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“… Am I still asleep?” I croak.

He startles, nearly dropping the lights. “Oh! Shit. I wanted this to be a surprise.”

I blink at the tree again and the box of ornaments by his feet. There’s tinsel draped over the arm of the couch, too. “What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s December,” he replies indignantly, like that explains everything.

“Don’t you have your own place to desecrate?”

His lips pop open in offense as he turns to continue unraveling the lights. “I'm going to pretend you did not just say that when I'm doing something nice for you.”

Blowing out a breath, I retreat into the bathroom to throw on some sweats and brush my teeth. By the time I rejoin him in the living room, the tree's already lit up and twinkling.

“Wow,” I mutter. “You move fast.”

“I had a system,” he grumbles, hanging an ornament on a branch. “I was going to have this all decorated and presents wrapped before you both came home from work and now you've ruined it.”

My brows knit together. “It's my day off. Did you say presents?”

“It’s our last Christmas here. At least, the last one with all of us under the same roof.”

“Oh,” I say flatly, still not understanding what the big deal is.

He shoots me a look. “What, you don't like Christmas?”

“My grandparents never decorated, except for the Nativity scene. We didn't do gifts.”

From the way Owen gasps in horror, you'd think I just confessed to murder. “What did you even do on Christmas?”

“Church, usually.” A memory pops into my head—one of my grandfather's belt biting into my flesh for falling asleep during a three-hour sermon—but I shake it away. “Dinner and prayer. Scripture reading.”

“No wonder you don't have any whimsy,” he says forlornly, eyes big and brown and sad.

“Whimsy wasn't exactly encouraged.”

“Well, it is now.” Leaning down, he grabs an ornament from the box at his feet and holds it out to me. “New tradition. Owen and Devon decorate every year, starting today.”

I stare at the little glass bauble like it might bite me. “I don’t know how to do that.”

He blinks. “Uh… hang it up?”

“No. The… tradition part. At least one that doesn't involve getting as strung out as possible to make the day go by quicker.”

Something shifts in his expression, the teasing giving way to clarity. He just resumes decorating again like I didn't fuck up the moment with my sob story. “The thing I love about traditions,” he says lightly, hanging the ornament on an upper branch, “is that they're like promises. I promise to still be here next year to put up a tree with you, and so on. Then it becomes a tradition.”

I swallow around the lump in my throat. “That’s a lot to promise.”

“Not really. Being your friend isn't a burden, Dev. Now use your monkey arms to help me with the topper.”

I don’t really know how to process that, so I just take the silver star from his hand and fit it onto the top of the tree without a word. It wobbles for a second before settling into a tilted position.

“There,” Owen announces, satisfied. “Perfect.”

Stepping back beside him, I cross my arms and take the whole tree in. It's crooked, missing a whole row of lights, and the ornaments don't even match. But Owen’s looking at it like it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

“Okay,” he exclaims, clapping his hands once. “I’m grabbing the wrapping paper and gifts out of my car. Go away so you don't see what I got you.”

“I didn’t get you anything,” I say quickly. “Or anyone.”