Chapter 3: A Dangerous Distraction
From behind the apples, I watched my own life unravel. Andrea was laughing, pointing at a basket of grotesque heirloom tomatoes, but the laugh didn’t reach her eyes. Her smile was becoming strained, polite. Sabrina-in-my-body just stood there, a monolith in gray sweats, nodding like a broken toy. She’d shoved my hands deep into the hoodie’s pockets, my shoulders hunched up near my ears. Every few seconds, her eyes—my eyes—would dart toward where I was hiding, screaming silently for a rescue I hadn’t planned.
I had to move.
The decision was a cold splash in my gut. I stepped out from behind the stall, and the world recalibrated. The ground felt farther away. My center, which had been my sternum for thirty-six years, was now somewhere in my hips, making each step a conscious negotiation of balance. The green dress swished against my thighs, a faint, whispering tease. The bra was a rigid cage, the underwire a persistent pinch beneath the soft, heavy weight it contained. And the thong… the thong was a maddening filament, a constant, intimate reminder of a topology that was not mine.
I focused on the sway. Sabrina’s body knew how to walk. If I let the hips lead, the rest followed in a loose, rolling gait that felt alien but efficient. I approached them from the side, the scents of basil and ripe strawberries thickening the air.
“Hey, girl! Fancy meeting you here!”
My voice. Sabrina’s voice. It trilled out of me, higher, brighter than I intended. Both of them turned. Andrea’s face lit with genuine roommate-recognition. Sabrina-in-my-body stared, her jaw—my jaw—slightly agape.
I leaned in, pecking Andrea’s cheek. Her skin was warm, and she smelled of lavender and coffee. The simple intimacy of the gesture, performed in this body, sent a confusing ripple through me.
“Sabrina! I didn’t know you were coming down here,” Andrea said, her hand coming to rest lightly on my arm. Her touch on Sabrina’s bare skin was electric, a direct line to my scrambled nerves.
“Spur of the moment,” I chirped, forcing a grin onto this new, pliable mouth. “Needed some air.” I turned my head slightly, aiming a wide, deliberate stare at my own body. “Justin, right? From next door? How’s it going?”
Sabrina-in-me blinked. “Uh. Good. It’s. Going.”
“Cool, cool.” I kept the inane smile locked in place, watching Andrea from the corner of my eye. She was looking between us, a faint crease appearing between her brows. The warmth she’d shown “Justin” was cooling, displaced by a polite curiosity that felt like a door clicking shut.
“Well,” Andrea said, shifting her basket. Her tone was light, but the dismissal was clear. “Don’t let us keep you from your errands, Sab. I know you hate crowds.”
It was a gentle shove. A please leave so I can have a proper date shove. The message was in her eyes, in the slight turn of her shoulder toward the man she thought was me. The pain was swift and startling, a physical pinch somewhere beneath the cage of my ribs. I was being excised from my own moment.
“Right! Yeah, tons of… air to get. See you at home, Andrea.” My voice sounded brittle. I gave a little finger-wave to my own terrified doppelganger and turned away.
The retreat was a relief and a humiliation. The dress clung to my lower back, damp with a nervous sweat I could feel beading along my spine. I moved blindly, wanting only to put distance between myself and the sight of Andrea leaning in to say something private to my usurped body.
I didn’t see him until I collided with a solid wall of chest.
The impact was soft, but it jolted me. A pair of strong hands came up to steady my shoulders. “Whoa, easy there.”
I looked up. And up. He was tall, maybe my old height, with a easy smile and eyes the color of worn denim. His hands were still on my bare shoulders, his thumbs resting lightly on the twin butterflies tattooed there. The contact was warm, firm. It sent a traitorous signal through Sabrina’s nervous system—a quickening of the pulse, a flush of heat that had nothing to do with the sun.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, my voice shrinking. I tried to step back, but his hands tightened for a fraction of a second before releasing.
“No harm done. You seemed in a hurry to get somewhere less… populated.” His gaze traveled over my face, not with the crude assessment of the neighbor, but with an appreciative curiosity that was somehow worse. It felt specific. Personal.
“Just… meeting a friend. Who isn’t here.” I was babbling. I could feel the blush burning across my cheeks and down my neck, a full-body betrayal.
“A common tragedy at these things.” He smiled again. He had a good smile. “I’m Leo. I was actually defeat-marching toward the coffee tent. Can I bribe you with a latte to forgive my chest for being in your way?”
The offer hung in the air. Every sane part of me, the part that was Justin Zygurski, screamed to decline. To go home, to bury myself in my dark room and try to puzzle this out. But Justin Zygurski wasn’t in charge of the physiological responses happening in this vessel. The warmth between my legs, a low, unfamiliar thrum that had begun with his touch, was spreading. The sensation was nothing like male arousal. It was deeper, more diffuse, a pooling heat that demanded attention. The soft cotton of the thong was suddenly an abrasive, intolerable presence against sensitized skin.
This body wanted to say yes.
It was a horrifying, fascinating revelation. My mind was a storm of panic and longing for Andrea, but Sabrina’s biology was operating on a different frequency, responding to a stranger’s smile, his hands, his proximity.
I looked over his shoulder. Past the crowd, I could just see the back of Andrea’s head, leaning closer to listen to something my body was saying. A fresh twist of jealousy stabbed through the heat.
“Sure,” I heard myself say. The word came out breathy, unlike me. Unlike Sabrina, even. It was a new sound. “Coffee. Yeah.”
Leo’s smile widened. “Great. This way.”
He gestured for me to walk ahead. As I turned, I was hyper-aware of the movement. The dress hem brushed my knees. The weight on my chest shifted, a gentle sway that the bra only partially contained. I felt his eyes on me, not staring, but watching. Tracking. It made the skin between my shoulder blades prickle. The thin straps of the dress, the band of the bra, the line of the thong—every point of contact with this foreign form felt amplified, etched in light. My smaller feet in the tight sneakers carried me forward, each step a妥协 between my instinctual stride and this body’s learned rhythm.
I was going for coffee with a man. In a dress. With a body humming with an arousal I didn't ask for, toward a person I didn't know, while the woman I loved was yards away, falling for a ghost in my skin.
The chaos was no longer something happening to me. It was inside now, in every sway, every heartbeat, every confusing, urgent pulse. I walked beside Leo, the noise of the market fading into a roar in my ears, a prisoner and a pilot in this beautiful, treacherous flesh.