Chapter 1: Game Night Shift
The last thing I remember was Chloe laughing so hard she snorted her beer, a fine mist spraying across the Trivial Pursuit cards. I was reaching for another slice of pizza, my own laughter dying in my throat as the world did a lazy, nauseating spin.
I blinked.
The perspective was all wrong. The ceiling was suddenly farther away. The leather couch felt massive against my back, and my… my chest felt heavy. And soft. A strange, anchoring weight.
I looked down.
A tight, white tank top stretched over curves that were not mine. The swell of two large, unmistakable breasts pressed against the thin cotton. My heart, or Sabrina’s heart, began to hammer against my ribs, a frantic bird in a cage of flesh and bone. I could feel each beat echo through this new torso.
I raised a hand. A small, delicate hand with slim fingers and perfectly manicured nails painted a shell pink. It trembled violently in the air between me and the coffee table.
Across the table, my own face stared back at me.
My beard. My glasses. My old, familiar flannel shirt. But the eyes behind those lenses were wide with a terror I knew I must be mirroring. That was me over there. But I was here, in this… this body.
“Sabrina? You okay, babe?” Chloe’s voice, concerned, came from my left. It sounded different. Higher, somehow.
I tried to speak. “I…” The voice that came out was a higher, melodic trickle, laced with a breathy vulnerability that made my skin crawl. It was her voice. Sabrina’s voice. “I feel… strange.”
From the hallway, the bathroom door clicked open. Mark Mooers walked back into the living room, a confident smile on his handsome face. He was a big man, tall and broad-shouldered, moving with an athlete’s ease. His gaze went straight to me. To her. To this body I was trapped in.
“Everything all right over here?” he asked, his voice a warm rumble.
He walked around the couch and, without hesitation, bent down. His large hand cupped the back of my head, his fingers tangling in this long, blonde hair that felt like spun silk against my scalp. The scent of his cologne, something dark and expensive, washed over me. He leaned in.
My mind screamed. Every instinct from thirty-six years of being Justin Zygurski short-circuited. I froze.
His lips met mine.
They were soft, but demanding. The sensation was utterly foreign. The pressure, the slight moisture, the intimacy of it sent a lightning bolt of wrongness down my spine. I sat there, stiff as a board, my new, plump lips unmoving under his.
He pulled back an inch, his brows slightly furrowed. “You’re cold,” he murmured, his thumb stroking my cheek. A jolt, hot and entirely physical, shot from that point of contact straight down between my legs. An area that now felt… different. Empty and full at the same time. A low, unwelcome heat began to pool there, independent of my screaming mind.
“Just… dizzy for a second,” I stammered in that horrible, pretty voice. I could feel the delicate strap of a bra cutting into my shoulder, the constricting band around my ribs. Lower down, a wisp of fabric, a thong, rode up in a cleft that was completely new geography. Every movement made me aware of the sway of new weight on my chest, the shift of hips that were wider than my brain remembered.
Mark smiled, reassured, and straightened up. “Too much wine, maybe.” He ruffled my hair and went to sit in the armchair.
I chanced a glance across the table. My old body—Sabrina-in-my-body—was staring fixedly at the chessboard, its hands (my hands) clenched into white-knuckled fists on its knees. It looked like it was trying not to vomit.
Chloe, oblivious, clapped her hands. “Okay, my turn! Category is… historically inaccurate movies. Ready?”
The next twenty minutes were a special kind of hell. I was swimming in a soup of sensation. The brush of my own hair against my bare shoulders and collarbones was a constant, tickling distraction. When I shifted on the couch, I felt the soft, heavy jiggle of my chest and the smoother, fuller shift of my rear against the leather. My clothes felt like a costume made of spiderwebs and rubber bands—constricting, foreign, highlighting every alien curve.
And Mark… God, Mark was a problem. Every time he laughed, a deep, rich sound, my eyes were drawn to the line of his throat. When he stretched, his t-shirt pulling across his chest, that same low heat flickered in my new core. It was a primal, chemical pull, this body’s programmed response to its mate. It made me want to crawl out of my own skin.
My old body suddenly stood up, clumsily, almost knocking over the game board. “Bathroom,” it grunted, in a rough approximation of my voice. It hurried down the hall.
A minute later, my phone—now in that body’s pocket—buzzed in mine. I flinched. I fumbled the tiny, sleek device from the tight pocket of my short skirt, my unfamiliar fingers struggling with the passcode. It was a text from my own number.
What the FUCK is happening. This is Sabrina. I’m in you. Meet me. Now. Back porch.
“Excuse me,” I whispered, getting up. My center of gravity was off. I took a step and my smaller feet, encased in dainty sandals, almost turned. I caught myself, feeling a blush of humiliation heat my cheeks. Mark watched me with a fond, slightly amused look that curdled my stomach.
I navigated the unfamiliar house, my hips automatically swaying in a way that felt both unnatural and instinctual. The hallway seemed longer. Everything was scaled differently.
The cool night air hit me as I slid open the glass door. My old body was there, pacing, running a hand through my messy beard.
It turned. My own eyes, filled with a feminine panic I’d never seen in them before, locked onto me. “Justin?” she asked, my voice tight.
“Yeah.” My new voice broke. “Sabrina?”
She nodded frantically. “What did you do? How is this possible?”
“I didn’t do anything! I was just sitting there!” I hugged myself, a gesture that brought my arms in contact with the sides of my breasts. I dropped them instantly. “We have to figure this out. We have to switch back.”
“Obviously!” she hissed. She looked down at my old hands, turning them over with disgust. “This is… this is disgusting. I feel like a caveman. Everything smells wrong.” She looked back at me, her gaze critical, scanning the body she once inhabited. “You’re standing wrong. You’re going to give us away.”
“He already almost did,” I said, the words tumbling out. “Mark kissed me.”
Sabrina’s face—my face—went pale. “Oh, god. Did he… notice anything?”
“I don’t think so. I just froze.” I hesitated. The next part felt like a betrayal. “This body… it… reacted to him.”
She closed her eyes, pained. “Of course it did. It’s my body. It loves him.” She opened them, a new, harder desperation there. “You cannot tell him. You cannot. If he finds out… he’ll think I’m insane, or possessed, or… he’ll leave. You have to be me. Perfectly.”
The back door slid open. Mark leaned out, his huge frame filling the space. “There you are. Everything okay out here?” His gaze moved between us, a flicker of curiosity in his eyes.
Sabrina-in-my-body stiffened. I saw the struggle, the effort to mimic my usual slouch. “Just, uh, getting some air. Game’s getting intense.”
Mark’s attention settled back on me. On the wife he adored. His expression softened. “Come back in, sweetheart. You’ll get cold.” He held out his hand.
I looked at his outstretched palm. I looked at Sabrina’s warning glare from within my own eyes.
The body I was in yearned to go to him. A deep, aching pull started in my core and radiated outwards, a traitorous warmth spreading through my limbs. My smaller hand, of its own volition, began to lift.
I was going to have to take it.