispering frantically. "Clove, I'm freaking out. I'm really fucking freaking out. Marvel's been trying to talk to me all morning, and I keep freezing up like a deer in fucking headlights. Do you have any idea how hard it is to lie to him?"
Clove nervously shushed her, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one had followed them. "Look, Jo, I know it's hard to lie to him. But I need you to give me a few more days to figure out how to tell him about what happened."
"A few more days!?" a panicked Johanna whispered. "I have to lie to him like this for a few more days?"
"Please just bear with me," Clove begged. "Avoid him if you have to. Just please don't say anything to him. He needs to hear it from me."
Johanna sighed. In all honesty, she wasn't really that freaked out about keeping things from Marvel. After all, she was an expert at keeping secrets – years of living in Beverly Hills had assisted in the growth and development of that characteristic. She was mainly freaked out because, well, she thought she might be falling for Marvel. And long story short, Johanna Mason did not fall for people.
The closest thing she'd ever had to a relationship was some no-strings-attached shit with Gloss Montgomery (total douchebag, she was aware) over the summer. Simply put, Johanna wasn't much of a lovey-dovey-stay-up-all-night-talking-about-your-feelings-and-shit type of girl. Commitment scared her; she didn't like the idea of getting attached to people. She figured that, especially in a town like Beverly Hills, it was better to depend only on yourself. Some might say her guardedness was a pity, but she saw it as more of a blessing in disguise.
"Fine," Johanna replied. "Let's just go to the beach. I need to tan."
"What the fuck is he doing here?"
Those were the first words out of Cato's mouth after stepping into the Everdeens' Malibu beach house. Finnick and Annie were sipping on martinis at the island counter when Cato barged in unexpectedly.
"I could ask the same thing," Finnick replied, narrowing his eyes at Cato.
"Who invited him?" Cato asked furiously, turning to Katniss.
She held up her hands. "Guilty."
Suddenly, Cato stopped, a smirk coming across his face as he caught sight of a little bruising around Finn's right eye. "Is that a black eye I see?"
Annie pursed her lips. "You're such an asshole."
"And you're horrified to have any blood relation to me and you wish I would learn to control my temper and blah blah blah…" Cato interrupted her. "Finnick deserved that."
"No, he didn't! If anybody deserved a black eye, it's you, Mr. I'm-a-gorgeous-teenage-quarterback-and-I-think-I-can-do-whatever-I-want," Annie shouted.
"Annie, calm down," Clove insisted.
"Oh, shut up," Annie said. "How can you be on his side?"
Clove sighed. "I'm not on his side. Believe me, I want you and Finn to be happy, but you need to understand that this isn't exactly easy for Cato. I mean, Finnick's his best friend and you're his sister."
"Are you insinuating that it's easy for me when he fucks my friends?"
Clove stiffened. "What are you trying to say?"
"For one, Clove, you're my friend, and I didn't throw a fit when you and my brother started dating, did I?"
"That's different," Clove started to say, but Annie cut her off.
"No, it's not," Annie said. "And don't even get me started on some of my friends in my own grade. Do you have any idea how many times I've woken up in the middle of the night during a sleepover to find one of my friends missing from my room, off somewhere hooking up with my brother? It's repulsive."
"Annie, I'm your older brother," Cato began. "It's my job to protect you from people like me and Finnick."
"But I don't need protecting," Annie insisted, her anger turning to desperation. "I'm going to get my heart broken eventually. It's inevitable. Whether it's Finnick who breaks it or not, it doesn't matter."
"It does matter," Cato said. "You don't deserve to ever have your heart broken, especially not by someone as sleazy as Finnick – no offense, man."
"None taken," Finnick replied. "I can't exactly disagree."
"Look," Annie started, "I know that Finnick's been a little sleazy, as you said, in the past. He's been to a lot of parties and slept with a ton of girls and probably has more experience at 16 than I'll have in my entire life, but I don't care. That was the past. He's different now, and despite his history, I think I love him."
"Y-you…what?" Finnick stuttered.
A small smile crept onto Clove's face. It cracked her up how scared football players got when somebody mentioned love – like it was some kind of disease or something that they'd caught.
Annie nodded hopefully.
Finnick suddenly smiled. "I think I love you, too."
Cato made a gagging noise from across the room, successfully ruining the moment. "Look, there's clearly nothing I can do to keep you two away from one another, but is there any way you can keep the lovey-dovey shit to a minimum when I'm around?"
"Maybe," Annie replied unconvincingly, pressing a lingering kiss to Finnick's lips and grinning when Cato groaned.
"Enough," Clove blurted, rolling her eyes. "We're losing precious tanning time. The lovebirds can make out on their own time."
Cato threw a grateful glance in her direction, and she grinned.
"Who's up for a game of beach volleyball?" Marvel called, and Johanna hooted.
"Me and Clo against you and Cato!"
"What!?" Marvel said incredulously. "That's not fair! Two of the star athletes at Panem Prep versus a pair of teenage girls."
Clove rolled her eyes. "Don't be sexist."
"Yeah," Jo backed her up, smirking. "We'll see if you still feel that way after we kick your asses."
"Oh, it's on," Cato laughed, grabbing a volleyball out of his bag and heading out onto the back deck.
Clove, Johanna, and Marvel followed him outside, leaving Katniss and Peeta alone in the kitchen – save for Finnick and Annie, who were too caught up in the other's lips to even realize that everybody else had headed down to the beach.
"So…" Katniss trailed off, feeling rather awkward seeing as she'd woken up in Peeta's arms this morning.
"About last night," Peeta started, but Katniss interrupted him.
"I don't really remember anything, but I don't suppose we did anything other than cuddle?"
Peeta smiled. "Nothing but cuddling."
She let out a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God."
There was a glimpse of disappointment in his eyes for a split second, before he replied, "Yeah. Thank God."
He'd had a secret crush on her for years, but not once had she ever shown the slightest sliver of affection for him in turn. So he kept his feelings a secret, watching from a distance as she went through guys like they were hundred dollar bills. And when she got her heart broken by yet another one of her many suitors, he was always there for her with a gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream and a batch of homemade cookies to help her get her mind off things.
"So do you want me to help you cook?" she asked him, pushing herself up onto the counter swiftly.
"I'm cooking?"
She smiled. "Absolutely."
He nodded in agreement. He couldn't say no to that perfect smile of hers.
"And that's a game!" Jo exclaimed as Clove sent the volleyball flying over the net and into the sand with her signature spike. The girls had won by a mere two points, which wasn't exactly the sweeping victory they were hoping for, but Clove couldn't be disappointed. A win was a win.
"You know, Marv, I agree with you. This game was kind of unfair." Clove smirked. "Two of the star athletes at Panem Prep versus a pair of inexperienced young boys."
"Yeah, how does it feel to have lost to a measly pair of teenage girls?" Johanna teased him playfully.
Marvel shook his head, chuckling. "Rather shitty, actually."
Johanna rolled her eyes. "I'm going to check on the status of the hamburgers and French fries that Peeta said he was cooking for us like, an hour ago."
As Jo headed back into the house, Clove plopped down on the sand in between Marvel and Cato, wrapping her arms around both of them. Marvel kissed the top of her head gently, and it wasn't until then that the real guilt started to hit her. She had actually cheated on her boyfriend – and with his best friend, at that. Johanna was right last night; Clove was no better than her mother.
"Damn," Cato said, staring out at the Pacific Ocean in awe. "Look at those waves."
"I know, man," Marvel agreed. "Wanna go surfing?"
"Um, absolutely," Cato replied cooly.
"I'll go get our boards from my car," Marvel said as he stood up, wiping the sand from his legs.
Clove squealed internally. She loved it when the boys surfed. It was so fucking hot.
"So Clover," Cato whispered huskily as soon as Marvel was out of sight. "I bet you can't get me off your mind."
"Don't flatter yourself," she replied flatly, folding her arms across her chest.
"Johanna said she wouldn't tell," Cato tempted her, pressing his lips to her collarbone.
"Marvel is your best friend," she protested, but continued to let him trail kisses down her chest until he reached the black polyester fabric of her bikini top. The whole time, her face remained stolid and detached, which only made things hotter in Cato's eyes.
"Stop," she finally said, gently pushing him away from her with one hand. "We can't do this."
"We're just having some fun," Cato insisted. "It means nothing."
Clove scoffed. "Look, maybe one day, when I'm like, I don't know, available, we can try out the whole friends with benefits, no strings attached shit. But right now, I'm in a relationship with your best friend, and until I figure out a way to break up with him, you and I can't be anything but friends."
"Whatever, Clove," Cato said, shaking his head. "But don't you dare go getting pissed at me when I go back to having one-night-stands every other night, alright?"
Before Clove could say anything in reply, the shrill ringtone of Cato's phone interrupted them.
"Hello?" Cato accepted the call.
"Hi, Cato." It was his mom. She sounded upset.
"What's up?"
"You might want to sit down for this. Something terrible has happened."
AN:
Yes, I am alive and well :) I'm so sorry for taking so long to update. By the time I got finals out of the way, my Netflix addiction kind of spiraled out of control, and on top of that, I didn't really know what exactly I wanted this chapter to be like. But you'll be glad to know that the next chapter is already in the works (and has been, actually, since this chapter was only at like 1000 words).
I also finally got around to updating my other Clato story, Backwards, in the last two months, so feel free to go check that out and let me know what you think of it!
Also, I have a couple of questions for you guys: what did you think of the tiny bit of info I finally decided to put in here about Peeta and Kat's relationship? and what do you think Cato's mom has to tell him? Let me know in a review :P
Anyway, please follow/fave/review, and tell all your fanfiction friends to do the same :)
xoxo