I’m about to say I need money when the call ends. I know I brought this on myself by being too ambitious with the Diary posts. It’s not cheap stumbling into cute guys at every aesthetic boba, ice cream, and coffee shop in town, but that’s not what I want to think about right now. Hell, it’s like ten a.m., I haven’t had coffee, and I’m stranded.

I dig around in my massive pockets—they’re probably my second favorite part about transitioning—and pull out my wallet. I’ve got a couple bills in there and an Arby’s coupon, which I’m not even sure why I have. I check my Starbucks app, but I’ve only got like two bucks on there, which isn’t nearly enough for a latte.

I turn back down the street and start walking, hoping I’ll stumble upon a Dunkin’ or somewhere with cheap coffee that just so happens to be hiring teenagers. It’s pretty ridiculous that my mom expects me to get a job in a city without a car. I mean, I doubt there are that many places hiring out here, even if we are pretty close to the university and some decent shops, and frankly, I don’t want to rely on my brother driving me to work. That’s a no-go.

I keep walking until I find a coffee shop advertising a one-dollar special. I slip in, pay cash, and choose a small side table under a tall bookshelf. It’s not the cutest, but it’ll do. Once I get my cup with a little foam flower floating at the top, I hold it up just long enough to snap the perfect selfie. Okay, to snap fifteen bad selfies and one I like.

Going against my own best interest, I open the Tumblr app and check the Diary’s follower count. Damn. I’m already down another two hundred from this morning. Whoever this troll is, they didn’t come to play, and they’re killing off my followers like flies.

I go back to their blog to torture myself a little more. It really is convincing, using the smallest details I wrote into the stories to pinpoint exactly where they were supposed to take place and adding details about each location that seemingly refute the stories. Plus they’ve got sources and statistics about how many trans people even live in Miami—where they traced every early story to—and about how next to impossible it is for there to be that many meet cute stories.

And honestly, it pisses me off. I’m not the first blogger to get targeted by some rando with too much time on their hands and a working Google search bar, and they’re right that the meet cutes aren’t real, but they’re stories. What kind of loser do you have to be to spend your time debunking every cute story you come across on social media? And even if they aren’t real, they give people hope. Isn’t that what matters?