Tough Love | EVERLARK

Where the boy with the bread is delicious in a suit.

If there were three known facts about Katniss Everdeen, they would be:
1) She was extremely loyal.
2) She was horrendously stubborn, and most importantly...
3) She was never late.

She had never once been late for school or any of her shifts at the diner. She used to even arrive 30 minutes early to the post office every Sunday at noon to collect the food stamps for her family.

So now, with her being over half an hour late, she was a complete and utter mess. Today was supposed to be an extremely important one. It was day one of her running the big project and was set to meet the advertisement representative from Mellarks. The person that she was supposed to be working on this campaign with. The

She blamed Peeta Mellark entirely. The only reason she woke up so late this morning was because she couldn't get to sleep the night before. She had spent the night rethinking their interaction over and over again in her head, trying to decipher what the sad look on his face meant.

She also blamed her shitbox of a car, the one day when she needed her car to start, it didn't.

Katniss praised the heavens for Madge, who gave her a lift to the office happily, even getting out of her bed early to help Katniss during her crisis.

"Thanks again Madge, I really owe you," Katniss thanked as the two parked outside of Fireshot. Katniss was attempting to smooth her bedraggled braid down and wipe off the remnants of last night's mascara.

"No problem Kitty, been there, done that," Madge soothed, reaching over and doing up one of Katniss' buttons on her shirt. Katniss smiled in appreciation, not knowing how she hadn't noticed it earlier.

"See you tonight," Katniss said as she hopped out of Madge's pristine Audi.

She checked her father's old watch on her wrist one more time, seeing it read forty-five past nine. God, she was screwed.

She caught sight of her reflection in the elevator mirror and frightened herself. Who was this strange girl looking back at her? Katniss spent the short time in the lift scrubbing her face clean, feeling embarrassed about having to meet the ad rep looking like this.

She felt utterly shamed as she marched through the office, her cheap heels clip-clopping loudly on the wood flooring. Everybody turned to stare at her as she made her way to Effie's office, with some turning and giggling to their desk mates. Let's just say she had pissed off some people by scoring this project. And she now had many people praying for her downfall.

Katniss kept marching, not even knocking as she reached Effie's office, just barging through the door, a sweaty, panting mess of a woman.

"I'm so. Sorry. Car. Broke. Down," Katniss panted as soon as she entered, only noticing the flash of Effie's now green wig as she sank onto one of the leather seats, her legs feeling wobbly.

"Kitty Kat?" An all too familiar smug voice sounded from beside her, making her heart sink as she realised just who the advertisement rep happened to be.

Looking over to the voice, she was met with the sight of Peeta Mellark, the boy whose tormented looks kept her up all night, the same boy who made her mind go dizzy.

"Peeta? What are you doing here?" Katniss asked, all of her professionalism disappearing as she saw her newfound enemy smirking at her.

Katniss could have thrown herself out of the nearest window. Of course, Peeta Mellark was delicious in a well-fitted suit. He looked like an Armani model, and Katniss smelt like the wine she had been drinking last night. Perfect.

"You two know each other?" Effie Trinket queried, looking at the two with shock plastered on her overdrawn eyebrows.

"No."
"Yes."