You Only Live Once

Chapter 15

The next Monday Peeta isn't waiting for me in our usual spot to walk to classes together, and I know better than to wait for him. After I run up to him in campus yesterday, I realised that he was somehow hurt about me and Gale. I don't know exactly what we were before, but if Peeta thought we were more than friends, he never really showed it. And friends don't get hurt when one of them sleeps with some guy, specially if they were drunk. Although I am to blame for most of what happened, this is Peeta's fault too. He is my friend, not my boyfriend, I haven't cheated on him, he shouldn't be acting so cold towards me, that's it. Simple as that.

But this other part of me, that has been growing considerably everytime I think about Peeta, keeps reminding me of the nights Peeta and I slept next to each other in the car, so close I could smell his breath and feel is warmth. It reminds me of when we shared the same bed, and slept cuddled in each other, of when Peeta would give me hidden complements and stare at me with that expression only Peeta can make, and, of course, of that kiss. I always thought that that kiss was the source to all of this mess between me and Peeta, but then again, is it really? Didn't all this mess start when we met, in that train to campus. Maybe the simple fact that Peeta entered in my life, is what changed everything. Not the kiss.

I sigh, it was so much easier when we were on the road, just the two of us, Peeta and Katniss, and no one else. No one to judge the way we acted, to question us about everything. We didn't need to complicate everything, it was easy.

The morning classes go as usual, nothing much happens, and they go slow, real slow. I keep denying myself that it is because Peeta isn't with me. Eventhough we share most of our classes, I have seen him in none, and during lunch he also doesn't show up. The fact that I haven't seen him the whole day leaves me uneasy, and worried that something happened to him, to my dismay. I want to ask about him so bad, but at the same time I can't muster courage enough to ask it. Instead I wait for someone else to make that question.

"Hei, does someone know where's Peeta?" Annie asks taking a bite from her sandwiche.

"He caught the first plane this morning to North Carolina, family emergency." Finnick answered.

This catches my attention, suddenley I feel bad about thinking that Peeta was only trying to avoid me for childish reasons, when in fact he was traveling out of state because something possibly terrible happened to his family. My uninterested mask I've been trying to pull off the whole day when I feel so empty I can barely take it, falls off.

"What? Why? What happened?" I ask franticly.

Finnick eyes me curiously, and I can also feel Gale's intense staring from the other end of the table. He has been trying to catch me by myself so we can 'talk'. Truthfully, I don't really want to, specially after seeing the lost puppy expression Gale has on right now.

"I think his grandpa his sick or something like that." Finnick say.

"Really? Oh, he was such a nice guy, he'd let me and Peeta play with his soda cans collection when we were little. He even helped me play a prank on Peeta once." Annie says, with a somewhat sad expression

Annie and Peeta are childhood bestfriends, they were neightbours since birth, until Peeta had to be hospitalized because of the cancer. It actually doesn't impress me that Annie would know his grandfather, in the end she always told me they were attached to the hip.

"That sounds incredibly evil." Finnick states. "I mean, you'd betray your bestfriend with his grandfather."

"Really? Come on, we were 5, and Peeta had been telling everyone how he wasn't afraid of anything We only locked him in the attic with the lights off for a few minutes. It wasn't such a big deal. It's weird that Peeta gave me the exact same speech back then." Annie says.