Page 16 of Love Letters to Christmas

All’s fair in love and fire.

Amelia

“Mars?” I say, staring at my box of…unmentionables.

Perking, the man, the myth, the legend turns his attention from a book toward the phone propped on Ceres’s desk.

These two might be married now, but nothing has changed.

I call. She works. He messes around behind her.

Occasionally, depending on when Brian heads to the store or a work meeting, Mars will leave and return with food, but… that’s about it.

I’m jealous of how married couple they’ve been from the very first moment I witnessed them together.

Rising, Mars approaches Ceres’s desk, plants a hand on the back of her chair, and smiles. “How can I help you, Mel?”

“I have a box of things I’d like to burn.”

“What sorts of things? You shouldn’t burn plastic, treated wood, styrofoam—”

“Letters.”

“Letters?” Ceres asks, dragging her attention off her computer for a rare bit of almost eye contact. “Why are you burning letters? Won’t that make Brian hate you?”

Yes, well. Possibly. But…

I stare at the overwhelming number of love letters I have drafted and sealed and shoved under my bed in my lifetime.

I restarted the habit on Monday, after we got back from Bandera.

In a desperate effort to shove my emotions somewhere else so I could return to my very important task of becoming a healthier person, I somehow have managed to spend the entirety of my free time writing letters…

about Brian…and working on myself just about, oh, not at all.

Mars says, “You shouldn’t burn cardstock, or ink, or paper products, really. Those are recyclables.”

“And if…I never want the contents to be read? Not by anyone? At all? Even by mistake?”

Dry, Mars says, “That’s what a shredder is for.”

I need to invest in a shredder. And remove all the carefully-constructed and decorated wax seals.

It seems…like so much work. And, yet, one of the horrible new additions to my box of shame was written in a fit of sleep deprivation and manic.

It is just a poem—a soliloquy, a reminiscence—about Brian’s bare chest. I compare its pale tone to a fresh page and suggest a desire to leave my kisses like penstrokes across the canvas.

So, haha, yeah! No. That along with all my worse childish musings must be destroyed.

“I’d…really like to burn it, I think,” I murmur.

Mars arches a brow. “It’s bad for the environment. Think of the sharks.”

“I thought you were pro-arson, Mars. I’ve seen you start forest fires.” I fix my weepy eyes off the unmentionables. “You are disappointing me.”

“For starters, I do controlled burns , and I’m disappointing you because I’m thinking about the well-being of terribly misunderstood and mistreated oceanlife?”

I think for a moment. Then I say, “Yes.”

Ceres sighs. “Girls, please.”

Mars’s lips quirk, then he hangs his body on top of his wife, wrapping her up in his arms. Peace consumes him as he closes his eyes, and it’s hard to work on myself when myself is a jealous, selfish monster who wants so badly to be loved like…whatever this is.

Without the anxiety.

Without the fear.

Without the constant, unbridled sensation that something is wrong.

Full contentment isn’t that much to ask for, right? Having everything should do the trick, and since all my basic needs are met in surplus, the only thing missing is love. Romantic love. Because, clearly, I have incredible friendship love already.

Pouting, I push my secret box of love letters back under my bed and locate my natural Ceres phone call position on the carpet, face down.

“Mellie?” Ceres hedges. “You good?”

“Totally,” I mumble into the shag. “What gives you any other idea?”

“Certainly a mystery.”

“I’d like to make myself be happy now.”

“It will take time.”

“It has been months.”

“It will take a lot of time.”

Facing the camera, I say, “My mother didn’t know how to give anyone a compliment.

No matter what anyone did, it was only ever insults and passive aggression, a constant you can do better or you still need to work on that .

I’d bring home perfect grades, but since I’d once made a one hundred and one percent with extra credit, she wanted that .

Perfecter than perfect. Always, always perfecter than perfect.

” I squeeze my eyes shut. “I want to be the kind of person who is happy with a ninety-four, and I need to be the kind of person who is at peace with an A-. Or even a B. I want to find rest. I’m so tired of everything I’ve been taught to become.

I just…don’t know how to get rid of it.”

“With time,” Ceres presses. “Give yourself time. It can take years for some plants to get strong enough to bear fruit.”

Years of this sound absolutely terrible. “Don’t talk plants at me. I’m not a plant girlie.”

“It’s like…a sourdough starter,” Ceres clarifies, clearly confused. “You have to…feed it? And take care of it? And then it takes a lot of time to be ready?”

“On average, it takes two weeks to prep a sourdough starter for baking, Ceres,” I drawl.

“Oh. Well.”

“Alcohol,” Mars interjects, lifting a finger. “You’re being aged like a fine wine.”

“Alcohol is bad.”

Mars lowers his finger. “I agree. It goes rather poorly with chocolate milk… I don’t know that this is the best analogy. The plant one was pretty good. Let’s go back to that.”

“I do not know where you both decided I lost the concept. I’m just upset about it.”

Ceres nods, affirmatively, then says, “Be the alcohol sourdough starter tree you want to see in the world.”

I would so dearly like to pass, thanks…but since that’s not an option, I guess I’ll keep on struggling. “Mars?”

“Yes, Mel?”

I blow out a breath. “What do you think would happen if I gave Brian a love letter?”

Mars’s eyes spark in a way I find slightly concerning as his chilling smile grows. “I don’t know. Why don’t you try it?”

Because I am scared out of my mind of rejection and making my present, perfect, living situation so awkward that I’ll be forced to move out immediately and get a job where I won’t see the reason I enjoy being alive every day.

Even though mailroom is love, mailroom is life.

And nothing is better than my life right now.

And honestly why, why, why can’t I just be happy with it ?

I mutter, “What if…I give him a love letter from a secret admirer? Do you think he’d reply?”

“Absolutely,” Mars says. “If there’s one thing, other than our hatred of raisins, that Brian and I have in common, it’s an incurable curiosity.”

Could I stomach a rejection letter from Brian? Would it actually be harder if he doesn’t reject some mystery girl while I’m right here ?

I don’t know. Probably.

Let’s face it, there’s no good ending to this horrible, grasping-at-straws idea. I’m fooling myself and chasing distractions, desperate to strive for something that keeps me from needing to process all the tangled tightness in my chest.

It’s a bad plan.

“Do it, Mel,” Mars says, and I locate that wild craze on his face. It spurs something like a flickering bit of misguided confidence in me. “Write Brian a secret love letter.”

“You think I should?”

“Yep.”

If a crazy man tells you to do something, it’s a very bad idea.

Nevertheless, once we hang up, I select a page of my favorite stationery, sit at my desk, and put pen to paper.

It hurts everything in me to forgo the seal, but most people don’t use wax seals to close their envelopes, and I am doing my best to maintain that whole secret aspect of secret admirer, so I finish the letter, and I close the envelope, and I stare at it.

Heart racing in my chest, I decide that getting a PO box so I can send this with a return address is a problem for tomorrow’s Amelia. Putting the whole thing in my desk drawer, I hope a modicum of sense might compel me to toss it under my bed with the others in the morning.