Second Time: Signature

The second time she said it, it was completely cautionary.

It was Sam's birthday in the morning, and she was still sitting up, frozen over the piece of paper in front of her face. She was petrified, her hand frozen in place, the pen grasped tightly in-between her fingers.

She just did not know how to sign his card.

She had rented and read about ten letter etiquette books, but in the end they were all no help. All of them had said that the safest way to sign was with a 'Sincerely' and a signature, but she figured that she knew Sam too well and such a formal closing would make her sound a little bitchy. But, she also ran the risk of upsetting Sam again by using the more informal and intimate 'yours truly', 'your friend', or heaven forbid 'with love'. She feared that just the word love would upset him like it had before, even though she was convinced that he was wrong about the entire notion of the word when it applied to people. She had watched hours' worth of old movies and TV shows to prove it.

If only she was more confident about things like she was before. But this wasn't her home turf; this wasn't a place she knew very much about and emotions were not her forte. She had to live by Sam's rules, and his rules only gave her a headache. So, done with the worrying, she just closed her eyes and bit the bullet.

She wrote down 'Love, Quorra.'

Sam could freak out if he wanted to. She was going to bed.

And in the morning, he opened the card and smiled. He didn't mention the signature.