Presents were small and perfect in the way presents are when money is finite and attention is not. Wren gave Dez a used book of jazz photography with a note on the flyleaf: For complexity, without the misting. Dez gave Wren a silver charm shaped like a tiny scissors—because trim it or I trim your bangs had become scripture—and a mix tape of songs that had played the year they met, lyrics correct this time. Gus gave them both matching scarves in ridiculous colors and gave Elena, who came by at noon with panettone, a copy of his play's new second act, less saggy, more true. Elena gave Gus a fountain pen and the instruction to stop apologizing for wanting things.
They called families. Wren's mother in Ohio cried happily about the Los Angeles maybe and then cried happier when Wren said she was in love with her roommate of six years, which was both accurate and overdue. Dez called his aunt in Queens, the last of his mother's sisters, and told her about the tree. She went quiet, then said, "She'd have hated that ceiling," and laughed until she sniffed, and Dez laughed too, the good kind, the kind that has room inside it for missing someone.
In the afternoon they walked through the Village under a sky the color of milk glass. Shop windows glowed. A few cabbies wore Santa hats with varying degrees of irony. Wren slipped her glove into Dez's pocket, finding his hand there like a secret the coat had been keeping. Gus and Elena walked ahead, arguing cheerfully about whether plays about roommates were narcissism or anthropology. Snow began again, light as powdered sugar.
On a bench near Washington Square, Wren said, "I've been thinking about the sentence."
"Yeah?"
"What if the sentence isn't New York or Los Angeles. What if it's us first, geography second. I take the job for a year. You come if the shop introduction turns into something, or you stay and visit until we know, or we try Portland after, or we come back when the condo fever breaks and find another purple place. The point isn't the fixed address. The point is we stop pretending we're temporary to each other."
Dez watched a kid chase pigeons and fail beautifully. "A year in L.A. with visits and a plan to reassess."
"And a too-big tree every December wherever we are."