Nate shook his head at me. "You are way too cynical for your own good. Come on, Annie. Come pick out a Christmas tree with me."

I sighed. "Fine," I said. "But you have to stop and buy me hot chocolate on the way home."

He grinned. "Sold."

Minutes later, I was shivering while Nate walked up and down the rows of trees. A tree lot had sprung up a few weeks ago down the street from his apartment and he had been bugging me to go with him to find the perfect tree ever since.

"Hmm, we always get a nice blue spruce at home," he said, squinting at a tree in front of us. "What do you think this one is?"

"If you can't tell them apart, why do you care what kind you get?" I asked.

"It's tradition!" he replied, grabbing me around the waist to pull me close. "Come on, don't you have any traditions?"

I shrugged. "My mom had an ugly old silver fake tree that she would pull out every year and decorate while I was at school."

Nate looked at me with an expression akin to horror on his face. "Are you kidding me?" he asked.

"No," I said, pulling away. "Why would I be kidding?"

"You guys didn't put your tree up together? What about the eggnog? What about the cookies?"

"Nate, I was too old for that stuff by the time I was ten."

"No," he said seriously, shaking his head. "No, no, no. You're never too old for decorating a Christmas tree. Oh, Annie. Now my mission is clear to me. I must impress upon you the wonderfulness of Christmas traditions."

"Oh, Jesus," I muttered.

"Seriously, Annie. Some of my favorite memories are of putting up the tree. We would go out with my whole family, all my cousins and my aunts and uncles, and we'd find a good tree farm-"

"A what?"

"A tree farm," he said. "You know, a place you go to cut down trees."

"You actually went out in the woods with an axe to chop down your tree?" I asked him. "Are you sure you're not confusing your life with a Laura Ingalls book?"

He pulled on my earlobe, an annoying habit he had picked up to get back at me when I teased him.

"We did not go into the woods," he said with dignity. "We went to a tree farm."

"Like that's so much better," I muttered. He just looked at me. "Sorry," I said. "You were saying?"

"So we would all go out and find the perfect tree for each of our houses. And then we would take turns with the saw to cut them down. And after we got them all loaded up on top of the cars, we would go back to my aunt's house for pizza. It was so great."

"I guess you had to be there," I said drily. Nothing that he had described sounded remotely like fun to me.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe next year we can go out to Maryland to visit them and you can come along for the tree-picking day."

I stared at him, aghast. He was not seriously making plans for us in a year-especially not for me to meet his entire family.

Before I could say anything, Nate started cracking up.

"Oh, you're too easy," he said. "G.o.d, it looked like your head was about to explode there, Annie."

"Haha," I replied, turning away. "You're such a laugh riot."

"Anyhow," he said as he grabbed my hand, undeterred. "The next weekend my dad would spend all day Sat.u.r.day putting lights up on the tree. And he would complain the whole time because the needles were so p.r.i.c.kly. Then he and my mom would fight about the tree-he would say that next year we were getting a scotch pine, something with softer bristles. And she would yell at him and say that the blue spruce was prettier and she would be d.a.m.ned if she would get anything else. And then he would say, *Well you can put the lights up yourself then!'"

Nate's face suddenly turned wistful, the way it did when he would get carried away in telling a story about his dad. It was almost like he would forget for a few minutes why he was sad...

I squeezed his hand. "Would they make up?" I asked softly.

He shook his head almost imperceptibly, as if he was clearing it, then smiled down at me. "Yeah. By that night they would be snuggling in front of the lights. And then they'd have the exact same fight the next year."

"Who's doing the lights this year?" I asked, feeling suddenly guilty for monopolizing so much of his time when his mother probably wanted him at home.

"She got a fake tree," he said, his face clouding over a little. "The year after he died. One of those pre-lit ones. She can set it up all by herself."

Something about the story made me feel incredibly sad. I squeezed his hand again, determined to change the subject. "I'm freezing my b.u.t.t off out here, Hughes," I said. "Let's pick that tree and get it home."

He smiled at me, a grateful smile, and started to lead me down the rows of trees. I squinted at the tags in the darkness, hoping I would find...

"Here," I said, tugging on his hand so he would stop. "This one looks perfect."

He looked at it for a long minute, his head c.o.c.ked as if in serious consideration. "It does look pretty good."

"I think it's beautiful," I told him.

He peered down to look at the tag. "Blue spruce," he murmured.

"Your mom has good taste," I said.

Nate looked up at me, a grin spreading across his face. Then he leaned forward and kissed me.

"So do you," he said. "Come on, let's get this home."

We dragged the tree behind us on the sidewalk. My fingers were freezing around the trunk in spite of my warm mittens. "G.o.d, you owe me so big for this," I muttered. "I'm so cold!"

"Oh, stop being such a baby," he said, looking at me over his shoulder. "This is good for you. Fresh air, exercise..."

"Nate, it's five below," I said. "This isn't fresh air, it's torture."

"Such a baby," he said sadly.

We finally reached his apartment and dragged the tree up the stairs to the second floor. It wasn't until he was unlocking his door that I remembered what was missing. "Hey!" I said loudly. "You were supposed to get me a hot chocolate!"

"Not to fear," he said, opening the door and pulling the tree through. "I have hot chocolate right here in the house."

"Seriously?" I asked, following him in and stamping my boots on the welcome mat to rid them of their cover of snow. "What twenty-eight-year-old man keeps cocoa in his house?"

"I've got marshmallows, too," he said happily. He raised one eyebrow at me in a mock-seductive expression. "You know you think that's s.e.xy."

I couldn't help but laugh. "Oh yeah, baby," I replied.

Nate pulled the tree into the living room.

"Don't you need one of those stand things?" I asked him.

"Yes," he replied. "And I have one."

"Where?" I asked, surprised.

"In my Christmas decoration box," he said.

"Oh my G.o.d," I said, collapsing on the couch. "You have a decoration box? Who are you?"

"Let me rephrase that," Nate said. "I have several decoration boxes."

When I stared at him incredulously, he only smiled. "Annie, trust me," he said. "Christmas is the best time of year. This is going to be fun."

I shrugged my shoulders. "If you say so..."

Twenty minutes later, Nate had pulled several plastic tubs up from his storage cage in the bas.e.m.e.nt and set the tree up in a red metal stand. Now he was pulling out string after string of lights.

"I have a feeling your dad had a point," I said, gingerly touching one of the branches. "These needles are sharp as h.e.l.l."

"It builds character," he said bracingly.

But a few minutes later he was asking me for my mittens in an effort to protect his hands.

"These don't help," he said grumpily. "The needles just poke right through."

"Do you have any hockey gloves?" I asked.

"No," he muttered, wincing again as he struggled to wrap the wire around one of the top branches. "c.r.a.p, that hurts!"

"I have an idea," I said, pulling the lights from his hand. "Instead of wrapping, let's go for a more artistic drape." I started to lay the strand on top of the braches, pulling it around the tree as I went.

"Smart girl," Nate said, taking the lights back and continuing to drape the strand. When he was finished I plugged the lights in and we both stood back to admire it.

"Well," Nate said. "Maybe not quite as nice as my dad did it, but still not bad."

"Okay," I said, looking around at the boxes. "What now?"

"Now," Nate said excitedly. "We put some music on and we start to decorate!"

Before I could respond, Nate had hurried off to the bedroom. A few minutes later he came back with his iPod, which he plugged into the docking stereo. The strains of Nat King Cole's *Christmas Song' soon filled the room.

"I'm not even going to say it," I said, staring at him.

"What, you think it's lame I have Christmas music on my iPod?"

I just shook my head at him. "Hide your true feelings all you want," he said, bending down to rifle through one of the boxes. "But I know you think I'm adorable."

I would never admit it, but the truth was, I kind of did.

"Get over here," he said, putting his hands on his hips and looking at me sternly. "You're helping, missy."

I groaned, but got up and joined him. "Is there, like, some specific traditional order we need to follow here?" I asked.

"Nope," he said. "Just grab one and get going."

Nate had a lot of ornaments. And most of them had a story, which he insisted on sharing with me. "I got that one in Frankenmuth," he told me, pointing at the gla.s.s bulb in my hand. "The year after I moved here. My sister Emily came out to visit and we went to that Christmas store, you know, the one that's open all year?"

I nodded. Frankenmuth was a touristy little town about two hours away. They got really into Christmas up there.

"We took Danny to see Santa there last year," I told him.

Nate laughed. "My mom still writes *from Santa' on half of our gifts."

I snorted. "When I was seven I told my mom to give up the act."

He stared at me, aghast. "You were only seven?"

I shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. That was the year I asked Santa to make my dad leave his newest girlfriend. When he didn't come home for Christmas, I decided I'd had enough of the fat man in the red suit.

Nate must have noticed I was uncomfortable-he had gotten surprisingly adept at that-and he changed the subject.

"So, that ornament," he said, pointing to the misshapen clay lump in my hand, "was a gift from my sister Janna. She made it when she was six."

"What is it?" I asked, holding it up to the light.

"I think it was supposed to be a reindeer," he said, squinting at it.

I felt a rush of affection for him, this man that would keep such a gift for all these years, a man who would cart it all the way from Maryland to Michigan and put it on his tree. I watched him as he hung a red glitter bulb on a tall branch. The lights from the tree reflected in his blond hair.

"Nate," I said suddenly.

He looked at me, smiling slightly. "Yeah?"

I kissed him, holding onto his face for a long moment as I pressed my lips against his.

"What was that for?" he asked, when I finally pulled away. He had a slightly dazed look on his face, but he was smiling at me.

"Nothing," I said, grinning back. "I just felt like kissing you."

It took us about twenty minutes to finish the tree. Sometimes we talked, Nate telling me about ornaments or memories they invoked. Mostly we worked in comfortable silence, the soft strains of Christmas music the only sound in the room.