The day after the holiday break, there was a huge snowstorm and school was canceled. For the first time in my life, upon hearing that particular announcement, my heart sank.

I hadn't seen Jin in four days because of the ski trip, and now it looked like I wasn't going to see him that day either. I wasn't going to see anyone, as a colleague with four-wheel drive had given eomma a ride to work.

I lay in bed with my knees pulled up to my chest, feeling the return of the fear from the mountaintop. In physics, Mr. Hwang told us the earth is spinning at a rate of a thousand miles per hour. "Imagine an amusement park ride moving that fast," he'd said. "Isn't it crazy that we don't feel a thing?" It was gravity, he explained. There are rules that govern bodies in motion, bodies in space.

But maybe those rules didn't alway apply. A thousand miles per hour is awfully fast - how are any of us supposed to hold on?

The phone rang. Jin: "I'm coming over."

"What?" I said. It was a good ten miles from my house to his, and his car was not okay in the snow.

"I've got cross-country skis."

He hung up fast, and then there he was, about an hour and a half later, standing on the snow-covered porch of my house, his cheeks burning red to match his red fleece vest, the sleeves of his chunky wool sweater rolled up to show off bare arms above black gloves, his cargo pants hanging low on his hips. He was sweating, his hair messy, he was breathing hard, and his eyes were bright when I stepped out into the sunshine to greet him. I breathed in his smell, the muskiness, the sweetness on his breath, the damp wool of his sweater, and I could barely stand to breathe out. I wanted every molecule to stay with me forever.

I think Jin was feeling the same thing. He has large hands and strong arms, and without saying anything, he used full force of them to press me against him. I looked up into his face and he leaned down to kiss me. His skin was rough and his breathing ragged.

Struggling with the releases on his ski boots, Jin moved through the front door, still kissing me. I had my back up against the wall, and Jin was pushing up against me, kissing me harder now. All I wanted was to kiss him back. I felt my breath catching. I wasn't thinking about anything but getting closer to him. He had his hands under my sweatshirt, on the skin of my back, and I wanted to strip off his vest and his sweater, to feel what his chest would be like on mine. Stumbling, holding each other, we moved upstairs.

I wished that I could say I'd planned it, that we'd talked about it, that I'd taken the requisite trip to Planned Parenthood eomma made me swear to years before. I'd always imagined that my first time would be premeditated, that I would be deliberate about it and not rush into something I would regret later. We used a and everything, but still, I didn't decide. I just let it happen.

And the moment after, with the sun streaming around the closed shades, the softness of the bedsheets, and the quiet of the house, everything was settled. The fear was gone.

I opened my eyes to find Jin watching me. Part of me wanted to hide from him. I didn't want to wreck the moment by saying the wrong thing, by making a statement that would move us away from the place we were now. But once I locked eyes with him, I couldn't look away, and I didn't want to.

We lay in my bed under the covers, the windows bright with reflected snow, my stuffed animals pushed to the side, the blue quilt and the white-painted bed frame just as they had always been. It was perfectly quiet, the way it can only be when it has snowed, with cars off the roads and the blanket of white an acoustic cushion. My cheek was resting on Jin's bare shoulder, his arm wrapped snugly around the small of my waist. He was looking at me, straight into my eyes. We were smiling at each other. I think. I barely knew what I was doing with my face, only that I felt happy in a way that went so deep I was sure just then I would feel happy forever.

I said, "Do you remember if we ever felt like this? Before?" I spoke my question as quietly as I could while still allowing Jin to hear. I wasn't sure he was going to know what I meant, but  I couldn't stand to be more specific. I leaned my nose into the soft skin just below his shoulder and breathed.

"It wasn't like this," he said. "It was never, ever like this."