Page 4 of The Stuffing Situation

No, nope, this was not supposed to render.

“Applying a cool compress is helpful for fainting,” he said cheerfully, brushing a knuckle down her temple with the tenderness of someone already starring in the romantic montage. “Did I conduct the action well?”

She sat bolt upright, and the washcloth fell to the floor in a damp, pathetic flop.

“Nope, nope, I’m still hallucinating.”

Felix blinked. “You passed out. I moved you to the couch. I made toast. Would you like jam?”

He gestured toward the coffee table with the flourish of a game show host, palm-up and proud. Two slices. One with jam, one with honey. Her favorite mug, the one with the faded decal and a tiny hairline crack, sat beside it, steaming smugly.

I’m hallucinating toast now. Fully unwell. Do they serve Turkey in the mental hospitals?

“Are you real?” she rasped.

Felix stared at his hands, fingers dancing with the glee of a toddler who’d just discovered they could move. Then looked up. “Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, you’re from an app. A TikTok trend. I made you. I picked your height!”

“I’m six foot four,” he said, the way someone might announce they’d just passed an oral exam. “As requested.”

“Oh my god.”

She scrambled for her phone with trembling fingers, heart pounding with the force of club bass she instantly regretted walking into, her bootleg TikTok, App Store, and download history.

Nothing, just a spinning wheel. Just the yawning void of digital gaslighting. The app was gone, and yet Felix was not. Her hangover had suddenly become a side quest.

She didn’t know whether to cry or reboot the router. This wasn’t just a glitch. This was something else. Something she might’vewanted,deep down, when she wasn’t joking.

“What the hell,” she whispered.

Felix stayed nearby but non-threatening, his posture open, arms folded, as if he were part bodyguard, part boyfriend, part high-end appliance that had just achieved sentience. His brow furrowed, just slightly. Just enough.

“You seem distressed.”

“Distressed?” Her laugh cracked with the fragility of cheap glass. “You’re a fake boyfriend from a TikTok trend, and you’re in my kitchen making toast as if we’re five episodes into a live-streaming original series!”

“Well,” he said, calmly adjusting the pan’s flame with the practiced ease of someone who understood heat distribution, “I was programmed to belong to you.”

She stared.

“I mean, with you. Not in an ownership sense. More of a selected emotional pairing.”

“No. Do not make this weirder.”

He plated a piece of toast. It glowed. Golden, crisp, and offensively perfect. He handed it to her, and her treacherous hands accepted it without consulting her brain.

He beamed. Warm, so proud, and entirely too pleased with himself.

“You enjoy sourdough best when you’re hungover. With honey, not butter.”

Her stomach dropped. Her fingers clenched around the plate.

That’s true.Disturbinglytrue.