Three in the Morning

Steady

Peeta

I'm glad Katniss is letting loose a little today. I mean, it might not be terrific that she's too drunk right now to walk two feet of a straight line, but I feel more comfortable when it doesn't seem like she's paying scrutinizing attention to every move I make.

Her sentences are unintelligible, but she's laughing and that's what matters.

"Excuse me," interrupts the bartender to Katniss, "you... you're not intending to drive home this afternoon, are you?"

"What're you implying?" She responds.

"Sorry, I'm just obligated to . . . nevermind."

"No she's not," I tell the girl whose shirt tells me her name is Glimmer, "definitely not," I laugh.

"I'll do what I want!" Katniss yells at no one in particular.

"On that note, would you mind getting her a soda or something?" I whisper to Glimmer. I think she should have been cut off a while ago, and I now feel guilty for revelling in watching her ease up since I only now realize it may not have been the best thing for her.

With someone as small as Katniss, I should have seen it coming that not too much more than one drink would have been enough to get her hooked and feeling a little buzzed.

I watch, intrigued and amused, as Katniss dazedly traces circles with a french fry across her forehead. Drunk Katniss is the kind of person a sober Katniss would frown upon for her simplemindedness, but I love them both.

After handing Glimmer a larger sum of cash than I would've preferred to have handed over, I keep her as steady as I can as we walk out of the place.

Katniss' half limpness makes her a lot more difficult to coax back to our building. It probably takes a half hour to walk just the few blocks and up to her apartment, she telling jokes the entire way that sound so cheesy that she could be reciting them from a popsicle stick, but I don't get sick of them. It's very entertaining.

"It's so hot in here!" Katniss yells as soon as we enter her apartment, and she proceeds to twirl around the room, making her a combination of coordinately impaired and dizzy.

"Aren't you hot?" she asks with an expression of genuine concern.

Katniss spins herself over to where I stand in the doorway, grabs the sleeves of my shirt, and tugs in effort to pull it off.

I have no idea what her drunken subliminal intention is, so I smile, grab her by the wrists, and sit her down on the couch.

"Hey, settle down, I'll turn on the fan."

I plug in her fan, turn it on, and aim it at where she sits. To my surprise, when I turn back around, Katniss has stripped herself of her floral tank top and is fanning herself with it.

"Should I go?" I ask.

"No! Come over here, Peeta, I want to talk to you!" she tells me, and with that, falls off of the couch.

"Alright, about what?"

"I don't know, I just don't want you to leave." she confesses.

I'm flattered that, even though not in her right mind, my fondness of Katniss seems to be reciprocated.

"You think of something to talk about," she instructs, her eyes closed.

"Okay then," I say, and I begin to tell her some things on my mind.

"I think you're beautiful . . . and I've liked you since we were very young."

Things I would never tell a more unforgiving, sober Katniss. Things I hope she won't remember.

She doesn't open her eyes, but her expression turns warmly serene.

"Thank you. Do you have the time?" she asks, unaffected by what I've just revealed.

I glance at the clock on her microwave.

"Sure, it's five o'clock."

Katniss springs up.

"I have to go! Bye!" she says, and hurries out through the door, slightly less teeteringly than before, leaving me to sit back and try to begin to comprehend all of this.