She swallows, that taut tendon spiking from the side of her neck. “I had the same feeling when I was with Claire, in the end. The emptiness came back, because I was siphoning off bit by bit who I truly am to satisfy someone else’s idea of who I should be.”

I swallow, too. Hearing Jack talk about the emptiness… it sounds an awful lot like my ache, like that pit that exists just south of my ribs, the hole I thought was loneliness. But what if the ache isn’t the absence of other people? What if the thing missing inside of me is… me? It’s a terrifying thought, because it means this hole inside my chest can’t be filled by two hundred thousand dollars or a woman with freckles and a quarter-moon smile.

“The day we met at Powell’s, the restlessness was the worst it had ever been,” Jack is saying. “I knew the snow was supposed to get bad, but the thought of being trapped in the Airstream all day made me sick. So I went to Powell’s on a whim and ended up finding you crying in that aisle,” Jack’s voice is thick with memory and affection and longing. “And you were just so—”

My heart sprouts wings and launches into my throat.

“—messy,” she says, and my heart plummets back again. “You were such an anxious, lonely mess, and you had snot all over your face.”

“This took a turn.”

“No!” Jack smiles, a full, ferocious thing. “You were beautiful, Elle, even with all that snot. I thought you were wonderful because you were just you, and for a day, you made me feel like I could be just me. And that would be enough. And that feeling—that’s something I’m willing to fight for.”

“What does any of this have to do with me quitting art?”

“I don’t know.” Jack flicks her hair out of her face. “The thematic arc got kind of muddled there in the middle, but the point is”—she reaches out and takes my hand—“in my good, healthy moments, I know I’m not a fuck-up. I’m someone who spent too much time trying to be something I didn’t want to be. And you’re not a fuck-up, either, Elle. You’re not going to fuck this up.”

Our fingers are stitched together in Jack’s lap, and she has no idea how badly I’ve already fucked this up. I slept with her, and she doesn’t even know the engagement is fake. “And maybe, when you’re panicking, you can tell me about it, instead of shoving it all down and pulling away.”

I squint at her. “I’m not familiar with that concept.”