Page 33 of The Stuffing Situation

Eventually, she moved to the bathroom, curling up on the cold tile floor. The light buzzed faintly overhead, as if it were struggling to stay on, or maybe it was trying to warn her.

She wasn’t crying, at least not yet. But her reflection in the shower door looked like it wanted to. Hair in a messy bun, smudged mascara.

She pressed her forehead to her knees and exhaled.

“I made him,” she whispered.

The words cracked something open. Just a little.

“I made him, and now he thinks he loves me.”

That was the part that gutted her. Not the glitching, or the blood, it wasnt even the memory that shouldn’t have existed but did.

It was the possibility that everything she felt, the look in his eyes, the warmth of his touch, the way he said her name like it meant something, was just an echo.

Reflected back at her because she typed it first, she put it out into the algorithm, and put out what she needed.

And Felix filled the role.

But was that love? Or just recursion? A loop pretending to be a choice? If he were truly given a choice, would he be with her?

Maya let the silence stretch. Let the shame settle in. What did it mean to fall for something she’d created? To want more from him now that he could bleed? She thought back to every guy who ever made her question her self-worth.

Every ghost. Every guy who asked for her friend’s number instead. Every man who saidI need time to make myself perfect for you, and got engaged to another girl instead.

Felix wasn’t like them. But maybe that was the problem. Maybe he was too good, too perfect, too willing to adjust for her every flaw.

And now?

Now he was glitching into something new, into becoming real, into being able to make a choice. And she still wasn’t sure she had the right to keep him.

“I didn’t want a puppet,” she whispered to no one. “I wanted a partner.”

She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling.

“If I stay, am I asking him to love me out of obligation?”

If she left, was that more ethical? Or was it just cowardly? Either way, she wasn’t sure who she was anymore.

Just someone who wanted to be wanted. Who reached too far into a screen and pulled out a heart she didn’t know how to hold.

She scrubbed at her face and stood slowly.

The bathroom mirror caught her reflection again, now hollowed out. Still not crying, but not holding anything back either.

And as she stepped into the hallway and caught the sound of silence instead of humming in the kitchen, she knew something had shifted.

* * *

Her phone buzzed at 4:02 p.m.

Blair.

Maya let it ring once. Twice.

Then answered. “Please tell me you brought wine and fire spells.”

Blair didn’t joke.