By senior year, Laura had stopped writing it. The phrase felt too heavy, too raw. She’d accepted that some loves were meant to stay on the underside of desks—invisible, permanent, but never touched. Katrina had started dating a boy named Mike who played lacrosse and didn’t know how to spell “algebra.”
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. lauraloveskatrina
“Hey.”
Laura’s throat closed.
Laura laughed too loudly. “It’s a nice name.” By senior year, Laura had stopped writing it
Laura froze.