Love Notes

Lila Morris:

Dear Alice,

I am besotted by you. You’ve smitten me. You have captured my heart and soul. Charmed would be an understatement, Alice.

While I am no great writer of romantic verses, for you I’d write a sonnet.

I cannot think of a better woman to spend Valentine’s Day with. You, Alice.

I’ve known you for nearly two years and in those years, I’ve had the chance to get to know you and develop feelings. I’ve learned all your quirks, likes, dislikes, your favorite food, which I know is chicken fried rice from Ling’s at the corner of Fifth and Vanguard.

You smile when you’re nervous, and it’s the cutest thing ever, Alice. I can’t seem to get your smile out of my mind. It’s etched there along with all of my best memories.

I adore the way your eyes light up when you’re excited, and the way you love the rain, you always say that life comes from the rain.

Our friendship has bloomed in the last two years. But with growth comes realization.

I know now that there’s more to us than just friendship, Alice.

I wish I could put my feelings adequately on the page, but I cannot find appropriate words to describe my feelings for you.

But I’ll try my best.

You are the sun that beams on my face in the early morning light. You are the air I need to breathe. You are who I think of when I’m most happy. You are everything good in life, everything pure.

I cannot see a life without you, Alice.

And my hope is that you feel the same way.

Your smile gives me hope, I adore the way your nose crinkles and your cheeks blush when you look at me. Your detailed text messages that are followed up with several smiley faces and even hearts also gives me hope. Your late night phone calls give me hope.

This love note serves as all of my hope chalked up to one thing: you, that you feel the same way about me as I feel about you, Alice.

I hope you see this note and it makes you smile. I hope you dance in the rain. I hope you send me a dozen smiley faces and a dozen emoji hearts.

Will you be my Valentine?

But most importantly, will you be my girlfriend?

Love,

Henry, your secret admirer, best friend, and hopefully soon to be boyfriend.

My hand slightly shook as I tossed the pen down onto my desk and heaved out a deep satisfactory breath.

That note was perfect.

Thankfully elementary school actually taught me something: how to write impeccably in cursive, and everyone always said that learning cursive would be a waste of time, but look at me now, my cursive is impeccable and I use it for my part time job.

It wasn’t over done or lame which some of my clients usually prefer. Everyone wants an overly done love note as if it was crafted from the mouth of Shakesphere and written in old Victorian.

Those were—-how do I say it nicely as an actual professional writer? Lame.

Those notes were lame. Everyone knew those types of notes didn’t come from the heart. While most women knew that the guy whose name was at the bottom of the letter didn’t actually write the note they received, notes written like above were much more convincing. The notes that read directly like poems weren’t any convincing.

Henry was a classy guy. I admired his style, and his profession of love for his best friend of two years was also really sweet.

I loved the part time gig. I loved imagining the looks on people’s faces when they opened the notes. I imagined that they would stare in awe, maybe even cry, or dance around in happiness. I imagined their reactions were usually grandiose ones, filled with disbelief and happiness. But I knew there was always a possibility that some of my Love Note recipients didn’t smile when they opened the letters. I’m sure some had a completely adverse reaction of happiness, too.

I mean, I loved my job at all but it’s not like I can run background checks on people who request letters. There’s always the possibility that a stalker commissions a letter to their ‘stalkee’. And that is exactly why I included a disclaimer inside my letters at the very bottom, Love letter commissioned by Love Notes, please reach out to [email protected] if this letter has caused you feelings of discomfort so we can adequately notate this in our system so the sender is prohibited from sending further letters to you. Please also call the appropriate authorities to take criminal and legal action. It was a personal touch in my letters, I wanted my recipients to feel safe and that they had the choice of reporting. Hell, we live in 2025, and while love notes are cute and romantic to receive, some can also be totally unwanted.

If you haven’t already gathered it, I’m a writer. A full time writer for a women’s guidance column, yes they still have those, it’s virtual but it’s still around and a lot of people read it too. I also dabble in writing horoscopes. But my real passion is my part-time gig, which in reality is actually like a full time gig to me, writing for Love Notes.

Love Notes isn’t just any old regular service that is used by hopeless romantics. A lot of people use it, hopeless romantics definitely do, but it also isn’t limited to them, regular old people who are head over heels for their significant other or unsure of how to break the ice with a new love interest use it too. And those are the letters that really excite me. I love writing the ‘break the ice’ type of letters, they’re cute and endearing and give me hope that good old fashioned love still exists. Maybe love is not on my radar but at least I know that I help love grow in the life of others, and I get to be the one who brings them together (or at least I hope that I do).

Our busiest week of the year is none other than…. Yes you’ve guessed it! Valentine’s Day week!

A random week in February does something to people. It makes them thirst for love. People are filled with hope, hope that cupid has in fact shot them with a magic love filled arrow, or that the love bug has bitten them and infected them with the magical zeal of love.

And I love it. I absolutely adore seeing people fall in love.

I’m the farthest thing from a cynic, I’m just unlucky in love. I associate luck with it, like I have a choice at it.

But in reality, I know why my love life has been a complete dud. It’s because of my standards. Some would say, especially the cynics, that my standards are there for a good reason, that I shouldn’t lower them for any man, that I’d eventually find a man who conforms to my standards.

But I wish that was true. I really really really wish it was true.

It isn’t. My standards are so high because I have this thing about love. I need love to be absolutely perfect, like earth shattering perfect.

I expected love to be like in the movies, utterly perfect. And by perfect I mean like rom com, happy ending perfect. I needed it to be. For some reason, my brain wouldn’t allow it to go any other way.

I wanted a guy that made me laugh, like really laugh, like a loud guttural belly laugh. I needed him to be funny, like really funny and easy going. I needed him to be like outwardly attractive too. I envisioned him with dark brown hair and I mean perfect hair cut with a trimmed but not overly trimmed beard, rock solid abs, chiseled muscles, oh and at least 6 feet in height. I want him to have a good job, not like a frat bro job either, a great job like an accountant, or a chef, or a lawyer, maybe even doctor even, but you know what I could settle for a guy with a steady job that pays the bills. And I need him to be kind, my perfect guy needs to love his parents, siblings, the whole shabang. But his most important quality is the ability to be humble though, I hate guys who are overly, like overly into themselves.

Is that too much to ask for?

Ugh, I know it is.

I sound like a woman that’s unrealistic and has an unrealistic expectation of love itself.

And that’s why I said I’m unlucky in love.

My standards are totally unrealistic. I should dull them down since I’m not getting any younger but I can’t seem to do so. Another thing about me is I’m stubborn, I’m a hopeless romantic with unrealistic expectations who also happens to be really frickening stubborn.

I guess at thirty years old I’m set in my ways, and that also lowers my playing field too. Your chances of finding the man of your dreams at thirty years old is much much harder. With age, your expectations lower and your options diminish.

But that’s why I work for Love Notes, so I don’t become a cynic. I want to live in my optimistic delusions as long as I possibly can.

I know I will meet Mr. Right one day.

Until then I’ll write for Love Notes and make other people’s romantic dreams come true.

I still had a few more notes left to write today.

I scanned through the email looking through the list of people that I still needed to write out some letters too.

Rachel Clausen

Tara Phillips

Oh and one last one, Benjamin Norris.

Um, what? I blinked twice as I stared down at the name. Benjamin Norris. Like as in my downstairs neighbor, Benjamin Norris? Like the one who lived on the floor below me?

I looked down to see who the sender was. Claire Bennett. Hmm, who in the world was Claire Bennett? Usually women didn’t send letters to men, this was different, a good kind of different and I was eager to write the letter for a man from a woman for once.

I looked through the email to see what was specified. There was always a short outline detailing what the sender wanted the letter to say, it gave me ideas of how to phrase the Love Note and what to write.

I read through the summary from my sender, Claire Bennett.

The outline read:

Benjamin and I go to the same coffee shop, that’s where we met last year. I know it’s dorky and all but I want to send him a little note and ask him to be my valentine this year. Ask him to go for pizza.

-He likes 90’s movies

-He likes pizza

-He likes telling dad jokes

-He flirts with me in cute, subtle ways

Please don’t write his or my name on it, I want it to be a surprise. I also want to see if he guesses it’s from me.

Hmm…. this note would be my favorite one I’ve written yet. He sounds like a humble sort of guy that was kind of a dork and liked the finer things in life. I mean who didn’t like 90’s movies, pizza, dad jokes, and flirting in cute, obnoxious ways? And a mysterious note? Who didn’t like a romance that kept you guessing.