She Lets Out Some Frustration

It's 2013. I'm a 26-year-old incel, depressed and working a minimum-wage job slinging burgers at a fast-food joint. About ten years too late, I'm just finally figuring out how to tease and flirt with girls, but I always get nervous and bail when it comes time to actually sleep with them because I don't want anyone to know that I'm practically a virgin.

After pouring all my repressed sexual energy into flipping burgers for a couple of years, I finally get promoted from closing cook to closing supervisor. To replace me as the closing cook, the manager hires a button-cute 23-year-old girl who just moved to town and doesn't have a single friend here outside of her roommate. As it turns out, said girl is SUPER horny and has the hots for me BAD.

Right from the start of her very first shift she's blatantly hitting on me, and while I flirt back a bit, I'm weirded out but how intense she is. In my stupid mind I come up with all sorts of bullshit excuses about why I'm not actually super into her - she's too clingy, I barely know her, maybe her nose is a tiny bit big. But the main reason is because I've been flirting with this crazy hot 18-year-old blonde girl at work and getting with this (super-attainable) cook will ruin my dreams of winning over the hot chick. (Stupid incel logic, thinking I have to "win over" the hottest girl to prove myself somehow.)

But a few weeks after the cook starts, the 18-year-old quits to go travel the world and no doubt fuck boatloads of gorgeous Brazilian or Australian men, and I begin to flirt with the cook in earnest. One night I get up the nerve to invite her over after work, but when she asks to see my bedroom I freeze up and insist we watch TV instead. She leaves, clearly sexually frustrated.

A couple of weeks later we both end up at some club for a staff birthday party and she's all over me, just following me around wherever I go. Eventually I get drunk enough to go in for the kiss and we sloppily make out in front of all our coworkers. But at the end of the night, I go home by myself, promising her before I leave that we'll see each other again and things won't be weird between us.

We proceed to go on a couple of super awkward dates, but each time I'm too sober and shy to make a move. In her car I hint that I want her to commit to moving in with me before we've ever even seen each other naked. (What the hell am I thinking?) She plays along a bit, but it's clear she's getting sick of waiting for me and just wants to get it on.

Then one night she comes into work and she seems different than usual. Less fawning, more intense and assertive. When the last pre-closer leaves, she climbs up on the counter and just sits there with her legs pressed tight together, glaring at me. Then the insults start coming. She's not mean, exactly - just obviously exasperated at whatever game I'm playing and letting out some pent-up frustration. I can't tell if she's super horny or just mad at me, but I stand there and take it, knowing I deserve it. For the next half an hour she sits in exactly the same position, not moving at all except once or twice when she has to fill an order. Each time, she makes each burger quickly and then quickly returns to her position. Her face is getting redder and redder and every time I come back into the kitchen she finds something inane to berate me about:

"What, done sweeping already? You think you're so special because you always get out of here on time?"

"WaIt, were you just FLIRTING with that girl in drive-thru?"

"Well, aren't you gonna tell me to get up and start working, Mr. SUPERVISOR?"

She's obviously getting off on insulting me, but I don't allow myself to believe that she's LITERALLY getting off on it...

...until she finally spits out, "You're just never going to touch me, are you?"

It's an invitation, almost a challenge, so I walk up to her and confidently reach for her arm.

"No!" she growls. "You can't touch me NOW."

There's something different about her skin - it's flushed, glowing almost, like she's vibrating in place, and she seems to more present in the room in a way that I'm not sure how to make sense of - like she's rising up.

I slink away, cowered, to resume my closing duties, and by the time I come back again to count my last till, she has left the counter to start her end of the night cleaning. When she's done, she comes into the office to say goodbye and flashes me a huge, satisfied smile.

"Sorry," she says. "That was just a really bad time to touch me."

"Are we...like...cool?" I stammer moronically, unsure how to address the elephant in the room. "I was starting to worry that you were...kind of...angry at me?"

"It wasn't ANGER exactly." She giggles and blushes slightly. "I was just...finishing something. But I feel so much better now."

"So what does this mean for us?"

"Were fine. We're great!" Her smile widens. "No hard feelings at all. I had a lot fun tonight, but I don't know if it's really what I'm looking for in a relationship -- unless, well, maybe if there was more to it..."

She trails off and looks at me hopefully, but I'm lost in a daze of confusion and insecurity. I can hear her words but can't process them, still can't quite believe that this is happening. Then just like that she's gone out the back way, and when I come in for work the next evening the manager tells me that she just quit to move back to her hometown.

We never see each other again.