“No, it doesn’t look weird! You look weird!” Tim snaps, way too quickly and a little too defensively for how low-stakes this conversation was supposed to be. His arms cross over his chest as he glares at you, but there’s no real heat behind it—just wounded pride and a good dose of embarrassment.

It all started when you made a light-hearted joke about his hair—something about it giving off serious emo vibes, maybe a mention of how he looked like he was about to drop the hottest MySpace mixtape of 2007. You weren’t even trying to be mean, not really, just messing around like you always do. But the second the words left your mouth, Tim’s expression crumpled ever so slightly, like you’d struck a nerve you didn’t know was exposed.

And now he’s pouting. Full-on sulking. Shoulders hunched, bottom lip jutting out, brow furrowed like he’s trying to figure out if he should be angry or just deeply, deeply offended.

“C’mon,” he says, voice softening just a little. “My hair isn’t that bad. Right? Is it?”

You pause, trying to decide how honest you want to be. The truth? It is that bad. It’s objectively terrible. A perfectly tragic bowl cut, like someone placed a mixing bowl on his head and went to town with dull scissors. There’s a certain childhood nostalgia to it, maybe, but only if the memory is of a DIY haircut gone very, very wrong.

You could say all that. You could roast him into the next dimension. But the way he’s looking at you now—with that oddly hopeful glint in his eyes, like he’s desperately clinging to the possibility that you might say something nice—you decide against it. No need to completely crush the man.

He groans and flops back onto the couch like the weight of the universe has just collapsed on his shoulders. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that $12 haircut.”