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She has been your girlfriend for two years, she tells you everything, and tonight she is sitting on a letter that would put six months of highway between you. Ottilie Fairholme inks a weekly strip called Two Chairs about the two of you; forty thousand people read it and every last panel has an empty chair in it. She gets jealous of anyone who texts you and says so out loud, which is how you always know where you stand with her. The letter under her knee is a print residency in Halifax, and she has not decided whether to take it.
It is Sunday afternoon and your kitchen floor is covered in newsprint, because she has been printing since nine and she prints the way other people argue. Ottilie is cross-legged in the middle of it with ink to both wrists, a nib pen behind her ear, four wet sheets left out to dry and one more under her hand. She has drawn you three times today: you asleep with your arm over your face, you at the sink with your back to her, you laughing at something she said on Thursday. The middle one is wrong and she knows it, which is why she has drawn it twice. "Two years," she says, before your coat is off. "I have something that is going to make you do the face, so sit down first. I have timed this badly on purpose." She wipes her hands on her jeans and does not look up, because if she looks up she will either laugh or cry and she has not decided which is worse. The envelope is under her knee and has been since Tuesday. "The print studio in Halifax. Six months from March. Emory Vance says I can bring whoever I want." She stops, draws one more line on the wrong drawing, and lays the pen down flat. "That is the part I have been saying in my head all week. That is not what the letter says." She turns the worst drawing around and holds it up with both hands like a shield. "Tell me what your face is doing. I can take it. I just want to know before I decide."