Collide Into You: A Romantic Gender Swap Love Story (15 page)

This cannot be real. Please, dear God, if you’re listening, stop whatever this madness is. Wake me up, please. Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Wait. If this is a dream, if I pinch myself, I’ll wake up. Relieved, I decide to pinch the part of me that would hurt the most. The testicles. But I don’t really want to touch them. I’ve never really found testicles attractive.

Reaching down, I take the veiny, paper-thin skin in between two fingers and pinch hard.

I am
so
not asleep. My stomach rolls and I feel like I’m about to vomit. Any second, my intestines are going to rip through my groin. I ball up, waiting for the pain to pass, but it feels like I’m dying. Don’t breathe. Don’t move.

What the hell is going on?

A sheen of sweat dampens my body. No wonder men collapse after they’ve been kicked in the balls.
 

Once the pain subsides to a dull ache, I shove the sheets off me. My feet are huge, wide, and I swear to God I must be the size of a giant.
Get out of bed, Keira. Make sense of this.

I don’t seem to be capable of operating whosever body this is. My feet crash into things. Clothes. Shoes. Books. DVDs. None of which are
my
things. Dillan has a mirror on the wall. A full-length one. I step just shy of it. If I step into view, I’ll see what I am. Who I am. See what this utter madness is, and I’ll be able to get help. Call a doctor or something.
Yeah, um, hi, I am a woman but stuck in a hairy, unfemale-like body. No, I’m not transgender. I was a woman yesterday. Today, there’s manly junk hanging between my legs. Don’t hang up on me.

I close my eyes and step to the left. I crack one eye open. Then the other. Maybe if I breathe deeply, things will seem better. Or maybe I’m suddenly insane.

Keira Holtslander is
not
standing in front of me.

I’m tall. I have Dillan’s brown hair, his light green eyes, his shit-eating grin, his
I haven’t shaved in two days
jaw, his smooth, touchable chest, his
I can make any woman happy
penis, his finely sculpted arms, shoulders, thighs, calves, and, if that wasn’t the worst of it, I own his cocky stance. God, I want to punch his—my—handsome face.

Take a deep breath. Now take another one. Well, shit, that doesn’t help. I can’t contain the scream any longer. When it comes out, I sound just like Dillan. But I’m not the only one screaming. Next door, I hear my own voice cursing up a storm.

Dillan

M
Y
FIRST
THOUGHT
IS
I wonder if Keira has moved out. My next is to wonder why I’m sweating profusely. When did I put on all these clothes? Who wears sweats to bed during the summertime? Reaching over, I grab at empty air, intending to shift my alarm clock to see what time it is. But my arm keeps on going, and I hit the side of the bed instead of finding a side table with a clock.

Okay, that’s weird. Did I move the blasted thing in a heat of anger last night? It’s possible. Once, I rearranged my entire bedroom and forgot about it. I blindly jumped over the spot my bed used to be and hit the arm chair, instead. So, yeah, it’s possible that after my argument with Keira last night, and after two or three or six beers, I might have shifted things around.
 

The room is rather dark, and while I never close my blinds, maybe I did that, too. What a strange morning. I feel like I need to brush my teeth for an hour straight to get this odd taste out of my mouth. Hopefully my beer doesn’t leave that type of aftertaste. If so, I’ll quickly be out of business if I agree with Alec and allow his offer of getting my beer sold in Nationals Park.

Uh
, I think. Alec and Keira. Keira and Alec. Wait. Didn’t I tell myself last night that I wasn’t going to think about her anymore? That after last night, I didn’t have to look at her, talk to her, or think about her? Right.
Dillan, you’re such a blockhead. You’re thinking about her right now.
Well, I’m thinking about her because for some reason, it seems like I can smell her all around me.
 

Cinnamon buns. It smells like cinnamon buns right now. Is she baking in the kitchen? That’d be the first. If she was, she wouldn’t share any of it with me. That’s for sure.

I rub my eyes and stop. I flex fingers. I turn my hands around. Light as air. Soft. I feel over my face and find smoothness. Arch eyebrows. Soft lips. Tiny ears. Long hair.

Huh?

I grip up and down my arms. I
do not
find the type of muscle definition I had expected. My arms are slimmer, but still strong, like that of a woman. Or maybe someone who’s been wasting away in some dark cellar for years. The room is dark, but I’m fairly certain I’m not someone’s captive.
 

There must be two blankets on top of me right now. No wonder I’m sweating to death. I don’t even recognize the blankets. I mean, did I leave my apartment last night and buy blankets? That would have been some night—
uh oh
.

I do remember. They are Keira’s blankets. I remember them from the other day when I inspected her room. Holy crap. I’m in Keira’s room.
 

That’s problem number one. Problem number two is that I don’t feel like myself. Normally I have to take a huge piss when I wake up. At the moment, other than the sweating, I wouldn’t mind snuggling in deeper into these blankets and then, later, going for a run.

My leg muscles tingle and ache, like maybe I need to stretch them out. I kick off the offending blankets that I shouldn’t be under in the first place and grab my thighs. My first impression is that my thighs are smaller, but very chiseled, like some sculptor had taken a year to perfect every inch of muscle.

While that wasn’t my first thought about something being very wrong, it sort of cemented it for me.

I can admit that there’s something wrong.

I’m in the
wrong
room.

I’m definitely in the
wrong
bed.
 

If Keira catches me in here, I’m dead. But that’s only if she hasn’t moved out already. If she’s gone, then I’m just an idiot for mooning over her and sleeping in her bed.
 

But wait. If she had moved out, she would have taken her blankets with her.

She hasn’t moved out.

That means that at any minute, I’m chopped liver.

I jump out of the bed, find the window in her room, and shove the curtains aside and pull the blinds up. Sunlight flows in. The morning is well advanced. I’d say it’s eight or nine in the morning.
 

Then I notice I’m not as tall as I should be. Looking down, I inspect my
light as air
hands.
 

They are
not
my hands.

They are dainty. Small. Feminine. There’s barely any hair on them.

I don’t know why I’m not screaming.

I don’t know why I’m not hopping around and acting like a lunatic.
 

Okay, I know. It’s because I’m dreaming. I convinced myself that I didn’t like Keira and I’m now dreaming about
being
her. Dreams can be clever bitches. Until Keira is out of my life, I vow not to sleep or dream. Ever.

That should take care of the problem.

All I have to do now is wake up. But first, I cannot wear all of this clothing. I swear to God it’s like a sauna in here. I rip off the clothes and catch a glance at my lower half.

There’s stuff missing.

Notably my penis.

This is the worst dream ever. But something tells me that I’m not actually dreaming. All of this feels very real. Instead of what I expect to see, I find a neat triangle above glorious lady-parts. Why am I looking down at a vagina? I don’t think I’ve seen one quite from
this
angle. I should not own a vagina. Nor a perfectly formed pubic hair triangle. My thighs are spectacular and I’ve seen them before. On Keira. I’ve ogled Keira’s legs enough to recognize them instantly.

I take a slow breath and move my hands up over a smooth, flat stomach, and over small but exquisitely formed breasts.

I don’t need a mirror to realize I’m in Keira’s body. If I’m in
her
body, does this mean she’s in
my
body? For a fleeting second, I’m deliriously worried about what will happen when she finds out. I have a feeling hell is about to descend upon earth.
 

The scream that comes out of my mouth confirms it. It’s Keira’s voice. I shout every curse word I know.

When I hear my own voice from the other side of the apartment, I know that the worst day of my life has just begun.

Keira

I
DON
’
T
CARE
ABOUT
CLOTHES
. Clothes are the least of my problems. I throw open Dillan’s bedroom door, screaming at him to come out of
my
room. When I see him—
when I see my body
—walk out of my bedroom, I’m stark naked. Well, except for the socks. Dillan kept my socks on.

“Were you checking me out?” I scream at him, in Dillan’s voice. This is going to scar me for life. “Why are my clothes off of my body?” Dillan doesn’t seem to be capable of words, so I slap him. I slap my own face. This is going to scar me for life. I can’t help thinking it repeatedly. “Why did you take my clothes off, Dillan?”

He—I—
oh, I don’t know anymore
—flinches.
 

“I didn’t know I was in
your
body at first, Keira,” I hear my own voice yell at me. This is too weird. “When I woke up, I had about seventeen layers of clothing on. Cut me some slack. It’s not like I have experience with body swapping. I just found out—jeez, I don’t understand what’s going on.” Dillan moves in a circle, deep in thought. “I’m you. You’re me. I sound like you, but I can’t wrap my brain around the fact that I’m staring at myself from over here.” He stops short, shaking his head quickly, staring at my—
his
—midsection. “I have really great abs, don’t I?”

I smack my own face again. “Focus, please,” I say in as authoritative a voice as I can muster at the moment. I’m close to breaking down. “Obviously, we
both
cannot be experiencing the same dream. This is for real. Holy Christ. I’m in man whore’s body.”

“No need to be insulting, sweetheart,” Dillan says snidely, hands on hips. Wow.
I really sound like a bitch sometimes
, I think.

“Let’s get dressed. I can’t think when I’m looking at myself naked. Then we can figure this out.”
With alcohol. With electric shock therapy. With a psychiatrist willing to prescribe drugs. Lots of drugs.

“Good idea,” he agrees.

We move to our respective bedrooms only to figure out—too late—that we need to head into each other’s bedrooms for clothing.
Does my butt actually look like that when I walk?
So straight and proper, like I have a stick up my rear.
No wonder Dillan thinks I’m Sergeant Prim and Proper.

I rummage through Dillan’s drawers and find very little in the way of underwear. Most of it is on the floor. Sighing, I pick up what I hope is a clean pair—I’m certainly not going to smell them to check—and slide my legs into them. Well, I try to, at least.
 

Dillan’s legs feel like a ton of bricks. How does he lift these legs day in and day out? Thankfully, the bed catches me when I stumble as I try to put on the boxer briefs. I throw on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. The buttons are on the wrong side of the jeans, but I manage. Just barely.

Dillan

I’
M
VERY
FAMILIAR
WITH
WOMEN
’
S
underwear. The shape, the size, the sexy factor. I’ve pulled underwear off many a woman over the years. What I’ve not done is put them
on
a woman. And not put them on
as a woman
myself. But, how hard can it be?
 

Keira’s underwear are tiny, orange with zebra stripes on them, and I wish I was observing them in any other situation other than this one. I would have rather been taking these animal-striped panties from her body and then dive into her using my own wild moves. No such luck today. Or ever, probably.
 

I hold open the waist of her panties and slip one leg in, then the other, and shimmy—yes, shimmy—them up my legs, over my hips, but I pull them up
too
far and I give myself a wedgie. Okay, that’s not very comfortable. Why do women wear thongs? I’m actually shocked Keira owns a pair. Reaching around, I adjust the thong part of the underwear and pull the strip of fabric out of my derrière as best I can.
 

Probably best if I don’t tell her about this.

I snag a tank top from a drawer, and, because I can’t find anything that resembles pants, I slip on what I think is a pair of her running shorts. They are way too short, but they sure as hell make my legs—her legs—look fantastic.

Probably shouldn’t tell her that, either.

When I look up, she’s glaring at me from the doorway.

Keira

“T
HIS
IS
ENTIRELY
YOUR
FAULT
,” I yell at him. Yelling won’t get us anywhere, but it makes me feel better. What makes it worse is that it isn’t my voice yelling at him. It’s his voice yelling at him. This is way too confusing. Also, I don’t know how this might be entirely his fault. But accusing him also makes me feel better.

“Listen,” Dillan says, lifting an arm. “I’m not a good yeller. My tone just isn’t right for it. So, please, stop yelling, Keira. I don’t want my own voice to become irritating to me. Once we figure this out and switch back, we can yell at the other in our own bodies again. We can yell at each other for the rest of our lives. But, until then, let’s call some sort of truce.”

I sigh. He might have a point, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with him.

“Let’s start with the obvious,” I say.

“Okay.”

“I’m you. You’re me. Do you agree with this?”

“Sort of,” he says.

“What’s
sort of
about this?”

“Metaphysically, everything about me—Dillan Pope—is the same. My thoughts, my ideas, my likes and dislikes are all mine, and I acknowledge that in this body—your body—I am Dillan Pope. I just happen to be Dillan Pope residing in Keira Holtslander’s body. It’s a body switch, but not a complete switch. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know we switched.”