Kyle had always been a very ambitious person about life.

Every celebration, birthday party, karaoke session, soccer drill- you name it. He was always the hype-giver of the group.

But this Christmas, everything seemed to be exactly the same.

The decorations seemed to be lazily put up. The music playlists weren't different. The food was exactly the same as last year's.

Everything just seemed so... generic.

And even though Kyle had gotten everything he had wanted for Christmas, something still felt a little bit off, like something was missing.

As he went up to his room to play on his new ukulele, he decided to text all of his friends Merry Christmas, as he usually did every year. It was a tradition to him; something to rebuild relationships and to connect over the simple things in life.

But as he was scrolling through his contacts, a new one showed up.

Holly.

He had gotten her number from a friend as a joke; being told to prank her over text just for kicks and then to leave it at that.

But he never did prank her.

Instead, he saved her number, just because.

He always had a sense of respect for her after one random phone call they had together, where he insisted on calling her Holly and not Holland.

Holland was her original name, but Holly just felt right. Not only was it festive, but it suited her personality too.

And now that Kyle was texting all of his friends, it didn't seem like such a bad idea to reach out to her.

For Holly, Christmas Day wasn't a time of joy and happiness.

It was a painful time to be reminded of the people who had families who accepted them, who spent time with them and didn't just ignore those who needed less attention to get by.

This Christmas, like many others, she would spend alone.

She was away in her room, spending time listening to music and reading her books as always, until a message from an unknown number popped up on her phone.

She squinted, reading it in her head.

"Merry Christmas, Holly!!"

That was all it said.

But all of a sudden, things didn't seem so bad this Christmas after all.

She replied within seconds, wondering who this person could be that she felt like she had known forever.

They hit off right away.

Two hours later, they both had to part for dinner, but something inside of both of them had changed forever.