Drew Starkey Imagines

Lace, Letters, and Love

The house creaks with age and charm. It's a quiet morning, soft with golden light streaming through gauzy curtains. Your bare feet pad across the wooden floor as you sip coffee from a floral mug, the scent of vanilla and sunlight filling the tiny, imperfect kitchen.

The two of you had stumbled on the cottage accidentally—a crooked little thing nestled into the Carolina countryside, its white paint peeling and garden overgrown with lavender and wild roses. You had fallen in love instantly. Drew took one look at the porch swing and the ivy climbing up the chimney and said, "It's got soul. Just like you."

You found the drawer on your second weekend there, hidden in a narrow nightstand tucked away in the upstairs bedroom you were planning to turn into a reading room. The drawer was stiff, stuck from years of disuse, and inside it were papers—old, yellowed, their edges soft from time and touch.

Love letters.

Real ones.

Written in neat cursive, dated from the 1940s. Notes passed between "Margaret" and "James," full of longing and hope and mundane sweetness. Mentions of lemon pie and porch dancing and missing the sound of her laugh in the kitchen. You read them aloud to Drew that night on the porch, the two of you wrapped in a single quilt, fireflies blinking around the edges of the dark.

"I want to love you like that," Drew had said quietly, eyes shining in the dim light. "All the way through."

You didn't realize he meant it literally—until the morning you found the first letter.

It was tucked into your bible, right between the page that read Proverbs 31:25, your favorite verse.

In his handwriting.

My Love,
I thought of you today when I passed the lilacs by the window. They've bloomed again, just like the first morning we arrived here and you said they smelled like sugar and old dreams. I think the cottage is alive because of you.
Yours, always,
D.

You smiled, blinking back sudden tears, and ran downstairs to find him. He was in the garden, sleeves rolled up, dirt under his nails, grinning when he saw you.

"I didn't think you'd find it yet," he said, pretending to be casual, but his cheeks flushed slightly.

That became the beginning.

Every week, sometimes twice, you'd find one: pressed into a teacup in the hutch, tucked under your pillow, slipped into the pocket of your denim jacket before you left for town.

They were never grand or overly poetic—they were real, and that made them perfect.

Darling,
You looked at me this morning like I hung the stars. I didn't know someone could love me that way. Please never stop.
(Also, I broke the cookie jar. Please pretend it was a ghost.)
— D.

One came hidden inside a vintage recipe book you'd been flipping through while baking.

Sweetheart,
You have flour on your nose. You've been humming the same song for twenty minutes. I never want to forget this version of you: messy, radiant, alive.
Let's be old here together. Let's fill every drawer with memories.
Yours.
Always.
D.

And you did. You left him some, too—between the pages of his journal, on sticky notes in the bathroom mirror. You wrote about the way he kissed you at sunrise, the way he danced with you in socks on the kitchen floor, the way his voice turned soft when he said your name.

Sometimes, you'd find him sitting at the old desk by the window, writing quietly with a cup of tea beside him, the lavender outside swaying in the breeze.

"I think Margaret and James started something," you'd tease.

Drew would look up, smile crookedly, and reply, "Yeah, but we're finishing the story."

One evening, after months of this quiet tradition, you came upstairs to find the drawer in the nightstand full—stuffed with your letters and his. All of them tied into messy bundles with ribbon and twine.

On top was a new one.

This one different.

It was thicker. Handwritten. On the outside, it read:

"For the person who taught me what love looks like in real life."

You unfolded it slowly, heart pounding.

My Dearest,
I've loved you a thousand ways since the day we met—but loving you here, in this house, in this ordinary, sacred way, has been my favorite.

I don't need the world, or fame, or answers to every question. I just need you in the kitchen with sunlight on your hair, asking me if I remembered to water the herbs.

I need the life we're building—not perfect, but ours. Woven into linens and wallpaper and sleepy mornings. I want every drawer in this house to be filled with pieces of our story.

And if you'll let me, I'll keep writing these letters to you forever.

But first, I have one more thing to ask.

Turn around.

Love,
D.

Your breath caught.

You turned around—and there he was, on one knee.

A small velvet ring box open in his hand. Your eyes connected to the beautiful oval shaped diamond and gold band sparkled when the sun hit it just right. Drew's eyes never leaving yours.

"I've loved you through words," he said. "Now I want to love you through every single day."

And you said yes.

Because your love wasn't just in letters.

It was in laughter, in the smell of baking bread, in rainy mornings and muddy boots and sleeping in. It was in drawer after drawer—filled with a love that felt old-fashioned and brand new all at once.