The next day at school Peeta tells me that I can stop by the bakery on this coming weekend. His mother will be out for the day, and it will be a good opportunity for him to show me how he decorates the cakes. I tell him I will be there.
He is flustered, but eager. I can relate, but the eagerness I feel must be different.
I try to spend the majority of my time with Prim. When I am not training myself. We wash the clothes together, darn the holes, and scrub the animal blood stains from my pants. As I labor over the washtub, and my sister chats happily with me, I am again taken away by the simplicity. The motions feel robotic, and when Prim playfully splashes some of the soapy water at Buttercup, who hisses and runs off, I mourn her as if she is not right there in front of me.
I shake myself. I cannot mourn someone who is alive.
I struggle to stay in the moment.
I splash some of the water at her. She squeals at how cold it is. Then she is laughing.
"What do you want for your birthday?" I ask her.
"Just this," she says, smiling. "Time with you and Mom."
"No, really," I say. "If you could have anything, what would you want?"
Prim thinks about it.
"Maybe we could do a dinner, with us, and Mom, and the Hawthornes. That would be nice."
"That can easily be done," I say.
I go back to the washing, but Prim frowns.
"What about you?" she asks. "Your birthday is right before mine."
"I'm not sure," I say. "There's still months before either of our birthdays, but I was curious what you might be wanting."
"Try to think of something," she says.
"I will," I tell her.
After the washing, we hang the clothes to dry.
We go inside to prep our dinner. Prim works on her current batch of goat cheese. I am stirring a pot simmering over the stove.
Our mother is ghosting around the house.
I turn to watch her. She is rearranging a box of medical supplies. The box is forlornly low.
"Do you need anything from the Hob?" I ask her.
She blinks, and then seems to realize I am right there.
"No, no, this should get us through the next two weeks if we are lucky," she says.
I turn back to the pot, at a loss at what else to say to her. I try not to resent her, but I fail.
The next morning I go hunting with Gale.
He goes on a rant about the upcoming Hunger Games. The poor unlucky souls who will be reaped from District 12 are going to die, he says. His resentful rant mirrors how he will feel in the future. His anger towards the Capitol is unmatched. I can see how he will change right before my eyes. How the hatred will only become nurtured throughout the war and make him into that angry man. How he will so easily condone the continuance of the Hunger Games with the people of the Capitol.
I find I still resent him.
I know about how his proposed bombs had inadvertently led to Prim's death. The fact that he so easily disregards human life, and makes it impersonal, is ultimately his flaw. It is exactly why I am angry at the Capitol in the first place, so casually disposing of and displaying the deaths of District children. For Gale to also disregard my opinion so easily, a person who had lived through two Hunger Games, who spoke against the measure to reinstate, cuts deep.
He does not respect my opinion in the future, and I do not speak up now, because it will be no different.
I let him go on and on, spurring himself into a rampage. I am reminded of why it could never have been him. He is all fire, all rage, and that is not what I need. I have enough of my own fire.
What I need is back in District 12, meandering about the bakery, creating things, not destroying them.
Near the end of the hunt, Gale finally pauses, and looks at me. He expects me to mirror him, to feed off of his rage, as I always used to.
Instead, I sling the gamebag over my shoulders and frown.
"Who knows," I say. "Maybe this year District 12 will have a winner."
Gale rolls his eyes at me.
"Yeah, right," he says.
"You never know," I say.
Back home, Prim and I prepare for school. Tomorrow, I will go to the bakery. I find my anxiety mounting.
At school, Peeta waves at me from across the school yard.
"Who's that?" asks Prim when I return the wave.
"A friend," I say.
"Really?" she asks, interested. She waves at him, too.
Peeta smiles at her, returns the wave, then turns back to his friends who are looking at us strangely.
I know better than to let the prejudices between Town and Seam get to me. Ultimately none of that will matter. Once we are both Victors, we will no longer carry our Town and Seam labels. We will become a part of a group that is entirely other. Yet, I cannot help that creeping of embarrassment that touches me by him so blatantly greeting me in front of people.
Throughout class, I struggle to keep my eyes on the teacher and not the back of Peeta's head.
I keep wondering what he is thinking. How do I go about this tentative relationship? I have feelings for him, but I am afraid these feelings will muddle my plans for the future. I know what I need most is his trust. When we go into the Games, I want us to trust each other. We had not that first time around, and if we are able to hash out a plan together, then we may be able to get out of it better than we had that first time.
Except we cannot start planning until after the Reaping. I don't think hypothetically talking about the situation in which we are both reaped would play over well as a conversation.
After class, as I am packing up my bag, Peeta wanders over to my desk.
"Still on for tomorrow?" he asks me.
"Yes," I say. "Around noon?"
"Yes, that'll be good. We will only have an hour or two before my mother gets back, but I think that'll probably be enough to touch on the basics."
"Thanks," I say.
He does not turn to go but waits. I stall, unsure.
"I can walk with you," he offers.
"Oh," I say. "Sure."
We walk side by side down the school hallway. It is so strange to me. This had never happened in the last future. While the surroundings and circumstances are new and strange, it is not the act of walking beside him that feels weird. That feels normal. I imagine other instances where we had walked together: the Victory Tour, across the arena beach, down the Capitol streets…
"When you come by the bakery, just come up to the backdoor, and I'll let you into the kitchen," he says.
"Alright," I say.
"If you have any squirrels, I'm sure my father wouldn't mind if you brought them by either," he says.
"Sure, if I get any that morning," I say.
"How often do you do that?" he asks, glancing over at me. "Hunting, I mean."
"Almost every morning," I say.
"It must feel weird going beyond the gate," he says.
"No," I say, thinking about it. "Out there is the only time I truly feel alive."
"How so?"
"There's no gate, no Peacekeepers… just my woods, the animals, the trees… like freedom," I say.
Peeta contemplates my words.
"It must be beautiful out there," he says.
"It is." Then I give him a sly smile. "Maybe I'll show you some time."
Peeta laughs.
"I don't think I'll fit through whatever hole in the fence it is that you get through," he jokes.
Peeta holds open the door for me, and I slip through.
Outside, I spot Prim talking with Rory, and next to them is Gale. He instantly notices Peeta.
I decide to spare Peeta of Gale's hostility, and myself from any impending conversation between them.
I turn to Peeta just outside the doors.
"I'll see you tomorrow," I tell him.
"See you," he says, and I walk away.
When I get to Prim, I take her hand and begin walking the way back to the Seam.
Rory and Gale tag along.
"That was the baker boy, wasn't it?" asks Gale.
"He's a friend," Prim unhelpfully chimes in.
Gale raises an eyebrow.
"Yes," I say. "He's a friend."
Gale says nothing else, but I can sense the distrust and suspicions from him.
I get to hear all about what he thinks the next morning on our hunt.
"You don't actually trust that Townie, do you?" he asks me.
I am working on resetting one of the snares. I try not to let my irritation at Gale make me mess up.
"I know how you feel about Townies," I say.
"I thought that was how we felt," he says.
I shoot him a glare.
"Peeta's different," I say.
Gale scoffs.
"All those Townie guys are the same," he says. "I know what they think of the Seam girls. Conquests, names on a list… they'd never actually settle down with one. They're like that."
I finish the snare and step back from it.
"Good thing Peeta is just my friend," I tell him.
Gale scowls. There is not much he can do to object to that.
Still, he tries to.
"I thought something was off with you lately, Catnip," he says.
I frown. Apparently, I have not been as good at maintaining composure as I had thought.
"I've just been stressed lately," I tell him. Which is true. Knowing the future is stressful. "Prim's twelfth birthday is this year and all I can think about is the reaping this summer."
"It's barely winter," says Gale. "Plus, she won't be taking out any tesserae."
"There's always that chance she'll be reaped," I say.
Thankfully, for the rest of the hunt, Gale lapses into a sullen silence.
I am outside the back of the bakery just before noon. I pause at the sight of the apple tree. The leaves are falling from it, all manners of orange and yellow. After District 12 is firebombed, this tree ceases to exist. I trace a hand along the rough bark.
I do not notice that Peeta has walked up behind me. Which is hard to believe with how heavily he stomps across the ground.
"You just missed the last of the apples," he says.
I turn to look at him, startled.
"We made a few pies out of them," he continues to say.
I want to ask him: Do you remember?
Of course, I know he does.
There is the pig pen beside the bakery's back door. The trash cans beyond that. The overhang above the door, that is not currently dripping with rain.
How many springs ago had it been?
To me, it feels even longer, as if a lifetime ago.
I look at this Peeta. He wears his apron, already sprinkled with flour. His hands are freshly washed. His hair is slightly askew. His face – I blink, and for a moment, there are bullet holes in his chest. He is bleeding out on the lavender paving stones in the Capitol. He clutches my hand. His blue eyes look into mine, pleading, begging me to leave him there to die.
Then I shake my head.
"Ready?" I ask him.
"Come on in," he says, nodding towards the back door.
Inside, the kitchen is toasty warm. I remove my father's hunting jacket and hang it by the door.
I start to remove my muddy boots, but Peeta assures me I can keep them on.
Peeta offers me my own apron. I tie it on lopsided, and Peeta smiles to himself about it, but says nothing.
He shows me over to a table, where he has already set up a cake base for decorating.
"This is a special order," he says, picking up one of the pipes of frosting. "There aren't many weddings in the winter, and they wanted their cake to represent that. They asked for snowflakes and white frosting decorations."
I step up to the table beside him, careful to leave enough room that I am not impeding on his space.
"The trick with frosting is making sure the cake is fully cooled," he says. He leans down and begins working on the outside edge of the cake, creating perfect little dollops of white. "I always start on the outside and work my way in."
I smile at him, nodding. I am listening, kind of. Mostly, I am just taking him in, drinking in this moment. The smell of freshly baked bread surrounds us. The ovens warm my face. Watching him, in his element, undisturbed by the future, by our impending tragedy, warms my chest. There is a simplicity here, in this little kitchen, that had never been a part of our original story.
While it feels strange and new, it is not an unwelcome new. If he had survived the war, maybe we could have found a way to grow back together. He could have recovered from the hijacking, and I could have sewn up my war wounds and recovered from my losses, just enough, just barely enough to play out that future with him.
Only, the war had taken him from me.
My hands curls into fists, fighting off the image of him laying across that street.
I had not left him there, not until his hand in mine had gone limp and I had known he was gone.
"Want to try?" Peeta asks me.
I blink.
"Oh, I don't think I'm ready," I say. "I don't want to mess up a special order."
"Don't worry, I can guide your hand," he says.
He smiles encouragingly at me. I submit under the powerful stare of those blue eyes.
I step up to the table where he was at, and he steps up to my side, guiding my hand around the pipe of frosting.
I had not actually been watching, so I am probably going to do a poor job.
"Just a gentle pressure," he says, so close to my ear.
I can feel of the warmth of his body – his real body – but he is not actually touching me anywhere except for my hand. His big square one wraps around mine, like they fit. He does most of the work, adding the pressure, and pulling back on the piping as he finishes the border of the cake. I am – well, I am there.
Old Katniss would have thought this was a ridiculous waste of time. I know better. I know now, that if there is some joy, some brightness in this world, you have to grasp at it, and never let it go. Or else, I will end up right back where I started. Alone, in that empty Victor's house, seeing ghosts from the corner of my eye, and swallowing the pills like candy…
Eventually, Peeta takes over again, showing me how to make the snowflakes. He is so precise, so delicate with it. I admire his work, and I tell him so. He laughs and there is a touch of red in his cheeks.
"It's just what I was taught," he says. "Anyone can learn it."
As he is finishing up the last snowflake, he asks me, "What are you thinking of for your sister?"
"Well we can't afford like a big cake, but I thought if I saved, I could probably buy a cupcake here and then give it a go at decorating it."
"That can definitely work. I'll even sneak you in again and let you decorate it yourself with the supplies we have," he tells me.
"Thanks," I say.
He did not have to offer that. I am reminded of his generosity, his kindness. Even with the bias of it being me, I do not doubt Peeta would not extend the same kindness to others.
"But what do you think you'll make with it?" he asks. "Any specific colors?"
I think about it for a moment.
"Yellow, for sure," I tell him. "I'll probably just make flowers. Primroses, like her name."
He smiles to himself.
"I know, I know," I say. "Not very original."
"I think it's a great idea," he says.
"Do you guys get cake for your birthdays?" I ask him.
"Not usually," he says. "Most of the unsellable leftovers go to the pigs, but sometimes we get to snack on them."
"Who takes care of the pigs?" I ask, genuinely curious.
There are so many things I never bothered to learn about him and his life before the Hunger Games.
"My older brother, Rye, mostly does that," he says. "But when we get piglets, I will help out."
"I've never seen the piglets," I say.
"Maybe I'll show you some time," he says, throwing a sly smile my way.
I feel my own smile building.
"We almost always have some, in the spring," he says.
The mention of this coming spring almost kills the smile.
After this spring, this simplicity between us will be gone again. I am not ready to let it go.
Peeta finishes up the cake, and after a few more touch ups, he places it into a fridge. He comes back to the table, and grabs the cake pan it had been in. There are leftovers. He pours the lumps of leftover cake onto the table and tries to shape it into a semi-cupcake looking pile.
"Here," he says. "You can decorate this. Practice your flowers."
He hands me the yellow pipe of frosting. I take it and step forward. My first attempt is sloppy, but almost flower shaped. He gives me a few tips and pointers. My second flower is much better.
"Try adding some green, to give it depth," he suggests.
The end results are nothing presentable, nothing near sellable, but it is nice to have practiced some. I take a bit of frosting off of the abomination and taste it. The sweetness spreads over my tongue.
Peeta leans over my side and takes his own taste.
I smile at him with his finger in his mouth. He smiles back, and there is bit of green frosting on his lip. He is close to me still; enough for me to sense, or at least imagine the warmth of him. For the first time, in a long time, I feel the urge to kiss someone. To kiss the green off of his lips. I am breathless at the thought.
Then we hear to front door of the bakery opening. His mother calls out. Peeta's face instantly changes.
"Time to go," I say, knowing.
He nods, and I untie the apron, handing it over to him.
At the door, I shrug into my jacket, and before I leave, I pause.
He stands there, expectantly, as if anticipating me to say something.
"You have frosting on your lip," I tell him.
Peeta tries to wipe at it but does not get it.
I reach over and wipe it with a thumb. His lip burns hotly against the pad of my finger.
His face is flushed.
"See you," I say, and then I hurry out the door.
Halfway up the path, I turn back. Peeta is still standing in the doorway. Watching me away.
When I catch him, he turns and pulls the door closed.
I am smiling the whole way home, the taste of sweetness lingering in my mouth.