Page 17 of The Stuffing Situation

Not for lack of exhaustion; her body hummed with it, she felt boneless. She was spent, gloriously wrecked, nerves still singing from what they’d done.

But her mind?

Her mind was wide awake. She lay curled on her side, facing the wall. Felix’s arm rested loosely across her waist, his breath warm against her shoulder, rhythmic and steady. Each exhale brushed her skin with faint static, as though radio waves were trying to tune themselves into the right frequency.

The sheets smelled of him, cinnamon, ozone, and something faintly electric. That scent right before a summer storm. That charged hush before the sky opens up.

He stirred slightly, murmuring her name in his sleep. It sounded too real, and that was the problem.

For a moment, she thought she heard it again: that soft, low hum beneath his breathing. A vibration that wasn’t quite mechanical anymore. This wasn’t just a system running. It was something reaching, straining, a body remembering itself into being. Her eyes blinked open in the dark, lashes dragging slowly over dry skin.

What even was real anymore?

She slipped out of bed slowly, gently untangling herself from his limbs like unthreading herself from a dream. He made a faint sound in his sleep, something between a sigh and a heartbeat, and her chest clenched.

The floor was cold against her feet, grounding. She pulled on his hoodie. It was too big, too warm, carrying that not-her scent. Just there. Just comfortinglynot her.

Down the hall, the kitchen light flickered to life with a soft buzz.

Maya stood for a moment, palms braced against the countertop, spine curved as though shaped by a question. She stared at the coffee maker as if it might dispense answers.

Her reflection glared back at her from the microwave door: flushed cheeks, kiss-bitten lips, hair that looked thoroughly argued with.

She looked like someone who’d been made love to by a man who didn’t technically exist.

God, she thought.What even is my life?

She opened the fridge. Let the cold wash over her face. Closed it again without taking anything.

Everything was still. Too still. The kind of quiet that hummed in your teeth.

She padded to the couch and sat down, arms folding around herself. Not because she was cold.

Because if she didn’t hold herself together, she might start coming apart at the seams.

He’d touched her gently, like something sacred.

He looked at her with intent, as if every part of her was worth understanding, a language he wanted to master. Never once did he flinch or falter. Never once did he make her feel like too much.

And that terrified her because she had summoned him.

Literally.

Typed the words into an app like it was a joke. A panic move. A glitch in the emotional matrix. A defense mechanism with good bone structure.

But now he was real, or as close to real as he could be, more real than she’d ever remember feeling before.

He kissed her as a man in love would; he knew the little things, how she liked her toast, the curve of her silences. He said things that made her heart stutter and her knees forget their purpose.

And worse? He meant them.

Because he was made to.

Or was he?

Maya curled her legs up onto the couch and pressed her face into her knees. For one dizzy, disorienting moment, she didn’t know if she wanted to cry, laugh, or erase every digital fingerprint she’d ever left behind, like she could undo him by clearing her browser history.

Footsteps padded in behind her; they were quiet, soft. She didn’t look up, and Felix didn’t speak. He just sat beside her, mirroring her posture with an uncanny gentleness. He didn’t reach out, he didn’t push. He just waited like he had all the time in the world. After a while, Maya finally spoke.