AT BREAKFAST THE next morning, Mummy asked me to go through Dad's things in the Windemere attic and take what I wanted. She would get rid of the rest.

          Windemere is gabled and angular. Two of the five bedrooms have slanted roofs, and it's the only house on the whole island with a full attic. There's a big porch and a modern kitchen, updated with marble countertops that look a little out of place. The rooms are airy and filled with dogs.

          Taeyeon and I climbed up to the attic with glass bottles of iced tea and sat on the floor. The room smelled like wood. A square of light glowed through from the window. 

          We had been in the attic before.

          Also, we had never been in the attic before.

          The books were Dad's vacation reading. All sports memoirs, cozy mysteries, and rock stars tell-all by old people I'd never heard of. Taeyeon wasn't really looking. She was sorting the books by color. A red pile, a blue, brown, white, yellow.

          "Don't you want anything to read?" I asked.

          "Maybe."

          "How about First Base and Way Beyond?"

          Taeyeon laughed. Shook her head. Straightened her blue pile.

          "Rock On with My Bad Self? Hero of the Dance Floor?"

          She was laughing again. Then serious. "Jessica?"

          "What?"

          "Shut up."

          I let myself look at her a long time. Every curve of her face was familiar, and also, it was as if, I had never seen her before.

          Taeyeon smiled her dimpled smile. That charming smile. Shining. Bashful. She got to her knees, kicking over her colorful book piles in the process. She reached out and my hair. "I love you, Sica. I mean it."

          I leaned in and kissed her.

          She touched my face. Ran her hand down my neck and along my collarbone. The light from the attic window shone down on  us. Our kiss was electric and soft,

          and tentative and certain,

          terrifying and exactly right.

          I felt the love rush from me to her and from Taeyeon to me.

          We were warm and shivering,

          and young and ancient,

          and alive.

          I was thinking, It's true. We already love each other.

          We already do.