The Christmas Letters: A Magnolia Bay Romantic Comedy

by Brenna Jacobs

  “Where did you grow up? North Charleston? West Ashley? Downtown?”

  “On Church Street, downtown.”

  He chuckled. “I should have guessed.”

  “What is that supposed to mean? What’s the point of all this?” Dahlia asked. “Why the twenty questions?”

  “We wouldn’t work out, Dahlia,” the man said matter-of-factly.

  “Because I lived downtown?” Confusion filled her tone.

  “Yes and no,” he said. “We come from different circles. I knew that the second I saw you driving away in a car that’s worth more than I make in a year. The life you live, the private schools, the money, the society, it’s not the circle I want to be in.”

  Dahlia scoffed. “Well that feels judgy.”

  “I’m not trying to be judgy. I’m just saying. This is all I want to do in my life. I’m not biding my time while I plan for something bigger. Can you honestly tell me your daddy wouldn’t frown on you dating someone like me?”

  Dahlia bit her lip. Her dad would frown on her dating a paramedic, at least at first. His expectations were high, and his list of approved careers for her significant other was short. He would undoubtedly start a conversation with a question about whether or not being a paramedic was a first step toward medical school. Even still, the whole point of Dahlia’s reformation was that she didn’t care about what people thought. Not anymore. She was trying to live her own life. To finally get out from under other people’s expectations. Even her father’s.

  When she didn’t respond, he only shook his head. “That’s what I thought. I have no doubt we would have fun together. There’s obvious . . . chemistry.” He glanced at her in a way that made her heart swoop and chill bumps break out over her arms. “It would be fun, but I’m done playing around. And we wouldn’t last.”

  Dahlia frowned. “I’m not sure that’s something you can really know after just one conversation. Maybe I’m different. Maybe I don’t care about money. I plan to make whatever I need for myself anyway. Who cares what you make?” Even as she said the words, Dahlia sensed her conviction waning. She wanted to be the kind of person that didn’t care. But she’d been raised to expect a certain kind of life, to believe it was what she was entitled to, what she deserved. Post-Bali, she’d already done a lot to separate herself from those expectations. But that didn’t mean the roots of who she was weren’t still entwined with who she was trying to be now. The point was, he’d made some huge leaps about her based on the car she drove. He wasn’t being fair.

  “It’s just complicated,” he said.

  “It’s judgmental,” she shot back.

  “Less judgmental than you deciding we were soulmates after an hour of conversation? Just because we came to different conclusions doesn’t mean you judged any less than I did.”

  Heat flushed Dahlia’s face, and she looked down, grabbing her bag so she could make a hasty retreat. He was right, technically, but that didn’t mean she wanted a reminder of just how much he wasn’t interested.

  “Wow,” she said as she backed away. “You know what? I’m suddenly really glad you didn’t call me. Have a nice life—” She hesitated. She still didn’t know the stupid man’s name.

  “Connor,” he said.

  “What?” Dahlia said.

  “My name,” he said. He reached down and scratched Roxie’s head. “You sounded like you—”

  “I didn’t,” she said, cutting him off. “I don’t.” Now it would be impossible to forget him. She’d always loved the name Connor. She turned and stalked off, as much as she could stalk in the loose sand that separated her from the access path that would take her to her car.

  The guy had some nerve calling her judgmental. And bringing up what she’d said? What she’d implied? It only renewed her embarrassment. At least now she had some anger to replace all the romantic notions she’d been trying—and failing—to forget.

  Back at her car, Dahlia dropped her belongings into her trunk and slid into the driver’s seat, slumping forward onto her steering wheel.

  This was not the way the evolution of Dahlia Ravenel was supposed to go.

  She was different.

  At least, she was trying to be.

  And yet, she’d just been rejected by a man who had somehow managed to turn her heart inside out because he’d assumed she was exactly like . . . she had always been.

  No amount of self-reflection and volunteer work would ever be enough. No matter her efforts, she would never get away from her selfish past.

  Dahlia pulled the letter from her Christmas pen pal out of her purse and ran her hand over the front. It had only arrived in the mail the day before, but she’d already read it half a dozen times at least.

  “I wonder if you’ll think I’m too rich to date?” she wondered out loud. “Whoever heard of such a stupid thing?”

  She dropped the letter onto her center console and pulled onto Old Magnolia, easing her way into traffic. She didn’t need someone like Connor anyway. There was no shortage of young, datable men in Charleston. She could find someone else.

  She glanced back at the letter. Maybe Mabel was right about C.M. and he was single. And far cuter than any paramedic.

  And richer, too, she thought spitefully, though it left a hollow feeling in her stomach when she did.

  She wondered if C.M. had gotten her response yet. If he would write her back a second time. If her present luck was any indication, he probably wouldn’t.

  “It’s fine,” she said out loud, tightening her grip on her steering wheel. She pulled onto the bridge that would take her back to the peninsula. “It’s fine and I’m fine and everything is going to be fine.”

  Chapter 8

  Connor

  Connor walked back toward Grandma June’s house chagrined and a little bit ashamed that he had called Dahlia out so plainly. She was the last person he had expected to run into on the beach. How had he managed to live his entire life in Charleston and never see her, and then suddenly see her everywhere?

  His grandma would argue it was fate, but she watched too many romantic comedies. Plus, she was already convinced his destiny was on the other end of the letter he’d gotten. She kept reminding him of how beautiful Mabel had claimed the woman to be, each time the claim getting more and more outlandish. “Like Miss America,” she had said the last time she’d mentioned it. “Or that Brazilian super model.”

  But looks weren’t the only thing that mattered.

  If anything, Dahlia Ravenel was a testament to that. He’d never met a woman more beautiful. That didn’t mean she was right for him.

  Roxie nuzzled his hand with her nose, and he scratched her ears before opening his grandmother’s back gate and letting the dog pass through.

  “This is your fault, you know,” he said to the dog. “Had you just minded your business, I wouldn’t have gotten into any trouble.”

  “Another letter came for you yesterday,” his grandma said as he made his way into the living room. She’d been napping when he’d arrived earlier, so he’d let her be and headed straight to the beach for a walk.

  Now, his grandma was awake and curled up on the living room sofa, a blanket over her legs and a bowl of popcorn on her lap. “It’s on the kitchen counter.”

  He stuck the letter in his back pocket, trying not to let his grandma see how excited he was to have gotten a response.

  “You want to watch with me?” she asked, offering him some popcorn.

  “For a little bit.” He scooped up a handful of popcorn. “What are we watching? I’m heading over to Ben’s—he’s invited some of the guys over to hang out—but I’ve got some time before I need to go.”

  “You’ve Got Mail,” she answered. “And I’m already half-way through, so we should be able to finish it before you leave.” She handed Connor the popcorn bowl and stood, moving behind the sofa. “In the meantime, I’ll pretend I need to use the bathroom so you can read your letter in private.” She patted him on the head as she passed behind him.
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br />   Connor laughed at Grandma June’s not so subtle nudging and pulled out the letter. He was curious, and also happy to have another woman take up the headspace that Dahlia currently filled.

  Dear C.M.,

  I’m glad you mentioned the beach. It does the same thing for me. Fills me up in the way you mentioned. It’s always been where I go when I need to think, when I need to puzzle over problems in my life. But I haven’t been there much lately, and you’ve inspired me to make it a priority.

  You asked me what about my life I lost. It’s a hard question. I can’t be too sad about it because the loss was a result of a decision that I made, and I know it was the right thing to do for everyone involved. But it still changed everything about what my future looks like. And that’s what has left me feeling lost. Like I’m having to find myself all over again, define myself in this new reality.

  The truth is, I spent a lot of years fighting against who everyone else wanted me to be. Now I don’t have to fight anymore. I’m free to do and be whoever I want. But I’m not sure I really know who that is. I’m working on figuring it out. I should probably be a little more patient with myself.

  Congratulations. I just told you more about my fears and insecurities than I’ve ever told anyone else. Feel free to send me a bill for the therapy.

  Now it’s your turn. Tell me something about you.

  Three random things that I might not guess just by looking at you. (Funny, even if I could look at you, I wouldn’t know you. I admit, I have wondered if we’ve ever passed each other on the street, if we’ve eaten at the same restaurant at the same time, or if we have any acquaintances in common. This is such a strange way for friendships to form, and yet, I do feel like this is a friendship. I hope that doesn’t seem too presumptuous.)

  Since I already tossed the question to you, and it’s only fair if I play along, here are three random things about me.

  Number one. I am really good at Cornhole. Stupidly good. Like if I didn’t think the shirts they had to wear were so ugly, I could go onto ESPN and win the National Cornhole Championship without breaking a sweat.

  Two. I graduated from college with a degree that I hate and don’t think I’ll ever use. I’m working on fixing this. Hopefully.

  And three. A year ago, I started listening to audiobooks and now I’m totally hooked. Fiction, nonfiction, all of them. I love that I can listen and learn while I’m doing other things. Plus, if I’m listening to books? I can’t hear all the doubts swirling around in my head.

  Too much information? Probably so.

  Please tell me something about you that will make me feel better.

  Warmly—Your Christmas pen pal

  The letter was a distraction. A good one. Whoever had written it sounded fun. He wondered if it would be weird if he stopped by to get his own take on what, exactly, Mabel had meant when she’d said beautiful. Beautiful like his grandma was beautiful? Beautiful but driving a minivan full of car seats? Brazilian super model beautiful?

  He reread the part about Cornhole, smiling the whole time. It was an endearing thing for her to admit, and also challenging. He wasn’t so bad at Cornhole himself. He suddenly wondered if he would be as excited about the letters if he hadn’t been clued into the fact that the letter writer was young and female. There were clues in the letter, for sure, but he wondered if he would have picked up on them had he not had the foreknowledge.

  It was maybe time to drop a few hints about himself and see what he could get her to admit.

  He was already thinking about the three things he might include in his return letter when his grandma crossed back into the room. She settled back under her blanket and reached for the popcorn.

  “Have you ever seen this one?” she asked, nodding toward the movie.

  “Not that I can remember,” Connor said. “What’s it about?”

  “Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are secret pen pals via email,” she answered. “And then they fall in love.”

  Connor shot her a look. “Did you pick this movie on purpose? Because you knew I was coming over to pick up another letter?”

  She smirked, the creases on either side of her face deepening as she smiled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re terrible,” Connor said, reaching for a handful of popcorn. “Just play the movie already.”

  It wasn’t hard to pick up the threads of the storyline, even half-way through, though it wasn’t exactly like his Santa pen pal; the characters in the movie actually knew each other in person without knowing the emails they were exchanging were with each other. But Connor enjoyed it anyway, right down to the cheesy line where Meg Ryan’s character, upon learning that her pen pal and the guy she’d been sparring with for the whole movie was the same person, told Tom Hanks that she’d wanted it to be him.

  Grandma June turned off the television when the ending credits rolled. “I do love a good romance,” she said, leaning her head back onto the sofa. She looked toward Connor, love evident in her eyes. “It’s been a long time since Peyton got married, Connor.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  “The right person, I guess?” He thought back to the words he’d first said to Peyton, and then repeated to Dahlia about wanting the kind of love that made the world tilt. The very words that Dahlia had repeated back to him, claiming she felt that way about him.

  His grandma nudged his knee. “Maybe the right person is writing you those letters.”

  Connor looked up, considering. He pulled the letter out of his pocket. He knew less about the letter writer than he did about Dahlia, and he’d had no trouble dismissing her. Except, maybe he did know something about the letter writer. And what he didn’t know, he could always ask. You could learn a lot about someone if you asked the right questions.

  He shrugged. “Maybe she is.”

  “So you’re going to write her back?”

  Connor stood and leaned over, kissing his grandma on the cheek. “I’ll write her back. But only if you keep feeding me pie whenever I come by to pick up another letter.”

  “You know I’ll feed you whenever and whatever you want, but Mabel makes a better pie than I do, and you know it. Plus, you can just use your own return address and get the letters delivered to your front door.”

  Connor made a dramatic display of placing his hands on his hips and turned fully to face his grandma. “June Adelia Hylton, your sweet potato pie is the best I’ve ever tasted, even better than Mabel’s.”

  “Oh hush,” his grandma teased. “You’re just saying that because you have to.”

  “I do not have to. Her chicken salad wins everything, and her Italian sub will always be my favorite sandwich. But I’m not going to Mabel’s for pie. And I like getting the letters sent here. Because pie.”

  “Fine,” she said, a playful smile on her face. “You write that woman and I’ll make you your pie. But it better be a good letter. You open yourself up. Nobody falls in love exchanging pleasantries about the weather.”

  On his way to Ben’s, Connor stopped by the store and picked up some actual stationery—he’d just used printer paper for the last few letters—and grabbed some stamps from the check-out line.

  “Christmas or regular?” the cashier asked as she rang up the stationery.

  “What was that?” Connor asked.

  “The stamps. Do you want holiday or regular?”

  Connor shrugged. “Holiday, I guess. Tis the season, and all that.”

  “We hardly sell these anymore,” the cashier said. She handed him a book of stamps, the picture on the stamps revealing a snow-covered mailbox draped in pine boughs and a giant red bow. “At Christmas, for cards and such, we’ll sell quite a bit. But that’s pretty much it. It seems like nobody sends real letters anymore.”

  Connor swiped his credit card and finished the transaction, anxious to get out of the store before the well-intentioned clerk asked who he was writing letters to. In the glow of his grand
mother’s television, the warmth of a perfectly scripted happily-ever-after still fresh in his mind, it had been easy to imagine his new pen pal as the woman of his dreams. But now? In bad fluorescent lighting, with a newly purchased book of stamps in his hand, the whole notion felt a little foolish.

  What were the odds, really? The letter writer could be anyone. She could be married already. Or have a boyfriend. She could live in an apartment with forty-seven cats or run an online shop that sold those creepy dolls made out of children’s actual teeth.

  Why couldn’t he just meet a woman the normal way? At a bar or a restaurant, or at a party thrown by a mutual friend. Was he really so badly off that he had to resort to writing a mystery woman he’d never seen before?

  This wasn’t Hollywood. There were no guarantees, no promised happily-ever-afters.

  Climbing back into his truck, Connor shoved the stationery and stamps onto his passenger seat and started the engine, suddenly wary about spending an evening at Ben’s house. Ben hadn’t stopped asking him about Dahlia, about whether or not he’d ever called her. Ben had also told enough of their friends and co-workers about Dahlia that she’d grown into something like a mythical creature with unparalleled, otherworldly beauty, not altogether different than what Mabel and Grandma June had done to his pen pal.

  His entire crew had been bugging him about Dahlia for days. Ben wouldn’t let him forget it if he knew Connor had actually seen Dahlia again, and that he’d refused, yet again, to actually ask her out on a real date. He couldn’t even imagine what his friends would think if they knew that instead, he’d decided to exchange letters with a mystery woman he’d never even seen in person.

  True to form, Connor had only been at Ben’s a matter of minutes before he brought up Dahlia.

  “I don’t know, man,” Chase, another coworker, said after Ben’s good-natured ribbing. “I understand his hesitation.” Chase reached forward and scooped a large handful of chips off the coffee table in Ben’s living room. “Those Southern Society girls aren’t for everyone. My brother’s wife, Hayley, she’s one of them. I mean, she’s awesome. But I’ve never seen my brother work so hard. He works eighty hours a week trying to keep up the lifestyle she’s used to. He loves her. He’s happy to do it. But looking from the outside, it’s hard not to feel sorry for the guy.”