The first thing that hit him was the light. Not the gentle pulse of morning sun filtered through silk curtains, or the honeyed blur of LA’s endless dusk, but the merciless, always-on glare of Apex Technologies’ open office. It was a seventy-five-foot shotgun of glass, drop ceilings, and six kinds of recycled carpet, every surface calibrated to strip your retinas and bleach your personality. The hum was omnipresent: keys clacking, phones chirping, HVAC cycling in futile loops. For Theo, it was a homecoming and a punishment.

  He made it maybe eight steps into the room before Marcus intercepted, appearing out of nowhere, the human equivalent of a browser pop-up.

  “There he is!” Marcus said, volume set to ‘public shaming.’ “The man, the myth, the groom who got Vegas’d.” He held out both hands, as if expecting Theo to fall gratefully into them. “Tell me you at least kept the Elvis certificate.”

  Theo sidestepped the offer and feigned nonchalance, but already his pulse had found a new gear. “Nice to see you too, Marcus. Still in the same chair, I see.”

  “Still running the show.” Marcus nudged him in the ribs, then gestured toward his own workstation, where the twin monitors displayed both a bug-tracking dashboard and what looked suspiciously like a Reddit thread on worst wedding disasters.

  Theo’s cubicle had been repopulated in his absence with two succulents (one dying, one already dead), a three-week backlog of mail, and the detritus of several “Welcome Back” Post-Its taped to his monitor in progressively smaller font sizes. He didn’t have time to parse any of it because Elena was already closing in, steps quiet but intent.

  She wore a navy cardigan and a look that was both amused and worried. “You’re alive,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.

  “Barely,” said Theo, forcing a smile.

  She took it in, then, “Can I hug you, or is that too soon after the marital collapse?”

  He blinked. “You still talking about that.”

  “It’s literally all your friends have talked about since you ditched us.” She leaned in, squeezed him for half a second, then held him at arm’s length. “You okay?”

  He shrugged, hoping the motion would shake off her concern. “I’m fine. It was…impulsive. We’re working things out.”

  Marcus snorted. “You’re not working anything out. You’re in damage control. Which, by the way, is the only way you beat me at chess—by sacrificing your queen and hoping I get bored.” He grinned, the effect equal parts smug and affectionate.

  Before Theo could answer, Darren slid into the periphery, silent as always. He perched on the edge of a vacant desk, arms crossed over a blazer, watching the whole exchange like an anthropologist with tenure.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “So,” Darren said, after a beat. “You really did it. Married a stranger. On purpose.”

  Theo rolled his eyes. “Let it stay in Vegas.”

  “That’s what everyone says about Vegas,” Darren replied. “But it’s always like that.”

  Elena swatted Marcus on the shoulder. “Don’t be an ass. He looks exhausted.” Then, to Theo, “Seriously—was it that bad?”

  He glanced over their faces, looking for the safest answer. “I don’t remember parts of it,” he said, “but I do remember waking up thinking I was married to a woman named Kristy who’d never once played chess or seen Star Wars. So yeah, it’s complicated.”

  Marcus leaned in, conspiratorial. “So you’re keeping the ring, right? Or did you pawn it to pay for the minibar?”

  Theo lifted his hands. “No ring. It was a ceremony-only deal. We were both too hungover to file the paperwork properly in a courthouse.”

  Darren shook his head, bemused. “You’ve gotta be an urban legend now, you know. Someone at that chapel is thinking, ‘Engineer bets on love, loses to random number generator.’”

  Theo laughed, but it came out brittle. “I’d argue the algorithm worked exactly as designed.”

  Elena frowned, just a hair. “So…are you going to see her again?”

  It was the question he’d been dreading. His palms were slick, his throat dry. He checked his phone, pretending to scroll for a message that wasn’t there. “I don’t know,” he lied. “It was a lot for both of us.”

  Marcus groaned, “What a waste. You had your shot at chaos and you caved to probability.”

  Elena’s face softened. “I’m glad you’re back. Even if you do look like you lost a bet with a vampire.”

  “I’m fine,” Theo said, more for himself than anyone. He flicked his phone again, thumb compulsively refreshing the home screen. Still no new messages. He put it down.

  The noise around them peaked: someone’s phone went off, the IT help desk fielded a panicked call, someone else dropped a coffee mug in the kitchenette. The world at Apex had kept spinning, even as his own had tilted sideways.

  Marcus grinned, gesturing to the monitors. “We saved all your bugs, by the way. There’s like twelve high-priority ones with your name on them.”

  “Lucky me,” Theo replied.

  Elena looked at him for a moment, long enough to make him uncomfortable. Then she reached out, touched his forearm lightly. “Hey. You really okay?”

  He nodded, the smile coming easier now. “Promise.”

  She let go, but not before giving him one of those looks: half doubt, half hope.

  Darren slid off the desk, checked his phone, and deadpanned, “Vegas might have erased your marriage, but it didn’t erase our Friday lunch plans. One o’clock, the usual?”

  Theo gave a thumbs-up. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  The group dispersed, leaving behind only the scent of skepticism and the certainty that nothing stayed private for long in this place.

  Theo powered up his workstation, watched the machine boot, and for a few precious seconds, lost himself in the comfort of blinking cursors and the cold logic of code. But even as he queued up his bug list, his mind drifted to the penthouse, to the woman who wasn’t Kristy or Mia, and to the secret that, for the next year, would make every day feel like living in two worlds at once.

  He forced himself back to the present, hammering out lines of code with a speed that made his fingers ache. If anyone noticed his distraction, they didn’t say.

  But he saw it in their glances, the way Elena lingered just a second longer than usual, the way Marcus refreshed his feed every time Theo reached for his phone. Even Darren, who claimed to live outside the laws of human drama, kept an eye on him, waiting for the next plot twist.

  Theo steeled himself, told himself it would be easier tomorrow.

  He didn’t believe it, but for now, it was enough to keep moving.