I woke up the next morning not thinking anything, my mind was blank. I got breakfast for myself and laid around the house having no plans at all. I had the blinds open in the window in my bedroom so that when the mail person comes and goes I can run out and grab the mail before anyone else. After about 2 hours of doing nothing but watching videos of Loki Tik Toks on youtube I looked over and saw the mail van pull up to my house, put in the mail, then leave. I bolted out of my room and through the living room and out the door as fast as I could, not even worrying about possibly knocking over any of my family that might be in my way. I went to the mailbox and flipped through it one by one so I could find the one piece of mail that I had.
When I saw a green envelope in the mailbox and knew it had to be from him, I grabbed it the second I saw it and stood in front of the mailbox just staring at it and screaming "HOLY SHIT HE ACTUALLY WROTE BACK TO ME!? WHAT- HE-- HUH?! DOES THIS MEAN WE ARE ACTUALLY OFFICIALLY PEN PALS?!? IS WHAT TRINA SAID ACTUALLY TRUE RIGHT NOW?!?! I DIDN'T EXPECT THIS TO ACTUALLY HAPPEN! I DIDN'T THINK HE WOULD ACTUALLY RESPOND BACK A SECOND TIME! I mean I was hopeful that he would but THIS TYPE OF SHIT ONLY HAPPENS IN STORIES! NOT REAL LIFE!".
I must have been standing out there for a long time cause suddenly I heard my mom calling out my name "Y/N! What are you doing?". It took me out of my trance just long enough for my brain to go into overdrive and make me bolt back into my room without even answering my mom. "Well what about the mail?!" she yelled out to me when I zipped past her, "You get it!" I responded, running in through the door and pushing it ajar behind me immediately regretting it because now it means that mom was gonna bother me as I'm trying to read the letter.
Once I was in my room I sat down at my desk and flipped over the envelope to open it then stopped immediately because I saw a gold rose stamp wax seal on the back and got very happy.
I grabbed the bottom of the wax seal and gently lifted it up so that it wouldn't break and took it off the envelope and put it in my little Loki coffee mug that I had sitting in the corner of my desk, I thought I would start my own little collection of all the wax stamps that I would get from him —just to have proof of something to brag about. I continued to take the letter out of the envelope to read, as I did that my mom and grandma busted into my room demanding why I was acting like Speedy fucking Gonzalez.
"What was that all about back there?" my mom and grandma both said at the same time.
"What do you mean what was that back there? I am always like that... just having a random burst of energy for no real reason, y'all know that. ADHD and all that."
They looked at me with the 'yeah right, don't bullshit us' look (you know, the one that all mothers have) "You know what we mean Y/N, why did you run out of the house the moment the mail person left?" my mom said. "Without even getting any of the mail" My grandma added.
I sighed because I knew that they weren't gonna leave me alone til they got an answer that satisfied them, so I figured I would just quickly catch them up with what I have been doing so I could get back to letter as fast as I could, "Ok so I am just gonna give you guys the short short version of why I was acting like Speedy Gonzalez. So basically the thing is... —I took a big inhale of breath, *the next part of this is to be read in a rushed demeanor*— when I wrote that first letter to Tom Hiddleston I put in a P.S at the bottom asking if he would like to be pen pals with me and when he wrote back to me he said he would like to be pen pals with me, so naturally I wrote to him again and as one normally would he responded and wrote to me again. So now this is our second exchange of letters and I think we are now officially pen pals -I exhaled my remaining breath and clapped my hands together in an 'all done' way *rushed part is over*— So there, is that good enough for you? Now, can you please go out now, so I can be my fan girl self and screech in delight whilst I read his letter that he wrote specifically for me?" I started walking towards them, shooing them out of my room not even letting them have the chance to speak again.
The moment they were both out of the door frame I gave them a sweet 'thank you, come again!' grin and shut the door with them still standing in front of it. I let out a deep sigh, Sigh, I know i'ma get some backlash for that later but whatever, I will deal with that later, cuz right now it is time to read Mr. Tom's letter! I went over to my desk, grabbed a piece of paper and wrote Do Not Disturb on it, then went to stick it on the front of my door with some tape so my family would know to leave me alone (it's childish I know, but sometimes it's the only thing that will actually work). I sat down back at my desk, took the letter out of the envelope and started reading.
Dear Miss Y/N,
I will be honest with you miss y/n, I am also quite surprised that I am writing back to you. I don't believe I have ever written back to a fan more than once, but then again, none of them have written to me twice and none of them have ever even attempted to ask me if I can be pen pals with them either. I am probably just as excited as you are to be pen pals with you, because for some reason, I really do enjoy reading your letters. I think it is because you don't write to me like I'm the celebrity that I am, you write to me like I am the regular civilian person that I am and I appreciate it very much, so thank you for doing that. When it comes to the schedule of us writing letters to each other, I think that writing once a month would work out good for me, because of my 'busy schedule' as you seem to call it. I'm sure, as you know, a lot can happen in the span of one month. By the way, you don't have to be so formal with me, you can address your letter with my first name, I would actually prefer if you did, since we are going to be pen pals after all, (and forgive me for guessing) but I guess that we will become good friends from this. At least that is what I hope for ;-D. But for now I will continue to put 'your pen pal' until you think it is appropriate to sign off as your friend.
Your Pen Pal, Tom Hiddleston
I read the letter so fast that those last couple sentences he wrote didn't even register through my head until I read them again. 'By the way ... good friends from this.' When I read it again I couldn't believe my eyes, he wants me to address him by his first name?? And he wants to be FRIENDS with ME??? This feels too good to be true! I astonishingly told myself, my mouth was wide open in a big circle, as well as my eyes, they were opened so much that you could almost see all the white that was in my eyes. I took one more quick glance at the letter to make sure that nothing else went over my head, which was nothing except for a P.S at the bottom.
P.S. As you can see on the top right corner of the letter, I wrote the date of which I wrote and sent it. So if you want, you can reply to this letter right away or wait until the end of the month. It won't matter to me, I will be waiting for your letter in the mail, whenever it comes :-)
Reading his P.S sent happy little goosebumps down my arms. I wanted to reply right away, but something stopped me and I'm not sure what it was; was it because I had no idea what I would reply with? Was it because nothing had really happened to me this month besides work? Or was it because my mom and grandma were still out there in the living room still expecting me to give them a good and proper explanation that actually made any damn sense?
For whatever reason it was I couldn't bring myself to write another letter so I just decided to wait till the end of the month to reply back to him, so with that decided I went out to the living room where my mom and grandma were sitting in the La-z boys semi-patiently waiting for me to properly explain everything.
Once I had finished explaining everything to my mom and grandma, they just shook their heads out of disbelief and also them probably thinking I am out of my damn mind.
I went back to my phone that was in my room and called up Trina to tell her the exciting news. She must have been sitting by her phone waiting, because not even after 3 rings, she picked up the phone and answered:
"Hellooo? What ya calling for? How may I help you?" she chuckled.
"Hmm, I have this strange feeling that you already know why I have called you and therefore, is why you are laughing" I said.
"You may be right about that my friend, if my hypothesis is correct."
"Well, then, dear friend, pray tell. What is this hypothesis of yours?"
I don't know what came over us but somehow during the first 5 minutes of our conversation we had become somewhat like Holmes and Watson, with Trina investigating to try and figure out whether her hypothesis was correct. And after many, many, ludicrous questions (and tons of laughs) she found out that she was right.
"AH HA! My educated guess was correct! The celebrity DID write back to you! I just knew he would!" she triumphantly shouted like she just beat that one level of candy crush that she has been stuck on for a month.
"Yes you were! Why couldn't you have just asked me that in the first place rather than us going on a whole Holmes and Watson skit for 3 minutes?!" I threw my hand up in the air as if she could see me through the phone even though she obviously couldn't.
"Because it's fun! And besides you were the one that fell into the skit not me. But anyway, I can't believe this! You know what this means right?! It means you and a celebrity, are now--"
"--officially pen pals." I said with her at the same time, but with a shocked tone of voice with the realization hitting me like a freight train. Trina took notice instantly when she heard the tone of my voice when I said it with her.
"Hey? Are you alright? You don't seem too excited?" Trina said.
"Uh, yeah, I'm fine, it's just, so shocking to think about ya know? I am an official pen pal of an official celebrity." I could hear Trina getting quiet to allow me to talk through it aloud to myself.
Once I was done talking to myself through the shock, we moved onto our next conversation of how and when we are writing to each other. I told her all about it and she gave me a few tips and some suggestions about pen palling with people from a distance away and how to fit a month's worth of events into one little letter.
After the tips and suggestions had been taken to note by me, Trina said she had to get ready for work, so we said goodbye and I hung up.
Even though the letter was dated June 7th, it didn't come to me till the 9th of July, which meant I was gonna write him back at the end of that month and therefore start our chain of letters.
~~~Time Skip~~~
It had been some months since Tom and I had become official pen pals (my friend Trina had confirmed).
We had been sending each other one letter at the end of every month for the past 6 months. The first couple of letters were just about what had happened to us that month or anything that we had done that was out of our ordinary daily life (like buying something unnecessary or going out somewhere new and just any other place that wasn't our house or work). We never asked each other about anything really personal —I think we both just weren't sure of the right time to start asking those type of question— but for at least the first 2 or 3 months we just talked about stuff that acquaintances would talk about (ya' know light conversations) because for the first the half of it we were just acquaintances. But I guess after about 4 months Tom got tired of talking about the same old boring things and finally asked me a personal questions in a P.S:
... So, I will be honest with you, all this talk that we are doing is getting kinda boring so I am gonna go out on a limb here and ask you some semi-personal question... What is your family like? Do you have any siblings? Are your parents together or are they not? Forgive me if these are too personal (you don't have to answer them) I would just like to get to know you a bit better so we can slowly work our way to becoming friends :-)
When I first read I almost had a heart attack, I couldn't believe it. He was legit serious about wanting to become friends by doing this —but of course so did I kind of, but I just thought 'oh that will never happen'— but here he was straight up asking me to become friends with him. When I wrote my next letter to him I didn't even say anything about my work or daily life from that month, I simply answered his questions:
Dear Tom,
I shall first say that, No, those questions you asked me were not too personal for me, and if you ask me they are not really all that personal, those are just the first type of questions you would usually ask when trying to get to know someone. And for that reason I will answer them for you... *I will this section of the letter to your own imagination so you can fill it with your own answers to his questions and not me answering it for you, (cuz y'all have your own answers to it I'm sure lol)* ...and that just about sums it up. I hope that satisfies your inquisition on what my family is like. If you would like to go into further detail about them, I think we would actually have to meet up in person because that is a lot of writing I would have to do and for 1. I don't want to do that (I would get writer's cramp in my hand) 2. It would probably be better and easier for you to understand them if you just met them.
From your (making their way to be) friend,
Y/n L/n
I put in a P.S at the bottom mentioning how much better my cursive has gotten since we started writing to each other, just to see if he has noticed, I thought. I also had asked him about his family (to show that I also wanted to make an effort to become his friend).
When he replied he said that he had noticed that my cursive was getting better and that he was envious of me because his hadn't and that he was convinced I was cheating and was practicing it on the side.
But ever since that first time of us being bold enough to ask each other any type of 'really getting to know you' question, we didn't give two craps about how the other person's day went. All we asked/talked about was things about our own personal lives which in turn got us closer and closer for our relationship upgrading from pen pals to friends.
And after about 9 months of us getting to know each other and us having become friends, I got a letter from Tom, it was the smallest letter I have ever seen from him; just one sentence asking me the question:
Would you like to meet in person?
End of Chapter 6