And is that even what I really want? To spend Christmas morning scraping a hungover Linds off the floor between suffering her rants about everything from my lackluster physical appearance to my even lacklustier love life? The last time we spent Christmas together back in Cleveland—before Linds followed husband number three to Arizona—she dragged me to a nightclub, tried to set me up with a handsy forty-year-old Realtor named Rick, and then promptly ditched me so she could go home with Rick’s friend. I didn’t see her for three days after that.

I was nineteen. My mother had provided the fake ID. Happy fucking holidays.

Is that really my Christmas wish?

The answer is, apparently, yes. I don’t have anyone else. If last Christmas is any indication, it’s best I’m not alone for the holidays. I tend to make misguided life choices in the name of loneliness.

“Why would I leave Phoenix for somewhere wet and cold?” Linds asks, reminding me that my Christmas wishes are always irrelevant.

“Because I’m here?”

She smacks her lips into the phone. “Elena Oliver, don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“You’re so dramatic. You’ve always been like this. Don’t get all sensitive and try to make me feel guilty for not wanting to spend Christmas in the rain.”

“I wasn’t—”

A deep voice growls in the background of the call, and Linds mutters something under her breath in reply. “I gotta go.”

“I could always fly down to Phoenix,” I offer pathetically. So very pathetically. Just a twenty-five-year-old woman, begging her mother to spend Christmas with her.

“Now’s not a good time for that. Just Venmo me the money by tonight, okay?”

That’s it. No happy holidays. No I love you. The call disconnects before I can even say goodbye. The earlier shame in my stomach is eclipsed by the aching hole of loneliness in my chest. I’m going to spend Christmas by myself in my squalid studio apartment, eating a five-dollar rotisserie chicken over my kitchen sink for dinner.

Homesickness sluices through me, but there is no home to be sick for, nothing waiting for me here or anywhere.

I don’t let myself think about the brief moment last Christmas when I thought I’d found someone to ease the ache, a person to call home.

But I’m always alone, have always been alone, and just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean there’s any reason for that to change. You can feel just as lost and aimless at Christmas as any other time of the year.

I pause as I wait for a walk sign, and around me, the snow is already turning to rain.

The thing about snow is, it never lasts, and you’re always left a slightly dingier version of the world when it starts to melt.