christmas boyfriend || z.h

chapter 1 ~ letters

september 6

"y/n! you have another letter!"

i try to bury my head in my pillow and ignore what gabbie just said, but she put the letter on my head.

"thanks for that." i talked into my pillow sarcastically.

"you're welcome." she replied with the same sarcasm in her voice. "why do your parents even still send letters? they do know texting and calling is a thing, right?"

i finally force myself up and the letter falls on my bed. "they hate technology." i reply to gabbie.

gabbie jumps back onto her bed where her daughter, lavender, is already sitting."you're already a broke college kid, they're just costing you more money by making you buy stamps and shit." we both laugh because, well, it's true.

my parents never liked technology, i never had a cell phone growing up until i was sixteen and payed for it myself. when i moved out for college two years ago, they decided to only send letters and to not get any form of technology to communicate with me.

i ripped open the envelope and pull out the letter. god, i can barely read my mom's cursive writing.

it starts off with all basic stuff: how have i been, are my grades up, blah blah blah, and then i stop. i have to read over the paragraph a few times to let it sink in.

your sister recently got married, i'm disappointed you couldn't take time out of your day to come to the wedding. but it did get me thinking, when will you have someone special in your life? are you going to get a boyfriend any time soon, y/n?

"what the fuck?" i say out loud.

"what 'what the fuck'?" she quoted. she laid lavender back down then hopped off her bed, then got onto mine.

"my sister got married and never invited me!" i scoffed. "and now my parents are asking if i've got someone special."

"wow, i knew your sister was a bitch but how could she not invite you to her wedding?"

i've told gabbie the stories of my childhood, how my parents always favored my older sister and how she was basically my bully for my entire childhood, so she understands.

"she's reached a new level of low." reading over the rest of the letter is basically pointless, it's just going to be a lot of her writing that i should come home more or asking why i don't visit more often. there's a reason why i went so far away for college.

lavender starts fussing a little, so gabbie hops back over to her bed to pick her up and starts rocking her in her arms. "so what're you gonna do?" she lowered her voice because she was trying to get lavender to sleep.

i folded the letter back up. "what am i gonna do about what?" i asked, confused.

"well they asked you if you have a boyfriend, how are you gonna tell them no?" she knows me all too well, she knows that if i say no: my parents will be pissed at me, but if i say that i do: they'll still be pissed at me.

one time around the middle of my freshman year at college i wrote to them that i had a boyfriend, i received a very angry reply from them. my boyfriend at the time didn't know about the letters, but he still broke up with me the next day.

i look over to my nightstand where there's a stack of letters, almost all of them filled with belittling words about how i'm not as good as my sister.

"i guess i tell them what they want to hear."

she raises her eyebrows. "you're going to tell them you have a boyfriend?"

"i guess." i shrugged. "if i came to christmas with nobody, then they'd just talk my ear off about how much i need to a boyfriend so that i can be just like my sister. so why not?"

"you're brave, y/n, very brave." she laughs. lavender has fallen asleep, her head was resting on gabbie's shoulder.

she lays back down and plays with lavender's hair while her phone is in her other hand. i grab a fresh sheet of notebook paper and use my notebook as a hard space, then i start writing.

hi mom and dad,
things have been pretty good as of recently. i have good grades, don't worry.
funny you mention me having a boyfriend, because i do. maybe some day you could meet him.

eh, what's the worst that could happen?