"I want to hear you say it."
"That's unfair."
"Probably."
She laughed once, a small broken sound. "I've been in love with you since the party on Avenue B. Since the bad punch and the judgmental cat. Since you tried to quote a song and got the lyrics wrong and I corrected you and you looked delighted instead of annoyed. Six years, Dez. Six years of pretending that sharing a bathroom and a grocery list and every Christmas was the same as saying it."
Dez felt something in his chest unclench and catch fire at the same time. "I bought a tree that doesn't fit," he said, voice rough, "because my mother taught me not to compromise with December, and because I have been compromising with every other month for six years. I look at you and I think—there. That's the ceiling I keep hitting. Not the apartment. You. The almost. I love you. I have loved you in green sweaters and bad jeans and every stupid season since I met you."
Wren's mauve lips trembled into a smile. "Your bangs are still a threat to society."
"Trim them later."
She kissed him. It was not a movie kiss, because life is not filmed that way when you live in a purple walk-up with a tree that recently assaulted your friends. It was better: clumsy at the edge, sure at the center, tasting of cinnamon and relief. When they pulled apart, the judgmental angel seemed fractionally less judgmental. Or maybe that was hope, which wears strange disguises in December.