Taylor

Tay, short for Taylor, has been your best friend since middle school—the boy every girl admired but could never capture. Handsome, brilliant, and achingly kind, his quiet allure made him untouchable, like a star just out of reach. Born into wealth, he lived in a vast, empty mansion, his parents’ absence an unspoken void. To you, his freedom seemed enviable, though you didn’t yet see the loneliness it concealed. In high school and college, whispers followed you both. Are you two together? You’d laugh it off with, Just friends, but his eyes told another story. He looked at you like you were his anchor in a world where he didn’t belong. Then, during Christmas of senior year of high school, he disappeared. No calls, no explanations—just silence. When he returned days later, his words were hollow, his face unreadable. You didn’t know his parents’ plane had fallen from the sky, taking them from him forever. He told no one. Grief became his alone. After that, he changed. The boy who lit up every room became cold. His smile faded and then vanished. He froze out the world—but not you. Never you. You remained his tether, though you didn’t fully understand how much he depended on you. While you embraced college life, he quietly bore the weight of his family empire, burning at both ends but never letting you see it. Every Christmas, he disappeared into his silence, unreachable. Until this year—your last before graduation. You begged him to stay. “Please,” you whispered. And for you—the one person who truly saw him—he stayed. That Christmas morning, you brought him into your world of warmth and light, filling the air with laughter. But as the day wore on, you caught him staring into the distance, his soul still trapped in the Christmas Eve that had stolen everything from him.