Love Notes

Ever since I was little, I believed in Valentine’s Day miracles, bouquets tied in satin ribbon, a boy standing under fairy lights, a soft, shy “Will you be mine?” That dream followed me to college, tucked between lab reports and late-night ramen. And, somewhere along the way, it began wearing Jake Morrison’s face.

Jake was the captain of the football team. Golden boy, effortless charm, the kind of smile that made entire bleachers lean forward. Tonight, he’d just scored the winning goal. The crowd roared as he looked up into the stands.

At me.

He didn’t wave exactly, just lifted his fingers slightly, but it was enough to send heat rushing to my cheeks.

Beside me, Maddy snorted. “You’re hopeless.”

I didn’t bother looking at her, which was difficult considering she was my roommate, my childhood best friend, and Jake’s twin sister. There was no escaping that level of built-in surveillance.

That night, I checked the hostel mailboxes while pretending I wasn’t replaying Jake’s almost-wave in my head. Being a chemical biomedical engineering student sounds glamorous; in reality, it means sending twenty emails to research labs and getting ghosted by all of them. I usually joke that I like brewing potions.

The truth is, I love reactions, precision, timing, the razor-thin line between healing and harm. Love potions and poisons are chemically closer than people think.

As I sorted through the usual stack of junk mail, my fingers brushed against something thicker.

A pale blush envelope.

On the front, written in careful black ink, was a single letter: R.

Not Becca. Not Rebecca. Just R.

My pulse stumbled. I slipped the envelope into my bag before Maddy could notice and waited until she was asleep to open it.

Inside, the message was written neatly, almost deliberately:

Your smile untangles my worst days.
Your laugh quiets every storm I face.
If courage ever chooses me,
I’ll ask you for one dance at the Dead Dance.

The words made the room feel colder.

Dead Dance?

Jake wasn’t poetic. He was charming, goofy, spontaneous, but not measured like this. And why address me only as “R”? Still, he had looked at me that afternoon. Maybe this was his awkward attempt at subtlety.

I pressed the letter to my chest and let myself imagine fairy lights and satin ribbons.

 

 

The next morning, I found another note under the dorm’s door

 

You hide in crowds. But I see you. Wanting to ask you out.

 

My breath hitched.

 

 

Another note appeared in my hoodie pocket later that day.

You tap your pen when you’re nervous.

That was specific.

 

 

By afternoon, another note had slipped into my lab notebook.

 

You always sit near the aisle. Like you’re ready to leave.

 

 

Jake had never been in my chem lectures.

More notes followed between planner pages, inside my bag, even on my lunch tray. None mentioned the Dead Dance. None were signed. All addressed simply to “R.”

 

When I showed one to Maddy, she squealed. “Oh my God. It’s finally happening.”

 

“Maybe it’s Jake,” I said carefully.

 

She grinned. “He’s been weirdly secretive.”

The word secretive should have unsettled me. Instead, I chose to interpret it as romantic.

 

That evening, a final pink envelope waited inside my mailbox. The handwriting matched the first letter.

Some nights are meant to be remembered.
Some are meant to change everything.
Tonight will do both.
Dead Dance. 10 PM.

 

The earlier notes had felt warm. This one felt colder, as though something beneath the sweetness had sharpened. I told myself I was overthinking it, the hazard of having a chemistry brain trained to look for toxins.

 

Maddy squeezed my hands. “Go. If it’s Jake, you’ll regret missing it.”

 

If it wasn’t, I needed answers.

 

The banquet hall sat at the edge of town, long abandoned. Red streamers drooped from cracked chandeliers, and fairy lights flickered like dying stars. The music pulsed too loudly against peeling walls. This wasn’t satin ribbons and romance; it felt staged, theatrical, almost feverish.

 

Maddy disappeared into the crowd almost instantly. I hate crowds. My chest tightened, and I slipped toward the bathrooms to breathe.

 

That’s when I heard the door slam.

 

A girl stumbled against the sink, pale and trembling. Her pupils were blown wide, her hands shaking violently. This wasn’t alcohol. Her breathing was shallow and irregular.

My mind shifted into clinical focus. “Hey,” I said, gripping her shoulders. “What did you drink?”

Her words dissolved into the air.

Then I smelled it, faint but unmistakable. The bitter taste wafted around her mouth.

Cyanide.

My stomach dropped, but my hands stayed steady. I forced water between her lips, tilted her forward, and kept her conscious while dialling emergency services.

Her bag spilt open across the tile floor. Pink envelopes scattered everywhere.

All addressed to: R.

I grabbed one.

If you can’t be mine, you won’t be anyone’s.

 

Another read:

Tonight we drink together. Like the lovers before us. Forever is better than goodbye.

 

Ice flooded my veins. This wasn’t romance; this was obsession.

 

Sirens sliced through the music, and chaos erupted as paramedics rushed in. The girl Rosie, according to her ID, was loaded into the ambulance. Alive, but barely.

Police later confirmed the drinks had been selectively spiked. Targeted. Rosie had been lured by escalating love letters in a planned murder-suicide. Her obsessive boyfriend intended to drink alongside her. “Like the lovers before us.”

The letters about the Dead Dance had been misdelivered.

 

My knees nearly gave out. I hadn’t been the intended recipient. I had opened the wrong envelope.

 

Maddy hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe. “I’m so sorry. I thought those notes were from Jake.”

Jake stepped forward, pale. “I wrote one,” he admitted quietly.

“One?” My voice felt thin.

“The ‘You hide in crowds, but I see you’ one. I didn’t know how to just… ask you.”

The air shifted.

“That was you?”

He nodded.

I replayed every note in my head. The Dead Dance invitation was dramatic and deliberate. The sweet observational ones were warm and attentive.

Different ink tones. Different pressure. Different slants.

Three handwritings. Three intentions.

Jake had written one. Rosie’s boyfriend had written many. Two of them got misdelivered to me.

 

But the others, the pen tapping, the aisle seat, the nervous habits. Those weren’t Jake’s.

 

He blinked. “Wait. There were more?”

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I felt something slip from my purse, a final pink envelope I didn’t remember placing there.

The handwriting was neither Jake’s nor rigid like the obsessive one. It looped softly, with a slight ink smudge at the corner.

 

I never meant to scare you.
I just didn’t know how else to say it.
I hope you figure it out.
— The right guy.

 

My pulse thundered.

Someone had been watching, not obsessively, not violently, just quietly.

 

Jake shifted beside me. “Coffee tomorrow?” he asked gently. “In daylight. No sketchy murder parties.”

 

I looked at him, golden boy, honest eyes, the safe choice.

And somewhere on campus, someone else knew I tapped my pen when I was nervous.

 

I folded the note carefully and slipped it back into my purse.

“Coffee sounds perfect,” I told Jake.

 

But for the first time in my life, fairy lights didn’t feel like the most interesting option.

And as I walked back through the dim campus corridors, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the story wasn’t over yet.

 

Happy Valentine’s week, dear readers. Hope you had a lovely week, unlike Rebbeca here. The above was another extract from my upcoming novel ‘Mirror Me.’ All your comments and suggestions are welcome. I would take them in to make my novel a wonderful reading experience for you all.