DeWayne and Laurie Sorrells are just your average high school sweethearts, with a not-so-average love story.
The Sorrells, both Auburn alumni and U.S. Marines, met at church in Newborn, Ga., where DeWayne's father is the preacher.
"I was 13. He was 15," Laurie said. "He was picking on me, you know, as boys do. He kept pulling my hair from the seat behind me."
DeWayne said they started to like each other, so he invited her to play paintball.
"I just thought it was a date, and 18 other guys show up," Laurie said. "I was like OK, sure."
DeWayne was already a paintball enthusiast, so Laurie started playing to get closer to him.
"We are both very competitive, so we would fight to the death, just me and him," Laurie said. "We would duel it out."
When DeWayne joined the Marines in 2004, everything changed for the couple. DeWayne said he knew he would be traveling to different bases and didn't want to be without Laurie.
While in boot camp, DeWayne said he started planning how he would ask Laurie to marry him.
The day of the proposal, he bought her a dress and told her to be ready at a certain time.
"He picked me up, and I thought, 'Oh mama, I think this is the night,'" Laurie said.
They were supposed to have dinner at an Atlanta restaurant called The Sun Dial, which spins to give a 360-degree view of the city, and then DeWayne was going to propose by a fountain in Centennial Park.
"His plan of proposal and what happened are totally different," Laurie said. "He was going to propose in this really romantic way and that would have been really neat, but there was this concert there that night in the park."
DeWayne was forced to change his plans.
"As he's realizing Centennial Park is full, and I'm still oblivious, or whatever, he's thinking in his head we are going to go downstairs," Laurie said. "I guess he just wanted to walk, and then we see this carriage ride like freakin' Cinderella."
Laurie said they get on the first one they could find and rode through the park.
"As we're riding down the street--I don't know what street we were at because I was lost in his eyes--he proposed," Laurie said. "Then someone yelled out in the back, 'Get a room.' It kind of ruined the moment, but that's OK. So goes life."
DeWayne said he was sure she would say yes, but he was still nervous.
"You don't want to mess it up," DeWayne said. "It's your one time to get it right."
After DeWayne proposed, he was deployed to the Middle East.
This marked the journey they would spend together and apart.
When he returned, the two got married on July 2, 2005. Shortly after, they moved to Hawaii where DeWayne was based. Then he was deployed again.
"It's really lonely," Laurie said. "You see the same stuff over and over again, all day, every day, that you used to experience together. It's like you get constant reminders that he is gone."
Laurie said it is really hard being the one left behind, but she found ways to cope.
"The military provides a great support system to all of us girls that have military husbands," Laurie said. "I basically lived with my girls. I had the sorority experience because all the wives on base chilled together."
She said they would swap-off living with each other every week.
DeWayne said one thing that worked for him was countdowns.
"We usually try to come up with some big trip to do as soon as we come back together so we have that to look forward to," DeWayne said.
When they weren't able to talk on the phone or e-mail, they enjoyed sending letters to each other.
"Letters are better than e-mails because they have more meaning, because it's something that she actually wrote," DeWayne said. "You can see her handwriting, smell her perfume and stuff like that, that you don't get with e-mails."
They would send gifts back and forth as well. Laurie said they have missed most of their anniversaries between deployments and both of their boot camps.
DeWayne said the best gift he received was an iPod.
"This was back in 2005 when the 30-gig video had just come out," DeWayne said.
"This is before the iPod touch or anything like that. That was really neat because it had my favorite songs on it."
While he was deployed, DeWayne would order gifts for Laurie on the Internet.
She remembers one gift in particular.
"It was this poem he wrote in this really pretty frame," Laurie said.
Unfortunately, even the best gifts can't keep a soldier's mind from wondering.
"(Being apart) is definitely difficult," DeWayne said. "It messes with your mind no matter how faithful you think your spouse would be to you.
"There are always the stories."
DeWayne said there was a wall of shame in the barracks, decorated with pictures of cheating girlfriends.
"It is something you have to deal with, especially when you have a beautiful wife in Hawaii on a base full of nothing but 18-24 year old guys, all in good shape making money." DeWayne said.
Laurie would sometimes receive angry phone calls from DeWayne after another soldier's wife cheated.
"It's so frustrating being the one back home who is being super loyal," Laurie said, "not looking, not thinking, not doing nothing."
DeWayne said she would reassure him that she would never do anything like that.
Even though neither one of them looks forward to deployment, the time apart keeps their relationship fresh.
"It is like your honeymoon every time he comes back," Laurie said. "It's like you're having to learn each other again each time. That in itself was fun."
DeWayne said a military relationship with one person constantly traveling keeps a relationship more interesting than a regular relationship.
"You get set in your ways, and you lose focus on how important they are to you," DeWayne said. "But when you know that you are only here for seven months, and then you go away for seven months--well, that seven months that you are here, you're like newlyweds."
In the future, the two plan to have children.
"We're looking three or four years down the road," DeWayne said.
"I've always wanted kids, but it's something we decided to put off at least until she gets through the end of her career in the Marines."
DeWayne said he would rather raise young children while he is in the military, and hopefully he will retire before they start middle school.
"What we are hoping is our oldest kid won't be older than 10 years old when I decide to retire," DeWayne said. "Then, we can move back to Georgia and then can settle in. "
For Valentine's Day, the Sorrells plan to do something they love to do together--travel.
Laurie said they plan to go to Jamaica thanks to a little extra money they had after graduation.
"I also demanded that I get some chocolate, and I think he ordered some," Laurie said.
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