Page 27 of Love Letters to Christmas

Am… I dessert?

Amelia

Brian owns the most Christmas decorations I have ever seen, and that is saying something considering my mother is very proud of her last name and persists in making sure our house is the most decorated for Christmas in the entire neighborhood every single year.

While “A Holly Jolly Christmas” plays and the scent of eggnog cookies—made with fresh eggnog since it’s not in stores at this time of year—pours through the house, Brian puts up a string of garland all around his living room.

In the open dining area beside the living room, I take my time decorating the third tree of the night, each covered in tiny decorative letters with little green-and-red Christmas-themed wax seals.

I have never been this happy.

Decorating with my mother was always a chore.

I’d be braced constantly, waiting for her to tell me I’d done something wrong.

Her arguing with my father over how he’d hung the lights outside would drown out any music, assuming music hadn’t already been outlawed as a distraction, because, many times—after I’d made too many mistakes—it was.

And I’d blame myself for having the audacity to sing along instead of staying focused.

Decorating beneath the scrutiny of a dictator in silence made it hard to still appreciate how beautiful everything was in the end…

Decorating with Brian brings the beauty forward, and you know something?

I’m not even scared to be singing along.

Hopping down off his ladder, Brian beams at me. “You’re doing amazing, A-mail-ia.” He then marches himself right on over to a box filled with fake snow, buries himself inside, and carries a pile to the last tree I decorated.

White fluff scatters behind him as he unceremoniously drops his load in a way that would make my mother livid .

With her, everything had to be perfect . We’d be up all night trying to obtain this mysterious level of perfection, all for her to cross her arms and pinch her lips and mutter that the Winter Wonderland we’d all spent hours putting together would have to do .

At least until one of our neighbors put up one more inflatable Santa than we had.

Then we needed not just all of the main reindeer, but also a collection of others, and elves, and snowmen, and the entire North Pole.

Breaking into a box filled with mismatched stuffed snowmen, Brian sets up a lovely little family in his chaotic fake snow mound, planting a crooked North Pole among them.

There’s something about the chaos. About the miniature village on the entertainment center, comprised solely of different types of post offices. About the warmth amid the AC being turned down to forty. About being here in a world of kind words, joy, and peace.

I love it.

“Mistletoe!” Brian declares, and my heart thuds.

Why would he have mistletoe decorations in his private collection? I turn from my duty of placing little letters all over this tree to find Brian approaching, swiftly, a green sprig with white plastic berries in his hand.

My heart trips into overdrive.

He can’t.

He isn’t.

He wouldn’t .

Grinning, he lifts the mistletoe above our heads, takes my hand, and—presses the letter I’m holding to my mouth. Breath held, I stand motionless as he leans in, settles his lips against the envelope, and kisses me through it.

Warm green eyes find me as he pulls away. “There,” he murmurs. “Now we’re safe. We’ve already kissed under this one, so I’m free to put it up.”

He… I… What?

Merry, he hums along to the Christmas music and finds the perfect place to hang the mistletoe, as though he has not left me traumatised or anything. Shaky, I look down at the decorative envelope and find my lip tint glazing the paper in a smudged kiss mark.

Heat explodes in my face.

Oblivious, Brian retrieves the eggnog cookies from the top oven, checks on the roast in the bottom one, and calls out, “Ten minutes until dinner break for all my busy little elves.”

I have ten minutes to stop floating and pull myself together.

Dazed, I set the letter upon a tree bough, adjust it so its seal is perfectly presented, and lose myself watching Brian set out an assortment of snowglobes down the center of the dining room table.

He stuffs more fake snow around their bases, then fluffs it.

Our eyes meet.

My heart launches itself to the North Pole.

Something sly slips into his smile a second before it’s gone, the look so brief I barely know whether I really saw it or not. He plants his hands on his hips, beholds the beautiful chaos, and says, “Perfect.”

Perfect.

Even with flecks of white peppering the floor and chairs, it’s perfect .

I cannot express how much being here is like breathing for the first time, despite how often Brian manages to take my breath away. The freedoms afforded to me, the care presented, the consistent behavior, it’s all so much more than I could have ever dreamed of.

Right now, when Brian is refusing to let me do anything to contribute, he still makes me feel like I have worth. Right now, when the point is that I am useless to him, he still makes me feel like he values my company.

He treats me like a person.

I don’t think I ever completely realized how my parents never even granted me that much. To them, I was extra labor, extra income, extra emotional support. Being here, now, I do not understand how anyone can survive in so much anger and negativity all the time .

It’s exhausting. It makes you irritable. It fuels its own awful cycle.

Being here, now, I pity them. I pity them and mourn what could have been.

“Whatcha thinking about, A-mail-ia?” Brian asks when he places our dinner on the counter and swipes a cookie off the stove.

Christmas music swells. I take in my home. It bursts with life, character, joy. Peace infiltrates my bloodstream, and I say, “I’m grateful. For everything.”

Brian laughs, offering me a cookie. “Well, of course you are, silly. You tell me that every day.”

My stomach tightens, and I flinch before I can take the offered cookie. “I don’t, though. I don’t tell you nearly as much as I should. After everything you’ve done for me—”

He mutes me with the cookie. “You tell me when you smile. When you do everything in your power to fight me on not letting you help out. When you hum along to the songs I play in the car on our way to work. When you laugh. Gratitude pours out of your actions every day, A-mail-ia. Just because your head voice has been trained to tell you horrible things doesn’t mean that what it says is true.

You’ve been lied to constantly, so now you lie to yourself.

But I know you’re grateful. I see it in your character. ”

A tear slips down my cheek as I take the cookie.

He swipes the drop off with his thumb and wipes it on his sweater vest. “Is it good?” he asks while I chew.

I can only nod as I sniffle.

“Excellent.” He touches his fingertips to his lips and turns to get plates out of the cabinet, murmuring, “Dessert first usually is.”

Before I can decode if that means something, he’s humming along to “Jingle Bells” and dishing out our roast.