“I—I don’t know, Mere,” I tell her honestly, because part of moving forward is being honest, always. Even when it’s hard. “She wants to publish the comic that literally outed me and Andrew to his entire family, and I don’t know how I would ever finish writing The Arrangement, let alone share it with the world. And…” Even when it’s hard. “Drawn2 was the one place I could do art just for me. It was the one place where I didn’t have to be perfect, where I could just be a messy work-in-progress. What if turning those comics into a graphic novel is more than I can handle emotionally? What if it becomes like animation, where I’m doing it for the wrong reasons? What if I become a perfectionist monster again? What if… what if I start hating it?”

Meredith clicks her tongue. “It sounds to me like you’re preparing for failure before it’s happened again.”

I don’t have time to sit with that before my phone starts buzzing on the coffee table in front of me. My heart shoots into my chest with hope, because maybe, maybe, it’s her.

It’s not.

“Hi, Mom.”

“What is this about your engagement getting called off?” my mother demands without greeting or pretense, just a disapproving pterodactyl screech in my ear.

“How did you hear about that?”

“It’s on his Instagram! A photo of him with someone else, and a caption about how the two of you ended things on ‘amicable terms’?” I shoot Meredith a look across the futon, but Linds is screaming loud enough that Meredith is already opening Andrew’s Instagram on her laptop. Right there, at the top of his flawlessly curated grid, is a photo of him and Dylan sitting side by side beneath the messy Christmas tree they decorated together. I feel a brief bubble of joy in my chest at the sight of them together. At least someone got their happy ending.

Linds sounds highly aggravated and mildly drunk as I shift my attention back to her. “He left you for someone else?”

“Yes,” I sigh, unable and unwilling to explain beyond that.

“What did you do?” Linds demands. “How did you fuck this up?”

“I—I didn’t,” I say. “He was in love with someone else.”

“Get him back!” my mother shouts in my ear. “You have to get him back! He was perfect! He was rich! You have to fix things with him!”

“There’s nothing to fix.”

“Tell him you’re pregnant! That’s worked for me before.”

Nausea seizes my stomach. “I’m not going to do that, Mom.” On the other side of the futon, Meredith pantomimes a strangling motion.

“Then beg. Beg him to take you back! Do whatever it takes. You are never going to do better than a man like Andrew.”