“We’ve already fallen apart once, and we’ll fall apart again, and I can’t. I can’t go through that a second time.” There are tears blinding me from the sight of her, which honestly helps. If I can’t see her, it’s a little easier to say this to her. To be honest.

She takes my face in those large, bruised-knuckled, bread-kneading hands. “Why do you think we’re going to fall apart?”

I put my hands over hers against my cheeks. “Because…”

“Because you think you’re going to fail,” she answers for me. She reaches for me, pulls me close against her chest, so her body is squeezing mine tightly, leaving no room for the panic attack. “But you’ve never failed.”

“I did. I got fired from Laika because I couldn’t cut it, and—”

“Elle.” Jack releases me, holds me carefully at arm’s length. “I’m going to say something I know you don’t want to hear but is the absolute truth: you didn’t fail at being an animator. You quit.”

“I did not—”

Jack holds up both hands, ass naked and asking me to hold on with a single gesture. “What do you love about art? And the answer can’t be that you’re good at it.”

“I’m not good at it, clearly,” I say, but Jack’s expression is so serious, I stiffen. There’s a dull undercurrent of anxiety coursing through me, but I answer her. “Okay. Well, I fell in love with art because… because it used to be a way to escape. My parents would fight, and I would hide away in my room, creating these colorful worlds where everything was better than my real life. And then I used to share my art with other kids in my class, and it brought them joy, too, and it was like… here’s this way that I can make something good, even though everything my parents touch is absolute garbage.”

Jack nods, like we’re getting close to the realization she’s clumsily dragging me toward. “And when did you fall out of love with art?”

I think about undergrad at Ohio State, when I was holed away in my dorm, teaching myself Photoshop and InDesign for assignments I hated, creating fanart at four in the morning because it was the only time I had to do something for me; in grad school, making sure I never faltered from my ten-year-plan, never wasted time with silly doodles or stories in my head; at Laika, truly struggling for the first time and not knowing who I was if I wasn’t the best, if I wasn’t Artist Ellie. Nothing could ever be a rough draft.