Peeta closed the bakery at two o'clock and walked along the neighborhood streets toward the center of town, enjoying the crisp fall air and bright red and orange leaves. Narrow brick houses crowded together in rows, every one just a little bit different. Crookedly carved pumpkins decorated stoops here and there, lacy curtains hung in a window, a flag flapped in the wind. The streets were crowded with people, even though it was a weekday afternoon. Teenagers and elderly couples, moms with strollers and businessmen in suits were all making their way downtown to the farmer's market.

The crowds shifted aside and he saw her across the square. She was standing behind a table stacked with mason jars and small parcels, looking down at something. The sunlight gleamed off her brown hair, wisps of it escaping from her braid. He took a step closer without even thinking about it, and then stopped and stood in the middle of the crowd and watched her from a distance.

She looked up and met his eyes, and her face lit up with a broad smile that was just for him. His entire body felt warm at the sight. The crowds fell away as he drew closer, ignoring every other person. Then he was beside her, and he cupped her face in both hands and pressed a long, gentle kiss to her lips, pouring out all the love and longing he'd built up over the years. Her lips were warm and soft, and her skin felt smooth against his palms. She sighed into his mouth, wrapped her arms around his chest, and returned the kiss with all the passion and determination-

Someone bumped into his shoulder, interrupting his fantasy. "Sorry," they muttered.

Katniss was still standing at her table across the square, making change for a customer. She hadn't even seen him. Probably she had never noticed him, not once in the two decades since he'd fallen in love with her in kindergarten. He was nobody and nothing to Katniss, not remotely good enough for her. His mother's voice in his head said waste of space, useless, unwanted.

He bought some apples and walked back to the bakery.

It was dark and quiet inside. He unlocked the door and flipped the sign over to OPEN , but no one came in.

Peeta pulled the apples out of his bag and rinsed them in the sink, working quickly and methodically. His wrist flexed and the knife flashed, and the pieces fell in perfect rows on the cutting board. The thump of the knife and the crunch of the apples were the only sounds in the kitchen, and they echoed off the peeling walls.

His hands were coated in a fine paste of juice, flour and cinnamon when a jangling ring interrupted the silence. Peeta looked around for a moment, trying to remember where the phone actually was, before locating it on the side wall. The place had been open for nearly six months now, and still the phone hardly ever rang.

"Mellark's Bakery," he said, balancing the receiver against his shoulder as he wiped his hands on a towel.

He should have been annoyed at the interruption, but there was nothing to interrupt. The bakery had exactly six customers today, a slow day even for him. And this afternoon, he might as well have stayed closed. All around the city, people were taking their coffee breaks, settling in with their newspapers and laptops, picking up bread on the way home, but all of that happened somewhere else.

"Peeta Mellark?" a woman's voice trilled over the line.

"Yes?" he asked.

She introduced herself as Effie Trinket, and the name was so ridiculous that he had to smile a little.

Then she started talking, and he stopped laughing.

"You've been selected for an exciting new television program called Farm to Table ," she said, sounding positively thrilled at the news. "Our celebrity chefs will mentor struggling restaurants and work with them to turn their businesses around!"

Struggling. The word took Peeta by surprise for a moment, though only because it was so accurate.

Reality TV? the voice in his head asked. So the entire country can see how you've failed, and laugh?

He gritted his teeth. Yeah, it might be embarrassing, but it had to be better than just giving up.

"Mister Mellark?" Effie Trinket asked.

"Sure," he said, his voice cracking a little. "What the hell?"

"I'll tell you what your problem is, kid." Peeta heard the voice before he saw his new mentor's face, but he'd watched enough reality TV to know Haymitch Abernathy immediately. "This is a goddamn terrible location."

"I know," Peeta said, watching as Haymitch prowled around the front of the bakery, peering in the display case and reading his hand-drawn signs. "I can't afford the rent on a place downtown."

Haymitch leveled a glare at him, but seemed to realize that relocation was a moot point and shrugged it off. "So aside from the admittedly shitty location, what's the problem here? What kinda mentoring you need?"

Peeta bit back several rude responses to this question. Haymitch Abernathy might not be the most polite person or the most considerate, but he was a respected chef with several successful restaurants to his credit. He must have some useful advice, right?

"The location's part of the bigger problem," Peeta admitted. "I need to attract customers, build up a clientele. People who come in say the food is great, but-"

"But there just aren't enough of them," Haymitch finished for him, and Peeta nodded.

"Good morning, Mr. Mellark," trilled Effie Trinket. "I hope you're ready for a big, big, big day!"

Peeta had already been sitting in a chair being fussed over for a half hour, and he had more products in his hair than he'd ever even seen in one place. "Is this really necessary?" he asked, as the makeup artist dusted his cheeks with clouds of loose powder.

"Absolutely essential," Effie assured him in her high-pitched voice. "Now, I believe you've already had your first mentoring session with Chef Abernathy?"

Peeta didn't answer, mostly because he wasn't sure what to say. Haymitch had insulted his bakery, his intelligence, and his manhood - then scarfed down four cheese buns and took a half-dozen more for the road. Was that mentoring?

She seemed to take his non-answer for agreement. "Excellent, so you're up to speed on our format and we can move on to-"

"Ah, maybe you can go over the basics one more time? I might've missed some of the details." Or all of them.

Effie seemed delighted to explain the show to him, despite thinking that Haymitch had already done so.

"The format is similar to Chef Abernathy's previous show, Restaurant Disasters. He will visit the bakery and give you advice on how to improve your kitchen and dining areas, menu, and publicity. He can be a bit, ah, rough around the edges at times-" Effie paused and frowned over the top of her clipboard at Peeta, making sure he understood that Haymitch could be a drunk asshole. He shrugged, and she went on. "-Then we'll give the bakery a facelift and several brand new appliances courtesy of our sponsors."

Peeta nodded. He'd seen Restaurant Disasters , and this sounded the same. "For this show," Effie went on, "you'll also be paired with a local farmer, and the new menu items will feature their products."

This was new information, but it hardly mattered to Peeta. "That sounds like a good twist," he said. His mind was still stuck on the part where he'd get new appliances and advice from someone who'd actually run a successful restaurant. Not to mention the free publicity. If people saw his bakery on TV, they'd want to come in, right?

"Oh yes, it's been wonderful visiting all the quaint little farms and seeing the orchards and so on," Effie said, beaming. "In our first episode we matched up a cheese maker with a pizzeria, and the next we had an apple grower and a pie baker."

Peeta nodded, thinking of the apples he'd bought just the other day at the farmer's market, when he saw Katniss across the crowd. Locally grown apples or fresh cheese would be great, he could work with that. "So I'll be matched with..."

"Why, here's our farmer now!" Effie exclaimed, and he turned around in the swiveling makeup chair.

Katniss Everdeen was standing by the door, and Peeta had to struggle for breath. Like him, she was wearing far too much makeup, but she looked amazing anyway. Her dark, glossy hair fell past her shoulders in waves, and her skin seemed to glow in the harsh fluorescent lights.

"Hi, Katniss," Peeta said, and they were the first words he'd spoken to her in years. At least, the first that happened in reality rather than fantasy.

"Hi... Peeta," she said, looking at him curiously.

"You two know each other, how wonderful!" Effie clapped her hands, as if she was overjoyed by this news.

He knew Katniss because he'd been head over heels in love with her for basically his entire life, but he wasn't sure he wanted to advertise that pathetic fact on national television. "We went to school together," he said.

Katniss said nothing, just stood near the door with a closed-off look on her face.

"Oooh, our producer will absolutely love that!" Effie said. "Well, let's not dawdle, we have a lot to do today!"

She led them down a narrow hallway to a television set with three plush armchairs. Peeta tried not to look at Katniss, but he couldn't help himself. When he glanced over at her, she looked quickly away.

They settled into two of the armchairs, sitting still as the stylists fluttered around straightening their clothes and fluffing their hair.

"How've you been, Katniss?" Peeta asked once they were alone, not quite looking at her face.

"All right," she said, then lapsed back into silence.

He looked down at his shoes, which still had a dusting of flour on them. "So you're a farmer now?"

"Not... really." He looked up at her in surprise. "My sister and I- well, we have a garden, and I pick plants and things in the forest, and she makes soap and stuff like that." She looked embarrassed. "I sell it online, and at the farmer's market."

"Soap?" he repeated, confused. How was he supposed to make anything with soap?

She shrugged. "Well, I guess Haymitch thinks the herbs-"

"Right," he said, nodding. He might not be any good with women, but he was great with bread. "I can make pretty damn good rosemary olive oil bread, if I do say so myself."

Her smile seemed to fill the entire soundstage.

"Why are you here, again?" Coming from anyone else, those words would've made Peeta think unwanted , but he'd already spent enough time around Haymitch to know that this was actually his version of nice.

"Effie told me it was the producer's idea," Peeta said with a shrug. "I think he wants to play up the whole-" he motioned with his hand. "-old home thing." Effie's actual words had been let's show the viewers those happy, happy, happy childhoods , but Peeta thought they probably wouldn't find a lot of happy childhood memories back in Panem Township.

Haymitch just huffed and reached into his jacket for a flask, tilting it back and draining it dry as they walked up the muddy dirt road that passed for a driveway to Katniss's house.

The house itself was an old craftsman with peeling white paint and a wide porch. A couple of pots of bright red geraniums sat next to a porch swing, occupied by an enormous orange cat who glared at them with one eye. Behind him, Peeta could hear the director, Cressida, talking with the camera guy about shot angles and "rustic charm." But the house was really nothing, compared to the gardens.

When Katniss said "we have a garden," she'd made it sound like a little plot with some falling-down tomato vines. This was at least two acres, and every square inch was being farmed. The perimeter of the lot was enclosed by a simple split-rail fence, and neat rows of plants stretched from one side to the other, even going right up to the side of the house.

Peeta spotted rosemary and thyme, basil and mint, oregano and lemongrass and yes, several tomato plants as well. He started to make a mental list and then gave up, pulling out his phone to take more concrete notes.

"Gettin' a lot of ideas, kid?" Haymitch muttered, and Peeta nodded without looking away from the gardens. "Good, you need a bigger menu. More savories." And then he wandered off, taking a long drink from his flask as he went.

Peeta blinked at his back. Had that just been... valuable advice? Was Haymitch drunk or mentoring? Maybe it was both. He glanced over toward Cressida to ask if Haymitch was always like that, and looked right into a camera lens.

"What do you think of Haymitch so far?" asked Cressida. He couldn't even see her behind the enormous bug-like camera, but he figured it didn't matter. She'd probably be edited out anyway.

He'd seen Restaurant Disasters before, so he had a good idea of what Cressida was looking for. He gave the camera a wry smile and asked, "Is he always like that?" The cameraman turned and focused in on Haymitch's unsteady walk across the garden.

"And... cut," Cressida said crisply. "Perfect."

Peeta smiled. "So what do you need me to do out here today?" he asked. "I mean, this will be mostly about the farm, right?"

"We'll get some shots of you, too," she said. "Since you're here and all. Don't go far."

Peeta walked up and down the rows, looking at the herbs and vegetables. Here and there, little stakes were stuck into the ground with faded seed packets attached or handwritten markers identifying the plants. Crouching down to read the names, he copied them carefully into his phone, occasionally making notes to himself.

Rosemary cheese buns?

Mixed green salad?

basil, oregano, tomato - bruschetta?

thyme, dill - savory scones?

"See anything good?" a quiet voice asked. Peeta looked around but saw only rows and rows of green things, some growing as high as his head.

"Hello?" he asked.

A moment later, Katniss stepped out from behind the enormous rosemary bush, twirling a fragrant stem in her fingers.

Peeta grinned and shook his head. "I'm really glad it was you," he said. "I thought the butterflies were talking to me."

"Maybe they are," she said, with a little half-smile.

"You never know," he agreed.

Peeta could hardly believe that he was actually carrying on a conversation with Katniss Everdeen. The last time they'd exchanged this many words was when he'd asked her to sign his yearbook in AP biology class during senior year. Her fingers had brushed his hand then, and she'd written see you around, Katniss. He'd read it a hundred times.

"This place is amazing," he said, looking around. "And the herbs - are these all for soap ?"

"Pretty much," she said. "Soap, lotion, hair conditioner. You'd be surprised. We sell any extras in bunches at the market, or dry them for winter." She bent down and plucked a dead leaf off a nearby plant. "Why, what did you have in mind?"

The back of her shirt was hitched up a little, exposing a strip of soft skin just above her waist. Peeta's mind was not on his recipes.

"Um," he said, and then took a deep breath and willed himself to focus. "Well, I was thinking about cheddar scones with thyme and dill, maybe some rosemary breadsticks. I guess - do you have anything else I should try?"

"The mint," she said decisively. "Prim planted it for a face cream, but then it was too intense and tingly. It makes a good tea, though."

"Can I try it?" he asked. "Maybe take some home to experiment? I've never cooked with mint leaves before." He had a vague feeling that it was served with lamb, and maybe in Indian food. He'd have to try out some new recipes, maybe combine it with some kind of tropical fruit. The possible combinations were already taking shape in his mind.

"Sure," she said, leading him across the farm. "We actually have a couple of different kinds, I can give you both to try out and we can adjust seasonally, I guess. Haymitch said people like that kind of thing, rotating menus."

He nodded, and tried to watch his step. There were so many different plants, he wondered how she kept track of them all. "How did you get into this?" he asked.

"The farm? Or the show?" She stopped next to a low-lying plant with bright green leaves, and crouched down to break off a few stems. The paint stirrer stuck in the ground nearby identified it as mint.

"The farm," he said.

"My dad always had a garden," she said softly. "He taught me all about edible plants and gardening. And my mom's parents too, they were apothecaries. I never knew them, but they had these old books about using herbs for skin care and stuff." She shrugged. "It's not useful, not like baking bread or anything."

Peeta shook his head. "Anyone can bake bread," he said. Even a waste of space like him. He looked out over the acres of carefully-tended plants, the straight rows of vegetables and herbs, the fruit trees at the back of the property. A breeze blew across the field, picking up the fresh, clean scent of growing things, and the sun warmed everything with a golden glow. Katniss herself seemed right at home there, her brown skin and gray eyes reflecting the colors of the earth. "What you have here is special," he told her.

The bell over the door jangled, and Peeta looked up. He was expecting Haymitch and the silent cameraman, for their first filmed mentoring session. On Restaurant Disasters , this was the part where Haymitch tasted the food and declared it horrible, raided the pantry and found all types of health code violations, and then berated the chef with a lot of profanity. It wasn't going to be a pleasant day.

Haymitch had not come alone. In fact, he'd brought an entire entourage. Their director Cressida and cameraman Pollux were with him. All right, maybe Peeta should have expected them. And there was a woman with short, curly hair and a large notebook, who Peeta vaguely remembered being a stylist or decorator or something. A heavyset man with pale, thinning hair who Peeta didn't know. Then, behind them all was Katniss.

Peeta opened his mouth to say something, maybe hi or what the hell or did it hurt when you fell from heaven? but none of those seemed right, so after a minute he closed his mouth and said nothing.

Haymitch looked from Peeta to Katniss and back, chuckling, and Peeta tried unsuccessfully not to blush.

"Okay, kid," Haymitch announced, holding court in the bakery's small seating area. "Here's how it's gonna go. First, we'll do a taste test out here - that's me and the herb woman here -" He nodded toward Katniss. "And then you and me will do an interview, and Pollux will get some shots of you making muffins or whatever."

"Sounds good," Peeta said, although Haymitch didn't appear to care one way or the other about his opinion. He turned to the man he didn't know. "And will you be taste testing as well, Mister..?"

"Heavensbee. Plutarch Heavensbee, I'm the producer of this little program," the man said, rocking back on his heels and looking pleased with himself. "I won't be on camera, but I'd like a cup of coffee, thank you." Peeta had no idea what a producer actually did, and he hadn't really offered to make the guy coffee, but he shrugged and did it anyway.

When he got back, Haymitch was studying the chalkboard menu with an exaggerated look of concentration, as Pollux trained his enormous camera on him.

"What are your specialties?" Haymitch asked.

"The cheese buns are a family recipe," Peeta said, doing his best to ignore the gigantic lens focused on him. "And the cinnamon rolls are very popular." Well, the few customers who actually came in seemed to like them.

"Great," Haymitch said. "Give us two cups of coffee, a cheese bun, a cinnamon roll, an oatmeal cookie, a chocolate cupcake and one of those ham scones over there. Oh, and a loaf of sourdough."

That was an awful lot of food, but Peeta supposed that he had to try a bunch of different menu items in order to get a complete picture. He smiled at Haymitch and said cheerfully, "Coming right up, Chef."

He normally didn't wait on tables, but this was so much food that it seemed easier than having Haymitch carry it all, so he arranged the items on a platter, and set it on a tray with the two coffees, a small pitcher of cream, and two small plates. "Here you go, Chef," he said, as he set down the platter on the table between Haymitch and Katniss.

"Thanks," Haymitch said. "Now beat it, so we can talk some trash."

"If you need anything-" Peeta started to say, happy enough to be out of the line of fire.

"Actually," Heavensbee interrupted from the corner, where he'd been drinking coffee and poking at his phone. "Why don't you sit down for the tasting - next to Miss Everdeen, I think." This seemed strange - why would Heavensbee want Peeta to taste his own food? Then again, Effie'd told him that only Haymitch did the tastings. Katniss didn't really need to be at the bakery at all.

Katniss looked over at Heavensbee and then back at Peeta, frowning a little. Peeta caught her eyes and shrugged, as if to say I don't know either. He grabbed a chair from a nearby table and pulled it up between Haymitch and Katniss.

"A little to the left, I think," Heavensbee said. Cressida shot him a glare, but he didn't seem to notice. "Move in a little closer - yes, there."

By this point, Peeta was so close to Katniss that he was nearly in her lap. He glanced over at her, but her face was tilted down and her expression was closed off.

"Hey," he said quietly, touching her briefly on the knee. "This okay?"

She looked up, and suddenly her face was very close to his. "It's fine," she breathed out, voice almost a whisper, and he could almost feel her breath on his skin. If he just leaned in a little bit, he could bring his lips to hers and- but no. She didn't want that, he reminded himself. He was nothing to her.

A minute later, another mug of coffee appeared at his elbow, and Cressida reached over his shoulder, rearranging the food on the serving platter and removing the tray, brushing a streak of flour off Peeta's shirt and tousling Haymitch's hair.

"All right," she said to them. "Eat slow, and don't talk with your mouths full. No one wants to watch that on television."

He remembered seeing her across another crowd, years ago. A sea of blue and white gowns, two hundred and thirty-three square cardboard hats flying up into the air and one clutched in his hand, the tassel dangling off the side.

The stage had three stairs, and he stepped down. People were cheering and hugging all around him, clapping him on the shoulder and congratulating him on the speech he'd just delivered. He'd said a lot of hypocritical things about being fearless and seizing opportunities as they came, advice that he had completely failed to use in his life so far. But today- today would be his day.

Katniss was at the edge of the crowd with another girl, hugging and talking quietly, set apart from the frantic celebration all around them.

Peeta pushed through the crowd, brushing off the friends who approached him or waved from a distance. The only person he cared about was her. His vision narrowed so that the only person he could see was Katniss, every detail of her face crisp and clear in a blur of blue and white. His heart pulsed in his chest at the thought of talking to her, but he knew he couldn't put it off any longer. This was his last chance. Graduation.

He was twenty feet away. Ten feet. Five feet. Three feet.

He was close enough to reach out and touch her, and she turned away.

She turned away, and he could have called her name, could have pulled her back, could have taken her in his arms and kissed the breath out of her right there on the field... and he didn't.

His last chance, and he'd missed it.

Useless.

Cressida set up two chairs inside the kitchen, next to the big butcher-block island where Peeta rolled out his dough in the early hours of the morning, with the big ovens in the background. "Don't worry about the camera, and you'll be fine. Talk to Haymitch, and forget I'm even here."

"Unless you're telling me what to do," he said with a smile.

"Right," she said, and her eyes twinkled in a way that softened out the harshness of her partially-shaved and tattooed head, the gleaming metal spikes in her ears.

Haymitch settled into the empty chair next to Peeta, and took a long sip from his flask before beginning the interview.

"Your father was a baker, too, right?" he said, basically a softball question, and Peeta felt his shoulders relax a little. This was easy to talk about.

He told Haymitch all about growing up in a bakery, about how he would work there on weekends and after school, learning how to knead dough and make cookies and frost cakes at his father's side. He left out the parts about his mother, about how he never stopped trying, even though nothing was ever good enough for her. He didn't talk about the yelling or the blows or the one time she came at him with a rolling pin. The camera didn't need to see those things.

Opening his own bakery had always been his dream, and he told Haymitch about that. About how happy he was to find this place, how perfect it seemed at first even though it was on a quiet side street. He didn't understand, then, how important a good location was.

"Eh, the location's not all bad," Haymitch said, surprising Peeta. "A little neighborhood place? People go crazy for that shit. You just have to sell it right."

"I thought-" Actually, Haymitch had outright said that the location was horrible, and Peeta had been kicking himself over it ever since. But if it wouldn't be a problem... He relaxed a little bit more, and smiled. Maybe he could make this work, after all.

"The way to sell the location," Haymitch told him seriously, "is to change your menu."

Peeta had no idea what that meant, but he bit his tongue and waited, hoping Haymitch would explain on his own. The worst thing the people could do on Restaurant Disasters was to get defensive and argue - that never worked.

"The food is great," Haymitch went on. "But the menu is all wrong. You need to keep people coming back, get them to tell their friends about this place. Here, take a look at this."

Haymitch pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket, unfolded it and slid it across the counter. It was handwritten, and looked as if it had been used as a coaster, or possibly a napkin, but the writing spelled out a clear sample menu.

Peeta studied the list carefully. Instead of bread and cake , the categories on Peeta's current menu, the items were grouped by eat in and to go , along with impulse buys and staples.It made sense. It made a lot of sense.

"So... less bread and more sandwiches," Peeta observed. "Bagged cookies by the register. Muffins. Baguettes."

"Keep doing the bread, too, just-"

"-Fewer varieties," Peeta finished for him.

"Ain't you gonna argue with me on this?" Haymitch asked, frowning at him in an oddly familiar way.

"You're the expert," Peeta said, shrugging.

Haymitch just shook his head, as if he were stunned speechless at the idea of someone actually listening to his advice.

"And these ones use the herbs from Katniss's farm?" Peeta asked, pointing to a section on the bottom, under the heading 'Farm to Table'. These were unfamiliar - caramelized onion crostini and savory Mexican corn muffins, traditional German soft pretzels with herbed dipping sauce.

"I'll give you recipes for those ones," Haymitch said, as if Michelin Star chefs just went around handing out recipes to struggling bakers all the time. No big deal. Peeta could only sputter out his thanks.

"You get some ideas of your own up on the farm?" Haymitch asked, a sly tone in his voice.

"That place was amazing," Peeta said, remembering the way the sunlight slanted across the green fields, the fresh smell of the breeze, the way Katniss's skin seemed to glow.

"And Katniss?" Haymitch prompted.

"Katniss is pretty amazing, too," Peeta admitted, smiling softly to himself. He'd forgotten all about the cameras.

"Are you nervous?" asked Cressida from the backseat, as they drove toward the bakery. Peeta hadn't seen the inside of it for several days, while the place got a full makeover.

"With Haymitch driving?" Peeta joked. "Very."

In retaliation, Haymitch took the next corner at full speed, and the big SUV actually tilted up off the ground on one side.

"What do you think Portia did with the place?" asked Cressida, still pushing for a good soundbite.

Peeta gripped the door handle and tried to distract himself from Haymitch's nightmarish driving by answering the question. "She said she was going for something rustic and whimsical," he said. "I just hope there'll be some seating, because I never had enough before."

Haymitch had been adamant that the bakery needed to cater to customers who wanted to eat in or sit and get work done, so he was certain there would be a bigger seating area. Truly, he just hoped that if the decorator put up anything really strange, it would be removable. He'd gotten into this show hoping for professional advice and new appliances: a Hollywood decorator makeover was not a selling point for him. Portia had been very nice, though, and he didn't want to seem ungrateful.

Besides, the bakery's makeover was a done deal at this point. All he could do was to make the best of it.

"Portia's incredibly talented," he told the camera, turning around to face the lens directly. "I know whatever she does will look amazing. I can't wait to see it."

Cressida gave him a thumbs-up from the backseat.

When they reached the bakery, Cressida pulled out a blue and white bandana, and handed it over the seat to Peeta. He looked at it blankly for a moment, then asked, "Seriously?"

She shrugged. "Makes for better TV."

Haymitch parked the car at an angle, so half of it was sticking out into the road and blocking traffic. "C'mon, kid," he growled. "Put the stupid thing on and let's go. I'll hold your hand if that's what you want."

Peeta laughed, and tied the bandana around his eyes. A moment later, his car door opened and Haymitch took his arm, guiding him along the sidewalk and through the bakery's front door.

When the blindfold was torn off, the first thing Peeta saw was the enormous black lens of Pollux's camera, gleaming like a bug's eye.

He glanced away quickly, and then took in the bakery.

Where the walls once had been painted white, now they had been scrubbed of paint to expose the original brick. Simple round tables with scarred wooden tops dotted the inside, framed by black wood chairs. A large glass display case separated the kitchen and seating area, with a counter that curved around to the side, where tall barstools were pulled up opposite a gleaming espresso machine.

Past the counter, Peeta could see straight into the kitchen, freshly painted a soft gray and filled with brand-new appliances. The baker in him wanted to run straight into the kitchen and look at all his new equipment, but he knew that was hardly what the television cameras wanted to see, and not fair to Portia, either.

Instead, he looked to Portia and gave her the biggest smile he could. "This is amazing," he said. "It looks the same, but better." It was true. The same walls, but stripped of the thick layers of paint. The same room, but filled with sturdy and comfortable seating, rather than the glorified lawn furniture that he'd been able to afford. The same space, but... "It actually looks bigger," he said, as Portia crossed the room to stand at his side, a pleased smile on her round face. "Did you make it bigger?"

"It is bigger," she confirmed. "We moved the display case back four feet, to make a larger seating area, and we removed the wall between the bakery and the counter, so there's actually more kitchen space as well."

"It feels so much bigger without that wall," Peeta said. "And people can see right into the kitchen." He hoped that would be a hint that he wanted to go in there and have a look for himself, but Portia didn't take the bait.

"That kitchen is what makes Mellark's Bakery really special - everything is made right here, in-house," Portia said, speaking directly to the camera now. "Anyone who walks through that door can see the craftsmanship that goes into each cupcake, and the freshness of every ingredient."

Peeta almost laughed in her face at the idea of customers admiring the freshness of his hundred-pound bags of flour, but he bit his lip. And although Portia's explanation was a bit overly dramatic, the place did look wonderful. Somehow she had transformed his bakery from a little hole-in-the-wall to a warm, welcoming destination, a spot that hungry people might actually want to visit for its own sake, not just a place to stop in and pick up a loaf of bread.

"I know you want to go see that gourmet kitchen," Portia said, "but-" Peeta almost groaned out loud at the thought of another delay getting between him and his new kitchen. "But I have one more thing to show you, and it's outside. Come on."

They walked outside, and Portia pointed up. Just above the bakery's door and to the left, a strip of wrought iron was attached to the side of the building, extending out over the sidewalk. Two S-shaped hooks dangled from the bar. After a moment, Portia stepped up beside him, holding something large and flat, which she handed to Peeta.

It was a sign. A square shape with scalloped edges and rounded corners, painted a soft shade of orange and decorated with bold black and white lettering that said Mellark's Bakery. There were two iron rings affixed to the top of the sign, dangling off the edge, waiting to be put to use.

Two production assistants brought over a large ladder, and Portia gestured to it with her hand. "Would you like to do the honors?" she asked.

"Yes," Peeta answered right away. "Thank you."

He climbed to the top of the ladder clutching the sign, and then turned and carefully hung the sign above the door of his bakery.

When he was finished, he climbed down and looked at the sign, at the new furniture now visible through the plate-glass window, at the display case and the appliances and the freshly-scrubbed interior. It looked beautiful: warm and inviting, fresh and tempting. It looked like a new start.

Peeta had a stack of business cards in his apron, and a tray full of paper napkins stamped with Mellark's Bakery and piled high with food samples. His stomach was fluttering with excitement, but it had a lot more to do with Katniss's proximity than the prospect of introducing strangers to his food. He'd been up since dawn baking crusty loaves of French bread and slicing them thin, arranging the tomatoes and sprinkling them with Katniss's fresh herbs and crumbly, fragrant goat cheese. The night before he'd rolled out a buttery crust and cut it to fit dozens of tiny tart pans, mixing the creamy pumpkin custard and pouring it carefully into each one.

"You ready to give away some food?" he asked Katniss, smiling at her, leaning in and bumping her elbow with his.

"Don't make me drop the tray," she said. Her cheeks flushed red, and she looked away.

"So ready!" answered her sister, Prim, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, and somehow not disturbing a single basil leaf on her enormous tray. "Aren't these delicious?" she asked her sister. "Was this your recipe or the Chef's?"

Peeta smiled at her. "Thanks. The tartlets are Haymitch's recipe, but the bruschetta is mine."

Haymitch ambled up and grabbed a tray off the table, as if it was second nature. It probably was. "You two, go around and introduce yourself to the vendors. Tell 'em about the show and give out cards," he ordered, before turning to Prim. "Blondie, you're with me."

"Let's go," Katniss said grimly.

"Chins up! Smiles on!" Effie called as they walked away.

Peeta leaned toward Katniss and echoed the command in a squeaky voice, "Smiiiiiiiles ooo-on." Katniss let out a little snort, and when he looked back at her face, the corners of her mouth were twitching.

They started at the next stall, a farmer selling squash and okra. Katniss handed him a Mellark's napkin with a slice of bruschetta on it, and Peeta explained about the show as a camera followed them. Across the square, Haymitch and Prim were attracting lots of attention, shouting "Free food!" and hamming it up, as Pollux filmed the whole thing.

"Those two are best friends already," Peeta pointed out, nodding to the other side of the market.

"They should've got her for this show," Katniss said, as they walked to the next stall and handed out samples to a woman selling jars of honey and beeswax. "She's better at all this TV stuff than I am."

"Nah," Peeta said, leaning as close as he could, without disturbing his sample tray. "I'd take you any day." It was dangerously close to a confession.

Peeta made change for the girl at the counter. "Your bruschetta plate will be right out," he said with a smile, and then looked expectantly at the next person in line.

"Hi," said Katniss, shifting from one foot to the other.

"Hey!" he replied, with a wide smile. "Good to see you without the film crew." It was strange, actually - even though there were actual customers in the bakery now, the place felt calm and quiet without an entire television entourage taking up space.

"Yeah," Katniss said simply, looking around the bakery with interest. "Makeover looks good. I like all the brick."

"Thanks," he said. "Can I get you a cupcake or something?"

Her gray eyes darted over to the display case, but she shook her head. "I just have a delivery for you, from the farm."

"Great," Peeta agreed. "Do you need help bringing it in, or..?"

She scowled, and Peeta almost laughed. God, she even looked beautiful when she was frowning. He was such a goner. He walked over to the side and propped open the door marked Employees Only.

He pulled out a plain white plate, one that Portia had bought for him that went with the simple design. He sliced a fresh loaf of golden-crusted bread and toasted the pieces, arranging the thick red slices of tomato on each one, then crumbling a fragrant mix of herbs and cheese, and garnishing the platter with a sprig of rosemary before he carried it out to the front.

When he got back to the kitchen, Katniss was there, setting two plastic crates full of leafy herbs and vegetables on the butcher-block counter.

"Thanks," he said. "People love the new recipes, and I get lots of questions about the farm," he said. "It'll be even better once the show airs."

She gave him a small smile. "I get a lot of questions at the market, too," she said. "Haymitch made a big impression, I guess."

Peeta laughed. "He's a memorable kind of guy." Then, before she could turn to leave, he hurried to say, "Listen, I was thinking- maybe I could cook you dinner sometime?"

"Dinner?" she repeated, her brow wrinkled in confusion. At least, he hoped it was confusion and not distaste.

"Turns out I can cook," he said, motioning around the bright, open kitchen with both hands. "Who knew?"

Katniss smiled at this, and then bit her lip. She hesitated, for what felt like the longest moments of Peeta's life. And then finally she answered. "Um, okay," she said. "This weekend? After the episode airs, maybe?"

After decades of inhabiting his dreams and fueling his fantasies, Katniss had actually agreed to go on a date. With him.

"Awesome," he said, feeling the smile take over his entire face. "Saturday, then?"

She smiled and her dusky cheeks flushed with a hint of red. "Okay," she said again. "See you Saturday."

He managed not to jump for joy, but it was a close thing.

Peeta popped open a bottle of beer and carried it over to his coffee table, along with a thick sandwich on fresh-baked bread. He settled on the couch and turned on the TV with a flick of the remote.

His knee bounced without permission, and his stomach felt sour, and the last thing he wanted was to eat the giant turkey sandwich he'd just made. Peeta sighed and tried to relax, wishing for the thousandth time that he had the kind of family who would come over to watch this with him and maybe even understand why he'd wanted to do the show in the first place. But instead, he hadn't even told his parents about the show, because he knew the only reaction would be bad.

If he could make it through this broadcast, he had a date with Katniss Everdeen. That idea alone was enough to balance out tonight's loneliness.

"Coming up..." boomed the distinctive voice of Caesar Flickerman, over a shot of Haymitch screaming at some poor, cowering chef. "Haymitch Abernathy takes on America's best local food in Farm to Table. Stay tuned!"

Peeta breathed deeply through the commercials, reminding himself that Haymitch had never screamed at him like that, hadn't found any terrible health code violations, hadn't even called him an idiot more than a couple times. So hopefully this wouldn't be too bad.

Then a familiar location appeared onscreen, and Peeta leaned forward to watch, resting his elbows on his knees.

The screen showed Katniss's farm, with a few shots of Katniss and her sister tending the plants and mixing up soap in a huge kettle on their stove, with a voiceover about how the sisters had worked hard to build up the farm "from nothing." The announcer really played on how poor they'd been growing up, and how they only had each other, and some old family herb lore. The camera lingered on her rusty old truck and the handwritten garden signs. Peeta frowned. They were making Katniss's life sound like some kind of sob story, as if she were a helpless victim of a poor economy, rather than the incredible, resilient woman he'd admired for years.

Then the show switched to the exterior of his bakery, and Peeta had only a moment to think about what kind of angle they'd take on him before the voiceover was back. "As Katniss Everdeen struggled to feed her family, former classmate Peeta Mellark had his own difficulties, dropping out of college and trying to keep a failing business afloat. But he never forgot the girl from his hometown, the one that got away..." There was Katniss's face again, and Peeta's voice saying "We went to school together, but we haven't spoken in years." Was that from the initial interview? The cameras hadn't even been rolling then. At least, he'd thought they weren't.

It only got worse from there. Shots of Katniss and Peeta lingering in the garden together. Close-ups of his expression as he watched her talk about her family, with everything he'd ever felt written on his face. Katniss blushing and biting her lip, leaning close to him. That had to be some kind of trick of the camera.

The stuff he expected was in there - scenes at the farm and the bakery, interviews with both of them, the tasting and Portia's decorating and everything - but somehow it had all been twisted around to be part of some big love story. The love story that Peeta had been dreaming about for his entire life, which had never actually happened. But there it was, playing out onscreen.

Even the things that he remembered happening seemed ugly and strange, the way that the cameras had manipulated them. Katniss bit into a cheese bun at their tasting, closing her eyes and letting out a little moan of delight, and the screen cut to Peeta's hand on her knee. That had happened before the tasting, and it had been completely innocent! The show was making it seem like that moment had been something sexual. Peeta had been happy for a week because Katniss loved his cheese buns.

Of course he wanted to touch her intimately one day, he'd fantasized about her for years. But if and when it actually happened, it was something that he wanted to be private, something between them, something real. Not faked for the cameras, just to sell a stupid television show.

"Katniss is pretty amazing," his onscreen self admitted, smiling softly.

"Peeta is - he's just incredible," Katniss-on-TV said, biting her lip.

He felt sick. That was it, the moment he'd dreamt about for most of his life, when Katniss Everdeen noticed him. And when it finally happened, it wasn't even real. Seeing a parody of his dream was even worse than never having it at all.

On Saturday night, Peeta intended to sit around in his sweatpants and get drunk while watching old Julia Child cooking shows. It was a good plan, a tried and true plan. Sure, his original plan to cook dinner for Katniss would have been better, but there was no way she'd show up now, right?

He was about twenty minutes into dinner with Julia and Johnny Walker when his phone rang. When he glanced at the screen, Katniss's gray eyes looked back at him.

He lunged for the phone so fast, he nearly knocked over the bottle of whiskey.

"Katniss?" he asked, disbelieving. Why would she even want to speak to him, after seeing the show? He could barely even look himself in the eye when he shaved.

"Hi," she said. "Ah, I wanted to stop and pick up a bottle of wine for dinner, but I didn't know what you were making. Should I get red or white?"

Peeta blinked at the phone. Did she - was she really planning to keep their date?

"Um," he said stupidly. He looked frantically around the apartment, suddenly afraid that there was something horrifying sitting out in plain sight. No, the room looked fine. Dinner. She wanted to know what he was going to make for dinner.

Shit. He was supposed to be making dinner for Katniss Everdeen, and he'd fucking whiffed it. Shit, shit, shit.His brain was completely frozen with panic. He couldn't speak, couldn't move, couldn't think.

"Peeta?" she asked. "You still there?"

He looked at the phone again, and felt something click on in his mind. Time. He needed time. Just enough to figure out the answer to her question, a minute or two.

"Katniss?" he asked. "Can you hear me? Are you in a tunnel or something? This reception is-" and he hung up.

It was cheap, pathetic and cowardly. But it worked.

He ran to the kitchen and looked in the fridge. Inside there was beer, some leftover pizza and old Chinese food, and a few vegetables in the drawer. Not much to work with. He pulled open the freezer and found a package of chicken breasts. He grabbed the chicken and tossed the package in the sink, then turned on the faucet to run warm water over the meat.

Then he ran downstairs to the bakery, thanking every higher power he'd ever heard of that he lived above a fully-stocked kitchen. When he got there, he realized he didn't have his keys, and had to dash back upstairs to get them. The keys were on his coffee table, next to his ringing phone. He grabbed them both and ran back down the stairs.

Inside the bakery, he tried to catch his breath before he answered the phone. "Katniss?" he asked, opening the giant industrial-sized fridge. Somewhere in here, he should have- yes, perfect.

Katniss repeated her question about the wine, and Peeta listened with a tiny portion of his mind as he grabbed ingredients. He was going to owe himself so many ingredients for this dinner, but if the date went well, it would be worth the price. When she stopped talking, he realized he hadn't been paying quite enough attention.

"I was going to make chicken," he said, hoping it was the answer to the question he didn't hear. "So a white would be great, thanks."

"White wine it is," she said. "I'll see you soon."

"See you soon," he repeated, and then looked down at his sweatpants and bare feet. Hopefully not too soon.

Fifteen minutes later, he'd managed to whip up a spinach and goat cheese filling out of ingredients from the bakery refrigerators, and stuff it inside the chicken breasts, which were baking in the oven. He'd even had time to run into his bedroom and throw on a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt. He was still fastening up the buttons when he heard her knock.

He fastened the last button as he was running for the door, his socked feet sliding a little on the smooth wood floor.

When he pulled open the door, he was still trying to catch his breath. Katniss was standing on his front step, with a bottle of white wine in her hands, smiling nervously. She glanced down at his feet, and then her smile widened at his lack of shoes.

Peeta felt his face heat up, and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. "Um, come in," he said. She handed him the bottle of wine, and he thanked her.

"I'm still - ah, still working on the vegetables," he said. "You want to have a seat over here while I cook? I'll pour you a glass." He gestured to the barstools that sat on one side of the kitchen island, and she sat down, hooking one foot over the bottom rung.

"Sounds great," she said, and looked around the apartment while he fumbled with the corkscrew.

"Did you start without me?" she asked, pointing at the couch with a teasing smile on her face.

With a start, he realized that the bottle of Johnny Walker was still sitting out on the coffee table, next to a glass that was still half full of brown liquor. "Yeah, a little bit," he said, trying to will away his embarrassment as he reached for a wine glass.

He poured the wine carefully, wiping up a stray drop as it slipped down the side of the bottle. When he handed her the glass, he was careful not to touch her fingers.

A loud gurgle erupted from between them, and a split second later, Katniss began to laugh.

Peeta felt his nerves relax a little at the sound of her laughter. "Was that your stomach?" he asked, teasing a little. "Or does this apartment have a ghost?"

She giggled again, a sound that Peeta had never even imagined but now wanted to hear every day. "I'm really hungry, all right?" she said. "And it smells so good in here."

He turned back to the kitchen, but he couldn't keep the smile off his face. "It's a good thing I have bread to tide you over."

"You did promise me bread," she said, mock-seriously. The corners of her mouth twitched, and a moment later her solemn expression melted into a wide, warm smile. After that it was easier to talk and laugh, easier to think of her as just Katniss and not Katniss Everdeen, The Girl of His Dreams.

"As you wish." He bowed deeply and then pulled out a loaf of crusty, tangy sourdough bread.

Katniss sat at the counter and sipped her wine, her gray eyes sparkling as she watched him prepare the vegetables. Peeta sliced and diced the colorful squash he'd found in the fridge, tossing them in a pan with a little bit of olive oil and a handful of Katniss's rosemary. Grabbing the wine bottle off the counter, he poured some into an empty glass for himself and then sprinkled a little bit over the pan. With a satisfying sizzle, a cloud of herb-scented steam rose and filled the small kitchen.

"You're pretty good at this," Katniss said, propping her chin in one hand.

He shrugged. "It's not a big deal," he said. It wasn't. This was just some sautéed vegetables that had been sitting in the back of his fridge for a week. Plan A had been to impress Katniss with a flaky grilled sea bass topped with artichoke ragout, and a side of earthy mushroom-stuffed squash blossoms and freshly baked bread. This was pretty lame by comparison. The bread was already twelve hours old.

The timer dinged on the oven, and Peeta pulled out the tray of chicken breasts. The cheese filling had seeped out the sides and burned onto the baking sheet in places, and his quick balsamic vinegar glaze was pooled in one corner, but it smelled okay. He scraped off the burned bits with a spatula and set out the meat on plates, then added the vegetables from the pan before carrying the two plates to his little dining table.

Katniss carried over the bread she'd been nibbling on, and her wine glass. Peeta turned back to grab his glass and some silverware, and brought them over to the table as well. He hadn't even had time to buy flowers or anything, so the table looked pretty bare. At least it was next to the window, so they could look out on the setting sun.

"Thank you so much for dinner, Peeta," Katniss said, looking over the food in front of her. He supposed the cheesy glazed chicken and steaming sautéed vegetables did look pretty good - not compared to his original plan, but it was certainly the best meal he'd ever prepared in a blind panic.

"You're welcome," he said, biting his tongue to hold back anything more critical.

Katniss sliced open her chicken and brought a forkful up to her lips, and Peeta held his breath. The chicken didn't seem undercooked, at least. Hopefully it wasn't too horrible. She closed her mouth around the fork and then slid it out through her closed lips, closing her eyes and tipping her head back as she began to chew.

The sound she made was pornographic.

"God, Peeta, this is amazing," she said. "Is this Prim's goat cheese?" Her tongue darted across her bottom lip, chasing a drop of glaze at the corner of her mouth.

He had to blink a few times to get his brain working again. "Uh, yeah," he said finally. "Yeah, I borrowed some of your ingredients from the bakery. The herbs and spinach, too." It wasn't something he normally ever did, but this had been a major culinary emergency.

"It never tasted this good before," she said, shaking her head and spearing another bite with her fork.

Peeta barely tasted his own dinner, he was so wrapped up in watching her eat his food. She devoured the meal he'd prepared, pausing in between bites only to sip her wine and tell him over and over how wonderful it was.

"I hope you saved room for dessert," he said, after she'd devoured all the chicken and vegetables on her plate. He stood and retrieved the two small plates from the kitchen. "Pear tartlets," he announced, setting one down in front of her, and one at his plate. The poached pears were covered with a silky Bourbon sauce, and nestled inside a flaky, buttery crust.

Katniss didn't take a bite, just looked at him with her eyebrows raised in disbelief.

"What can I say?" Peeta asked, smiling down at the dessert in front of him. "I like to bake."

"This is too much," she said, shaking her head. "You must have been working all day."

Peeta ran his fingertip across the edge of the table. "Actually, I have a confession to make."

"Confession?" she asked, the smile falling off her face.

"I didn't think you would come tonight," he said, watching as she raised her fork to her lips and then set it down without eating.

"Why not?" she said, frowning. "I said I would."

"After the show aired, I mean," he admitted, his face tilted down toward his plate. The apartment was very quiet.

Katniss toyed with the rim of her glass, and finally raised her eyes to his. "I liked it," she said, her voice so quiet it was almost a whisper.

Peeta struggled to take a breath. "Really?" If she'd liked the show, did that mean she- Was that even possible?

"I mean, yeah," she said, tucking an invisible lock of hair behind her ear. "It was nice." Then she frowned, her gray eyes going hard. "Wait, you didn't like the show?" she asked. "Was that not-"

Peeta reached across the table and took Katniss's hand in his, stilling her restless fingers with his own.

"I liked the show," he said. "The parts with the food, the farm and the bakery. But the parts with us were awful - Katniss, I never planned to share that with the entire world." He'd had enough trouble just asking her to dinner, after all.

Katniss bit her lip and looked up at him, her gray eyes shining in the soft orange glow of sunset outside the window. "Before I saw- I never realized-" She trailed off, but he thought maybe he knew what she was trying to say. He could feel hope growing inside his chest.

He squeezed her fingers in his own. "I don't know how to say it exactly," he told her. "Only... I felt like they changed us on the show. I want for this-" He gestured between them, as if he could indicate any potential relationship with one wave of his hand. "I want us to be more than just a storyline for their show."

She tightened her fingers around his, returning the squeeze. "All right," she said. "I'll allow it."

Peeta felt an enormous smile break out across his face.

Keeping Katniss's hand in his own, Peeta stood and pulled her to her feet. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and drew her into a hug, holding her close to his chest for a long moment. She felt tiny and delicate and perfect there. Even better, her arms tightened around his waist and gripped just as firmly, and she rested her cheek against his chest as if they did this every day.

When she tilted her face back to look up at him, her lips were barely an inch from his. All he had to do was to lean down, close the distance, and press his mouth to hers. It had taken him twenty years to do this, but today it was the simplest thing imaginable.

Her lips were soft but firm, and she dug her fingers in his hair and pulled him closer as they kissed. She tasted of wine and cheese, herbs and sunshine and warm breezes. He nipped at her bottom lip, and she moaned softly as she pulled back from the kiss.

Peeta looked down into Katniss's storm-gray eyes and gently stroked the pad of his thumb along her cheekbone. Her arms squeezed him tightly in response.

"Still think the show was awful?" she asked.

He could remember the anger and disappointment he'd felt watching the show, but it was a distant memory now, like something he'd read about. And a few days of pain seemed like nothing, after twenty years of hesitation and regret.

"Worth it," he said, and kissed her again.

Four months later...

"Did you want to watch a movie or something?" Katniss asked, picking up the remote and switching on the TV. She switched from one channel to the next quickly, so that Peeta hardly had time to guess what each program was.

"Hey, look," she said after a minute. "It's on again."

Peeta glanced up, and was startled to see his own face on the screen. "-We went to school together," his voice said, over a panoramic view of Katniss's lush green farm. He'd spent enough time there in the months since their first date that it was comfortable and familiar now, but he was struck once again by its beauty.

"Want me to turn it off?" Katniss asked, biting her lip. "I know you... never really liked this."

The television showed Katniss and Peeta walking through her herb garden, their heads leaning close to one another. All around them, flowers bloomed and growing things fluttered in the breeze.

His expression onscreen was a billboard of feelings, longing and hope and love shining out of his eyes as he watched Katniss talk. He could remember the intense embarrassment he'd felt when he watched all this the first time around, but with Katniss curled against his side and her small hand on his knee, all he felt was content.

"It's actually kind of nice," he said, pressing a kiss to her soft, dark hair.

"Yeah," Katniss murmured, and he could feel the vibration of her voice in his chest. "I told you so."

"I thought... When I first saw this, it seemed like they'd created a whole fake romance, just for the show." Katniss twisted under his arm so she could look up and meet his eyes, and the expression on her face looked just like the one on the television.

"And now?" she asked softly.

"Now, it seems..."

"Real."