He was two exits from home on Route 84. She was standing in the Houston airport.

He said it anyway.

Neither of them could have told you how two people — one in Connecticut, one in Utah — were going to make this work. They didn’t have a plan. They had a phone call, and a distance that was already built into the moment they first named what this was.

For years, the middle was Chicago.

Geographically centered between their two cities. Direct flights from both. A hotel bar, a steakhouse where they’d close the place down just talking, and never quite enough time before the first flight out. They switched airlines entirely so they could share the same hubs. They logged hundreds of thousands of miles just to be in the same room.

That’s what it looks like when you’ve decided someone is worth it before you know how it’s going to work.

Some of the most important people in their lives didn’t make it to the other side of this story. Derek’s brother Dave. Jessica’s friend Emily. His cousin Debbie, just weeks before the wedding.

They weren’t there on June 21st, 2013. We believe they were the reason any of it happened at all. You’ll understand why when you read the book.

The wedding was in Punta Mita. It hadn’t rained there since December — months of drought, right through the ceremony, right through the dancing.

At 10:59pm, one minute before the noise ordinance would cut the music, the rain came.

The drought ended exactly when the wedding did.

There’s a version of that story where it’s a coincidence. We don’t tell that version.

Somewhere in the years between Route 84 and that rain, a text became a ritual. Every morning, one of them would reach for their phone before they were fully awake. Good morning, LOML.

Love of my life. Said so many times it became its own language.

That’s where the name came from. That’s what this is.

The book is coming. The emails, the miles, the losses, the small gestures that held it all together — it’s becoming a memoir. If you want to be the first to know when it’s ready, join the waitlist below.

And if you want the ongoing version — the story still being written every morning — we’re on Instagram.