Everyone Alex works with, or is friends with, or who has seen an interview with him on television, knows he is from Indy-fucking-ana. It’s no secret that he’s from a tiny, crappy town.

Exactly how tiny and how crappy that town is, and how really desperate his childhood was, is something that’s a secret. Victor, the showrunner on The Fourth Estate and Alex’s boss, knows some small parts of the story of Alex’s childhood. His boyfriend, Paul, knows some other parts. Nobody knows the full story, though, and Alex prefers it that way. Home is, for Alex, never a place he wants to return to.

Even for the holidays. When Alex was a not-quite-starving PA, it was easy to avoid going home, because he couldn’t afford to. Which meant that his first Christmas in L.A., he spent alone in the crappy apartment he shared with Gemma. She had gone home to Scranton — and even invited Alex along — but a holiday alone, with just a strand of Christmas lights  strung around his bedroom, was much preferable to Indiana or anywhere else.

In Starling, Alex has the means to go home but instead he flies his mom out to New York City, where he’s working. As with Thanksgiving, Alex has complicated feelings and a fair degree of guilt about how much he hates the place he’s from.

It’s easier, once he has Paul and his own ever-growing chosen family. Cooking holiday meals with Paul and chasing their cat out of the Christmas tree feels like a normal holiday experience, even if Alex’s life has never been normal. In some ways, that’s made his life easier. In some, a lot harder.

Tomorrow, Evergreen, a Love in Los Angeles holiday story, is coming out from Torquere. In it, you’ll get to see a slice of what the holidays look like for Alex now. While he’s working on leaving the memories of his childhood in Indiana behind, spending the holidays with all the trappings of the holidays is just one more way Alex is figuring out how to navigate the life he never thought he’d have.