A coyote approached the glass door to small business, pulling it open with a tug. A small sensor tripped, and a tiny plastic speaker glued above the doorframe then started playing the challenger approaching tune from Smash Bros. She flinched at the noise, knowing that everyone in the store knew someone had just walked in. She let the door swing shut behind her with a clack.

The store was bustling with activity today, forcing the coyote to shrink even deeper into her hoodie as she started walking through the crowded store. Half the store was video games, TCGs, and tabletops while the other half was a library of comics and manga. The coyote’s target was the small collection of tables that the owners had set up for TCG and tabletop players to use.

Of the four tables, three were occupied, and one of them was swarmed by a small group of familiar faces. She smiled a little, briefly showing off her pristine and pearly perfect straight teeth as a small wave of relief washed over her. She hated being here when there wasn’t anyone around that she knew. She was never comfortable with strangers.

As approached the table, she could hear the familiar voice of a fox, dripping with sarcasm.

“Oookay, Yoog.” The fox, seated at the table, said to another guy sitting across from him.

Like a ghost, the coyote quietly appeared behind the fox. The rest of the group noticed her arrival and gave her their attention with a nod or a quick greeting, triggering her attention anxiety as all eyes pivoted to her. The fox then twisted his head around, found the coyote in his sights, then nodded up at her.

“Sup, Tombs.” He told her.

“Amigos.” Tombs replied to them all, her vocal fry coming across clear with just a single word.

They all returned their attention to the game of cards they were playing, and she felt relief that she was no longer the center of anyone’s attention. She leaned over the fox’s shoulder and looked at the game they were playing. She didn’t play TCGs, but this is one that the boys all were playing now. It just came out half a year ago and was starting to get popular in the store.

She watched them play for a bit, then began to move around the table to make her way to the guy sitting directly across from the fox. As she moved, she slouched more and felt herself shrink deeper inside her hoodie until she was standing behind her target.

“Don’t be cheatin’, chica.” The dog sitting to her left spoke up, suddenly eyeing her with suspicion now that she’d moved from the fox, to the dog, and now to the horse whom she was now standing behind.

“Si, senor.” She replied, dropping her vocal fry on a dime to switch to an exaggerated and nasally Mexican accent, like if Speedy had been born a chica.

“She’d have to know how to play to be able to cheat for shit.” The fox replied, then played a card from his hand.

The play of the card resulted in no discernable shift in the game, or none that she could see. Tombs didn’t pay attention to TCGs, or most of the contents in the store for that matter. Most of it wasn’t her thing, but she did like the tabletop games for all the little miniatures they came with.

“Been playing long?” She asked, now back to her vocal fry.

Six voices spoke at the same time, each giving her a contradictory answer. She didn’t ask anyone to explain. She eyed the cards in the horse’s hand and understood none of it. The fox was right, she didn’t know how to play. Her autism was wasted on other things.

The fox’s name was Daniel, and the dog on her left was Marcus. She was standing behind a horse named Dwayne. To Dwayne’s right was Oscar, a rat. The two other dudes that were in attendance were Nathan and Dweeb. Nathan was another dog, and Dweeb was actually Dwight, and was a cat that liked anime a whole lot, which was why he was called Dweeb. D from Dwight, and weeb because that’s what he was.

And to everyone at the table, she was just Tombs, which was short for Tombstone, because of her very prominent perfectly straight pearly “anime” teeth. Everyone else got bullied for having crooked teeth or having braces. She got bullied for being too perfect when she smiled. The coyote continued to hide inside her oversized hoodie and cargo pants, a knit cap pulled over her head to hide even her ears. She did not like being in public where attention could find her and make her want to crawl into a fetal position of anxiety. The less she was noticed the more comfortable she felt, right down to how she’d wear blacks and greys to be as neutral as possible in a crowd of brightly colored people and clothing.

She pretended to look like she was interested in the game they were playing, but she was really just interested in Dwayne. He was the oldest in the group and probably older than her, not that anyone could tell. No one at this table knew how old she was, or how much she weighed, or anything other than the fact that she was a coyote with social anxiety that liked to hide in her baggy clothes and liked to come to the store for miniatures and vintage media.

Everyone else in her circle mostly played TCGs, watched new anime, and played video games. She was only interested in the anime if it was as old as her or older, and the games she liked playing weren’t ones that the boys played. There was very little overlap between her interests and the interests of her exclusively male friend circle.

As she continued to watch the boys play their game, she shifted her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie, feeling around for the rectangular shape of her phone, and then to the small giftbox she was struggling to work up the courage to present. Inside the box was a miniature she’d finished painting, something she’d agreed to paint for Dwayne for a nominal fee, since he played Battletech and had a bunch of the little robots.

He’d sent her a bunch of photos of what he wanted his robot to look like. She was very good at painting miniatures; a skill developed from a childhood of learning how to paint her own fingernails very carefully with lots of pretty colors. Her fingernails weren’t painted now, as she never wore anything in public that would draw attention to herself, but she knew how to keep her hand steady, and could apply anything from thinner to acrylic with any size and shape of brush. Her interest in painting miniatures revealed itself after she bought a gunpla of the Nobel Gundam because she looked like Sailor Moon.

Tombs patiently waited, grateful that this TCG wasn’t a quick game to play. Her anxiety was growing as the group’s body language signaled that the game was going to end soon. As soon as she produced the gift box for Dwayne all eyes would be on her, and they’d shower her with praise for the miniature, and she’d suffer a painful death at the hands of her own anxiety.

When the game finally ended, with Marcus the winner, the boys all griped and moaned about it. Marcus was pleased with himself, but everyone else kept claiming he only won because he had four of the same kind of card that was supposed to be really good, and he kept drawing it because of something to do with the heart of the cards.

She swallowed, feeling her mouth suddenly go dry. Despite her reservations she had to do it, and so she slipped the box from her front pocket, and then quietly sat it down on the table next to the horse.

“Yo.” The horse replied, noticing the plain, unwrapped brown box she’d sat down.

“I finished it.” She told him quietly.

“Oh, shit!” He replied with a smile and picked up the box.

Now all the attention was bouncing from her, to the box, then to Dwayne, back to her. It bounced around and she wanted it to just stay on the box instead of coming back to her! Just look at the box and not her!

“What’s that?” Daniel asked.

Dwayne opened the box, just a lid that slid off the top. She’d stuffed it with white tissue paper to keep the miniature safe. Tombs watched, her anxiety reaching its crescendo as she not only felt the attention settle over her, but also the anxiety of what Dwayne’s reaction would be. He found the miniature and plucked it from the tissue paper, her heart rate spiking.

“Oh, this looks awesome!” He announced and held the miniature up to his face to examine it closely.

Everyone else shifted in their seats or stepped closer, all looking at the miniature. They all knew what it was even though they didn’t all play Battletech like he did.

“Which mech is that?” Dweeb asked.

“Battlemaster. This looks fucking great, Tombs, thank you!” Dwyane replied, twisting in his seat to look at her.

She wanted to shrink and squirm with him looking at her, her heart pounding with anxiety making her want to curl up into a pretzel and shrink until she poofed into a cloud of smoke and disappeared.

“Yer welcome, dude.” She replied.

He sat the miniature down on the table next to his cards and started reaching for his back pocket. He pulled out his wallet, flipped it open, and began pulling out a collection of bills. He finished counting out forty dollars and handed her the money.

She pulled a hand from her pocket and reached for it, and once the money was in her possession she tucked it right back into her front pocket and found her own wallet, which was just an old coin purse she’d bought from a pawn shop. As she folded the money up and slipped it into the coin purse, the rest of the boys were admiring the paint job of the miniature.

“That does look really good.” Nathan told her. “You gonna pay her to paint the rest? Don’t you have like a whole army of them?”

The boys were now talking Battletech, even though only a few of them actually played it. It was an expensive hobby with the miniatures and other playset things, so it wasn’t something everyone could afford to get invested in.

Dwayne was holding the miniature again and turning it round and round in his hands as he looked at all the details. She had spent a few hours painting it, getting the colors right, and then carefully adding the decals for the faction it was from. It was a golden circle with a sword down the middle.

“I’ve got three lances I care about. Forty a pop is kinda high, though. I might not be able to get all of them done.” He replied to Nathan.

Her heart somersaulted with panic. She wanted to paint more of his robots for him! Forty was a fair price…

“Can haggle.” She interrupted him.

“Bulk discount. That’s like ten more models?” Oscar asked.

“Eleven. If I got you to paint all of them just like this one, how much would you want?” Dwayne asked her, now looking back up at her from his chair. Everyone else was looking at her too and she froze.

She struggled to do math in her head with so many eyeballs on her, so she found an empty spot on the table and stared at it as she counted with her fingers in her front pocket. Eleven minis would normally be forty a piece, but if she did all of them with a discount, she could maybe give him…

“350.” She replied, rounding down after she knocked off the price of painting two minis. If they all looked the same, then she already had all the paints she needed. Didn’t need to buy more like she had to when she painted the first one.

“That’s two booster boxes.” Daniel added.

Dwayne hummed in reply, twisting his mouth to the side while he thought about it.

“Can I do it in chunks? Like a hundred at a time, then one fifty? You can do one lance at a time.” He told her.

She didn’t mind doing it in chunks, but...

“Whaz a lance?” She asked.

They started explaining BattleTech lore to her and she wanted to die from the unwanted attention she was getting.

When she was able to finally pull herself away from the store, she’d agreed to paint all of Dwayne’s minis for 350 dollars, but she’d do three of them at first, then two sets of four. Apparently, a lance was just a team of four, so she was doing them one team at a time. She didn’t care. It was 350 dollars for her to sit at her desk under a lamp and paint a bunch of little robots. She would have to come back to the store next week to get the minis from him.

She was able to calm down once she was back in the safety of her car, her tinted windows rolled up, her favorite music playing. At least she could pretend to be alone in her car, and it would work, even if she was outside driving around. Even in a busy parking lot she was chill until she finally had to park and get out to run an errand.

And she had one more errand to run today and it was one she’d been dreading for the last month. The little sticker at the top of her windshield stared at her every day with its handwritten date and mileage. Just a gross reminder of how much she hated that she was this weird anxious person every day.

She had to pull over in a random parking lot first, just to rest her forehead against her steering wheel.

She just needed to go to the shop and get her oil changed. Tombs breathed deeply for a few minutes and then pulled back out of the lot and started driving the rest of the way through town to get to the car shop. When she got there, she was ahead of schedule, since she’d called yesterday to schedule an appointment. Making a phone call was one of the few things that was easy for her to do, since she wasn’t actually there in person. She envied the people whose only problem was making a phone call. She’d trade places with them if she could.

Tombs made it. The shop she was headed to was tucked in between several other businesses, like a book sandwiched between other books on a shelf. She turned into their small driveway and into the gravel lot that was the only parking. She felt ugly goosebumps as she parked in an empty spot. There wasn’t anyone around when she hopped out of her car, which meant she had to walk over to the office. There wasn’t anyone she could see through the window either, so she had to walk over to the garage bays to find someone there.

And there was someone there, a tall shark that made her dizzy and nervous just looking at him from a distance.

He recognized her, asked for her keys with a smile, which she then gave to him with a trembling hand. He then shouted someone’s name and tossed her keys through the air; the keys flew like a bird until they were caught by a hyena who had been somewhere else in the garage. She then retreated out of everyone’s way as the two men in the shop went back to their work. The hyena came out and cranked her car, pulling it into one of the open bays for service. The shark then went to a motorcycle parked in front of another bay and knelt down next to it.

The garage only had three bays to service vehicles, and at one end was probably the smallest office she’d ever seen. There wasn’t really a waiting room. It was just a glass door that led inside a matchbox size room that contained a worn-out looking desk and an out-of-date-looking computer. Over in the garage large fluorescent lights kept the bays illuminated in the evening, but the small office had a ceiling fan with a single big incandescent lightbulb in the middle. Behind the small office was another room of mystery, but she didn’t know what it was for. She just knew it was marked by an employee only sign.

Her car was now parked in the middle bay, currently being lifted up on a rack by the hyena, a scruffy looking character. She’d started bringing her car to this shop a while ago. Today was for an oil change. And filter check, tires begin checked, fluid checked. Bunch of things, whatever things are that go with oil changes. She looked away from her car and back over to the shark.

The motorcycle the shark had moved to was a big one. It wasn’t a crotch rocket, but something more like a big Harley but it had Honda scrawled on the side instead.

“So, are you from Texas or did you just study there?” The shark then spoke up, breaking the silence, but she didn’t know why he asked about Texas.

She wasn’t good at small talk in public, and she was sweating under the pressure of having a conversation with him.

He was a fit looking dude, his skin a pretty shade of blue. And he was tall, almost lean with a toned body, like somebody that went swimming all the time. He was a shark, of course he probably went swimming, but she wasn’t supposed to think something like that, it was rude to assume, but she thought it anyway because seeing him swimming would have been really nice…

The shark was kneeling down next to the motorcycle, which might have been his. It just looked like he was tinkering with it. She had no idea what he was doing to it, but it looked like maybe general maintenance. There was a big plastic shell looking part sitting on the ground next to him, and he was using small tools to twist and turn things on or in what was maybe the engine.

“Arizona. I went to school in Texas, then came to Cali.” She told him.

“Damn, hoofing it all over the southwest.” He replied, then wiped sweat off his blue brow.

He was so incredibly hot she almost couldn’t stand it, but she had nowhere to retreat to. She couldn’t escape her nervous anxiety, nor the desire to watch him at work.

She could only stand there and patiently waiting for her car to be finished, killing time by wasting the time of the guy that owned this tiny little car repair place. She knew he owned it from past visits, just listening in on their conversations while she waited for her car to be finished. He had two or three employees that she knew about. She doubted he made much money, but it was enough to keep this little shop running.

“Kinda worked out that way.” She told him.

She fidgeted, her hands anxiously clinging to the cellphone in the front pocket of her hoodie.

The shark picked up a metal part that had been resting inside the bowl of the plastic shell, some weird alien-looking piece of machinery, before popping it into place inside the motorcycle. He began to reassemble whatever that part was.

“Never been out of Cali. Hear Texas is hot as hell though, Arizona too.” He commented, his attention fixed on the motorcycle.

She was grateful everyone here ignored her, just focused on the cars or motorcycle or whatever it was they were working on. She could just stand there in her dumb neutral outfit and watch and feel almost invisible, even if she might have been holding a conversation.

“Yeah, whaz hot. Better weather in Cali.” She replied.

But it took everything she had to keep talking, she’d normally be hiding in the office of a place like this, playing on her phone until she was told she could pay and leave. But he was so incredibly hot! She didn’t have the courage to come out of her shell, but she could stand awkwardly in the gravel lot and gawk at the shark while he worked on a motorcycle.

And had it not been for her car catching a nail one day, she’d have never found this shop. That flat had forced her to search for a place close by that could fix a tire, and then she carefully drove here. She’d been a nervous wreck, her anxiety out of control as she easily panicked under pressure. The shark dude was the first guy she talked to, and he took pity on her and squeezed her in as fast as he could to get her tire looked at and fixed. It ended up being an easy patch job and she was on her way in less than thirty.

But he was very nice, and something just screamed at her about him. He was just hot.

That day he’d been wearing a torn up Motley Crew shirt and a pair of Hawaiian print swim trunks. His whole shop didn’t look professional, just an old and beat-up building with employees that didn’t have uniforms. They just showed up wearing junky day clothes that they didn’t care if they got covered in oil or torn up by something. The shark had greeted her, seemed to notice she was freaking out, and got her taken care of.

And he had a warm rumbly voice, much taller than her, that pretty blue skin from head to toe with bits of pale skin on his chest that ran down to what she could see of his stomach.

She knew she was crushing on a stranger, which didn’t happen very often, but it also wasn’t very often she got to see a man in person with a sweat soaked shirt sticking to his chest with a pair of shorts that were trying to do the same. And she’d have not noticed anything extra if he didn’t periodically reached down to adjust the fabric of his shorts, trying to keep it from sticking to his skin.

That day had nearly ended in a panic-induced disaster because of the nail, but then she’d nearly ended it again by having a feinting spell just watching this lean hunky guy casually hike her car up on a jack while reaching down to adjust his junk without him noticing she’d been watching.

Today he was wearing a white wife beater, shrink wrapped to his chest again and covered in dirt and oil stains. He looked filthy, like he’d been laying on the ground both front and back to work on something. His shorts weren’t Hawaiian today, wearing a pair of beige khaki cargo shorts with holes in the pockets and tools sticking out of them wherever he found convenient.

She watched as he shifted in place, falling off his feet and dropping onto his butt so he could pick up another part sitting on the ground next to him. He pulled a white handkerchief out of another pocket and began to wipe down the metal piece, some kind of small cover piece but different than the plastic shell. Everything he was doing was a mystery to her, she only wanted an excuse to stare at him.

He didn’t seem to notice where her eyes wandered.

“People say that, but I guess I’d have to actually leave the state to know if it’s true. Been kinda wanting to drive out to Vegas for the hell of it. That’d be something neat to do.” He told her, then finally looked up.

Her eyes snapped up to his face and she awkwardly smiled, her pearly perfect teeth like rows of tombstones.

“My parents want to go to Vegas.” She lied; she had no idea where her parents wanted to go.

“Heard it’s cool.” He replied, then finished wiping the part clean before returning it to where it belonged on the bike.

He started to use a small socket wrench, or she thought that’s what it was, to start putting little screws in. He was very good with his hands, working that tool so quick and easy. His hands looked so strong.

Her eyes lowered down past his hands and over to his crotch. She might not have looked feminine, but she was still just like the girls in high school that giggled over cute boys. Except that was a long time ago, and she’d become a very different person since then. Giggling wasn’t something she did anymore, she just hid in her hoodie and daydreamed about cute boys. Kept that part of herself only to herself where it was safe.

Not that she was playing anything safe right now. She was openly watching the shark work on a motorcycle, looking like some weirdo that stares at people in public. She shivered in her hoodie at the thought of people giving her a side eye, but there wasn’t anyone around except the shark and the hyena. Neither of them was looking at her, they had jobs to do. Still, she was being creepy. It’s just, when you found a man that really set your heart on fire, you just looked at him different from all the other men. He became special. So, she couldn’t take her eyes off him even if it meant losing sleep later over worrying what people thought of her.

But this dude was special, so special that she started taking her car to his tiny shop for everything she needed, even making up excuses for him to check out her car. Check her tire pressure (they were fine), investigate a noise she heard (she didn’t), even playing dumb about things she actually understood about cars (which admittedly wasn’t much).

She’d looked this man up and down so many times from so many different angles that she cringed at herself in the mirror. Everyone at this shop probably nicknamed her the creepy girl that stares at their boss. She hated thinking that, but she still kept taking her car to his shop.

“Yo, tomboys done, boss!” The hyena shouted from inside the garage.

She nearly jumped out of her skin, dying on the inside at being loudly identified by name as a tomboy. As the hyena began to lower her car down in the bay, the shark hopped up off the ground and began to dust himself off.

“When he gets your car pulled out, you’re good to go, oh, wait no you haven’t paid yet.” He started to say, then began to pat all of his pockets looking for something.

“No, I haven’t.” She told him.

“Left it inside.” He said after failing to find what he was looking for, then started walking towards the tiny office.

She followed behind him, watching his back muscles through the damp fabric of his wife beater, then the sway of his strong looking tail, counting his fins. He was a very pretty man, covered in dirt but looking like a toned blue torpedo of hunk.

He stepped around behind the small desk and sat down, started searching the drawers until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out one of those electronic card readers. She reached into her hoodie’s front pocket, past her phone, and located her wallet. He told her the bill, and she fished out her debit card and handed it to him across the desk.

Their hands didn’t touch but her heart fluttered as if they had.

He touched her card to the chip reader on the device and waited. He was staring at the screen, she was staring at him, the shark rocking his head back and forth impatiently as he waited, then suddenly pulled her card away from the device and returned it to her. She took it.

“Receipt?” He asked her.

She stared at him, this dirty looking guy sitting there so handsomely in his sweat-stained shirt and dirty shorts with holes in them.

“Ma’am?” He asked again, looking up at her.

Suddenly, she returned to Earth and opened her mouth. She didn’t need one, but she nodded her head at him more out of panic than any real need for a receipt. He twisted in his chair, turned to his computer, and started pushing buttons on the keyboard until the small printer next to the monitor began to noisily churn out a white slip of paper.

He had to use both hands to tear the receipt off the old printer, then he handed it to her. She took it.

“Looks like he’s got your car pulled out for you, keys in the ignition.” He told her.

She turned and looked outside, saw her car was indeed now sitting outside with her driver’s side door left open. She turned around to look at him again.

“Thank you.” She told him, then stuffed her card and the receipt into her hoodie pocket before retreating out the door to her car.

“Welcome, ma’am.” She heard him say to her backside as she quickly left the little office in full retreat mode.

The coyote climbed into the driver’s seat, found that the keys were still plugged into the ignition. She reached, held them in her hand, pinched the key between her thumb and finger, ready to crank it. She swallowed, then looked back at the small office. The shark was already stepping back outside to return to the bike. Tombs watched as he knelt back down, then took another seat on the ground to resume his work.

She let go of her keys and stared at her steering wheel, then swallowed again.

Her anxiety was destroying her insides, more than butterflies in her gut, but like hornets angrily fighting each other. She wanted to crank up and speed off, leaving the public behind her and go home to her apartment, hiding behind the safety of a tightly shut door. Her safe space of privacy called out to her after a day of errands, but the shark was over there calling out to her too as he fondled another one of his dirty tools to twist and turn at whatever stupid thing he was doing to the motorcycle.

Tombs clapped her hands over the top of her steering wheel, upset with herself, angry. She violently spat out a held breath, then breathed back in nice and deep. She exhaled again, trying to calm herself down, inhaled then grabbed the door handle and shoved it back open. She exited her car as she let out an exhale and nervously shuffled over to the shark who was already looking at her from the ground, having noticed her approach.

“Something wrong, ma’am?” He asked her, pausing what he was doing and giving her his full anxiety-inducing attention.

She froze, nervously hiding her hands in her front pocket as she worked up the courage to say literally anything that wasn’t retarded.

“Do you like coffee?” Was the best she could do.