Karan raises his eyebrows.

Natasha tells herself to stay strong and put on a brave face.

But as she and Karan lock eyes, she feels herself crumbling, unable to keep it all in anymore. “Okay, so maybe more downs than ups.”

She gives him a summary of how Alexis’s class was harder than she thought it’d be and how she froze last night during an open mic segment at the Punchline. Someone in the audience even shouted “Get off the stage, already!”

“And there are other ways to pursue comedy, I know,” she says. “I’ve applied for internships at some of the comedy clubs I’ve tried to go to for open mics. But they don’t really pay much, if anything, and that’s if I’m lucky enough to get a spot. Nobody will even interview me because of my lack of experience. What a catch-22, right? I can’t get experience unless someone will give me a chance but nobody will give me a chance without experience. So, here I am, your favorite neighborhood barista.”

She gives a big I’m-fine smile. And for this moment, she is a little closer to fine than she has been in weeks. It’s cathartic to purge her mind, to tell the person who was her best friend everything that she’s been keeping locked inside.

“I see,” Karan says as he stares at his latte. “Wow. That really is a lot.”

“I know. Sorry I just unloaded on you. I haven’t been able to really talk about any of this with anyone,” Natasha says. Why did she let go of the one person she used to talk to all the time?

“What about the girls? And Suhani?”

Natasha shrugs. “I know they all care, but they’ve got their own things going on. Things that are really different from anything I’m doing. They try but they don’t fully get it. And I don’t blame them. Even I don’t always fully get why I’m doing all this.”

Karan’s eyes are heavy with concern. “Natasha, don’t take this the wrong way, but are you okay?”

“Yeah, totally. I’m fine,” Natasha says, then adds, “Fine enough. I mean, sure, things have been tougher than I thought they’d be, but I’ll get through it.”

Tears line the corners of her eyes. But she can’t cry. Karan shouldn’t see her like this. “It’s just hard to stay motivated and keep going after I’m rejected over and over again. Then I tell myself to keep creating more ideas but my brain is running so fast sometimes that I can’t even produce anything.”

She doesn’t say that within minutes of talking to him, she already feels more at ease. It was always so easy to talk to him. With his nonjudgmental questions and occasional nods, he’s what Suhani calls an “active listener.”