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I don’t remember the last time I spoke to someone. Not really spoke—voice-to-voice, eye-to-eye. The kind where words have texture. Where silence sits between them like breath.
It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m seventeen.
The house is quiet in that way old houses get when they’ve absorbed too many unspoken things. The walls are thin. The floorboards creak like they’re whispering to each other. Outside, the world is glittering—neighbours’ porches lit up in red and green, wreaths hanging on doors, tinsel catching the cold light of December. Laughter carries from down the street. A dog barks. Somewhere, someone is singing “Silent Night,” off-key but joyful.
I can hear it all, just beyond the glass.
But here, in this room, there’s only me, the half-finished tree, and the ghost of her.
Her name was Lily.
I won’t say it out loud. Not even in my head. It hurts too much to give it shape.
We used to sit on this same couch, her back against my chest, my arms wrapped around her like I could keep time from moving. I’d rest my chin on her shoulder, and she’d hum along to the songs drifting through my headphones. She never asked which ones—just knew. She’d say, “Play that one with the left hand going like falling rain,” and I’d smile because she’d heard it. Not just the notes. The ache beneath them.
That’s why I picked River Flows in You tonight. Because it’s the closest thing I have to telling her how I feel now.
The piano fills the room—soft, slow, aching. It doesn’t comfort me. It reminds me.
Reminds me that love isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s a whispered promise in the kitchen while you’re boiling water for tea. Sometimes it’s tangled fingers under a movie theatre blanket. Sometimes it’s saying I’ll help you decorate the tree with such certainty that you believe, for a moment, that nothing could ever break it.
And sometimes, it’s just… gone.
Not with shouting. Not with blame. Just a slow untangling. Like a sweater pulled thread by thread until all you’re left with is a pile of yarn and no idea how to begin again.
That’s how it ended with us.
No betrayal. No grand fight. Just… distance.
She started staying late at her sister’s. Cancelled plans twice. Then three times. Then she stopped calling before she cancelled. I’d see her name on my phone, my pulse jumping, only to find: Hey, can’t make it. Something came up.
I never asked what.
I think I knew.
I think we both did.
That night, the last night, she came over. Snow was falling in thick, lazy flakes. The kind that sticks to eyelashes and makes the world feel muffled, sacred.
She wore that green scarf I loved—the one with the slight unravel at the end that I kept meaning to fix. We didn’t talk. We just sat. She curled into the couch, pulling her knees to her chest. I played piano. Not the full piece. Just fragments. A measure here, a chord there. Like memories I couldn’t string together.
After a while, she said, “We should decorate the tree tomorrow.”
I looked at her.
She didn’t look back.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” I said. “We said we’d do it together.”
She nodded. “Then tomorrow.”
She left an hour later. Kissed my cheek—just once. Soft. Final.
And I never saw her again.
Not really.
She texted the next day: Can’t make it. Family stuff.
Then: Maybe tomorrow.
Then nothing.
And the tree stayed bare.
I bought the ornaments weeks before. Tiny glass birds, red bulbs dusted with fake snow, little wooden stars with our names carved into them—Lily & Ethan, I’d written in shaky script. I carved them while she watched, laughing at how I kept slipping. “You’re better at music than woodcraft,” she said, pressing her thumb over my cut finger.
I kept them in the box.
Then, one day, I opened it.
Just to look.
Then I hung one. A blue bulb. Off to the left. Too high. It dangles crooked, like it’s trying to escape.
I haven’t touched it since.
It’s been three weeks.
The tree is still half-undone. The rest of the ornaments sit in the box, nestled in crumpled tissue paper. The lights are strung, but only half of them work. The other half flicker or stay dark, like dead stars.
I don’t know how to fix them.
I don’t know how to fix anything.
I sit on the couch now, pulled into myself. My hoodie is too big—black, worn at the cuffs, sleeves pulled over my fingers. I found it in the back of my closet last week. It still smells faintly like her shampoo. I wore it every day for a year. She used to bury her face in the collar and say, “You smell like home.”
I don’t feel like home anymore.
My phone lies beside me, face-down. I know it’s silent. I’ve been checking without looking. The screen lights up when someone messages. It hasn’t lit up in hours.
Mom called earlier.
“Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” she said, voice crackling through the speaker. She’s in Florida with her new husband—his kids, their dog, a villa with a pool. She offered to fly me down. I said no.
“I’ll be fine,” I told her. “I’ve got plans.”
She didn’t ask what they were.
I think she knew.
There’s a plate on the coffee table—turkey sandwich, eaten halfway. The crusts are cut off. Mom always hated crusts. I don’t know why I did it. Force of habit. A tiny gesture towards normalcy.
I don’t finish it.
The music loops. River Flows in You. Over and over. I don’t change it. I don’t want to think about choosing anything.
The snow has started again.
Outside, the neighbourhood is transforming. A soft white blanket drapes over rooftops, lawns, cars. The Christmas lights glow brighter against the dark, melting into the snow like liquid colour.
I watch a family across the street. They’re hanging their stockings. A boy—maybe ten—dances in place, tugging at his dad’s sleeve. The mom laughs, holding a mug of something steaming. They look warm. They are warm.
I press my palm against the window. The glass is cold.
Do you ever feel like you’re watching your life through someone else’s eyes?
Like you were supposed to be in the picture, but someone erased you?
That’s how it feels.
Like I was part of a story that didn’t want me anymore.
Lily and I met in the spring.
I was playing Clair de Lune in the school auditorium after hours. I didn’t lock the door. I never do. Music isn’t meant to be hidden.
She walked in halfway through. Didn’t say anything. Just stood in the back, arms crossed, listening.
When I finished, she clapped—soft, slow.
“That wasn’t Debussy,” she said.
I frowned. “Yes, it was.”
“No,” she said, stepping forward. “You changed the ending. Made it… softer. Less tragic.”
I stared at her.
She smiled. “I like it better.”
That was Lily. She didn’t just hear the music. She felt it. And she wasn’t afraid to say what it did to her.
We started meeting after school. At first, it was just about music. She’d bring me recordings—old jazz, Korean indie, Icelandic ballads. I’d play them on the piano, reimagining them, layering them with my own touch.
Then one day, she sat beside me on the bench.
“Play something you wrote,” she said.
I froze.
“I haven’t written anything,” I lied.
She raised an eyebrow. “You think I don’t know when you’re improvising?”
I played it then. A piece I’d been working on for weeks. No name. Just chords and melodies that poured out when I couldn’t sleep. It was sad. Not hopeless, but… unfinished. Like a letter never sent.
When I finished, she didn’t speak.
Just leaned her head on my shoulder.
And said, “It needs a title.”
“What should I call it?” I asked.
She thought for a long time.
Then, “Almost There.”
I never changed it.
We fell in love like that—slowly, quietly, without fanfare. No grand confession. Just a look across the cafeteria. A hand held under the table. A note slipped into my locker: Play ‘Almost There’ for me tonight? I’ll be outside your window.
And she was.
Standing in the dim streetlight, wrapped in that green scarf, snow in her hair.
I played it twice.
Love shouldn’t hurt this much.
That’s what I keep thinking.
It’s supposed to be sweet. Warm. A thing that fills you.
But this? This is a hollow place in my chest. A constant hum of absence.
I remember the first time she said she loved me.
It was July. Hot. We were at the lake, lying on a blanket, staring at the stars.
“I love you,” she said, casually, like she was commenting on the weather.
I turned to her. “What?”
She grinned. “You heard me.”
I didn’t say it back.
Not then.
I wanted to. God, I wanted to. But the words got stuck, like they were too big for my throat.
She didn’t push. Just squeezed my hand.
Later, I wrote her a letter. Typed it. Printed it. Left it on her doorstep.
It said: I love you too. I just can’t say it yet.
She called me that night.
Cried.
Not sad. Happy.
Said it was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given her.
Now, that letter is folded in my desk drawer. I’ve read it a hundred times.
I wonder if she still has hers.
I wonder if she even remembers.
The music stops. The track ends. Silence crashes in.
I don’t move.
The quiet is heavier now. Louder.
I lift my hand from the armrest. My fingers ache. I didn’t realize I’d been clenching them.
My phone buzzes.
Once.
I don’t look.
It stops.
I wait.
Nothing.
I turn it over.
One new message.
From Lily.
My breath hitches.
Hey.
That’s it.
Just Hey.
No explanation. No Merry Christmas. No I miss you.
Just Hey.
I stare at it.
My thumb hovers over the screen. I could reply. I could say anything.
Hi.
I saw you.
Why now?
Do you remember the tree?
But I don’t.
I set the phone back down, face-up this time.
Let her see I’ve read it.
Let her wonder if I’ll answer.
Let her feel, for once, the weight of waiting.
I walk to the piano.
It’s an old upright, inherited from my grandmother. The middle C sticks sometimes. The finish is chipped. But the sound—when it’s coaxed right—is rich. Deep. Like water over stone.
I sit.
Place my hands on the keys.
They’re cold.
I close my eyes.
And I play.
Not River Flows in You. Not Clair de Lune. Not even Almost There.
I play something new.
Something I’ve never played before.
It starts softly—single notes in the left hand, slow and deliberate. Then the right joins in, tentative. A melody emerges. Sad, but not broken. Full of longing, but not without hope.
It’s about the tree.
About the ornaments in the box.
About the scarf I still haven’t returned.
It’s about the way she used to laugh when I played wrong notes. The way she’d hum along, even if she didn’t know the tune.
It’s about snow falling outside on Christmas Eve.
And it’s about love—real love—that doesn’t end when people walk away.
It just… changes shape.
The piece builds.
I lose track of time.
The room fills with sound. The walls breathe it. The floor trembles under my feet. The half-lit tree sways slightly, as if listening.
And then—mid-phrase—I hear it.
A knock.
Soft.
At the door.
I stop.
The last note hangs in the air, trembling.
I turn.
The clock says 10:47 p.m.
No one comes here at 10:47 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
Another knock.
I stand.
Walk barefoot across the cold floor.
My heartbeat loud in my ears.
I open the door.
She’s there.
Lily.
In her coat. The green scarf. Snow in her hair.
She looks smaller. Tired. But her eyes—God, her eyes are the same.
“Hi,” she says.
I don’t speak.
“I didn’t know if you’d answer,” she whispers.
I don’t move.
She glances past me, into the house.
Sees the tree.
The half-decorated tree.
Her breath catches.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry, Ethan.”
I say nothing.
“I should’ve called. I should’ve come sooner. I just… I didn’t know how to come back.”
I swallow.
“What do you want?” My voice is rough. Unfamiliar.
She looks at me. “I miss you.”
“That’s not a reason,” I say.
“It’s the only one I have.”
Silence.
The snow falls between us.
I step back.
She doesn’t move.
“Come in,” I say.
She hesitates. Then steps inside.
I close the door.
She walks to the tree.
Kneels by the box.
Runs her fingers over the ornaments.
“These are beautiful,” she says.
I stand behind her.
“I started them,” I say. “But I couldn’t finish.”
She looks up. “Can we?”
I don’t answer.
She stands. Turns to me.
Her face is close.
I can smell her—vanilla and cold air.
“I didn’t mean to leave it like this,” she says. “I didn’t know how to stay. I didn’t know how to go.”
I nod.
“I know.”
“I wasn’t ready,” she says. “For… all of it. The love. The future. The us. It scared me.”
“It scared me too,” I admit.
“But I don’t want to be scared anymore,” she says. “Not if it means losing you.”
I look at her.
Really look.
And I see it—the same girl who stood outside my window. Who heard the sadness in my music. Who laughed when I burned toast. Who loved me in whispers and glances and the quiet spaces between words.
I take her hand.
It’s cold.
I lead her to the box.
We sit on the floor together.
She pulls out a red bulb. Hands it to me.
I hang it.
Then she takes a silver star. Places it high.
We don’t speak.
We just work.
Ornament by ornament.
Memory by memory.
The tree fills.
We plug in the lights again.
This time, they all work.
Or maybe we just don’t care which ones don’t.
She leans into me.
I wrap my arm around her.
Outside, the snow keeps falling.
The neighbourhood is quiet now. Most of the lights are off.
But ours is on.
The house glows.
The tree sparkles.
And from the piano, in the corner, softly, a single note plays—left behind from my earlier piece, a string vibrating long after the hand has lifted.
Lily turns her head.
“What was that piece you were playing?” she asks.
I look at the piano.
“It didn’t have a name,” I say.
She smiles. “Give it one.”
I think.
Then, softly, “The River That Doesn’t Reach the Sea.”
She frowns. “That’s sad.”
“It is,” I say. “But it’s not finished.”
She kisses me.
Slow. Sweet.
Like a promise.
When she pulls back, she rests her forehead against mine.
“Then let’s write the next part together.”
I close my eyes.
And for the first time in weeks, the silence doesn’t hurt.
It feels like breathing.
Like beginning.