Chapter 16 Echo Chamber
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.
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 said I 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.
Her voice was low. “He’s gone.”
Maya sat up too fast. “What?”
“Felix,” Blair said, words clipped now. “He left. Ashar said he was just… gone. Like something pulled him out.”
Maya’s lungs forgot how to work. “No. No, no, no, that can’t happen!”
“Yeah,” Blair snapped. “That’s what happens when you abandon someone who would bleed for you, you know. Someone who was literally glitching into realness, developing a damn soul, all because he loved you that damn much.”
Maya curled tighter into the couch, the ice cream melting into her lap, untouched. Her chest ached like it was full of glass shards.
“I didn’t want to force him to stay,” she whispered. “I thought I was giving him space, an option for a real choice.”
“You didn’t force him,” Blair said, sharper now. “You abandoned him, big difference.”
Silence. And then a knock. Firm and deliberate, Maya’s head jerked toward the door.
Her voice trembled. “Blair?”
“That panic you felt just now?” Blair said coolly. “You deserved that. For walking away from that man.”
Another knock. Louder this time. Maya rose slowly from the couch, legs shaky.
“Go answer the door,” Blair said, her tone softening. “Tell him how bad you need him.”
A beat passed.
Then, muttered under her breath:
“Before I kidnap him for myself and run off to Aruba.”
Maya stood in front of the door, hand hovering just above the handle. Her breath came too fast. She wasn’t afraid of him being gone. She was afraid of him still being there.
Because if he were, if he’d come back after everything, then she couldn’t pretend anymore. Not that he was just a glitch. Not that she didn’t love him. Not that she wasn’t already his. Not that he hadn’t already said it, I choose you. Over and over. Even when she ran.
She opened the door.
And everything changed.