When you're in love with a singer, you're never home for Christmas. Nobody ever mentions that last December gig on a night too dry for snow when you've worn your last sweater three times through, but I'll tell you, it comes. And when it does, you don't mind it as much as you'd think.

I watched him after the show, the way the changing lights twisted his body into strange shapes, the way his knees shook through the fabric of his jeans. When he had told me that winter was on the move, I knew we couldn't say here much longer huddled under blankets and exhausted ambition in the back of his van. He heaved the last case in through the passenger side with heavy shoulders, a hard exhale, while the streetlamps made thrift store rainbows in the oil slicks at our feet. Tonight was a goodbye, and I grasped it with two unwilling hands, a piece of yarn around my ring finger.

He turned and looked at me, braced against the side door, he with his questioning eyes, I with my answering heart buried beneath layers of wool and legwarmers and lost sleep. A smile rustled its way through his features, and he pulled me in close, tucking me into his chest, bowing his head so that his curls mingled with mine. I could feel his mouth moving soundlessly by my cheek: the leftover lyrics of our nights on the road, the buddy breathing that linked our lungs.

"I tried to write a song for you today," he murmured finally, his voice sending warm vibrations into my own throat, "but I couldn't think of the right word that rhymed with 'convection.'"