The anticipation of seeing him again today, as friends, kept me awake for most of the night. I kept peeking out my window after he dropped me off, wondering if he was still out there. I wouldn’t mind if he was, to be honest. I liked his attention, fleeting as it may be.

Earlier, while I waited for Feather to get out of the shower, I called Maria, the taxi driver. She apologized frantically, telling me she had gotten a call on her cell that her two-year-old son was sick and she’d had to leave quickly. She had no way of calling me, so she had no choice except to just leave. She told me she had worried about me all night, wondering how I would get home. I could actually hear the relief in her voice when I told her I was fine and would like another ride today.

“I’m going shopping, want to come?” Feather asks, coming into our small kitchen, where I’m drinking a cup of tea and eating a blueberry muffin.

“I can’t… I’m going to see Poppy today. The driver will be here in about an hour.”

“You mean you’re going to see Tyler,” she comments with a grin, grabbing her car keys off the heart-shaped key rack on the wall. The hook next to hers is empty, mocking me and my carless life.

I shift uncomfortably at the small wooden table. “Of course he’ll be there too.”

“I saw him drop you off last night. I can’t believe you got on that bike with him.” She leans against the doorframe, her long hair flowing down her shoulder and over her chest.

“You were watching me?”

“You can hear his motorcycle a mile away, Holly. I heard it in the lot and looked out the window, and there you were, all googly-eyed, staring up at him while he played with your hair. He’s actually pretty hot from a distance. The arms on him…damn, girl.” She pops the gum in her mouth and flashes a teasing smile at me. “I can see the appeal.”

“Feather…” I shake my head at her and tuck my hair behind my ear. “He wasn’t playing with my hair. There was a leaf stuck in it. I was embarrassed having foliage on my head, I wasn’t googly-eyed.”

Or was I? I certainly felt all googly and woogly.

“It’s okay to like him. You don’t have to get all embarrassed and nervous. I’m just not sure he’s the best guy for you to be crushing on, but he’ll do as a stepping stone.”

“Stepping stone?” I repeat.”What’s that?”

She lifts her hand to inspect one of her chipped nails. “Someone you see while you’re waiting for the next one to come along. Like training wheels for dating.”

My mouth falls open. What a horrible way to treat someone. “He is not a stepping stone.” Rising, I grab my dishes and bring them over to the sink to wash later. “Is that what Steve is for you?”

She actually stares off, contemplating her answer. I’ll be disappointed in her if she says yes, and I’ll feel sorry for Steve, who seems to really care about her.

“No,” she finally replies. “I really like Steve. I always have. We have a history, and we started as friends. I suppose, in a way, I wanted him to be a stepping stone, but he turned out to be a lot more.”

“I have a history with Tyler,” I say with slight defensiveness. I get to have a past with people, too, even if it’s not quite perfect and only started a year ago. It’s still my history.

“Pulling you out of a hole isn’t quite the kind of history that’s going to lead to everlasting love, Holly.” She turns before I have a chance to reply. “I’ll see you tonight. Have fun but be careful,” she calls out just before she closes the front door behind her.

I file our conversation into the messy backroom of my mind, with the other things I don’t want to think about, and take a quick shower with what’s left of our hot water. I should know better than to let Feather shower first if I don’t want to end up with lukewarm water. As I’m toweling off, I slowly inch the towel away and reveal my reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door as the fog slowly dissipates.

I’m not used to looking at my body. I had one tiny, compact mirror while being held by the bad man, so I was only able to see two circular inches of my body at a time. He only gave it to me so I could put the awful red lipstick on, but sometimes I stared into it when I was alone and watched my lips talk to myself. Other times, I could angle it just the right way to see the cigarette burns he’d branded into my skin and the thin red slash marks the knife had made when he threatened me.

Once I used it to look at the letters carved across my stomach, even though the reflection made the word backward. That was the first and last time I used the compact to look at the ugly letters on me.

Feather has told me numerous times how pretty I am, how she wishes she had a body like mine. Rockin’ curves were the words she used. At the time I laughed nervously and told her to shut up, not believing her, or even caring. I didn’t need or want to be pretty.

But lately, I’ve been wondering if I really am pretty. More specifically, I wonder if Tyler thinks I’m pretty. As the fog fades from the mirror, I wrap the white towel around my body to cover it all up. Even if he does think I’m pretty, he would change his mind damn fast if he ever saw what I looked like under my clothes. The pretty girls on TV don’t have scars and words carved into them.

* * *

This time, when I get out of the taxi, he’s sitting on the ground waiting for me, his back leaning against a tree, staring up at the sky with a small twig in his mouth. Poppy and the fox are sitting with him, and it’s obvious they’re very attached to him in the way they stick by his side. I think that’s a good sign because animals don’t like bad people. His subtle acts of chivalry might seem small, but to me they are huge. It’s a hint that he cares, maybe even likes me.

Or is it a sense of responsibility? I wonder what it feels like knowing you saved someone’s life. Do you feel forever responsible for them? Like feeding a stray cat that keeps coming back and you’re not sure what to do with? So you just keep feeding it out of a sense of pity and obligation?

God, don’t let me be a stray cat.

He stands as I approach and brushes debris off the back of his jeans. “They wait for you?” he asks, nodding toward the taxi.

“Yeah.”

“Tell her to go.”

“But how will I—”

He interrupts me. “I’ll get you home.”

I hesitate, leaning down to pet Poppy, not sure if I should trust Tyler so completely yet. Last night was nice, but not enough to gauge who he really is. If I tell the driver to leave, I’ll be stuck here—on the edge of town, on a back road near the woods—with a man I barely even know.

Alone.

Trapped.

“You can trust me,” he says. “I’m a good weird.”

Smiling at our inside joke, I walk back to the car to tell the driver she doesn’t have to wait for me today. She eyes Tyler suspiciously, doing nothing to hide her obvious distrust of leaving me here with him. It was clear from our conversation on the phone this morning that she feels some sort of concern for me, but she finally relents after I insist that I’ll be fine. Apprehension simmers through me as I watch her drive away. This is another big step for me, letting part of my safety net go voluntarily.

Without a word, he turns and heads down the dirt road, and I walk briskly to catch up to him, as do Poppy and the fox. “How did you come to have a fox for a pet?” I ask. “Are they common as pets?”

“No, they don’t make good pets at all. They’re destructive and hyper and hard to train.” He coughs. “I found him as a kit, stuck in a trap. He had a broken leg.”

“Oh…that’s so sad.”

“Yeah. I tried to release him back into the woods after it healed, but he kept showing up at my door, scratching and crying. He didn’t want to go. So I let him stay.”

Oh, God. He does have stray cat obligation tendencies.

“He’s in one of the Christmas tree pictures I bought at the boutique. I look at his adorable little face every morning, he almost looks like he’s grinning. What’s his name?”

“Boomer. Well, Boomerang. Since he kept coming back.”

Yikes. Just like me.

He’s a magnet, I convince myself. That’s why me and the fox keep coming back. It’s not because we’re desperate. It’s something about him.

When we get to his yard, he points to an old wrought-iron bench that appears to be in what will be a flower and rock garden when the winter season has ended, and we sit on it together. Without thinking, I put about two feet of distance between us.

He reaches into the inside pocket of his black leather jacket, pulls out a cell phone, and holds it out to me. “For you,” he says softly.

I stare at it, my brow furrowing, not sure what he means. “I’m sorry?”

“I got it for you.”

“Oh!” I exclaim. “Wow…” I hold the silver phone in my hand, not sure what to do with it or how to even say thank you for such an unexpected gift.

“I had my brother pick it up for me. I don’t do stores.”

“I-I don’t know how to use it,” I stammer. “And I don’t really have any calls to make…”

Ignoring my protests, he reaches over and presses the power button, and when his scarred fingers brush across mine, an electric tingle runs up my arm. I wonder if that feeling will ever stop. If he were to touch me every day, for the rest of my life, would I still feel it? And is it crazy if I want to find out? I don’t believe what Feather said this morning, that everlasting love can’t happen with him. My heart knows better.

“You should have one. For emergencies.”

Statements like that always make me want to burst out into insane hysterics. I had many emergencies over the past ten years that I managed to live through, yet people like Feather freak out if she’s half an hour late to meet Steve, and then she makes ten phone calls to let him know, like some terrible tragedy is happening, when it’s actually just that she can’t find the perfect shirt or can’t find her black eyeliner.

I run my finger along the smooth edge of the rectangular phone. My first cell phone. Does this mean he might call me?

As if reading my mind, he says, “It’s easier to talk. With texts. For me.”

Ohhh. I had forgotten about texting. Like Feather and Steve do all the time, with little smiley faces and three-letter codes that I don’t understand. I’ll have to ask Feather for a cheat sheet.

“If you want to,” he adds quickly. Behind the shaggy hair covering half his face, he slowly lifts his eyes to meet mine, and it feels like a visual caress, the way they change color from turquoise to sapphire and back again like a kaleidoscope. Long ago I learned how to read the eyes of a man, to use them as a meter to gauge mood and intention.

In Tyler’s eyes, I see the man behind the scars and the mask, the man he was before life tore him apart and drove him to hide in the woods. Before some tragedy made him a man who could strangle someone to death. Just like me, there’s a person hiding in there who had their very soul stolen from them, and I see him, trying to let me in.

I see him trying to get out.

“I want to.” My voice shakes, and so does my hand holding the phone. “Very much.”

He spends the next half hour showing me how to use the phone to make calls and how to text back and forth. He adds himself to my contacts and shows me how to use the camera. He takes a photo of Boomer and adds it as the photo for “Tyler” in the contact profile. I want to use a picture of him, but he refuses, agitation instantly evident in his eyes and body language at the mention of capturing him with a photograph. He does, however, take a photo of me holding Poppy and uses that for my profile in his phone.

Slowly, our walls are deteriorating.

“Let me give you some money for the phone,” I say, reaching for my backpack, where my wallet is hidden.

“No.”

“I’m sure it was expensive. I have money my father gives me.”

He grabs my hand, stopping me before I reach my wallet and, for a moment, I freeze as old demons rise to the surface. Sensing my reaction, he immediately lets go.

“Sorry. The phone’s a gift.” He coughs into his hand. “For you.”

I’ve noticed after he talks for a while, his voice becomes wheezy, cracking over certain words and shifting in odd places. Matching his mood and intention to his tone of voice must be difficult, and maybe that’s why he’d rather not talk. Thankfully for me, his eyes are very expressive of his feelings, and I’m sure once I get to know him better, words won’t even be necessary for me to know what he’s thinking.

“Thank you.” I put the phone in my backpack along with my wallet. “Does it hurt?” I ask softly, treading lightly because I know all too well how much a simple question can offend. “When you talk?”

His lip twitches. “Not really. Just dry. Fatigued. It’s fucked up.”

I don’t ask how it happened, and he doesn’t tell me. I hope maybe someday our friendship will be in a place where we can share our pasts, but I have no problem waiting. Time and patience are two things I can offer in abundance.

“Will drinking help?” I ask.

“Quit drinking years ago.”

“Um…I meant water. Or tea.” I bet honey would help soothe his throat, and I make a mental note to read up on that.

He lets out a gruff laugh. “Water helps a little.” He stands up from the bench and tilts his head at me. “Want to do something with me?”

My mind spins with excitement and nervousness. Yes. No. What?

“Sure,” I answer, rising to my feet with him.

I follow him inside the large garage, where he walks to a corner with some workout equipment and weights and returns with a large plastic storage box. Lifting the lid, he reveals what’s inside. Christmas ornaments…garland…and wrapped presents with big bows.

Excitement bubbles up inside me. “We’re going to decorate a tree?” I ask, almost hopping up and down with happiness. His lips turn up into a handsome yet slightly snarky grin. “Yeah. This one is late.” I wonder what that means as he pulls a Santa hat out of the box and puts it on his head. “No laughing,” he warns. “I have to wear it.” I can’t help smiling, but I don’t laugh. There must be a story here, with the trees and the hat, and I’m not about to do anything to make him not want to tell me all about it someday.

Poppy and Boomer accompany us as we walk up into the woods, farther than I’ve walked before.

“You pick,” he says.

I glance up at him. “I get to pick the tree?”

When he nods, I start to scope out all the trees in the area, trying to find the perfect shape and fullness, but it’s an imperfect tree that catches my eye, set apart from the others, almost like it’s the outcast. It’s short, its branches aren’t as full, and it has a few dead spots, but once the decorations are on, it’ll be beautiful.

“This one,” I announce.

Tyler sets the box down on the ground and silently starts to decorate it. I watch him for a few minutes, admiring how meticulous and thoughtful he is about placing the decorations, and then I help him. When the last red globe has been hung, he places six wrapped boxes under the tree, just like in my photographs and the tree I saw in the woods the day I saw him and Poppy.

“This is the last tree,” he says. “Until next year.”

“How many do you decorate?” I ask.

“Six.”

Six. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that there are also six wrapped presents.

“I’d love to hear how you started doing this,” I say. “The girl in the store where I bought the photos said it’s like a legend out here. She said the little kids love to hear about it, and people hunt for the trees.”

He nods, the white pouf on the hat bouncing, the small bell jingling. “My father started it. When I was little, he brought me up here to look for a tree to cut to bring home.” He pauses and clears his throat. “I was like, why can’t we just decorate it here? For the animals? Why cut it and drag it out of its home?” He smiles at the memory, and I smile too, picturing a young Tyler in my mind, same shaggy blond hair and blue eyes. “The next day we came back. We both wore the hats. We sang. We decorated the tree. I was all excited.” He takes a deep breath. “Dad said, ‘We’re going to do this every year and make it our own tradition, just me and you.’ Christmas day was my dad’s birthday. He wanted to do something special with me. I’m one of six kids, and he tried to make each one of us feel special. This was our thing.”

“Ty…you should have told me it was your father’s birthday too,” I say, but he shakes his head.

“We don’t celebrate it anymore. Other than doing this.” He stares off to a faraway place I can’t see, his face shadowed.

“Why six trees?” I ask softly, hoping to bring him back.

He takes out his pack of cigarettes, pulls one out with this mouth, and lights it.

“One for me and one for each of my brothers and sister. It was my idea, when I was little, to decorate one for each of them even though they never actually saw the trees.”

Poppy and Boomer frolic around the tree, the fox especially interested in the present boxes, sniffing them and nudging them with his rust-colored nose.

“It means a lot to me you told me. I’ve been fascinated with the story since I heard about it, and it’s even more special to me now.”

He moves a few ornaments to different branches as I talk, not meeting my eyes.

“Your Dad sounds like a really nice man.”

“Yeah. He was.”

Was. Past tense. Meaning he’s gone. He must be heartbroken missing him, and that must be where his sadness is stemming from.

“Thank you for letting me share this with you,” I say. “I’m not part of any of my family’s traditions. I’m not even sure if they have any or ever did. To be honest, they barely even talk to me. You’re lucky.”

He kneels and puts the lid back on the box. “I was lucky, Holly. Now I’m just a mess.”

He ends the conversation by picking up the box, whistling for the dogs, and walking back in the direction of his house. All I can do is follow him in silence.

* * *

I’m not sure how I never noticed it before, but he has an old pickup truck parked on the other side of the garage. It’s tan and rusty with oversized tires, the leather bench seat ripped from age. It suits him perfectly, though. He drives me home in it, and it’s loud and bouncy, the tires rumbling over the road like an animal. Neither the radio nor the heat works, but I’m not bothered by it. I’m on a high from spending half the day with him, Poppy, and Boomer.

When he parks in the small lot in front my apartment unit to let me out, I’m not sure how to say goodbye, and the awkwardness reminds me how socially behind I still am. I put my hand on the door handle, my other hand clutching my backpack, wondering if and when I’ll see him again or if today was just a one-time thing. He doesn’t look at me as I hesitate; he just stares out the windshield, deep in thought once again.

“Thank you again for the phone,” I say. “And for today.” Is it appropriate to thank a guy for sharing part of his life with you? Or am I hammering more nails into my own coffin of social inadequacy?

He nods at me again and I tell myself it’s because he talked a lot today and his voice grew hoarser and hoarser as the day went on, so he’s probably tired. Taking a breath, I try to pull the inside handle of the truck door, but it’s stuck, not budging under my grip.

“I can’t—”

He reaches across the bench seat, his arm stretching across my body, and yanks the door handle. It opens with a loud creak, and I worry it might break right off its hinges. His face is so close to mine his hair brushes across my cheek, soft and wispy like a feather. Leaning back into his space behind the wheel, he takes his sunglasses off the rearview mirror and puts them on, hiding his eyes from me just when I want to see them the most. Does he feel like I do when we’re close to each other? Does he feel that odd shimmy shiver?

“Talk soon,” he says. “Slam the door shut.”

I jump out of the truck and gingerly push the door shut, still nervous it might crumble into a pile of rust, and he immediately drives away. One thing I’ve quickly figured out is Tyler is really bad at hellos and goodbyes. I feel a small amount of consolation that he’s even worse at it than I am, so maybe he doesn’t notice how much I struggle.

* * *

Later that night, when I’m lying in bed reading one of the books Zac and Anna gave me for Christmas, I hear a strange noise in my room. Putting the book down on my comforter, I glance around the room in confusion, and I hear it again.

The sound of a tiny bell, coming from my leather trunk.

I crawl out of bed, pull my backpack from the trunk, and fish inside it for the cell phone. It’s screen is lit up, and the text message indicator is on.

My heartbeats speed up to an unnatural and frightening pace. My first text message. Holding the phone close to me, I get back in bed and pull the blanket over myself before sliding my finger across the tiny screen to read the message, which is, of course, from Tyler Grace.

Tyler: :-)

A tiny yellow smiley face.

I type one back, just like he showed me.

Holly: :-)

Tyler: :-)

I frown at the screen. Is this what texting is?

The phone dings again.

Tyler: You asked me two questions today. About my voice and the trees. Now it’s my turn.

Holly: Okay. That’s fair.

Tyler: Tell me about the backpack. You had it that day I found you. You always have it.

He went from smiley faces to something so deeply personal and hard to talk about that I don’t even know how to begin to explain. I suppose I did the same to him, though, asking about his voice and the decorated trees, and he answered me.

Holly: My favorite books are in it. I read them every day when I was little, before I was kidnapped. I had it with me the day he took me. He let me keep it, and I kept reading them every day. I had nothing else. Maybe it’s silly but the books made me feel safe. I made myself believe I was part of the stories.

A few seconds go by, and he replies.

Tyler: That’s not silly. Not at all. We all need something to help us escape

Holly: They still make me feel safe. I feel unsettled without them with me all the time.

I read the text back to myself, and I’m afraid I sound like a weirdo.

Holly: Its hard to explain.

Tyler: You explained it perfectly. Now I understand.

I let out a small breath of relief.

Tyler: I get another question

Holly: Okay.

I brace myself for what could be next. I had no idea texting could be so stressful.

Tyler: Do you want to see Poppy tomorrow?

Smiling, I type back quickly:

Holly: Does Poppy want to see me?

Tyler: You can’t answer a question with a question. It’s in the texting rulebook.

Ah, he has a sense of humor.

Holly: I would like to see Poppy

Tyler: He says to be ready at noon. That a good time?

Holly: Yes

Tyler: We’ll pick you up :-)

Still smiling, I keep my eyes on the screen, waiting to see if he sends something else. How do people end texts? Am I supposed to say goodbye? Send another smiley face? Send a different face? I fall asleep with the phone in my hand and dream of sky-blue eyes.