Lauraloveskatrina -

Katrina smiled, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “You doodle my name a lot.”

Katrina reached out, took Laura’s hand, and turned it over. On Laura’s palm, still smudged from where she’d traced the carving, were the faint red remains of marker. From that first day. Or maybe from every day after. lauraloveskatrina

In high school, the phrase evolved. It appeared in the condensation on Laura’s bathroom mirror after a shower. It was scratched into the bark of the oak tree behind the football field where they’d sit after practice. lauraloveskatrina was written in the margins of Laura’s chemistry notebook, disguised among the formulas for molarity and atomic mass. Katrina smiled, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear

And later, when they drove to the beach for the first time together, Katrina borrowed Laura’s pen and wrote on her own palm: From that first day