“You didn’t tie it on tight enough.”

“Yes, I did, Tao, I know how to attach a tree to a car. I’ve done it before.”

Tao shakes his head and looks out the window at the passing trees. They’d had a light snowfall the previous night, but now, in the unexpected surge of relatively warm weather this afternoon (the same warm weather that had prompted Kris to throw Tao’s jacket at him and announce that they were going Christmas tree shopping), it melts off the trees in slow drips, patches of brown grass showing through the melted spots on the ground.

Petulantly, Tao mutters, “I don’t think you tied it tight enough.”

“It’s tight enough. You’re just upset that I made you get off the couch to shop for a tree.”

Tao would probably be a great deal less upset if the statement weren’t undeniably true.

“I was watching a movie,” he says, as though the opportunity for movie watching is offered only once every ten years. “I didn’t want to miss it.”

“You’ve seen How the Grinch Stole Christmas fifty times, Tao.” Kris cuts his eyes at him from the driver’s seat. “I wonder why.”

Tao points his finger accusingly at him. “I have nothing against Christmas. I just think there’s no point in buying a real tree when plastic trees serve the same purpose.”

Kris spends so long shooting him an offended, judgmental look that Tao has to gesture through the windshield and say, “Kris, watch the road.”

“A plastic tree completely kills the spirit of Christmas, Tao. It’s just not right.”

“It’s the exact same thing as a real tree, Kris. The only difference is that real trees are an expensive, messy hassle and artificial trees are convenient money savers.”

“Money savers?” Kris ejects, the idea of living fiscally apparently abhorrent to him. “What are you, Scrooge?”

“What is with you and comparisons to Christmas villains? I’m being reasonable, Kris.”

“What you’re being is a buzzkill. There’s no point in doing something if you’re not going to do it right.”

“Do you feel this strongly about everything or do these rules only apply to the integrity of Christmas trees? Do you feel the need to churn your own butter, for example? Or would you sink beneath your standards to accept store-bought margarine?”

“What does margarine have to do with anything?”

“It’s an analogy---”

They both stop abruptly at the sound of shrill scraping coming from the roof of their car, followed by a loud, unmistakable thump.

Tao cranes in his seat and looks at their Christmas tree, the thin rope of Kris’ tying still wrapped around it, lying in the middle of the country road they’re travelling, getting further behind them as they drive forward.

He turns back to Kris, eyebrows raised expectantly, and Kris sighs, aggressively flipping on his turn signal and pulling over.

“Next year,” he agrees, “we can get an artificial tree.”