The next four days had gone perfectly fine, without a hitch. All the way from the twenty-first to the twenty-fourth, things really had been back to normal, Connor's and my normal, that is.

And then came Christmas Day. We stuffed ourselves, to the point of thinking we were going to burst. We took a short walk around the block, neither of us talking because of how miserable we both felt from all of the food, which sadly involved, for the most part, a store-bought (at the last minute possible, mind you) duck.

After that came the tellie. Hours and hours…and hours of pointless, mind-numbing tellie. And it wasn't even the good kind, shows with simple, predictable plots, that you somehow still felt obliged to watch week after week. No, this wasn't that kind of tellie. This was bloody Top of the Pops, which, at first, I will admit was alright, but grew old very quickly.

As if it hadn't been bad enough already, all day Connor had been bothering me, asking me why I refused to tell him something as simple and harmless as a 'Happy Christmas.'

"The only people that I've ever told 'Happy Christmas' to are my…closest friends…and family," I had finally answered. "The people I love."

He had looked so hurt by what I had said, I couldn't help but to feel horrible afterwards. And even though he had bounced back completely after about an hour or two, I still found myself with a sharp pang of regret for making him think that he didn't matter to me, like he was just some unimportant coworker and flatmate of mine.

And then came the snow, and the cold that went along with it, just as it was starting to get dark. Connor and I had stayed watching it for a while, huddled under a blanket to keep warm, talking about all kinds of nothing.

After that, we had simply said our goodnights and gone to bed. I had given him a quick peck on the cheek, like I always did, and he had given me a warm hug in return, like he always did.

So now, I lay in bed, trying to find a permanent solution-or temporarily, it didn't much matter to me-to this unbearable cold that had settled in the flat since the sun had gone down.

And Connor was the lucky one. After all, heat does rise. He was probably just fine up there, all tucked up in his little bed…

Here, right here, is where I finally came up with my solution.