Three in the Morning

May I Have This Dance?

Peeta

Katniss doesn't look too well. Her hair is matted and dirty looking. Her clothes appear wrinkled and slept in. Even her stomach looks pinched to some degree under the fitted shirt she's wearing, like she's starved herself. Somehow, she's still a beautiful sight. Disheveled, but beautiful.

I must admit, it hurt to see my cheese buns scattered and trampled on the floor like that. It's also pretty confusing, because . . . why?

I was hoping she would love them.

Well, my mother tried to kill herself, she'd said.

Now it's my turn to feel guilty.

"Katniss . . . I didn't know."

"It's okay. How could you have?" she spews from a contorted face.

"I'm so sorry. Is she okay?"

"Yeah."

Silence hangs in the air between us for a moment.

"I guess you'd like to be left alone," I tell her, and touch my hand to the doorknob, poised to exit.

"Peeta,"

"Yes?" I turn around optimistically.

"Will you stay with me?" She asks.

"Of course," I say.

I trod into her apartment and take a seat on the couch. She follows me, but stops.

"I'll be right back," Katniss announces.

I nod. She hurries off.

The sound of a shower becomes audible.

During the fifteen or so minutes she bathes, I make myself useful, picking up the demolished remains of my desserts and throwing them into the trash. I wipe up the sticky residue with a paper towel, and shortly after, Katniss emerges from her bedroom.

I'd never before realized how unfamiliar someone can look with an altered hairstyle. Her long, sopping, brunette head of hair hangs down, unbraided, to reach halfway down her chest. It makes Katniss in her entirety look surprisingly different, not to have it all woven up as usual.

She comes off friendlier and more unguarded. It's actually very pleasant.

Taylor Swift's "Love Story" whispers from the radio she keeps on the kitchen counter.

I walk over and turn the volume dial until it's blaring.

"Do you dance, Katniss?" I ask timidly.

"What? No," She says.

"Well... will you dance?"

"I don't know how."

"Neither do I. We can learn from each other."

She eyes me suspiciously, but takes the invitation that is my open arms.

"We were both young when I first saw you," the voice sings.

I wonder if she's struck by that verse as I am. I'd never acknowledged this song as anything but overplayed, but it might just become our anthem.

Katniss has her hands on my shoulders while we awkwardly sway side to side, a little too slowly for the upbeat tempo of the song.

Much to my surprise, at the chorus, Katniss' voice accompanies the radio.

"Romeo save me, they're trying to tell me how to feel," she chimes, her eyes lightly shut.

"This love is difficult, but it's real."

Her voice is so gently pure. I haven't heard her sing since... I don't even remember when, but I can recall a love of hers for the practice. She'd shamelessly harmonize with her father while they walked home from school, when we were very young. Some of the kids would snicker at them from the monkey bars, and either Katniss didn't know it or didn't care, because she'd sing with him softly every day until we got to the stage of life where it's laughable to so much as hug your dad goodbye in the morning. Come to think of it, I have not seen Mister Everdeen since then. I wonder if he's still spending his days in the south. It would seem like an anomaly anyway for such a man to reside in a place like New York City. Even stranger for a girl like Katniss to have migrated here, though. I really don't know.

By the time the last chord has struck and the last verse has been sung, she and I are breathless, and we collapse onto the couch.

"You're not as bad a dancer as you think," I tell her.

"Oh, I know. I'm spectacular," she says sarcastically, flipping her braid on to her back.

Looking at Katniss with the rarest of her expressions plastered across her face, a genuine smile, I am overwhelmed with a desire to kiss her. And something sends me the notion that that's a good idea, too.

High on the aspiration, I lean in. Unfortunately, her smile is consumed by a look of mild bewilderment.

"What are you doing?" She questions in a high pitched tone.

"I was... going to kiss you,"

Katniss hesitates. "Alright then."

And now we're both craning in each other's directions until our lips touch.

We kiss. It's certainly something else. It's weird but wonderful in our own middle-schoolers-first-liplocking kind of way.

My hands awkwardly grip the material of the couch and hers are folded on her lap. Any spectators would be cringing by now at how stiff and prude this form of endearment is.

Nothing but quiet is exchanged for probably a minute afterwards. But it feels like an hour to me.

"I think," Katniss starts, "we'll have to try that again sometime."

"I think so, too."