Page 36 of The Stuffing Situation

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Epilogue: Yes, Forever

Afew weeks later, Maya hadn’t expected to spend Christmas morning at her mom’s house again. Shedefinitelyhadn’t expected to do it with a boyfriend who came from a TikTok app and then bled his way into becoming real.

But here she was.

Watching Felix hand her niece a toy he’d thoroughly researched to be developmentally appropriate, while her mom beamed like she’d personally summoned him through prayer and Pinterest boards.

They handed him a present wrapped with too much tape and not enough wrapping paper. He opened it, and Felix held up the blue-and-silver jersey, a grin spreading across his face as if he’d just been handed a crown.

“Barry Sanders?” he asked, reverent. “The legend himself.”

Uncle Rob puffed up. “Best running back the NFL ever had.”

Her cousin Kyle snorted. “Gibbs might give him a run for his money if he keeps it up.”

Felix glanced down at the number, then over at Maya. “Guess I really am part of the team now.”

Maya rolled her eyes, but her chest ached in that terrifying, wonderful way. Because damn it, he looked good in Honolulu blue. He was a true Michigander now.

After breakfast, as the family gathered around the tree, Felix stood up.

Maya blinked. “Are you,”

But he was already reaching into his sweater pocket.

A small box with a Silver ribbon. Everything was silent, except for her pounding heart.

“I know this is fast,” he said. “But I also know I was made to love you. What’s been happening —this becoming— it’s not just magic, or something in the matrix, it’s a choice.”

He knelt.

“And I choose you. Every day, every version of me, forever. Will you marry me?”

Maya didn’t even let him finish, she launched herself into his arms.

“Yes! Yes, you glitchy, perfect, emotionally-evolving himbo, I will!”

Her mother clapped, then promptly locked them in the guest room with a wink.

“Go make me that grandbaby, you two!”

Maya screamed into a pillow.

Felix leaned over. “Would now be an appropriate time to initiate?”

Felix stood at the foot of the bed, sweater half-on, hair tousled like a man caught between battle and bedtime. The soft knit clung to his arms, stretched taut over those unfairlyengineered shoulders, and Maya had to pause, just a beat, to take him in.

He was hers. This weird, glitchy, loyal golden retriever of a man washers, and she was about to climb him like a Christmas tree.

“Shut up and take your pants off,” she growled, voice thick with want and laughter.

His eyes sparked, a flicker of delight, yes, but also heat. The good kind. The kind that made her thighs clench before he even moved.

Felix obeyed with a flash of eagerness that was borderline obscene.

He kicked off his pants with all the grace of a man unlearning gravity, nearly knocking over a chair in the process. The rustle of denim. The softthumpof his phone falling from a pocket. The sharp little hiss of static from the rug’s friction, like the room couldn’t reasonably handle what he was becoming.