Chapter 3

Every night, Peeta appeared at his neighbors' door with bread and cheese buns, greeted with steaming bowls of stew or pasta or chili in return. The routine quickly became a source of comfort to him. But bundled with the companionship he'd begun to relish and the hot meals were Katniss and Haymitch's arguments, rapidly increasing in their regularity. The instant Peeta would open his back door, the sound of their raised voices wafted toward him like a poisonous fog, abruptly stopping once Peeta arrived. They never spoke of it, carrying on as if nothing had happened.

On one occasion, their fight was so loud Peeta could clearly make out what they were saying as he trekked across their yards.

"…only cared about the money!" came Katniss's voice.

"I never wanted a red cent of it," Haymitch countered with equal intensity. "I keep trying to give you girls the blasted money!"

"I don't want the money. You weren't supposed to sell it. Now some other family's living there…"

"I hope the damn place burns to the ground so I don't have to keep hearing about it!"

The next sounds Peeta heard before letting himself in were shattering glass and a slamming door. Once inside, the acrid stench of liquor assaulted him. A bottle lay in wet shards in the kitchen sink. Haymitch sat on the couch nearly inhaling in the contents of his flask. Katniss was nowhere to be found. The only sign of her was the sound of the nearby bathroom faucet running. She returned several minutes later with puffy, bloodshot eyes that refused to meet Peeta's for the rest of the night.

Most evenings weren't as intense. He'd walk in mid-bicker, they'd stop, he'd eat. Haymitch frequently went to bed early, leaving Peeta alone with Katniss, and Peeta would give his best imitation of someone whose blood wasn't screaming beneath his skin at the sight of her. Those were good nights.

Tonight wasn't.

Katniss and Haymitch were at it again. Peeta stood at the back entrance, fingers frozen around the door handle. He debated whether to turn right back around and go home, fall asleep on his couch in front of an old episode of House.

"So why am I even here then?" Peeta heard her yell. It sounded like she and her uncle were in the living room.

"Feel free to leave any time, sweetheart."

"Uh-huh. My car won't start. So how do you suggest I do that?"

"Your legs broken?"

"Seriously? And I have class in the morning, by the way, and I have no idea how I'm getting there."

Peeta sighed and slid the door open, stepping through the kitchen where he left a bag of cheese buns and a sourdough loaf on the table, and straight into the battle taking place in the next room. He stopped at the end of the couch where Haymitch sat clutching his flask while Katniss paced back and forth in front of it, as if working off all the excess anger.

For once, Haymitch appeared unaffected by both Peeta's presence and Katniss's words. "What happened to those friends of yours? Their cars won't start either?"

Katniss halted. She wrapped and unwrapped the end of her braid around her thumb, not acknowledging Peeta either. "Johanna doesn't have hers right now," she said, her voice much smaller. "And I can't get a hold of Madge."

"How 'bout that other one?"

Who?"

Haymitch closed his eyes and clumsily snapped his fingers. "Tall, dark...what's-his-name."

"Who – Gale? He lives on the opposite side of the country. Jesus, you know that."

"I'd offer you a ride," Peeta cut in apologetically, finally getting both of their attention, "but I have to be at the bakery before sunrise. Hi, Katniss. Haymitch."

"Hi," Katniss muttered. She gave him a weak smile. "That's okay. I'll just get notes from someone."

Haymitch, meanwhile, struggled for something in his pocket, finally retrieving his wallet and threw it toward her where it bounced off the carpet. "Get the damn thing fixed."

"No!" Katniss made no move toward the wallet. "I'm not taking more of your money than I have to. I'll get it fixed when I can pay for it."

"I'm also paying for you to go to school. Not sit around with me all day or entertaining him." Haymitch jerked his head toward Peeta.

The mention of his name dissolved the self-imposed boundary that had been keeping Peeta from interfering in their dispute. He bent down to grab Haymitch's wallet and shoved it back into the man's hand. "This is going to stop," he said. "Right now. Whatever your issues are, screaming at each other isn't getting you anywhere. You two are going to figure this thing out like the adults you are, so I suggest you – where are you going?"

Haymitch had stretched and pushed himself up off the couch. "It's my own damn house. I'll go wherever I damn well want. You and the girl have fun working this out yourselves. I'm going to bed."

Peeta tightened his fingers into a fist at his side, resisting the urge to shove his neighbor back into his seat. "Whatever you're arguing about is still going to be waiting for you in the morning, you know."

"And I'm praying to whatever deity might be listening that I expire in my sleep," Haymitch fired back, taking pained-looking steps across the room.

"Quit being so fucking morbid," Katniss called after him, to no response.

Once Haymitch was gone, Katniss led Peeta into the kitchen and pulled dinner from the microwave. "It's a pretty simple solution, Katniss," he was telling her as they sat together at the table between creamy bites of macaroni made with sharp cheddar and American cheese, and not the neon orange powder that came in the boxes that Max preferred.

"I can't afford to get it fixed right now," she reminded him.

"Okay. So, if your car won't start after it's rained and you're not able to repair it, you know what you need to do? You need to keep the rain off of it."

"With what? A car-sized umbrella?" she quipped.

Peeta leaned forward, unaffected by Katniss's sarcasm. "You told me there wasn't enough room in the garage. Just how bad is it?"

He'd been expecting a mess. General disarray. Not this. This wasn't a garage; it was wall-to-wall junk blanketed in dust. There was almost no room to walk let alone park a car. It was as overgrown as the backyard.

It was early Sunday morning, Peeta's only day off, but he'd insisted on helping Katniss with this. It was far too big a job for just one person. Katniss tried to argue with him at first, telling him it wasn't his problem, that he did enough for Haymitch and her and got so little in return. But on that point she was wrong. She had no idea how much spending time with them meant, but he didn't tell her that, didn't want to seem more pathetic than he already felt. "Tell you what," he'd proposed a few nights earlier during dinner. "You make more of this on Sunday," he pointed his fork at the macaroni on his plate, "and we'll call it even, okay?" Katniss had grumbled about it not being a fair trade, but gave in all the same.

Inside the garage, they were silent aside from the crunch their shoes made on the available surface, gritty with dirt and tracked-in leaves, as they stepped between waist-high stacks of boxes and everything else that couldn't be packed away. Pieces from an artificial Christmas tree were strewn everywhere. Cobwebs hung from every corner like canopies. There was an old spindle headboard by Peeta's feet. Four rusted bicycles stood beside it. An aluminum ladder leaned casually against the back wall and several sets of ratty shoes and boots sat obediently beneath it.

As Katniss hit a switch that sent the garage door sputtering and wheezing its way upward, Peeta clasped his hands together. "Okay," he said. "Here's what we do. Everything that we want to donate goes in one pile on the driveway. Everything that needs to be thrown away gets taken to the curb. And Haymitch is okay with this, right? When you told him what we were doing?"

"He sort of grunted," Katniss told him. "I took that as a yes."

With that out of the way, they stepped around a labyrinth of plastic lawn furniture, and the enormity of the task began to feel overwhelming, threatening to crush Peeta's resolve like an Acme anvil. It looked like an entire lifetime was crammed into one eighteen-by-twenty foot space. Nevertheless, he suggested that they start in opposite corners, working section by section, spending hours inspecting and sorting everything in their way.

While the neatly stacked boxes gave the impression of orderliness, Peeta opened each cardboard flap and was met with chaos. One box contained a jumble of dish towels and picture books and a slim wooden hairbrush with long dark hair still caught in its bristles. Stuffed animals surrounded a crystal gravy boat and a pair of periwinkle suede boots in another. And there were Lego pieces scattered in nearly every box.

Eventually, he and Katniss met up in the middle, as Peeta began digging through a bin filled with sports equipment: balls and bats and mitts and pucks and sticks, some of which looked like they had never been used. When he looked up, where there'd been a small dresser with peeling cream-colored paint in front of him, he saw Katniss now obstructing its view, bending over to reach for something behind it. His body's reaction to the sight was swift and scalding. He tried not to think of his hands gripping her hips, of how soft her bare skin would feel beneath them. Of her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth slightly parted.

The concave soccer ball in his hand fell to the ground. He hated himself so much in moments like these. But he took a deep breath, inhaling the musty garage air that not even the fresh autumn breeze let in from the open door could eliminate, then picked up the ball to focus on his own task, not glancing up at Katniss even once. Most of the sports equipment looked to be in good enough shape to donate, so he stuck what he could in the designated pile and moved on.

Leaning against the wall to his left was a deconstructed piece of furniture that Peeta at first mistook for another headboard. On closer look, though, he could clearly see what it used to be. A baby's crib. Reverently, he ran his knuckles over the cherry wood bars. He'd put one together much like it for his son. Peeta had always assumed that Haymitch had children, because of the pool and the swingset in the backyard, though in the years Peeta had been his neighbor, he'd never met Haymitch's kids, and the man had certainly never mentioned them. He'd always assumed they were estranged. "Who did this belong to?" he called out in Katniss's direction. After all, for all Peeta knew, much of this could have belonged to Katniss and her sister.

"Huh?" She was now crouched beside a box that apparently used to hold a television set but now contained clothing, moth-eaten and not even folded, just crumpled up in a compacted heap. Katniss leaned forward, pressing her knees into the filthy concrete, rifling through the piles of crinkled blouses and skirts and pill-y sweaters.

He shook his head. "It's okay. It's not important." About to reach for the box of trash bags, something else caught his eye instead: a small yellow wicker basket. He picked it up, blew off the layer of dust, and inspected it further. It looked like the kind that would attach to the front of a bicycle. A plastic gerbera daisy adorned the front of it.

Katniss appeared beside him then. She gently ran the pad of one dirt-covered finger along the faded pink petals. "I never even…" she started to say, then stopped short. She shook her head as if to erase whatever she'd been about to share and took her hand off the basket, taking a step back.

"What is it?" he asked. "Was this yours?"

Her gaze fuzed with his, like a magnet on metal. "What? No. That wasn't mine."

"Oh." He scratched the back of his neck. "Does this belong to one of Haymitch's kids? Does he have kids?" He regretted immediately the bluntness of his question. This was none of his business.

Katniss would have had every right to snap at him, call him out on his rudeness. She didn't, nodding instead. "He did," she confirmed. "Two of them."

Her use of the past-tense wasn't lost on Peeta. Neither were the hastily packed boxes filled with toys and clothes and objects that surely Haymitch's family would want were they still alive.

They'd cleaned enough of the garage that Sunday so that Katniss could park her car, a blue Pontiac Sunfire with red replacement doors and a rusted undercarriage. They didn't speak of Haymitch's family again, even as their belongings were hauled away to sit in either a dumpster or a thrift shop in the city.

A few days later, Peeta unexpectedly ran into Katniss at the grocery store, where she was inspecting a giant bag of off-brand puffed rice on the bottom shelf of the cereal aisle.

She looked up at him and eyed his red plastic grocery basket critically. "Do you ever buy any real food for yourself?"

"Well, hello to you too," he said playfully, even as he stared down at the sad collection of items in his basket: a six-pack of beer, a block of cheese, and his son's favorite cereal. "You know, just because you have a cart full of produce doesn't give you license to act so superior."

She took his teasing in stride, merrily pushing her shopping cart toward him. "Guess what?" she asked, then erupted with details about her sister Prim's upcoming visit that weekend. Prim didn't eat any animal products, so Katniss had made a list of Prim-friendly groceries to pick up. As she spoke, Peeta noticed something different about her, a radiance that wasn't just from the harsh glow of the florescent lights that emanated from the store's high ceiling. And then Peeta realized what it was. It was the first time he'd ever seen her smile. A real smile, the kind that reached her eyes. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate the way she looked otherwise – he was actually a big fan of the scowl – but he also reveled in her obvious joy, and all it took was something as simple as an upcoming visit from her sister.

"Haymitch should be happy," she continued. "He's always liked her better than me anyway." She studied the crumpled list in her hands. "Now I just need to find almond milk." She wrinkled her nose. "How do you milk an almond anyway?" she asked dryly.

Peeta stamped down the urge to embarrass them both with a lame joke about tiny almond udders.

"Hopefully this'll keep everyone happy," Katniss continued, looking pensive all of a sudden. The light had started to dim from her eyes. "Haymitch pretty much only eats toast these days. Sometimes soup. And tea if I can pry that flask away from him. I made sure to get Prim's cereal... Oh, and I found this recipe for vegetable soup that I think he and Prim will eat. And you," she added a tad shyly. "Hopefully you'll like it too."

"Yeah. Yeah, of course," he said. There was something suddenly bothering him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He glanced at the contents of Katniss's cart again — carrots and celery, three pounds of red potatoes, cereal and tea and cans of broth, a box of silken tofu, plastic-wrapped packages of white button mushrooms, bags of dried beans. "So, which of this is yours?"

Her brows crinkled in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, everything that you've mentioned is for someone else. What are you getting that's just for you?"

"Oh. It's not like I'm not going to eat this stuff, too…" She trailed off, appearing flustered.

What's your favorite food?" he asked. "And don't tell me cheese buns. I already know you like those. What else do you like?"

"I don't know." Her answer wasn't sullen or defensive; she looked honestly perplexed by this line of questioning, as if this were something no one had ever thought to ask her. And it broke Peeta's heart.

"Sure you do," he said gently. "What's the one thing you like more than anything else?"

She cocked her head to the side, mulling it over. "Grandma Everdeen used to make this lamb stew when I was a kid," she finally said. "I don't remember much, only that it had dried plums and she served it over wild rice. Whenever we came to visit, she always made that the first day."

"You're a good cook," he encouraged her. "Have you ever considered trying to replicate it?"

Katniss shrugged. "I'm all right, I guess. But that's more complicated than the stuff I usually make. Haymitch won't eat it, anyway. And Prim eat a cute little lamb? That'll never happen."

"And you can't make it sometime just because you want it?"

"That'd be kind of a waste."

"You really think doing something for yourself is a waste?"

"He won't eat it," she snapped. "He won't eat any of her recipes, so there's no point. And I probably couldn't make it right anyway."

"Katniss..."

"Look," she said. "I've gotta go to the back of the store. I'll see you later, okay?" She hastily pushed her cart away from him without giving him a chance to respond.

He knew better than to go after her, knew that she needed her space. So he watched her leave, sadness and affection and concern churning inside of him as she turned the corner out of sight.