Not a Tale of Love

Chapter 1

          I looked up into his eyes as we lay, hand in hand, behind some bushes near the meadow. The stars overhead were reflected almost perfectly in his twinkling grey-brown eyes. “What?” Gale whispered sweetly to me.

    I sat up, still staring into those eyes. “Nothing… It’s just-“ I hesitated for a long moment.

     “What?” he repeated, concern growing in his voice.

   “I don’t know… I don’t… How much longer can we keep this a secret?” Gale looked at me with a vague, slightly confused expression. “Think about how horrified people would be if they knew. The looks we’d get, the hatred spilling from their mouths, the anger- I don’t think I could handle it. Katniss is getting suspicious. We can’t risk her finding out. Maybe we should just end it-“

    “Listen,” Gale sat up then, too, and said to me in a stern tone, “I don’t care about other people. I don’t care about the looks, the words, the anger, I don’t care. What I do care about is you. Prim, I know things don’t look good for us but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, does it?”

     “Gale, I’m trying to be logical here. It makes more sense to-”

   “To what, give up?” I averted my gaze to the grass I had been plucking from the earth. After a slight pause, Gale made his final argument, “I’m being logical, too. I love you, so it’s logical for us to be together.”

     “The age difference, though-“

    “Look, I want to be with you, so I will.” He interrupted me. I wasquite unhappy that Gale finished our disagreement like that, but I was done fighting. Eventually, I nodded in agreement.

     Glancing up at the moon then back at me, Gale said, “It’s almost midnight. We should go. Tomorrow’s the reaping after all.” Gale stood and began to stride off. A few paces later, he halted, turned on his heel, and took a bow as he said, “May the odds be ever in your favor,” mimicking a Capitol accent. Resentfully, I laughed.