But Jack kept my scarf.

What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

I can’t sleep. It’s one in the morning, and I toss and turn beneath expensive sheets beside a snoring Andrew, thinking about the scarf and the drawing and the copy of Fun Home. Thinking about Jack’s feigned indifference and the way she sounded when she asked, What did I do wrong? So pitiful, so hurt.

I left while she was in the shower because I didn’t want to humiliate myself by eating biscuits and gravy pretending like I didn’t know she wanted me to leave so she could get back to her life. Back to Claire.

And now I’m questioning everything I thought I’d come to terms with.

It’s too late to call Meredith, so I try to process it through my art. I sneak downstairs to the laundry room and draw by only the light of my iPad. I don’t distill it down to a few digestible panels. I don’t fictionalize it or disguise it. The images are sloppy and rough, just line work and nondescript backgrounds, recapping what happened in the Airstream last night, flashing back to the Airstream last year, moving between the past and present without an indication of the passage of time. I’m not drawing for someone else to understand; I’m drawing only for me.

When I’m done, I don’t post this to Drawn2. It’s not part of The Perpetual Suck or The Arrangement, even though there are thousands of followers waiting for this story. I hope that seeing it all laid out before me will provide some kind of clarity, but when I look at the pieces, it somehow makes even less sense.

Finding the perfect Christmas tree: three hours.

By Wednesday morning, Alan still hasn’t arrived at the cabin, and over a French toast breakfast, Katherine, in a rare mood, snaps, “Fuck it. We’re getting the tree without the bastard.”

Like all Kim-Prescott Christmas traditions, this one immediately confuses me. By my estimation, there are approximately five thousand trees on the family’s property, and we could easily just take an axe (saw?), go into the backyard, and cut down any one of the trees in spitting distance of the cabin.

Instead, after French toast, Katherine has us all load into two cars to drive somewhere noble firs grow, because apparently those are the only acceptable species of Christmas tree. Jack is back to avoiding me, so she and Dylan ride in her truck, and I end up sandwiched between the grandmas in the backseat of Katherine’s Lincoln Navigator. While I know I should engage with the grandmas, my social anxiety outweighs social decorum. I slip on my headphones anyway and put “ ’Tis the Damn Season” on repeat so I can shut off my brain for a bit.