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She guesses she shouldn’t be surprised to see the dive bar decked out with the dollar store tinsel. The smell of pine febreze and Natty Light assaulting her as she enters the building. Her entire graduating class (all 15 of them) filled out the bar area, casual conversation and faces frozen in time. Why would anything change in Panem, just because she had.
He sits across the bar nursing a beer. He’s chatting with Leevy. He’s probably always chatting with Leevy because she’s here even when Madge is not. Leevy helps with Sunday school and has a brother the same age as Rory and lives in picture perfect Panem. She probably wants two and a half kids. A white picket fence. A dog named buddy. The American dream.
Or at least that’s what Madge will continue to bitterly think as she observes them from across the bar and then orders another mai tai from Ripper.
-
The snow had turned to sludge about 30 seconds after Christmas Day. It’s kind of sad how quickly things can change despite the fact that time moves so slow in the boondocks. In highschool all she wanted to do was leave. Now she isn't sure that was the right choice. College in the city was everything. There was culture. She was fun. And it was nothing like the small coal mining town that hadn’t quite emerged from the 1900’s yet. No one knew who she was there. No one cared. At first that had been the appeal. Sometimes all she wants to do is be known.
-
He’s like an addiction she can’t quite quit. She’ll lie around her apartment thinking about him, what he’s doing, and wonders if running away from her problems was actually effective at solving them. Type up text after text that she won’t send. Stalk his mom’s facebook. Calls Katniss to catch up and gouge for information. She’ll cut her own hair, pierce her own nose, try to distract the aching loneliness in a city filled with millions.
She’ll think about causing a scene tonight surrounded by all their friends so he’ll take care of her. Tell her everything’s alright and that he’s there. He’ll run his hands through her hair pressed up against the side of his truck and then berate her for wearing such a short skirt in below three weather. Instead, she just orders another drink.
-
“Bangs?” A voice questions behind her. Cato. She takes a drink, rolls her eyes, turns around with a smile on her face. She saw him earlier eyeing her from across the dance floor. Everyone has their holiday traditions. His’s is getting rejected by Madge. “The city sure has changed you, Mary Magdalene.” She laughs him off and curses him out (in her head, of course). Asks how his last year of college is going. He was a dick in High School and he’s a dick as an adult. Probably why he’ll make a fine history teacher. “Rumor has it Mr. Brutus is retiring.” The joys of an American public education.
-
She won’t admit it but she’s watching Gale from the corner of her eye. Always is. He is chatting with Thom and Delly now. He doesn’t seem interested, his gaze stuck on her and Cato. Madge leans into Cato, laughs at a joke he wasn’t making. Looks directly at Gale. Cato must get the hint eventually that there really are three people in this conversation now because soon he’s off to the dance floor and Madge is stuck sipping the melted ice from her cocktail.
Eventually Gale makes his way over. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She’s not sure who starts the conversation first.
He tells her all about Posy in the Nativity scene (which she had watched from the farthest pew), Rory’s big football win, Vick being number one in the science fair. How he hates the commute to school and he knows that PanemU isn’t the best engineering program in the country, but he just needs that foot in the door, and how working for Haymitch in the meantime is grueling and “that old bastard better wait until he’s workin’ for me”. That he misses her and that Quizzo in the church basement isn't the same without his winning partner.
She describes how her dad rarely calls, the intricacies of her classes and the city club scene. Her internship is looking like it will turn into a full time job and her friends don’t really understand her small-town quirks or her “weird” accent. How the city liberals tend to disenfranchise the tenacity of rural progressives; she’s a fish outta water. Sometimes she misses Greasy Sae’s greasy cooking. And she’s so lonely. She misses home and she’s a little drunk. It’s not fair he can’t just say things like that to her. “You can’t make me feel guilty for getting out.”
Then, she is yelling at him and her scene has finally been caused and the entirety of her graduating class sees the mess she is. He ushers her out into the alleyway that separates Ripper’s and the nail salon, she’s crying - one drink too many.
“I miss you” he’ll say as he holds her against the scratchy brick wall. She doesn’t understand why it hurts this much. Why it isn’t everything she always wanted. Why she doesn’t feel at home here or there. How come the one person in her life she wants to actually keep, she can’t. He calls an Uber.
-
He’ll bury his chin in the crook of her neck and leave marks up and down her chest. Cuddled up on the twin bed that haunts his childhood bedroom. His tongue shoved down her throat so far you’d think he was trying to reach her heart. Two moths drawn to a flame.
He’ll question after she is asleep how they always end up in this position. When the other shoe will drop and this will end? When she won’t come home anymore. When he’ll become a distant memory. A story to tell on a night in a highrise apartment. An anecdote in her vows to someone else. A confession to her daughter on the eve of girlhood. Then, he’ll kiss her forehead and pull her closer.
-
He looks at her instagram, tries to memorize the contours of her face. He’ll pick Rory up on a rare day off and picture them hidden behind the bleachers during lunch. Posy asks about Miss Madge often, when is she going to play with her again? And Vick is damn near inconsolable when she doesn’t respond to his emails right away. He studies and works and searches for a piece of her within the quiet moments. Wonders if she'd be proud, if she misses him, if he’ll ever get out.
She’ll leave before the sun rises. Before a sleep-worn Posy can slip into his bed after a nightmare. She’ll become the ghost haunting his halls. He’ll be left in the aftermath, pondering if anything would change if he got on his knees and begged her to stay; begged her to take him with her. Instead, he crawls back under the covers, tosses and turns, until his eyes darken with sleep.
-
December fades into January. New years, new endings. She goes to church on Sunday with his Ma. Bakes cookies with Posy. Teaches Rory how to dance for the Junior prom and gifts Vick her old biology textbooks. He shovels her dad’s driveway. Deliver Haymitch a fruit basket for her. Acts as her date for the Mayor’s annual Christmas eve Gala.
They watch the ball drop in Delly’s musty basement and drink cheap liquor stored behind the couch from their high school days. They go to the graveyard together, visit pieces of the past. They stumble upon open houses and picture Blue Ridge babies with toothy grins, his hair, her eyes. Settle into a period of false security. She soaks in their limited time together. He waits for the other shoe to drop.
-
He knows the way up the tree that leads to her bedroom window. Any person would argue at twenty-three he should at least be able to sneak through the back door. Some things never change. Sentimentality or something like that. Her bags are packed on the bed and the car is all fueled up. Her dad screaming up from the parlor that it's time to go. Gale’s boots dirty the cream carpet. The room is pristine, floral wallpaper and linen sheets. So very Madge.
They always say each time is the last time. They never mean it though. Every year the holidays roll around and they come crashing back to each like the shore meets the waves. Every part of Madge Undersee is Gale Hawthorne. Every part of Gale Hawthorne is Madge Undersee. Kindred spirits irrevocably attached and changed. He carries her bags down the steps, she follows watching her present slip away into the past (at least for now). The car is warmed, the trunk is loaded. Mayor Undersee in the driver’s seat.
Gale pulls her in for a final hug. “I like the bangs.” He says brushing a piece of her hair from her eye. The tears glaze over her eyes. She gets in the car, drives past the methodist and the school that used to be theirs.
-
It's the kind of cold, fogs up windshield glass
But I felt it when I passed you
+
No one needs to know that she’s applying for jobs close to home after graduation. No one needs to know that graduate schools in the city don’t sound so bad to him.