Page 7 of The Stuffing Situation

Her mom paused, all innocence. “What?”

“I’m not a virgin!” Maya sputtered. “I’ve had sex. Like, so much sex. All the kinds. Every position!”

Then fell the silence. A thick, judgmental silence. Even the walls seemed to shift further apart to give the moment more space to breathe.

Felix tilted his head, clinically curious. “You are very pink.”

Her mother lit up, the picture of someone who’d just won a bake-off. “Well.Good.”

Then, casually, she turned and left, humming.

HUMMING.

Maya stood frozen, fists clenched, vibrating with secondhand embarrassment that was now uncomfortably firsthand.

“I want to die.”

Felix looked at her with the grave sympathy of someone offering a brochure for advanced burial planning. “Do you wish to discuss your sexual history? For context?”

“No!”

He nodded gravely. “Understood. But if it helps, I find your blush very compelling.”

She groaned and collapsed onto the bed, burying her face under a pillow in a futile attempt to silence both noise and self-awareness. Felix lowered himself beside her with exaggerated care, hands folded as though a guest in someone else’s life, unwilling to disturb even the bedspread.

“You’re lucky you’re hot,” she muttered into the pillow.

He smiled. “You programmed me this way.”

Wasn’t that the whole problem? That somewhere between panic and an AI prompt, she’d made someone who wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t cheat, and wouldn’t scroll past her feelings like they were an ad. Someone who looked at her as if she were an algorithm worth running.

She groaned again. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not? I am yours. In all the romantic literature I consumed, that line was highly effective.”

“You can’t just quote fanfiction at me and expect it to work.”

Felix tilted his head, genuinely considering. “It appears to be working.”

And unfortunately, for one dizzying, traitorous second,

It was.

4

Blair Witch & Football Glitches

Downstairs, Maya locked herself in the bathroom, as if it were a panic room.

The overhead light flickered with the haunted enthusiasm of a Spirit Halloween prop, and the vent made a low, continuous moan, as if it were processing generational trauma. The tile was cold under her sockless feet, clean enough to pretend it was sanitary, cracked sufficiently to match her mental state. The mirror bore ancient toothpaste smudges, a constellation of 2009 dental negligence. However, it was still a glitch-free sanctuary.

She braced her palms against the sink, sucking in shallow, controlled breaths like a woman trying not to detonate. Outside that door?

Thanksgiving hellscape.

The soundtrack of familial chaos leaked in with surround sound precision: serving spoons clanging, someone yelling“Where’s the good butter?!”, kids shrieking like sugar-fueled goblins, and the chirp of a dying smoke alarm offering faint moral support to someone’s ruined dinner rolls.

And beneath it all, Felix.