Until a tree that was too big looked at him like a dare and a prayer at the same time.
He paid more than he should have. He tipped the salesman. He dragged the thing downtown through light snow while strangers laughed and one taxi honked as if the fir had personally offended traffic law. By the time he reached the coffeehouse—their coffeehouse, the one with brick walls and giant mugs and tinsel over the bar—his arms burned and his sweater was full of needles and he felt, absurdly, like he had done something holy.
"Nobody panic," he had said, because panic was the opposite of what his mother would have wanted, "it shrinks when it warms up!"
It did not shrink. Of course it did not. Trees don't shrink, Dez. But for a few minutes, pinned under branches with Gus wheezing laughter into his shoulder, Dez had felt twelve years old and safe, which was a feeling he had not known he was hunting until he caught it.
---
After the first round of cocoa, Wren stood and stretched, the cream cardigan slipping off one shoulder. She walked to the window and pressed her fingertips to the cold glass. Across the street, a couple argued cheerfully about whether to buy eggnog or just drink wine and call it culture. A dog in a tiny sweater peed on a hydrant with civic pride. Somewhere a car stereo leaked a Christmas song through a cracked window, the kind of song that had been overplayed since Thanksgiving and somehow still worked.
"You know," Wren said without turning around, "most people buy a tree that fits."
"Most people are boring," Dez said from the sofa.