Page 32 of The Stuffing Situation

Terrified that if she stayed, it wouldn’t be real. That every soft kiss and quiet joke would calcify into performance. That he’d keep being perfect until he forgot how to be honest.

That she’d keep needing him, even if he stopped choosing her.

So she wrote the only truth she had left.

You deserve to choose freely, not out of obligation.

She didn’t sign it; she couldn’t bring herself to do so, and then she left. The door closed with a soft click.

* * *

Felix stood in the silence she left behind, every line of his code aching with something unnamed. His systems were stable. His pulse was still steady. But something deeper buzzed beneath the surface, like loss, but sharper.

He crossed the room slowly, his bare feet padding over the floorboards they’d danced on.

A coffee mug sat on the counter. The one she’d used. Hairline crack near the rim, a faint lipstick ghost along the ceramic. He picked it up, running his thumb over the edge like it could still hum with her heat.

He closed his eyes.

In the quiet, he could still feel the ghost of her weight on the mattress. The way her breath used to skip just slightly when she laughed at something he said. The rhythm of her heartbeat when she lay pressed against him, out of habit, not need.

He didn’t know if those were real or if he’d constructed them from data and desire.

But they felt real.

Real enough to hurt.

Then, gently, he set it in the center of the table.

“I could follow her,” he said aloud. The room didn’t answer.

“I could rewrite everything,” he added, softer now.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he turned to the window. Watched the wind play with the edge of a wrinkled curtain.

And smiled, just a little.

“Next time,” he whispered, “I want her to choose me without the glitch.”

Then he sat down, closed his eyes, and waited for whatever came next, not as code, but as someone learning how to stay.

16

Echo Chamber

By noon, Maya was curled on her own couch in oversized sweatpants and socks that didn’t match. A Hallmark movie played in the background, some holiday nonsense involving a big-city lawyer, a tragic sledding accident, and a man in plaid who never once raised his voice.

She hated it, and yet she couldn’t stop watching.

The woman on-screen was falling in love with a Christmas tree farmer who had zero red flags and a golden retriever that somehow always exited the room at the right time.

“Bullshit,” Maya muttered, digging into a pint of mint chocolate chip. “No one’s that emotionally available. Not even fake Christmas movie men.”

The movie ended with a kiss in a snowstorm.

She hit play on the next one anyway and opened another pint.