You Only Live Once

Chapter 8

I type the number on the greasy buttons of the phone of the dinner and wait for Annie to pick up, while redoing my braid that is a complete mess from staying in the car all day long.

I feel uneasy for Peeta not being anywhere near. He stayed in the car because it would take him to long to put his prothestic back on. After Peeta told me about his leg, I started noticing his expressions of discomfort and his continues rubbing of his left leg (or stump), caused by wearing the prothetic for so much time non-stop. I basically forced him to take it off because it was clearly bothering him, and Peeta didn't want me to see him without it. "What, with you watching?" he had said after I suggested him to take it. Clearly, he is embaressed by his missing leg, though I don't see why. It's not his fault he doesn't have it, and it doesn't make him less of a person. The other way around, it makes me look uo at him, and how fast he climbs stairs. I almost feel embaressed for all those times at campus I would be walking uo the stairs with Peeta and me actually stopping halway to make a break.

"Hello?" Annie's jovial voice pierces through the phone.

"Hi, Annie. It's Katniss." I say. Since me and Peeta left campus we still haen't called anyone. I don't even know if Peeta told Finnick about the adventure he had planned for us. So yeah, I feel kind of embaressed for having not reacheed out to anyone, specially Annie, who is my roommate and gets worried as easily as my mother would.

"Katniss! We're have you been? I've been so worried about you! You know how it felt like waking up in the morning and you were missing? I almost had an heart attack!!" Annie basically screams. I let her go on with her little overreactive speech until I'm actually bored of her lecturing me.

"Yes, I'm sorry Annie. I realy am. It was just an unexpected exit." I try to explain myself, remembering the night Peeta broke in my our dorm and basically dragged to his car in a road trip to Philadelphia so that we could still Luke Hemming's underwear. Good memories, right?

"What do you mean? Have you run away with some hippie guy I didn't know about?" Annie asks suddenley all to serious for her ridiculous statement.

"Oh, come on, Annie! A hippie? That's so not my style. A drug dealer would've been more likely." I joke, trying at the same time to ressurge her, showing that I'm alright. Annie laughs in the other side of the line. "But no. I'm with Peeta. We're in Philaddelphia."

"What? You ran away with Peeta to out of state? I didn't even kniw you two were having a thing. I suspected it, but I didn't know for sure." Annie starts to blabber.

"No, no. Annie, it's not like that. He dragged me to one of his adventures." I say, trying to make it clear to her that I'm not having a thing with her childhood bestfriend. The thought of having any sort of romantic relatioship with Peeta makes my face feel hot and my hands jittery.

"Oh, ok. Forget what I just said then." Annie awkwardly says, probably feeling embarissing for suggesting that me and Peeta were having some sort of love affair. "Well, I'm really sorry for Peeta dragging you in one of his cooky experiences. If I kneew any of that, I would've stopped him. Sometimes he really does go to far. Just please, don't get the police on him, he is kind of delusiounal."

"Stop! Don't worry about it. I already beat Peeta about the subject and really, in a sort of weird freeky way, I'm having fun."

"Well, that's unexpected." Annie mumbles, making me chuckle.

"It's kind of good, we're getting to know each other."

"Well, that's great Katniss! Just tell me you'll call next time you and Peeta decide to have a nicee get away." Annie states teasingly. I blush again, and feel something near to goosebumps. Before I even have the time to respond to her tease she hangs up.