Page 9 of We Were Liars

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 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.

Gat 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 star tell-alls by old people I’d never heard of. Gat wasn’t really looking. He 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 ?”

Gat laughed. Shook his head. Straightened his blue pile.

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

He was laughing again. Then serious. “Cadence?”

“What?”

“Shut up.”

I let myself look at him a long time. Every curve of his face was familiar, and also, I had never seen him before.

Gat smiled. Shining. Bashful. He got to his knees, kicking over his colorful book piles in the process. He reached out and stroked my hair. “I love you, Cady. I mean it.”

I leaned in and kissed him.

He touched my face. Ran his 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 Gat and from Gat 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.