Page 73 of Love Letters to Christmas

A harsh word slides casually through my brain, so I loop my arm around her back and pull her from everyone working on their sculptures just in case they look up. Stopping in a quiet corner of the hall outside the conference room, I run a knuckle beneath her eyes and continue munching on what is probably the best gingerbread I’ve ever had.

“You think I’d let just anyone live in my spare room, Mail-ia?” I ask, gently.

“Y-yes?”

I chuckle. “You really do have rose-colored glasses for me, don’t you?” I pull the hem of my vest up to dry a tear that falls. “You’re allowed to be kind to yourself, too. If you can’t do it for you because you think it’s selfish, do it for me because I don’t like to see you hurting. Okay?”

Her fingers splay beside her skirt, flat against the wall that I am—quite apparently—pinning her to. Fragile, she whispers, “That’s…an interesting way to put things.”

“Is it really? Seems fairly normal for a friend to not want another friend to beat themselves up all the time.” Did I just sayfriendtwice? Oops. She’s gonna be up all night thinking about that one. Which means she’ll be up all night thinking about me. I let it slide. “It doesn’t make you any better of a person to think how horrible of a person you are, and it even hurtsthe people who care about you. If you’re determined to believe you’re selfish, be selfish. Because, really, before this week, I let you spoil me rotten, and you still think I’m some kind of good person, which must mean you’ve either got a messed up idea of how things work, or double standards. Face it, Mail-ia. All I’ve done is flip the script. If I wasn’t selfish during the months you spoiled me, you aren’t selfish now.”

She flinches, and her pupils dart between my eyes.

“Well?” I prompt after a minute.

“I think I have double standards,” she says.

Chuckling, I finish her gingerbread letter and give her a little more space in the corner. “Awareness is the first step to leveling them out, don’t you think?”

Silent, she nods.

“You okay?”

Air fills her chest as she laces her fingers in front of her skirt. Hopeful, she says, “I will be.”

I hum. “That’s all I can ask for. Come now, my precious girl. I think I need another cookie.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Character growing…like a chia pet…please wait.

Amelia

My precious girl.

Brian called me his precious girl. I don’t know how to handle that information. I don’t know how to implement what he told me. He’s not wrong, at all. I know that.

I have double standards.

I expect things of myself that I don’t expect of others. Worse, if Brian behaved toward my acts of service the way I’ve been behaving toward his,I’d be hurt. If he took one look at the muffins I’d been making us for breakfast and winced and made it seem like a burden on him that I was asking him to accept them…

Ugh.

I need to do better. Get out of my head. Give myself the same courtesy that I give to others.

Because the more I think about it, the more I realize that I am the only thing standing in my own way. No one is making demands of me anymore. No one is saying that my best isn’t good enough. No one is getting angry over nothing. Ever since I moved and started working in the mailroom, I have been given tasks that I have accomplished without further instruction or complaint.

My cleaning hasn’t been nitpicked. The only thing I’ve made that Brian didn’t like was those vegan raisin bran muffins.

I am appreciated here.

And if I spend all my time waiting for something to change, I’m never going to be able to appreciate being here.

I cannot keep living my life waiting for people to start acting like my parents. I cannot allow my upbringing to dictate my future.

Sitting in my car outside the post office, I run my finger over the wax seal on my new letter from Brian. I rambled a lot in my last letter, dumped a ton of nonsense onto the stationery. I’m a little scared to see how he responded.

At the very least, he should absolutely understand that I’m serious after he’s read nothing short of a breakdown.

---