The autumn of their senior year, Chris and Jamisen were just two people trying to survive Dakota Ridge High School. Jamisen, with her perpetually ink-stained fingers and a habit of humming off-key, was the polar opposite of Chris, whose life was neatly organized into soccer practices and color-coded study guides. Their worlds collided on a rainy Tuesday in October when their friends gather in the school parking lot.

At first, their conversations were strictly about velocity and friction. But soon, the margins of their lab notebooks began to fill with doodles of constellations and lists of their favorite obscure movies. Chris started walking Jamisen to her jeep, although it was in the same direction of his car, just to get ten more minutes of conversation. By the time the winter formal rolled around, Chris had worked up the courage to ask her, not with a grand gesture, but with a simple note tucked inside her textbook. They danced under the gymnasium lights, realizing that the best kind of love wasn't the kind that struck like lightning, but the kind that grew quietly in the spaces between the everyday.