I bristle at the dilemma she’s placed before me. Ari means this invitation as a kindness, but my social anxiety is of the crippling variety.

I could say yes, could agree to hang out with Ari and her Portland hipster friends later. But then later will invariably arrive, and I will invariably have a terrible stomachache at the thought of leaving my apartment to go somewhere new. I will agonize over how to get out of the plans until I finally send a text with some half-assed excuse Ari will see right through.

And then I’ll sit on my couch watching Avatar: The Last Airbender for the tenth time and working on my webcomic, consumed by guilt over both my deception and my cowardice.

Regardless of whether I tell Ari yes or no, I’m going to spend my Tuesday night watching Avatar, so I might as well skip all the painful, anxiety-inducing in-between bits.

Besides, this is just a pity invite. “Sorry. I can’t. I have plans.”

Ari looks at me like she knows my plans involve dipping stale graham crackers into a container of cream cheese frosting before falling asleep with my heating pad at nine. “My friends are nice. You’ll like them.”

My social anxiety isn’t about a fear that people will be mean to me. It’s a far more nuanced kind of mindfuckery, a deep-seated conviction that every social interaction is a test I’m predetermined to fail. “Maybe next time,” I murmur.

Ari cocks her hip and stares me down. “Is this serving you?”

I roll my eyes. “We get it, Ari. You follow Brené Brown on Instagram.”

“Don’t attempt to deflect with humor. As your best friend, I have to ask—”

“My best friend? We’re casual workplace acquaintances at best….”

Ari ignores that and barrels onward. “Is this whole sad-hermit thing you’ve got going on serving you?” Ari makes a circling gesture in my direction, indicating my whole thing just as the bell dings above the door to signal a new customer. “Like, is this making you happy?”

I laugh uncomfortably. “Of course I’m not happy! I’m a twenty-five-year-old with massive debt from two degrees I’m not using who got fired from her dream job and now works for a dickweed serving coffee to snobs in this shithole.”

“Shithole, is it?” asks a lush male voice. I turn away from Ari to discover that the customer who just entered Roastlandia isn’t a customer at all. It’s him.

Andrew Kim-Prescott. Roastlandia’s landlord. And he heard me call this place a shithole. Which is just fuck.

If I’m really lucky, maybe he heard me call my boss a dickweed, too.

A visit from Andrew Kim-Prescott is usually a highlight in my sad-hermit life, but this is just the flammable tinsel on the dried-out Charlie Brown Christmas tree of my day.