A Jingle Bell Mingle (Christmas Notch Book 3)

by Julie Murphy

I must learn her ways, because there is nothing more unsexy than me trying to fidget my way onto this thing like a toddler.

Working alongside someone but not with them, each of us having our own passions and desires and loving each other for it.

“Sometimes the girls who seem like they don’t need anyone or anything are the ones who are the most easily hurt.”

The idea was as ridiculous as a sunbeam being hurt by a . . . well, I didn’t even know what. A sad tree stump or something.

Eventually I’d ruin it, I’d let him down, he’d realize that I was the furthest thing from his last muse, and he’d sadly but firmly inform me that I didn’t measure up.

I suddenly realized that I wanted him to push a little.

But the intense devotion he had for Brooklyn only made him all the more equipped to share his love with somebody else one day, even if he couldn’t believe it yet.

Sometimes, stories bring the people we’ve lost back to us, you know? Even if it’s just for a few minutes, even if it’s only for one.

Maybe I’d been hiding from the memory of them too, in my own way, flitting from job to job, refusing to grow up and put down roots, because if I did things like fall in love or buy a house or, really, actually achieve a dream without them here, it meant they were unequivocally and forever dead.

“We have many hearts inside us,” she went on, “and so much room to grow new ones. It didn’t mean that they loved Ronald any less because they forged ahead without him; in fact, maybe it meant they loved him more.

It was a sound I associated with something more than fighting, more than my brother; it was the sound of me being accused. Declared a failure.

I’d cheered on my own friends and loved ones so enthusiastically—and happily so—for the last few years that I’d forgotten how deeply fulfilling it felt for someone to be proud of and cheer for me.

I’m tired of being treated like I don’t need the same things everyone else does just because I can slap a smile on my face when I have to.”

I don’t think it’s that you need to let Brooklyn go. I think it’s that you need to let go of this idea that you have to be someone who can’t love again in order to still love Brooklyn.”

but you also deserve devotion and adoration and all the promises you could ever want. You deserve the right to mess up and to be unhappy and to take risks and dream big dreams and have someone by your side throughout it all.”

I want to be your cloud when everyone else wants too much of your sunshine.

Sometimes when you were the happiest person in the room, no one bothered to check in and see what might be brewing under the surface.