Chapter 3: The Bikini Decision
The mirror didn’t lie. It showed a ghost, a beautiful, hollow-eyed ghost wearing my skin as a costume. The black bikini wasn’t clothing; it was a framework, a minimalist diagram highlighting every asset. The triangles of the top strained, the deep cleavage they created a shadowed canyon I couldn’t stop staring at. The bottoms were a betrayal, a narrow strip of fabric that vanished between the cheeks of an ass that felt foreign and prominently rounded. My waist was a severe inward curve my hands could nearly span. My stomach, flat and soft, led down to the vulnerable junction of my thighs, the dark triangle of the bikini bottom a flimsy flag planted on uncharted, nerve-rich land.
I looked like a centerfold. I felt like a prisoner.
The white cover-up was a joke of modesty. The sheer fabric clung, doing more to accentuate than conceal. I pulled my long hair over one shoulder, the strands like blonde silk against my collarbone, and tied it into a messy knot. The simple act felt performative, feminine in a way that was embedded in muscle memory that wasn’t mine.
Walking back through the silent mansion was a study in alien physics. My bare feet, size five, slapped softly on the cool marble. Each step sent a reverberating jiggle up through my torso, a bounce and sway in my chest and rear that was impossible to ignore. My center of gravity was lower, anchored in my hips, making my gait inherently different. I felt both incredibly light and precariously unbalanced, like a vase on a narrow pedestal.
The afternoon sun hit me like a physical wall when I stepped back onto the pool deck. The heat soaked into my bare shoulders, so different from the bearded, T-shirt-covered exposure I was used to.
They were in the pool. Mark was floating on his back, his powerful frame effortlessly buoyant, his chest a broad plane of muscle and dark hair above the waterline. Sabrina—in my body—was clinging to the edge in the shallow end, looking profoundly uncomfortable. She held herself stiffly, my shoulders tense up near my ears. Seeing my own face from the outside, wearing an expression of pure, trapped anxiety, was a surreal punch to the gut.
“There she is!” Mark righted himself, standing up in the chest-deep water. His eyes tracked me from the hedge to the lounge chairs. They widened, just for a second, before a friendly smile plastered itself over his obvious appreciation. “Find something that worked?”
“Barely,” I muttered, but the words got lost in the breeze. I let the cover-up slide off my shoulders. The air felt immediately cooler, more invasive, on the vast expanse of skin I’d just revealed. I could feel every millimeter of the tiny bikini, the strings at my neck and back, the narrow band across my ribs. My breasts felt utterly unsupported, their full weight a soft, persistent pull against the flimsy fabric.
I walked to the pool’s edge, my every movement conscious and stiff. The concrete was rough under my tender feet. I sat, dipping my legs in. The water was shockingly cool. My new skin was paler, finer, and the temperature registered with a sharper intensity.
“Coming in?” Mark asked. He was closer now. Water droplets gleamed on the dusting of hair on his arms and chest.
Sabrina shook my head—our head—vigorously. “I’m good here. Sun’s nice.”
I lowered myself into the water, a slow, controlled descent. The relief of submersion was instant. The water lifted the weight from my chest, blurred the harsh lines of my new shape. For a moment, I was just a form in the blue, not a spectacle.
That lasted about three seconds.
Mark swam over, his movements creating small waves that lapped against my chin. He stopped an arm’s length away, resting his elbows on the submerged deck. “So, Sabrina. Justin’s been a miser with details. How long have you lived next door?”
I glanced at Sabrina. Her eyes, my blue eyes, were wide with panic. “A year,” I said, answering for her. “Since… after my parents.”
“Oh, hell. I’m sorry,” Mark said, and his sincerity seemed genuine. It made my skin crawl. “That’s tough. And you live in that big place all alone?”
“I like the quiet,” I said, echoing what I’d vaguely known about her. My voice was higher, and I had to consciously soften it to avoid a girlish squeak.
“She’s very private,” Sabrina added, using my voice with a clunky force. “Keeps to herself. Doesn’t like visitors.” She was trying to get him to leave, but it just sounded rude.
Mark chuckled, unoffended. He shifted, and his leg brushed against mine under the water.
The contact was electric. Not in a good way. It was a bolt of pure, jarring shock. His skin was warm, his leg solid and hairy against the smooth, sensitive flesh of my calf. I jerked my leg back as if scalded.
He didn’t seem to notice. Or he chose not to. “So, not a big swimmer either, I take it?” he asked, nodding toward Sabrina’s death-grip on the pool edge.
“Just… cooling off,” she mumbled.
An awkward silence descended, filled only with the hum of the pool filter. The sun beat down. I was hyper-aware of my body floating in the space between them—the man who was my best friend, looking at me with open desire, and the girl who was my neighbor, wearing my face like a ill-fitting mask.
Mark broke the silence. He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a confidential tone meant just for me. “Can I ask you something kinda forward?”
My heart, that small, frantic bird, tried to escape my ribs. “Sure.”
“Did Justin put you up to this?”
I blinked. “What?”
“This.” He gestured vaguely between us, a wet hand encompassing the pool, the situation. “He knows I’ve been… out of the game. Lonely, maybe. Was this his idea? You coming over? Because if it is, it’s the best damn thing he’s ever done for me.”
The horror was ice in my veins. He thought this was a setup. A blind date arranged by his best friend. He thought I had orchestrated this, using this young, beautiful body as bait.
“No,” I said, too quickly. “God, no. It’s not… that. At all. It was an accident. The cable. Remember?”
His smile didn’t falter, but it changed. It became knowing, tinged with a disappointment he tried to hide. “Right. The cable. Well. Accident or not, I’m glad it happened.”
He pushed off from the edge then, swimming a slow, powerful breaststroke toward the deep end, leaving me alone in the shimmering water. I watched the play of muscles in his back, the familiar tattoo of an eagle on his shoulder blade, and felt a nausea that had nothing to do with the body I was in.
From the edge, Sabrina whispered, her voice barely carrying over the water. “We have to get him to leave.”
I looked at her—at my own bearded face, pale and sweating, etched with a fear I’d never worn before. “How?” I whispered back, the sound swallowed by the pool.
She had no answer. We were stuck in the sun-drenched water, two strangers in each other’s skins, watching the one person who might be able to help us swim lazy laps, utterly captivated by a illusion. And the terrible, unspoken truth hung between us, heavier than the water, more suffocating than the heat: he wasn’t leaving anytime soon.