Delly Cartwright was Peeta's oldest, and perhaps best, friend. They'd lived in the same neighborhood since Peeta was nine – waiting together at their shared bus stop, eating dinner at each other's houses, drawing pictures on their driveways with colored chalk. When Peeta moved there in the fourth grade, Delly was the first one to defend him when the other kids made fun of his Texan accent, which he spent the rest of the school year working hard to lose. And when some of their classmates teased Delly about the lingering baby fat that made her cheeks and stomach bigger than those of her peers, Peeta was the one who stood up to them. This was still that period of childhood before it was socially acceptable for boys and girls to be friends, what with the rampant threat of cooties, so Delly liked to tell people that Peeta was her brother. And on those occasions when Peeta spent the evening at the Cartwrights' house – where there was no yelling, no passive-aggressive digs leveled at one another, no one bursting into tears, no fistfights or broken dishes – Peeta reveled in the fantasy of having Delly as a sister. He'd liked being a Cartwright, if only temporarily.
So he tried hard to remember that as he sat there at his kitchen table. For the past hour he'd been one-handedly sketching a picture of the sun setting over a lake while he held the telephone to his ear. Delly was married, a mother of two, with a career that fulfilled her, living in the dream house her husband had built for her. She'd always been sunshine personified, but lately she was radiating happiness. It hovered in the air between them, even if that air now stretched for hundreds of miles. She also made it her mission to spread her good fortune to all of her loved ones. It didn't surprise Peeta, then, that at every opportunity after he and Clove had split, Delly attempted to set Peeta up with one of her many friends. With no success.
"She's gorgeous, Peet," came Delly's voice on the other end of the line, "and she has a Master's in Economics, so maybe she could help with your bakery problem." Ah, yes. Not only was Delly going to help his love life, she was also going to save his livelihood. If awards were given for excellence in multitasking, Delly's dream house would be littered with blue ribbons.
The last time he went on a blind date, it was with one of Delly's sorority sisters, her "Little", whatever that meant. The woman was beautiful, with shiny blond hair and long legs and eyes so vividly green he wasn't even sure they were her natural color. When she introduced herself, telling him to "just call [her] Glimmer," he tried not to use that as a strike against her. Tried not to keep score, period. Delly had warned him to keep an open mind. That not everyone was Clove.
At the pretentious little bistro she'd picked out, in which they were served far too little food for far too much money, Glimmer spent half the night talking about her ex. Marvel never used to take her out anywhere nice. Marvel had a new girlfriend already. Marvel's cock was apparently the size of a brazil nut. Strike two. If he were keeping score. It was possible Delly believed that setting Peeta up with someone who'd also just gotten out of a long-term relationship would ensure that they were both on equal footing. But Peeta could still go the rest of his life without hearing the name Marvel ever again.
After dinner, they'd gone back to his place to watch a movie on the couch. Not ten minutes later, Glimmer crawled into his lap in a straddling position, her hands cradling the back of his head, fingers buried in the soft curls there. Her eyes were little pools of midnight. She wanted him. She said so. She told him that she wanted him to literally fuck her brains out. And with that, the umpire was sending her off the plate, ending the inning that ended the game. Peeta laughed in her face. He hadn't meant to. He just couldn't erase the unintentionally hilarious mental image those words created. Any arousal he'd felt had disappeared by then. He knew that if he'd been interested, he could have spun some lie, charmed her into resuming what she was doing. He didn't. She slid off his lap then, and smoothed the wrinkles out of her slinky black dress. Even before she was out the door, complaining of a headache, he knew for sure he'd never see this woman again. He was okay with that.
"And before you tell me you're not interested," Delly continued, "just hear me out. Cecelia has three kids of her own, all boys, so she'd be good with Max. She'd be good for you too, I just know it."
Peeta raked his free hand through his hair and sighed. "I'll think about it, Dell, okay?"
"She's divorced too, and she's just the nicest person, Peeta. After everything she's been through, she deserves someone like you. Her ex is such a rat. She invested seventeen years of her life with him, gave him three children, and always worked her tail off keeping her figure nice. She goes to the gym four days a week and she's even sworn off refined sugar completely. And you know what he did? On her 37th birthday, he ran off with his 22 year-old secretary, like he's Don Draper or something. I'm telling you, Peeta, she needs a good guy like y—"
"Stop." He couldn't hear anymore. It was all making his stomach churn. Every cell in his body felt weighted down. Just that morning he'd been thinking about hope, clinging to it desperately like a life preserver. Actually believing that he deserved a shot at happiness with someone. A few short months ago he would have jumped at the chance to meet this woman. But now all he could think about was Katniss. Every time he closed his eyes it was all he could do not to hear her voice, smell her skin, imagine the taste of her mouth, the feel of her body underneath his. "Just stop, Delly," he said, sounding so tired even to his own ears. "You're going to have to set her up with someone else. It can't be me." He was no better than the rat of an ex husband.
"What? But I don't understa—"
"I make cakes for a living," he said with a light laugh, forcing away any trace of the guilt that corroded his insides. "And you're trying to fix me up with someone who doesn't eat sugar? It'd never work."
Delly sounded disappointed, but she let the subject drop. The rest of the conversation was fairly benign. And one-sided. "Mary Jane just passed her road test." "Thom bought me the most beautiful garnet earrings for our anniversary." "The Barefoot Contessa taught me how to make my own dill pickles." Peeta preferred it this way. It was always easier hearing about someone else's life than facing his own.
His morning had started off well: helping Katniss get to school, their talk on the way there. But as the day wore on, it quickly deteriorated.
After having dropped Katniss off, Peeta came home to find a message on the answering machine from his ex-wife, her sharp voice shouting the kind of invectives that, had he not been so desensitized to it by now, might have burrowed beneath his thick skin and stung him.
To be fair, her anger wasn't completely uncalled-for this time. He'd shown Max The Muppet Movie during their last visit. As a result, Max developed a deep, spiritual connection with Animal, even banging on rocks with sticks pretending they were drums. So when Mr. Templesmith across the street was disposing of his banged-up but perfectly usable drumset, Peeta couldn't resist. An unsuspecting Cato had even let Peeta inside to assemble it in Max's playroom. It was educational, Peeta argued when Clove made her displeasure known. Making music was a much better use of their son's time than playing video games or demolishing the never-ending supply of toys that Clove provided. Of course, that small, petty part of Peeta that reminded him that he was indeed his mother's son reveled in the nuisance his gift caused Clove, paying her back for the Disney World stunt she'd pulled a few weeks back. It hadn't been Peeta's finest moment and he knew it. Now even he was using his son as a pawn, and he hated himself for it. When his best friend called shortly thereafter, he mistakenly thought it would make him feel better.
Once he got off the phone with Delly, the next several hours were spent burying himself in bakery-related paperwork. For dinner he made himself a sandwich and ate it over the kitchen sink. He watched Food Network reruns until the sun went down.
When Peeta picked Katniss up that night he asked her how her classes had gone and she told him they were fine. After that he didn't know what else to say. He'd never been at a loss for words before. But maybe it was the way her obvious discomfort radiated from her like a warning that made even small-talk an impossibility, her body angled away from him toward her window and pressed as close to the passenger door as she could get. She looked like she was preparing to escape. As if one wrong word or too-forward gesture and she'd open her door and tuck and roll right there on the highway. He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter with both hands. They stayed that way the entire drive, in silence. He'd forgotten to offer her the radio and she hadn't asked.
A row of modest houses, all nearly identical except in color, lined Katniss's street. With each house that he passed, he could feel his pulse speeding up. As uncomfortable as the drive had been, he wasn't looking forward to returning to his empty home. He rolled to a stop in Haymitch's driveway and idled the car to let Katniss out. She mumbled a hurried thank-you before bolting from the vehicle, shutting the door behind her before he could even utter so much as a you're welcome or goodnight. He was about to drive off when he remembered the paper bag of bread that he'd put in the backseat. He'd almost forgotten all about it. The majority of the unsold product from his bakery went to food pantries, though he'd usually save a little aside one day a week for his neighbor. He hadn't lately. Not since his encounter with Katniss at Haymitch's door. This wasn't even from the bakery; these he baked late last night when he could neither sleep nor quiet his restless mind. With the car still running, he stepped outside and called out to her before she reached the front steps.
She turned to look at him and he held up the bag as if to answer her unspoken question. "I owe your uncle some bread," he told her. The light from the full moon overhead made her narrowed eyes blaze like molten silver, causing his breath to catch in his throat and linger there before he could exhale. But her next words knocked the wind out of him completely:
"You should come in. Give it to him yourself."
"You sure?" he asked, eyebrows lodged somewhere near his hairline. Katniss had seemed so intent on getting away from him earlier. The change of heart honestly baffled him.
"Uncle Haymitch mentioned you the other day," she added, as if reading his mind. "He doesn't really have any other visitors."
And with that, Peeta knew there was no way he could possibly refuse.
Haymitch's front yard was in considerably better condition than the back. The grass was mostly dead thanks to a large maple tree that blocked out all the sunlight, and a few scraggly shrubs guarded the front porch, but at least it looked relatively tidy. The house itself, an L-shaped, one-storey ranch topped with broken, tawny shingles, had clearly seen better days. The front door sported a rancid shade of green paint that matched the shutters and the dented entrance to the garage, and was curling away from the wood at the bottom. Flakes of it drifted to the ground as Katniss led Peeta inside.
The front hall led directly to the kitchen on a worn path of dingy vinyl tiles. And there was Haymitch sitting at the table cradling a chipped mug in both hands. He didn't acknowledge them in any way, just stared heavy-lidded down at whatever he was drinking. He'd lost some weight since Peeta saw him last, though the potbelly still remained. He didn't know how old the man actually was, but by looking at him Peeta would guess he was in his mid-sixties. Maybe even older. His skin was leathery and lightly spotted, his face covered by a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard and topped with thin, greasy hair combed sideways across his head. The gray t-shirt he wore had some sort of faded brown stain on the front of it, with both sleeves frayed at the ends and tiny holes speckling it throughout. Peeta's greeting went unanswered. Instead, Haymitch looked up at Katniss with bloodshot eyes. "Where've you been?"
"School," she answered evenly. "Like always." She paced the kitchen as if she were inspecting it for something and then turned her attention back toward her uncle. "Have you eaten?" No answer. "All you had to do was heat it up."
Haymitch mumbled something unintelligible in reply.
Katniss didn't respond, either because she didn't understand what he'd said or didn't care, and made her way to the avocado green refrigerator and opened the door with such force that Peeta could hear the rattling of glass and plastic slamming against each other inside. Haymitch rolled his eyes before taking another gulp of his drink. Katniss had started dumping the contents of a large plastic storage container into a pot on the stove. Peeta kept his eyes on the back of her head, her braid swaying gently as she moved, and at her hands as they busied themselves with preparation, not allowing his gaze to travel any lower. But all the same, he watched with rapt attention as her slim fingers gripped the wooden spoon she used to stir the pot, before tearing his eyes away from her altogether.
"So" Peeta said to Haymitch. "It's been awhile. Katniss says you missed my company. Or maybe you just missed the bread."
"It's better than whatever the girl's putting together, anyway."
"What – are your arms broken or something?" Katniss snapped. She slammed the wooden spoon down on the counter and whipped around to face them. The pot bubbled behind her. "Because I'm pretty sure you could be making your own dinner right now. I know I have better things I could be doing instead of feeding you."
"Well, whatever you're making smells delicious," Peeta called out to her. "Your uncle is very lucky to have you around." He shot Haymitch a pointed look. It hadn't gone unnoticed how much Katniss's presence had improved Haymitch's living conditions – the clutter, the dirty dishes, the garbage, the odor. And she was apparently preparing his meals on top of that.
Haymitch sighed raggedly. "Just hurry up with it, whatever it is, and I'll eat it," he said, less gruffly than normal.
Katniss's eyes softened and flickered with something Peeta suspected was astonishment. He couldn't be sure, of course, but that may have been the nicest Haymitch has been to her since she arrived.
She brought out a serrated knife and a cutting board for the bread, and Peeta began removing the loaves – one a fluffy country white and the other a dense multigrain – from the paper bag. As he sliced a few pieces of the white, Katniss retrieved two spoons from a drawer, shutting it with a gentle swish of her hips, a move that he found so effortlessly sexy that he had to look away from her.
There wasn't much else to look at, unfortunately. The kitchen walls were blank, nothing but drywall, as if Haymitch had ripped away what was once there and made no effort to put anything, even a coat of simple white paint, up in its place. In an upper corner peeking out from behind the refrigerator was a strip of pale yellow wallpaper. There was just enough showing that he could make out the print: quarter-sized marigolds that alternated in color from mustard to pumpkin to brick red. It was a bit dated, like something out of his childhood. Nevertheless, he wondered why Haymitch considered drywall a better alternative.
Katniss came back to the table a moment later with the spoons and two heavy ceramic soup bowls and ladled what she'd been making into them both. Peeta was about to excuse himself and head home so she and Haymitch could eat dinner in peace, but Katniss surprised him by setting one of the bowls in front of him, where he's been standing rather awkwardly all this time. The other bowl went to Haymitch.
"You sure?" Peeta asked her. "What about you?"
She shook her head dismissively. "I'm fine," she said. "Here." She gestured for him to sit down. "Just try it at least."
Haymitch, meanwhile, was stirring his spoon into his still-full bowl but had yet to actually eat anything. Peeta handed a slice of the white bread to Haymitch, who pinched off a tiny section and ate it slowly, as if the small act took a great amount of effort.
Peeta took a seat and inspected his own bowl. It was a thick, fragrant stew with generous chunks of beef and fat slices of carrots and celery and onion. And when he tasted it, he found the meat and vegetables to be tender and well-seasoned. She was obviously a better cook than Haymitch gave her credit. Still, it felt funny eating in front of her. He supposed she could have eaten at school. Ultimately, it was none of his business, he decided. She was an adult. If she wanted to eat right now, she would've served herself. "This is excellent," he told her after another spoonful.
Katniss was still standing, hovering near the seat next to his. "Really?" she asked. "It's okay?"
"Of course."
Worry etched Katniss's features. She absently trailed her hand over the space where it appeared a landline telephone had once been. No one had bothered to patch the holes in the wall.
By the time Peeta was finished, Katniss had asked a few more times before she was sufficiently satisfied that he had liked it. She never asked Haymitch, who, as far as Peeta had seen, hadn't eaten a mouthful of his. When Katniss was busy depositing Peeta's empty bowl in the dishwasher, Haymitch slinked off to bed. If this surprised Katniss upon returning to the table, she gave no indication. She just slipped into the seat that her uncle had vacated, shoveling the abandoned stew in her mouth like she hadn't seen food all day.
"You made this?" Peeta wanted to know.
"Mmm-hmm," she answered with a shrug and a full mouth. "The canned kind isn't good for him. Too much salt."
"I'm sorry he didn't eat it."
"I think he dipped some of the bread in it, at least." She dejectedly poked at a piece of carrot with her spoon. "I just don't know how to…" She trailed off and ate more of her stew rather than completing her thought.
"You don't know how to what?" he asked gently after awhile.
She refused to look him in the eye. "Nothing. Forget I said anything."
In the distance, the battered, green dishwasher droned steadily. Peeta shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I should probably get going."
"Thanks again for the ride," she said softly, her gaze meeting his briefly before traveling down toward the bread, then back up at Peeta. "That stuff's pretty good. Even Haymitch ate some."
Remembering Katniss's words outside, the reason he came in the house in the first place, because up until then he'd just assumed that Haymitch barely tolerated him, he asked her, "Earlier, you said he mentioned me?"
"Yeah. He said, 'that goddamn Mormon hasn't been around in awhile'."
"And that's me?"
"That's you."
"Not that it matters, but I'm not actually –"
"No, I think he just says it because you're blond and friendly," Katniss answered immediately, appearing relaxed for the first time that day.
"And not that there's anything wrong with being –"
"Right, right," Katniss cut him off, nodding in agreement.
They were quiet again, and Peeta stood. "I really should get going."
Katniss stood as well, the chair scraping noisily against the floor tiles as she pushed away from it. Her hands were shoved in her pockets, and her eyes caught his briefly before they became fixed on the table. "Do you, uh…do you think you'll be back soon?"
After that, his visits became routine.
Katniss was still as confusing to him as ever; he hadn't figured out whether she actually enjoyed his company or if his coming over was strictly for Haymitch's sake. Even still, there were worse ways to spend his time.
"How is Haymitch related to you?" he had asked her one day. They were at the kitchen counter chopping carrots side by side, when it occurred to him how little he knew about her.
"My dad's brother," she'd told him, eyes trained on the blade while her slim fingers worked the knife with practiced ease.
"So that would make you Katniss Abernathy?"
"Everdeen. He and my dad were half brothers."
It continued to bother Peeta how little he knew about his neighbor. He'd had no idea that he had a brother – or any family at all until Katniss arrived – and he may never have found much out if it weren't for the fact that he wanted to get to know the man's niece. Get to know, he thought bitterly. Who was he kidding? He wasn't interested in learning her favorite color; he wanted to have sex with her. He could at least be honest with himself about that. Except that the more he dropped by, the more he enjoyed just being with Katniss. Talking, cleaning the kitchen in companionable silence, showing her how to make a proper crust for the chicken pot pie she was preparing for the next night's dinner. The intense attraction was still there, but as long as Peeta didn't let it show, his feelings were irrelevant. His private thoughts, after all, the kind that he reluctantly indulged in on lonely nights when he couldn't sleep, were his own.
Before long, Katniss dismantled part of the fence that separated their yards, clearing a straight path between the two houses. "You can just come in through the back," she explained. "That door's always unlocked when I'm home anyway."
He was there nearly every day. On days he spent at the bakery, he'd show up after work, at eight or nine or so at night, with loaves of bread that Katniss usually toasted the next morning for breakfast. Or turned to croutons or stuffing for a future meal. Even though he frequently arrived long after dinner was over, Katniss always had a plate waiting for him in the microwave. On his day off, when it wasn't his weekend with Max, Peeta would bake something at home to take to his neighbors sometime in the afternoon. Katniss was never particularly forthcoming about what she liked, but one time Haymitch let it slip that the buns with cheese baked on top were her favorite. So Peeta made it a point to include some every time he dropped by. Tonight's haul from the bakery contained some of those, plus a pumpernickel loaf and another baked with sesame and fennel seeds.
The air inside the house was heavy with the smell of cleaning products, with just the slightest hint of decay, prompting Peeta to open a window. Haymitch, as usual, didn't object, as he sat in his spot on the couch watching a muted television tuned to CNN. His fingers were like a vice around a metal flask that he clutched possessively to his chest, as if worried about it being stolen. Peeta left the bread on the kitchen table and joined Haymitch in the living room, stepping onto a rust-colored carpet stained and crusted with something that evidently not even the carpet cleaner stationed in the corner could get out.
"She's not here," Haymitch announced, eyes still fixed on the TV. He took a long drink from his flask.
"Now, is that any way to greet your favorite neighbor?" Peeta teased, leaning against the side of the couch.
"Don't act like you've been showing up so often to see me," Haymitch said, to which Peeta replied that he'd been coming to visit well before Katniss moved in.
"I'll bet you brought more of those cheese things the girl likes," Haymitch continued. "The last batch didn't look very stale to me."
"Would you prefer it if they were?" Peeta asked, becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the interrogation.
Another swig. "Just an observation."
"You know, the bread I brought you wasn't stale either," Peeta pointed out.
"Hmm." Haymitch took a thoughtful sip. "Can't imagine why you're going out of business."
The comment got to him, much more than Peeta would ever let on. He'd recently had to let go several of his employees, making him the bakery's only baker and decorator. His teenage nieces now helped out before and after school a few days a week with basic prep work, though only because their guidance counselor assured them that it would count toward the community service hours required for graduation. Peeta put in fourteen-hour days six days a week, and often returned home with throbbing temples and a twitching eye. And the bakery was still hemorrhaging funds.
About a million caustic replies sat perched on his tongue, but Peeta wasn't about to argue with an old man on a threadbare couch half-watching the news and gripping a container of booze like it would keep him alive. Instead, he masked his hurt with a good-natured grin. "Uh-huh," he said. "A few loaves each week are what's keeping me in the red. That's kind of why I'm here. I've upped my prices. I'm afraid I'm going to have to retroactively bill you for all the bread I've been giving you. That was $1,000 worth of pumpernickel rye you ate the other day."
Haymitch gave a wheezy laugh that turned into a cough. He jerked his head toward the television. "Before you barged in here I was trying to watch these idiots argue in circles about how our country's going down the tubes."
"And you can tell all that without the sound?" He took a seat next to Haymitch.
"Don't need it. Every day it's the same thing."
They sat there in silence for awhile, Peeta's eyes trained on the text-crawl at the bottom of the screen, becoming so accustomed to the quiet that the sudden sound of Haymitch's voice caused him to startle slightly. "She's a good kid," Haymitch said. "Been through a lot. More than anyone her age should." Then, though he didn't need to, the serious expression in Haymitch's bloodshot eyes sending the message all on its own, he added: "Just remember that."
The implied warning in those words chilled the blood coursing through Peeta's veins. Somewhere in that haze of alcohol and unhappiness Haymitch must have seen the way Peeta looked at Katniss. How often he looked at Katniss. Any gesture of kindness on Peeta's part must have seemed awfully hollow if Haymitch believed that Peeta was interested in taking advantage of her. There wasn't much more said that night, and Peeta made sure to leave before Katniss came home from wherever she was.
That night, like so many before it, Peeta lay awake in his too-large bed in his too-empty house unable to sleep. Usually he'd take himself in his hand and let visions of smooth olive skin and the memory of a raw, sultry voice bring him to a peak that he's only reached alone for nearly a year. And once his heart rate would calm down, he'd drift off to sleep. It was as good as any sedative. But tonight he felt even guiltier than usual. It was no use, though. He was even starting to tent his boxer-briefs in anticipation. Yes, he needed the release, but he was going to have to get it another way.
At first he focused on the sensation of his hand against the hot, sensitive flesh beneath it, but without any additional stimulation he felt himself beginning to deflate, while his mind and body continued to buzz incessantly. He tried to think back on the last woman he was attracted to before Katniss. There was the redhead who worked at the bookstore that was once next to the bakery, her long coppery eyelashes framing dark blue eyes. Creamy skin disappearing beneath a snug blouse that clung to the swells of her breasts. It wasn't working, so he tried switching tactics. The last time he had sex was mostly a drunken, fuzzy, wholly unmemorable encounter. That wouldn't work either. He let his eyes shut tightly and tried to conjure up something. Nameless, faceless products of his imagination. Anything but her.
"Oh, fuck it," he muttered under his breath. Obviously touching her was out of the question, but there was no reason to keep from touching himself. If denying his urges made him crazy, maybe fully giving in to them in the dark could make them eventually go away. With each stroke, he let the waves of bliss settle through him as he pictured her above him, pinned beneath, pressed against the tiles of his shower, bent over the side of his couch. The gray in her eyes nearly swallowed up with black. Her dark hair wild and free of the confines of its braid. All that blistering longing became so palpable that in that moment he didn't think he'd ever wanted anything in his life as much as he wanted her. His cock swelled in his hand and with a strangled cry he released onto his stomach.
Coming down from his high, the cloud of lust began to dissipate, making way for things like guilt and overwhelming loneliness to creep back in. He was only torturing himself by fantasizing about something that would never happen. More than just the age difference, which was inappropriate enough, after his conversation with Haymitch, this couldn't happen.
He cleaned himself off using his sticky hand and then punched the wall beside his bed.
After that night, he managed to avoid Katniss for four days. He couldn't even face Haymitch. On those nights, he came straight home from work, exhausted and shaking with stress, and intermittently watched infomercials between brief bouts of sleep, then got up before the sun had even risen to do it all over again.
The sound of knocking against the back door startled him awake on the fifth night. With bleary eyes and unstable legs, he dragged himself from the couch, where he'd accidentally dozed off in front of the television, to the source of all the noise.
When he got there, Katniss was scowling up at him, looking inexplicably lovely in a baggy Capitol U sweatshirt and jeans. "I thought maybe you'd died," she said as soon as he slid open the door.
"Hey." He stifled a yawn. "What can I do for you, Katniss?"
She held up a transparent storage container with something red-brown piled inside. "I brought you some leftovers." The gesture was so sweet, yet so incongruent with the expression on her face, he couldn't help but grin at her.
She didn't smile back.
Dinner one night over at chez Abernathy had been a spicy gumbo consisting of sliced andouille sausage and kidney beans with chopped celery and onions and red bell peppers served over long grain rice, Katniss told him. That's what she brought over. It sounded a hell of a lot better than the cheese sandwich on stale bread that he'd made for himself forty-five minutes earlier when he got home. "Oh, Katniss… I don't know what to say. Thank you. You really didn't have to do this."
"You come over with food all the time. I owe you," she told him. The tight line of her mouth quivered ever-so-slightly. "I made this yesterday, actually," she confessed. "You could have had it fresh if you'd come over. I'm really glad you're not dead, by the way," she added bitterly.
"Yeah, well, that makes one of us." The flippant remark fled from Peeta's mouth without permission, and Katniss's eyes widened, horrified, for just an instant. "Sorry," he said, drowsily scratching the back of his head, fighting off another yawn. "I was just sleeping." As if that explained anything at all. He side-stepped to the right to unblock the doorway. "Did you want to come in?"
Katniss moved right past him into the kitchen. "Where do you want this?" she asked, stopping at the refrigerator. Magneted to the front of it was a landscape created from uncooked tri-color rotini glued to construction paper depicting a buttery yellow sun overlooking pale red-orange trees and surrounded by green grass, Max's name scrawled sloppily in crayon at the upper left-hand corner. Peeta had mentioned his son to Katniss in passing, but for the most part their conversations were relatively superficial. Telling him her last name was about the most personal Katniss had gotten with him.
"I'll take it," Peeta said, gratefully accepting the container of food from her and then putting it in the fridge for tomorrow. "Did you want anything to drink?" With the refrigerator door still open, he began listing what was available, but stopped when his eyes landed on the bottles of Sam Adams on the top shelf. It only served to remind him of how young she was, how little he knew about her. He had no idea if she could legally drink the stuff.
Saving him the trouble of asking, Katniss cleared her throat. "Water's fine."
He retrieved two glasses and the tray of ice cubes, but when he turned back toward Katniss she was glowering at him. "What's the matter?" he asked her.
"Your freezer."
"What about it?"
"There's hardly anything in there. Just frozen peas and dinosaur nuggets." She crossed her arms tightly across her chest, narrowing her gray eyes at him.
"And that's a problem?" He plunked two ice cubes into each of the glasses and filled them with water from the sink.
"You told me your freezer was full of bread."
Oh. He winced internally, having forgotten all about the lie he told her all those weeks ago. "I don't actually take it home, no. I donate most of the leftovers to charity."
She leveled him with a glare. "So is that what my uncle and I are to you? Another charity?"
"Of course not," he said adamantly. "I keep bringing you bread because I like you. And your uncle. Maybe I went about it all wrong, but I just...I'm just trying to help, Katniss. And before you tell me that you don't need my help," he added, noting the way Katniss's mouth opened, primed to yell, "keep in mind that you're the one who asked me inside that night. And to keep coming back. It sounds like whatever issues you've been having with Haymitch, you needed me." Peeta handed Katniss her drink. They stared at each other for a moment before she finally accepted it. The hostility in her features slowly ebbed away.
"You're pretty much Haymitch's only friend, you know," she said at last. "That's why I got in the car with you that day. Plus, you know...exam. I guess it was worth possibly getting murdered."
He laughed unexpectedly. "What – by me?"
She gave a non-committal one shouldered shrug.
"Are you still afraid of me, Katniss?" he asked softly.
At this, Katniss rolled her eyes. "I was never actually afraid of you." But her reddening cheeks and the aversion of her gaze seemed to belie her words. She took a sip of her water, still not looking at him.
He took a tentative step toward her so that his bare toes and the tips of her sneakers were just a hairsbreadth away from each other. The proximity caused Katniss to look up suddenly. Her eyes locked onto his. "Katniss?"
"You say my name a lot."
"And you've never said mine." What'll it take to get you to say it? That's what he wanted to ask her. But it was way too forward. There were too many scenarios forcing their way into his head in which Katniss did say his name, over and over again. The lingering silence between them felt electric. The heat of her breath against him sparked at his skin.
And then Katniss stepped away. "Peeta," she said, rolling her eyes again and barely suppressing a grin. "There. I said it. Happy now?"
Not even close. Moments like these were the reason he'd been avoiding her. She had no idea how she was affecting him. But he knew one thing for sure: he was such a selfish asshole. He certainly wasn't the good guy Delly thought he was. If Haymitch and Katniss counted on him being around, if they really did need him, then he shouldn't have let anything stop him.
This infatuation with Katniss would run its course. Like with that woman from the bookstore, Lavinia. He could be friends with Lavinia if he ran into her now without any of the awkwardness or desperation to impress her that plagued all of their interactions in the past. It could eventually be the same with Katniss. He just had to try harder. Get to know her. Separate the real Katniss from the fantasy.
Drinks in hand, they made their way past the kitchen's ceramic tiles to a sea of beige carpeting. Katniss ghosted her fingertips over the living room wall. "Pretty color," she said softly. He'd long been unaffected by people's opinions of something as trivial as one's interior decorating, but hearing this praise from Katniss, something akin to pride bloomed inside him.
Within months of moving in, Peeta made a point of putting his own stamp on the first house he'd ever lived in by himself. He came home from the hardware store one day with two cans of what the paint company called Venetian Stucco, a pale orange, nearly yellow, like candlelight. The same color that would rim an indigo sky just before the last sliver of sunlight vanished off the edge. Neither Clove nor his mother would have approved of orange walls. In spite of that, maybe because of that, he made sure nearly every room in his house greeted him with faux sunshine. He never got around to hanging anything on the walls, but that didn't matter. The color alone was enough to announce to visitors that this was his place.
He extended his index finger toward the wall beside her. "If someone were to ask me my favorite color, that's probably it."
"If they were ever inside your house they'd never have to ask," Katniss retorted.
"You've got a point," he conceded with a laugh. "You know, you've been in my house for all of five minutes and already you know more about me than I know about you. So how about we level the playing field a bit?"
"You want to know my favorite color?" she asked incredulously.
"I want to know you." He took a seat on the far end of the couch and Katniss sat directly in the center, with her body angled toward him, crossing her legs and balancing her drink on her knee. "Anything you feel comfortable telling me," he added.
"I like green"
"You see? Now don't you feel better after baring your soul like that?"
Katniss gave a scoffing little laugh without an accompanying smile, but slowly, she began to open up. She had a mother and sister who lived a few hours away. Her sister Primrose – or "Prim" as Katniss would continue to refer to her – was sixteen, a high school junior whose passion for animal rights rivaled that of Katniss's passion for cheese buns. The way Katniss spoke of her, one would think Prim was her daughter rather than her sister. She said very little of her mother. Nothing about her father. In the little over two hours that they spent talking, Peeta learned that Katniss liked to hunt, that she ran track in high school, that her twenty-first birthday wasn't until May. He told her stories about his son, about going to baseball games with his father as a child, about how he'd lived in Texas until he was nine years old until the family moved here, where his father started the very bakery that Peeta now owned.
The longer they talked, the smaller the space between them on the couch became. After awhile, Katniss's head drooped onto Peeta's shoulder, and he knew she'd fallen asleep. It was almost midnight. In another four hours he'd have to leave for the bakery. "Katniss?" He gently shook her awake. "Hey there, sleepyhead. I guess that's what happens when you spend too much time listening to me talk. Almost as effective as counting sheep."
"Hmm?" She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "That's not true. What time is it?"
"About twelve."
"Shit!" She bolted upright. "I have to get home. Were we really talking that long?"
He nodded. "This was really nice," he added.
He saw her out the back door, and just as she stepped into the darkness she stopped, turning back in his direction. "You're coming over tomorrow, right?" she asked.
"I will, Katniss. I promise."
"Good." She moved in the direction of her own house before halting again. "Oh, and Peeta? You owe us like a dozen cheese buns now."