Maybe It Can Be Real

Chapter 8

ALL RIGHTS GO TO SUZANNE COLLINS. I OWN NOTHING.

I smile back. "You can never love someone too much."

He kisses me again and suggests going outside on the porch to watch the rain. I turn my head and look out the window surprised. I didn't even hear it before, but now that I can hear it, I don't know how I didn't before.

We get up and walk out of the bathroom. Peeta grabs the blanket off the bed then my hand. We go downstairs and out to the porch. Once sitting down, Peeta wraps the blanket around us.

We sit there in silence watching the rain. I rest my head on Peeta's shoulder and look around. I guess it's been raining pretty hard for a while because I can see puddles in the grass and on the sidewalk. I sigh as I look over and see Haymitch's windows open.

"What's wrong?", Peeta asks.

I point to Haymitch's house and roll my eyes. When Peeta sees the windows, he rolls his eyes too.

"I guess we should go close them," he says trailing off toward the end.

"We don't have to," I reply, drawing out the "o" in "to."

"Yes we should," he says, mimicking me by drawing out the "ld."

I glare at him and say, "Fine. But you will be making cheese buns when we get back."

Peeta laughs a little then says he'll do it. We get up and I start to go inside to get a jacket and shoes.

"What are you doing?", Peeta asks me.

"Getting a jacket and shoes. Duhhh," I say to him.

He turns a little red in the face and says, "Right. Sorry I forgot."

I go inside and slip my father's hunting jacket and boots on. I guess Peeta is already wearing stuff. I didn't really pay any attention.

I go back out onto the porch and walk to Haymitch's house with Peeta following me. He catches up to me and grabs my hand.

When we get to Haymitch's house we walk inside. I gag and almost fall over at the stench: alcohol and vomit. Yuck. I look over at Peeta to see that his eyes are watering and let out a small laugh. We pull our shirts over our noses and start to close the windows.

The windows are a little hard to close at first, but I eventually get it. I don't know if it's because I'm weak or they're just hard to close. Probably both.

It takes a while to close them, but we finally do. We look around and see that there is puddles under some windows and wet footprints leading to where we're standing. We look at each other and groan as we realize what happened.

"Seriously?", Peeta complains. I nod my head and start searching for the cleanest towels I can find. I don't see any downstairs, so that means I have to go upstairs.

"Good luck. You'll need it," Peeta calls as I walk away. I walk up the creaky steps and almost fall over yet again at the stench when I reach the top. It's infinitely worse up here. Haymitch must be in his room.

I pick my way around the broken bottles and ....used clothes. I finally find the linen closet and grab two towels. I stumble down the stairs and run into Peeta. He grabs my shoulders to steady me and laughs.

"Was it really that bad?", He asks me.

"Yes! Don't go up there," I warn him. Peeta laughs again and grabs a towel. We walk over to the windows and start sopping up the puddles. We clean up the wet footprints too.

When we're finally done, we just throw the towels into the mess already on the floor. We walk back outside and I take a deep breath of fresh air. It's raining a lot harder now; it's pouring outside.