by Angel Devlin
“Jerk.” I shouted at his retreating back.
After I’d finished the clearing up, I retired to my bedroom to write my letter. I decided to type it into the computer first and then handwrite it because otherwise it could take forever. I’d show Finn the printout and then once I had a man’s view on it, I’d handwrite it. God, then I’d need to decide what to write it on. A notelet, a plain piece of paper? Would I be judged on what I sent it on? It was something else I needed to ask Finn. For now, I just had to concentrate on my opening letter and how to sound so amazing, he wanted to date me (and even maybe in the future marry me).
Dear Stranger (this doesn’t sound right, ask Finn).
My name is Ella and I am writing you this letter in the hopes that we may share common interests and get to know each other a little better. If we get along after the three letters then hopefully we will already know that we are quite compatible? I do understand some might think it’s a strange way to get to know someone in this modern day and age, but do you know what? I’m tired of the swipe right mentality and the loss of romance.
It was no good, I needed Finn in here as I went along. I jumped off the bed and stuck my head out into the hall.
“Fiiiinnnnnnn.”
“What?”
“I need you.”
“What for?”
“My love letter.”
“Needs to sound more enticing than that.”
I bit my bottom lip. He was being a dick.
“Fiiiinnnn. I need you in my bedroom.”
I heard a thud and he came running to my door. My eyes watched his junk bounce about in his pants. I was such a perve.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
I shook my head. “You’re such a dufus. Come in and help me. I’m writing nonsense.”
“Oh my god, I am actually going in a girl’s bedroom. I’m so excited.” Finn skipped in. I couldn’t help but laugh.
He swung around to me in the doorway. “Where do you want me?” He wiggled his eyebrows.
I giggled. “Finn, I need you on the bed.”
He flicked his hair and pouted. “I was hoping you would say that.” He jumped on the bed and hutched up to the right near the wall, placing my laptop on his knee and reading. Then he looked up at me. “Dear God, Ella. If I received that I’d be looking for a bucket to vomit into.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“You say the word romance to the guy in the first paragraph. You’ve lost him.”
“Finn. I need romance in my life. If the guy doesn’t then he’s not for me.”
Finn patted the side of the bed. “Come here, squirt. Look, you lead up to that. Maybe letter number two, but here you want the guy to write back, right? So he needs to know you’ve got great tits, and an ass to die for.”
“Finn!”
Finn held up his hands. “Do you want my input, or not?”
I got on the bed and sat next to him. I’d never been this close before and the side of his body now touching mine was all warm and lovely. In fact, come to think of it, I’d never had a man in this bed. This was a first.
“You’re the first man who’s ever been in my bedroom.” I blurted out.
“Seriously? Even when Lara was here?”
“Even then. My love life is like a desert—harsh and unyielding.”
He laughed.
“Finn, it’s not funny.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m not laughing at that. It’s just the people I edit for often spell it dessert instead, you know like after a main meal, and then it would be a harsh and unyielding dessert, like it’s still frozen or something.”
I looked at him blankly.
“Oh you have to be there, I guess. It’s little things like that which amuse me during my working day.”
“Great, now back to me.” I elbowed him.
“Ouch.” He said, nipping my waist.
I tickled his neck to see if he was ticklish. He didn’t move.
He wiggled his fingers close to me.
“Please don’t.” I started giggling.
“Oh my god. I haven’t even tickled you and you’re already laughing.”
“I can’t help it, I know what’s coming.”
He wiggled his fingers closer and the laptop wobbled precariously on his lap.
“Watch my laptop.” I yelled. “Now, back to work.”
“Okay, let me try to type a combination of your stuff and what I would want to read. Don’t kill the messenger, okay? If you don’t like it, you’re free to change it. Just let me do my thing.”
“Fine. Go for it. I’ll change it after.”
“How do you know you won’t keep it?”
“Lucky guess.”
I watched as his fingers swept across the keys.
Hey there, I’m Ella!
This letter thing is crazy, right? But I’m game, if you are ;)
So first of three, I’ll give you some quick details about me.
I’m single (obvs).
I’m twenty-five.
I have red hair (I know what you’re thinking, but a girl never tells her secrets straight off).
“You can’t put that!” I screeched.
“Yes, it’s staying. It’s flirty and shows you might be up for a future hook up. Anyway, are you a natural redhead?”
I flicked his ears. “A girl never tells her secrets straight off.”
He pulled his tongue out at me and carried on.
My hobbies include fitness and partying.
“Finn, I come straight home from work most nights, unless I’m out with the girls, and the last time I went to a gym was about eight years ago.”
“This gives the impression you have stamina and you’re up for it.”
“Is that all a guy wants to know? That I’ll put out?”
“Basically, yes.”
“Well, that’s just tragic. I’m not sure I want to do this anymore if I can’t send the romantic letter I want to send.”
I sat back against my headboard and tears welled, threatening to spill over. I didn’t want someone who wanted a quick fuck. I wanted romance.
Finn looked at me and deleted his whole letter. We were back to a blank screen.
“Why did you do that?”
He shrugged. “You’re right. You’re trying this because you want something different. So, go for it. But don’t write what you did before either. Fully go for it. Write the dream. Write what you want and then if it doesn’t work out, at least you’ll know you gave it everything you had.”
I stared at him. “Finn, I had no idea you could be so profound.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me. I have hidden depths.” He farted. “That came from one of them.”
I grabbed my laptop and dashed out of the room back to the living room, screaming that he was a dirty pig to fart on my bed and he’d never be allowed in there again.
His laughter echoed down the hall as he returned to his own room. Jerk.
Heading to the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of wine. Then I returned to the living room and settled down on the sofa, resting against a comfy cushion. After taking a huge gulp of the red and enjoying the burst of berries on my tongue, I placed the glass on the coffee table and picked up my laptop, placing it on my knee. I decided I was going for it. I would write what the hell I wanted and if the guy didn’t reply, he wasn’t for me. In fact—I thought about what Finn said—I would potentially scare my could-be suitor right from the off. Flexing my fingers, I started my letter:
Dear Future Husband
Also, I decided I’d make Finn read my letter in the morning. He’d die! Feeling energized, I carried on.
Still reading? Not made you run a mile, or burn this letter on a pyre? Congrats, we might have a connection.
I’m Ella. I’m twenty-five, a redhead, and I’m a dressmaker. My love life has been virtually non-existent for the past year. A customer spoke of Grace Graham and What the Heart Wants and I decided why not go for it? Try a diff
erent way of meeting someone. I love the idea of sending letters: sending a letter to you; someone matched for me, yet anonymous. Whereas in real life I’m kinda shy, here I can open myself up across the pages and if I blush, well, you won’t see it, will you?!
I don’t exercise unless you count lifting a glass of wine to my mouth. I love watching old movies and they don’t have to be romantic! I spend far too much time reading magazines and watching TV shows about fashion. Fashion is my passion.
My ideal date would be a stroll in Central Park, or even maybe a carriage ride, followed by a lovely meal in a restaurant.
I have a loving family including my parents and a younger sister. They live far enough away to not be a nuisance, but close enough for us to see each other regularly.
Music wise I love Taylor Swift. I’m sorry! Maybe I should have put that at the beginning. I can already see you groaning about my loving girlie pop! But I can’t help myself, she’s inspirational to me.
I’ll leave my first letter here, short and sweet. Hoping you managed to read to the end without requiring a bucket to vomit in!
Love, Ella.
I read it back through and happy with what I’d typed, I went into my now fart-free bedroom and chose a notelet with an illustration of a table in a café bearing a steaming cup of coffee on the front. It reminded me of HappBEANness. Back in the living room, I handwrote the note using my best pen and handwriting. Placing it in an unsealed envelope, I put that and the application form in a larger envelope addressed to Grace. Before I could change my mind, I got my shoes and coat on and headed to the mailbox.
It felt ceremonious as I stood before the mailbox. I kissed the back of the envelope and let it go. My love life was in the hands of fate.
Back in the apartment I printed a copy off and folded it. I scrawled across a blank part:
Finn, this is what I sent in the end and it’s too late, I mailed it already! Ella.
I posted it under his door.
Finn
I wasn’t asleep when I heard footsteps hovering outside my door and then a piece of paper came through underneath. Waiting until Ella’s feet padded down to her own room, I got up from my bed and picked up the paper. I read the words she was writing to another man. A stranger. I realized I was scrunching the paper up in my fist, I was so pissed.
We’d lived together for over a year now. A year of blue balls; that’s what I’d termed it. My cousin told me straight that I wasn’t to view Ella as another conquest and nail her, as I needed a place where I could settle more permanently, to leave my manslut persona behind. I’d not even slept with that many people. I just ended up with a reputation after a bad break-up and a vengeful ex.
Anyhow, when I first met Ella, I thought I was safe, that she wasn’t my type. But then she grew on me like some type of fungus. What’s a sexy kind of fungus? Does one exist? Because once I started noting the little mannerisms, like how when thinking she’d suck on her bottom lip slightly while going ‘hmmm’, my cock decided it wanted to sink into her womanly depths. She was a grower, was Ella; rather like my cock right now while it was thinking of her. However, once I started scanning the note, the actual words she’d sent to another man, my boner soon withered and died.
Dear Future Husband?
Dear FUCKING FUTURE HUSBAND?
What the actual fuck?
A dude was going to get this and run far, far away. A cold fear clamped around my guts. But what if they didn’t? What if they thought she was their ideal woman and wrote back? They either may read within the note a naivete and decide to play on that; or else they could be a wimp who wanted a little wifey at home that would please mama, but their buck teeth and acne-ridden face couldn’t procure one in the real world. My thoughts were not PC and were going to have me on a one-way-trip to Hell, but she was writing letters to another guy, hoping one might marry her, so I was halfway there already.
Was she blind?
She fucking lived with me and I walked around half-naked trying to get her to notice me.
Dude, it was time to accept she wasn’t interested. She wanted to date some fucking romantic nerd who was going to rock up on a white horse, go down on bended knee, and impregnate her with a million cherubic cheeked babies and keep her in comfort in her white picket fence house.
This was not acceptable.
I fired up my own laptop and found the details of this Grace Graham.
My own options were now running out, so I’d have to act fast.
Ella
I had a great beaming smile on my face the whole morning while I got showered and breakfasted ready for my working day. Finn, on the other hand, was banging around the place like he’d been possessed by Satan himself.
He sat at the kitchen table, his cereal bowl hitting the mat, and milk sloshing over the side.
“What on earth is going on with you this morning?” I asked.
“Didn’t sleep well.”
That explained everything. Sometimes Finn had bouts of insomnia and when he did he was a right moody bastard.
I came up behind him and began to massage his shoulders. “Are you all tense? Maybe if you calmed down, you’d begin to feel sleepy. At least you can get your head down for an hour, being self-employed.”
He shrugged away from me. “Well, not really, because I can’t exactly work while I’m asleep, can I? Everyone seems to think self-employment means not working at all.” He spooned a mouthful of cereal into his mouth.
“Wow. You grumpy fucker. I’m off to work and I’ll leave you to it. Don’t take it out on the apartment. I hope when I’m home you’ve changed your attitude because I don’t deserve to be on the receiving end of it.” I picked up my purse from the back of a chair.
His face relaxed from its previous snarl and he looked at me with doe-eyes.
Not the doe-eyes.
I can’t resist the doe-eyes.
I needed to look away, but I couldn’t. They were hypnotizing me.
“I’m sorry, Ella. You’re right. I shouldn’t be taking it out on my girl. Come here.”
“No.”
“Please. I want to give you an apology hug and a ‘see you later, have a nice day’ hug all rolled into one.”
“Why should I? I just tried to help you relax and got attitude for it.”
A pout appeared.
Now we had a pout and doe-eyes.
The big guns were out. Oh and now he was holding out his arms. The big guns really were out. Popping from his upper arms. God, I wanted to squeeze them.
Doe-eyes. Pout. Guns. Full ammo ahead.
My body walked me forward toward him, the betraying bastard. His arms came around me and he squeezed me.
“Sorry, my Ella. Have a lovely day at work. Hey, I’ll grab the takeout tonight and some wine, okay? My apology for being an ass.”
I looked down at him. “Will it be pizza?”
“Can be.”
“Will there be ham and pineapple?”
He groaned. “You’re killing me here, Ella. Yes, I’ll get you some goddamn ham and pineapple and I’ll try not to retch while you eat it.”
“Apology accepted. Now let me go. Some of us have to travel to their place of work.”
“It’s like five minutes walk away!”
I gave him side-eye. “Quit while you’re ahead or I’ll make you eat a piece of pineapple later.”
He let me go.
It was only once I was out of the door that I realized I didn’t ask him if he’d had chance to read my letter.
It was my morning to collect our coffees from HappBEANness. I pushed open the door and found the place was bustling. It was only 9am!
Casey spotted me and pointed to a seat, so I took it. A few minutes later she walked over with our regular orders and a paper bag. “Two blueberry and apple muffins.”
“Oooh, my favorite. Thank you. How come you’re so busy? It’s amazing, but it’s not usually like this.”
“We advertised our drink for Valentine’s. A special
ginseng tea, along with a heart-shaped ginger cookie for a special price and it was featured in a weekly women’s magazine! People are coming from far and wide to sample them. I’m making the most of it while it lasts.” She looked over at the counter. “I’d better get back or Audrina will start whining.”
I passed her the money for our drinks and goodies, left with a wave to Audrina, and walked next door into our very quiet shop. The difference was marked, but I knew which I preferred. I like our quiet ambience and bespoke service, versus the chaos next door, although thank goodness they were there to keep me nicely loaded with caffeine.
Jodi was already working on a custom order. “Morning. Oh, thank God for coffee. Coffee doesn’t turn up boring as hell.”
Jodi had been on a date last night.
“That good, eh?”
“Let’s just say if I could be bothered with the whole letter writing thing, I’d be tempted to give your idea a shot, but for now I’ll stick to Match and my mother’s erstwhile matchmaking attempts.” She took a sip of coffee. “How are you getting on anyway? Did you hear back from that woman?”
“Heard back, application filled in, first letter written, and all mailed.”
“Boy, you don’t hang around, do you?”
“Well, Grace needs to read it, select someone to match me with and then the mail service can take up to five days, so I wanted a head start.”
“So what did you put in your letter?”
I looked at my feet.
“Ella, what did you do?”
Straightening up my posture I looked Jodi straight in the eye. “I wrote a letter to my future husband. I actually addressed it to that. Dear Future Husband. And although I feel embarrassed telling you, I don’t regret it. I’m going for it, for love. I’m all in.”