This year, the highlight of my day is crafting shitty latte art for a cranky septuagenarian. Tuesday Jeff doesn’t even crack a smile at the impressive foam snowman I’ve designed on his flat white. I snap a photo for Greg to post on our Instagram, but Jeff simply troops out the door to brave the slush without so much as a thank-you.

“He’s such a twat,” Ari says from behind the cash register as soon as Jeff is gone. For some reason, Ari can get away with saying stuff like this about customers without ever attracting Greg’s outrage. Ari Ocampo is a thirty-one-year-old woman pulling off wearing a fedora indoors, so I guess she can get away with just about anything.

“Today’s a big day,” Ari trills.

“Taylor Swift’s birthday?”

Ari is unamused. “The day you talk to Greg about the promotion to assistant manager.”

Everything inside me slides downward, like the anxiety is shifting my center of gravity to somewhere around my knees. Ari gives me a look almost as condescending as Greg’s. Yet, with her thick black hair, currently punctuated with an undercut and dyed with streaks of purple, I will draw Ari as I always do in my webcomic panels: like a trans, dark-skinned, badass Rapunzel. “You’ve put it off as long as you can, Ellie.”

“I don’t know…. I can put things off for a shockingly long time if potential rejection is involved,” I inform her.

“It’s been two weeks since the interview, and Greg owes you an answer. You deserve to know if he’s going to give you the job.”

I make a vague sound of agreement. Of course, I want to know if I’m going to get the promotion. I also don’t want to know, because if the answer is no—if I don’t get this raise and I fail yet again—I have no idea what I’m going to do about my mom and my student loans and my rising rent. The fractured pieces of my dreams might be beyond repair.

Ari must smell the anxiety wafting off me because she backs down. “Fine. You’ll talk to Greg when you’re ready.”

For the next few hours, we fall into our usual rhythm. Me, silent behind the espresso machine, crafting foam art like it’s 2012. Ari, happily chatting with every customer. Ari loves working as a barista. She says it allows her the opportunity to nurture her extroverted soul while still pursuing her secondary calling as an apiarist. Apparently, her entire backyard is beehive boxes, and she makes home remedies using her honey that she sells at the Saturday Market.

“In other news,” she says near our six o’clock closing, her perkiness not even slightly dulled by the long day of serving the overcaffeinated and pretentious, “I’m meeting up with some friends at those new food carts off Alberta after work. You interested?”