To: Capital Radio Human Resources

From: Madge Undersee

Subject: Application for music curator position

Hello Jill,

It's Madge from production, I hope you are doing well. I noticed that after last week's company meeting, Mr. Abernathy put out a job listing for the music curator job he planned on creating. There was no specification on whether he would be looking inside the company or elsewhere, but with that being said, I took the liberty to fill out the application and update my resume and cover letter for his perusal.

Please forward the attached documents to Haymitch. In my almost three years working at this company I've learned so much and I'm ready to contribute more, and in a meaningful way. If there are any questions, you can contact me at my cell phone number or office number. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Best regards,

Madge Undersee

"Can I help you with anything?" Madge hears from behind her, and when she spins around she sees a wine boutique employee, staring at her eagerly. Maybe he came over because she looks lost; and she isn't usually overwhelmed by picking a bottle wine that she'll like but these days her head feels cluttered, and this feels like somewhat of a special occasion.

"Maybe," she shrugs. "I'm bringing a bottle of wine to a friend's house. She's really big on wine, and I think she's making charcuterie, or something fancy. Do you have anything that would pair well with anything, preferably a white?"

"Hm, fancy, eh? How fancy are we talking?"

"Like, under 40 dollars, so not that fancy. I think she plays the fanciness up ironically," Madge ponders, thinking about the sincerity of Delly's haste text message plans. She loves inviting a bunch of friends over and cooking for them, and who is Madge to object? If all she has to do is bring a bottle of something to get some delicious food and a fun night with friends, it's a worthy trade off.

The employee points her to a couple options, and she grabs the one from the region that Delly said that she enjoyed. None of them really knew anything about wine anyway, despite enjoying it so much. But at least this way the bottle she brings couldn't possibly be a total miss.

Even if she's only two days into the week, Madge needs this night and has been looking forward to it. Between everything that happened over the weekend and getting her application in for the new job to HR, there's nowhere she'd rather be than with a couple of friends winding down for the evening. And she's so grateful that Kota's not with her, at least in this circumstance. Finding a babysitter would just create so many extra problems.

It's why she's so surprised when she knocks on Thom and Delly door, and it's Gale who answers it.

"Hey Madge," he greets, almost like a sigh. He's clearly in his work clothes, but he's ditched the tie sometime in between getting out of the office and coming here.

"Hi," answers back dumbfoundedly. She doesn't know why it never crossed her mind that Gale would be here, they've been in this situation with Thom and Delly many times. Madge and Gale don't share many of the same friends, but Delly and Thom are their two closest ones; they set them up and now they happen to be engaged. It's not uncommon for them to end up hanging out with each other when it comes to Thom or Delly, but it's simply all the more uncomfortable. "You found a sitter?"

"Of course. Same girl as last time," he nods, still awkwardly guarding the door and staring at her wordlessly. Madge can hear music playing quietly behind him and then Delly pokes her head around the corner and flashes her friend a smile.

"Gale, let her in for God's sake. You look like you're either going to fight her or kiss her," she jokes, urging him to move away so that she can hug her friend. Madge doesn't need to make eye contact with Gale to know how awkward this is going to be. She hasn't filled Delly in on the situation yet, nor does she really want to. She already took enough scorn from Johanna when she tried to explain what had happened on Sunday morning.

"So he just wanted you to shut up, or felt some sort of urge and absolutely needed to kiss you?"

"I guess, I don't know. He said he was confused too."

"I don't really care if he's confused or not, you really shouldn't care either," Jo responds. They're sat on the couch and drinking coffee after Gale and KoKo went home. "I would scorn him for being selfish, but I guess there's no point now. I guess we should just figure out if you like him back?"

"What, no. Who said that he liked me to begin with?"

"Don't be vapid, Madge. Obviously he does, or at least he misses you in some sort of way. I don't know. But clearly he was empowered by some sort of romantic feeling which caused him to want to kiss you."

"You make it sound straightforward."

"It is straightforward. He feels some sort of way about you, and that's irrelevent to all the other stuff that you guys have to work out. But you just have to find out whether you want to work those things out and address the feelings if you reciprocate them, or just leave everything hanging."

Madge thinks about it and wonders if it's really as easy as Jo makes out. "What do you think I should do? You obviously have an opinion about me and about Gale."

"I can't permit myself to have an opinion right now. You really need to work this out with Hawthorne."

"Can you give me a clue, at least?" she asks while laughing humorlessly. Any sense of direction would help at this point.

"I think you already know my opinion on him. It's bias and unhelpful."

Jo will always give advice that has the interests of Madge's wellbeing in mind. She doesn't know what Madge is feeling inside and only knows the emotional pain she went through all throughout senior year. And she's right when she says that reiterating those thoughts would be unhelpful.

"Hey Dell," she smiles, hugging her friend back tightly and deliberately never looking up to meet Gale's eyes.

"I'm so happy you came. Jo couldn't, she had work."

Madge raises a brow. "Allegedly." For someone who gives such pragmatic advice, Jo sure is a hypocrite for hooking up with Cressida time and time again.

Delly laughs and shrugs. "Well, you know Jo. She's always bored at these things anyways, she probably only comes to not hurt my feelings."

"That's not true. But she would get a little bit antsy for sure."

Thom's in the kitchen making something aromatic and delicious smelling, and Madge says a quick hello to him before talking to some of their other friends. She's met most of them, or at least heard their names through conversation. There's Portia, who works with Delly at the boutique, and Bristel and Darius, who are Thom's friends from out of town.

At dinner they talk about many things. Bristel seems to be really upset that she missed their little engagement party.

"That sounds like so much fun! I wish I could've been there."

"Well, Gale and Madge did the whole thing, so..." Thom shrugs, taking a sip of wine.

Bristel looks over at them with wide eyes. "You guys are awesome!"

"They're the ones who set up me and Thom," Delly explains.

"Really? How did that go down?"

"Well, Gale and Madge dated for a while, maybe five or six years ago. And Madge is my childhood best friend. But after when I moved to the city, I was really struggling, you know? I had a hard couple of years looking after Eli, I forgot what it was like to focus on myself. Anyway, I took up a job waitressing at a small restaurant downtown… that's when I ran into Gale."

"It was a joint right near my office at that time," he explains, butting in. "I hadn't seen Delly in a while too, so it was crazy when I saw her there."

"I was renting this shitty apartment, the shower head would spurt out in all the wrong directions. I brought it up to Gale, I guess, he said he knew a guy who could fix it. A good friend of his."

"It was Thom," Bristel guesses, so invested in the story.

"Of course," Delly replies, giving her fiancé a coy glance that Madge couldn't summarize into words. "He came for an estimate, and then by the time he came back the next week to fix the damn thing, we sort of just, asked each other out."

Madge swoons. Gale's probably sick of the story at this point, because he lived it, but Madge was only a passive observer at that time. Delly and Thom are so good for each other that she knows that it couldn't've been a coincidence that Gale recommended Thom to go fix Delly's shower. He knew what he was doing by letting them meet. It only took a couple of dates for Delly to start shining again, acting playful and optimistic like she always was before Eli's condition, before she was forced to be serious for four years.

"And are you two still friends?" Bristel asks, and it takes Madge a moment to realize that she's referring to her and Gale.

She stares at Gale for the first time that night, trying to find some sort of consensus on whether their getting the full, complicated story tonight, or the abridged version.

"Kind of," Gale chuckles, looking back at her with a gaze stronger than normal. Maybe he doesn't feel like rehashing their history tonight either, not now of all times. But Madge bites the bullet.

"I, um… I got pregnant shortly before we ended things. So, we're still friends, I guess. Through Delly and Thom obviously, but we co-parent our daughter. That requires us seeing each other quite often, I suppose."

"Wow, that's like pre-divorce," Portia comments. Gale is clearly not having that much fun putting labels on things that are best left alone. "How modern."

Madge just shrugs and laughs sarcastically. "That's us. The poster children of modern day parenting."

"And what's your daughter like?"

"She's really kind, and she's just a big bundle of enthusiasm," she responds. "Her name is Dakota. She just turned five."

As much as they love talking about Kota, there's tension across the table when she looks over at him. Maybe he's getting a taste of his own medicine. After all, this is how she feels every time she goes over to the Hawthornes, pretending that everything is fine when all the issues are looming under the table.

Thankfully, they manage to get through dinner without talking about their relationship any longer. Everyone's more interested in Thom and Delly's upcoming wedding and all the happy things happening in their lives.

Madge sees Gale checking his watch, and sometimes his phone. She knows that he's planning to leave as soon as it isn't rude.

That moment comes after dessert, Thom and Delly insisted to clean up while everyone hangs around and chats in the living room. Gale puts on his coat and lets the hosts know that he's leaving, says he need to go into work early tomorrow. Madge is watching him the whole time though, and she decides to follow him.

"Delly, I'm really sorry. I have to go too. I'll tell you everything soon, I promise," she explains, knowing there would be some confusion about why she's leaving right after Gale.

"Don't worry," her friend brushes off. "I.. Thom literally just told me what happened. I'm so sorry I made you come tonight, I didn't know it would be so awkward and-"

"It's not your fault, Dell. Thank you for dinner, okay? It was delicious."

"It was all Thom," she dismisses, and Delly doesn't keep her any longer so that she can speed walk out the door and down the hall, searching for Gale.

Madge doesn't really know what she wants to say, but tonight she feels somewhat in charge of herself. Her application at work was submitted, and now she's going to confront Gale. She's going to figure out what he wants from her, and decide if she wants that too.

He's still waiting for the elevator when she gets to him, he looks confused as to why she followed.

"Why are you here?"

"Didn't you say we had to talk about it?"

His stare is still fixated on hers with so many unspoken emotions. For some moments Madge notices his vulnerability too, when he hugged her after the dinner at the Hawthornes', after he kissed her. But Gale puts his guard up again quickly, and she sometimes wishes she could do the same.

He nods and steps into the arrived elevator. "Okay, let's talk about it."

"Were you going to walk home?"

"Yeah." Gale's place is not too far from here.

"Okay, I can walk you home and call a cab, I suppose."

"Sure."

The elevator is filled with pregnant silence, and Madge is just trying to put words together and plan how she wants this conversation to go. She knows that the minute they start, all her neurotic plans will go off the rails, and that it's never going to be easy to talk about this stuff.

The air is cool outside; fall is always more like winter and less like summer.

"I'm sorry," Gale mumbles after pacing down the sidewalk a few steps.

"What for?"

"I…I always kept you and Kota separate in my mind for some reason. The things I did for Kota had it's own ramifications, and the things I did for you were separate. Do you know what I mean?"

"Sure."

"The whole thing with my family… was for Kota. I never thought beyond her, or my siblings and my mom. Well, I guess that only leaves you and me."

"You don't think what you're doing with your family is selfish?"

"I didn't, but now I do," he shrugs, stuffing his hands in his pockets while they walk. "When we broke up… I did it because we drifted apart. I was, I don't know, confused by the falling out with Katniss. And I could tell that me never being there, physically and emotionally was making it hard for you."

"You broke up with me for me?" Madge asks in disbelief. "Because I still loved you, you know that right?"

"I loved you too. But that doesn't mean it was the best thing for either of us."

"I just don't know why you thought you could make that executive decision."

"Because there was nothing left, Madge!" he exclaims, stopping in his tracks. There aren't any people out on the streets anymore, but she knows that he still feels uncomfortable out in the open, talking about closed matters. She stops walking too and turns to listen to what he has to say. "What we had in college, it was so fucking good but it's done. It's gone, and we were never going to get that back.

"Okay," she answers back softly, not really seeing where this verbal spar is going.

"Do you disagree?"

"No, I don't. Please, go on."

He runs a hand through his hair and looks past her. "And I just keep thinking about why we stopped loving each other."

"I never-"

"Me neither," Gale promises, and it twists her heart. "But I think about why I never tried again, why you never tried again and it's because Kota became our number one priority. I prioritized her over everything which is why when my family assumed we were still together, I went along with it. And when they talked about how great you were and how good we were supposed to be I didn't have to act the part. I knew that it was all true. But I didn't know how to act on it because I wasn't thinking about that, not directly. I was too invested in being a parent."

"I know what you mean, it was hard."

"But I guess, I'm at a point in being a father where… I'm realizing that I need to act on those things that I put aside."

"Again, Gale. You're always making choices for the two of us and I can't let you do that," Madge reminds him. She crosses her arms and sighs.

"But don't you feel the same way too? I'm not forcing you into anything but if you want to try and I do too then I think that that's okay."

"I feel the same way, maybe. But you can't just cast our daughter aside and say that it's all fine and good."

"What do you mean?"

"Us being together, it confuses her. She wants it more than anything, Gale, and it breaks my heart. If we decide to try things, who's to say that it'll all work out? I'm… I'm afraid that it won't and it's going to make her so upset and just even more confused."

"So what? I love you but I'm not allowed to act on it, so long as we have a daughter together?"

Madge's breath catches. "Don't put it that way."

"Why not, I really mean it, Madge," he insists, nodding ahead to their path ahead. They start to walk again, maybe the motion helps him piece his thoughts together. "I'm tired of being in this routine that feels selfless and lonely. I mean, we cherish Dakota and literally all the happiness I permit myself to have comes from her. But isn't that unsustainable?"

"Sure."

"And I've thought about why we never tried again, it doesn't make sense to me anymore. I want to try again."

"We can't just forget all of the problems that are undealt with and move forth into the big unknown," she points out with some sense of sarcasm. Gale is hopeful, he was forced to be economical and practical but he's always been a dreamer.

"Like what?"

"Like, you need to tell your family that we've been raising her separately for four years."

He seems to be taken aback by her blatantness. But then he shrugs. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah, okay. That needs to change, but it's hard for me. We can figure out all of that later."

"You're just going to let go of a campaign that you've been spearheading for Kota's entire life?"

"Literally everything about our relationship and our parenting is arbitrary right now Madge, I don't know why you're so shocked," Gale laughs humorlessly, he's clearly thrown all care for mannerisms out the window. "I'm just ready for our relationship to mean something again, aren't you?"

Madge wonders why he's stopped walking and realizes that they've arrived at his condo. Gale's still giving her that hopeful look, the one that he's been donning throughout this whole walk home. She has no more words left to give him but she bites her tongue anyways.

"I… I can't do this right now, Gale. I agree with most of what you're saying but… I don't know how to do this," she whispers at him. He's close enough to pick up the sound anyway.

"You're too cerebral."

"And you're too impulsive," Madge retorts. He bites his lip for a second and stares for an eternity, maybe still trying to formulate arguments. Maybe they've exhausted all that's left though, because after a while he nods resignedly and glances at his building.

"Okay. I'm going to go," he bids, swallowing every word. She feels bad, because she knows that she's leaving him empty handed. Madge wants to give him something, anything to soothe Gale after he just bore his heart out. She's never been that kind of girl though, so she gives him a curt nod.

"Bye."

Madge watches him walk deliberately into his building, and she sits on the bench outside for a while letting the wind blow at her hair and still calculating the whole situation.

Maybe she's paralyzed by clarity, but when she thinks about it nothing Gale admitted or said was extremely shocking. She could've pieced his ideas together herself. And sure, her chest hurt when he kept throwing words like "love" and sentiments of regret at her, but that's just Gale, he just does that to her.

Gale's right, though, about her being too cerebral. She wants to prove him wrong, wants to run after him and do something that she hasn't thought through to the utmost extent. Even if he'd allegedly love her anyways, but Madge is tired of being an afterthought.

It's then that her heart starts to fidget, and for the first time in so long Madge sets it free, letting her brain take the backseat.

"Oh, fuck it."

She gets up from the bench and paces into the lobby. It's humorous to her that she's spent the whole night chasing Gale Hawthorne through apartment buildings.

A/N: I think that's what you call a cliffhanger...? But I guess not, because you all know what's going to happen anyway.

Please drop a comment if you enjoyed it! I sure enjoyed writing this one.

P.S. I think lost some of my precious reviews last week, mostly from the first day of posting. I'm so sad! Sorry if I didn't get to read your review, I wish I could've.