Collide Into You: A Romantic Gender Swap Love Story (26 page)

He looks down at our still-clasped hands and says, “Something like that.”

I shake free from his hand, dive under, and, with protesting limbs, I swim to the opposite end of the pool and back again. I don’t care how much it hurts. He might have been a lifeguard in college, but I can tell he isn’t a natural swimmer like I am. I practically grew up in the pool in our backyard. So while he doesn’t have the muscle memory, I have the knowledge of how to swim. I surface in front of Dillan.

“So… I’m guessing that Jon told you?” he asks without preamble. I see the worry—no, the terror—in his eyes. By the end of all this, once we’ve swapped back into our respective bodies, we are going to know so much about the other that we’ll either be sick to death or madly in love with each other. I’m not sure which ending terrifies me more.

“You’re free to correct the record, Dillan. That is if you didn’t actually plan to jump off the roof of my parents’ house and into our pool.” He grunts and his nose flares. “I’ll make a deal with you,” I say. “Tell me what
you
planned to do and I’ll tell you what
I
planned to do that day, too.”

He gives me a look. An
I-hope-you-planned-something-naughty
look. He won’t be disappointed.

“Deal,” he agrees. “But you go first.”

Dillan

S
HE
PRESSES
HER
MOUTH
TOGETHER
like it’s something she’s used to doing on a regular basis. It looks odd on my face, but it’s all Keira in that expression. I ignore everyone around us. The men, the women, none of whom I even know, and concentrate on Keira.
 

On the woman I’m in love with.

I cannot deny it any longer. Every woman I’ve been with has been to get
her
out of my head. Unsuccessfully, I might add. I wasn’t a virgin when I first met Keira, but I wish to God that I was. I wish that she had looked at me that day at her party, called me over, and wanted to explore her sexuality with me.
 

In my dreams
, I think. I would have been happy just talking about the weather with her.

“Okay,” she says slowly. She directs me to the deep end and we sort of huddle and dog paddle in an empty corner of the pool. I have to repeatedly adjust the bathing suit. It continuously rides up my butt and I’m paranoid enough to assume that, at some point, the top will float away, as if it has its own agenda.
In a world, where bikinis rule the nation, one man will stop at nothing to save the world from President Bikini’s evil plot to overthrow the government…

I shake my head. Sometimes my mind goes in a juvenile direction. Keira’s about to tell me something important and I’m worried—okay,
worried
is too strong a word—that her bathing suit has nefarious plans.

“I only pretended to ignore you at my party,” she says in a hushed tone. “I was very, very aware of you.”

“Uh, Keira, you didn’t just pretend. You
did
ignore me. Trust me. I know when a beautiful woman is ignoring me.”

“I can prove it to you. You wore dark slacks, a white polo shirt, and you had a black backpack slung over one shoulder. You were clean-shaven, tan, and your hair was much shorter than it is right now. Everyone was drawn to you. I was, too. And that was the problem.”

I take a deep breath and ask, “That you were drawn to me?” I’m shocked that she remembers what I wore. The only reason I remember is because I’ve spent the last nine years trying to forget that day. Even small things stay in your memory.

Keira moves in closer and our feet occasionally touch. “No, because everyone
else
was drawn to you. Jon told me that you were some sort of woman magnet and, at first, I didn’t believe him. Not until I saw you. Dillan, I swear to God that I wanted to find any reason possible to give you a tour of our house and have that tour end in my bedroom. It was my high school graduation party. I was a grown up. In theory, at least. I wanted to do grown-up things…with you. But when everyone else practically adored you from the start, it sort of disgusted me. Obviously, you wouldn’t be interested in some eighteen-year-old virgin who had designs of
losing it
to you.”

I’m having trouble breathing. Suddenly I’m back to being that twenty-one-year-old kid trying to impress Keira. So I tell her everything. About my plan of jumping off the house and into the pool. The beer with the homeless guy. About how I worked harder on making my own beer, harder than I’ve ever worked on anything else before, and that I did it all because of that day. That defining, momentous, crashing day nine years ago.

“Nine Year Crush,” she says at the end of my speech.
She’s not making fun of me. This is a good thing.
“It has a good ring to it. Promise me one thing, Dillan. If you ever make it with this beer. If you actually sell it, because I don’t know what your plans are, I want you tell the real story behind the brand. It’s a powerful story. Without it, without that failure, so to speak, you wouldn’t have been motivated enough to build it. We failed nine years ago, Dillan. We should learn from that.”

Keira

A
FTER
DINNER
AND
AFTER
IT
becomes apparent, to me at least, that we aren’t going to swap back before the morning, I come to the realization that I need to instruct Dillan on how to act like me tomorrow at work. The do’s and don’ts of military life. He sits down with me at the dining room table. Seems a bit formal after he confessed a defining moment in his life. A moment that shaped him over the last nine years.

It’s not like I’m prepared to snuggle in bed with him to discuss these things. I’m not ready for that. Yes, I like Dillan. I more than
like
him. It’s funny that once he swapped into my body, I’m able to see the
real
him. If I think about that thought for too long, I’ll confuse myself, so I leave it at that.

What would have happened if we both acted on our initial thoughts all those years ago? Would we be here now? Would we still be together? Probably not. I needed to make my own mistakes. To grow up. To learn how to be a strong, independent woman who wasn’t defined by a man’s love. Because the greatest love a woman can have is the love she has for herself.

Do I love myself? Do I respect myself? Have I made all the right choices for me, thus far?

I don’t know. Maybe Dillan will help me realize this. Maybe, for some reason, I can’t discover this in my own skin. It’s one thing to think about something objectively, but this body swapping thing takes the premise to a whole new level. I suppose I have a few more days to figure this out. Otherwise, there’s no point of learning a lesson if we won’t change back.
 

I write something on a piece of paper as Dillan watches. After I give it to him, to which he gives me a “huh?” look, I turn on my laptop and find a diagram of the Pentagon.

“That,” I point to the paper, “is where my office is located in the Pentagon.” I then proceed to explain how to enter the building, how to find the office, and the names of the individuals he’ll encounter. I write that down, too.

He nods as if he’s getting everything up to this point, but I can see a question forming.
 

“Yeah,” he says, “That’s all good information, but what am I supposed to do when I get there? I mean, am I supposed to be deciphering cryptic code or something?”

“My background is in security intelligence. Basically, on how to protect classified information, the proper way to classify a document, and when, where, and how to declassify it. There are four main classification codes for the United States Government. Top Secret. Secret. Confidential. And Unclassified. Now, without getting too specific, there are compartments
within
each of those classifications that restrict who can see it. Just because someone has a Top Secret clearance doesn’t necessarily mean they can see everything and anything marked Top Secret. There’s something called
need-to-know,
meaning an individual, in the course of their official duties, has a valid
need-to-know
for the information. Only if they are properly read-on, or briefed, to that level, then they can see it.”

“What level do you have?”

“I possess a Top Secret and several sensitive compartments within the Top Secret domain. All you need to know, for the next few days, is that you are cleared to enter the room number I wrote down for you, as well as General MacWilliams’ secure office. I don’t have the codes for it yet. You’ll have to get Sergeant Justin Hauten—you met him at the bowling game—to open it for you.”

“Okay,” he says. “I can tell that this is important to you. But you never really answered my question. What am I supposed to be doing all day long tomorrow?”

“This is where things get somewhat interesting.”

Dillan

“I’
D
CALL
THAT
THE
UNDERSTATEMENT
of the year,” I tell Keira. “Things got interesting yesterday when we woke up. If we can deal with this, we can deal with anything.”

Keira smiles at me. “The reason General MacWilliams brought me to the Pentagon is to perform a special duty. I doubt I’ll be here longer than a few weeks.” My heart constricts with this knowledge.
Did Jon tell me this information in the beginning or not?
“General MacWilliams is the Chief of Staff of the Army. He’s the highest ranking Army general in the country. Don’t fuck up around him, okay? In fact, if you see him, keep your head down.”

“Yikes, Sergeant Brunette,” I say as I put my hands up in a surrendering manner. “I’ll solve everything by walking backwards. Will that work for you?”

She scoffs. “Only for those that are walking
opposite
you. Now, the folks walking behind you…you’ll be face to face.”

“Stop being so logical, Keira,” I say. “I was only joking.” As if she didn’t already know that.

“My job—your job—is to read several hundred letters from the 1950s and determine if classified information was passed along in the passages.”

“Yeah, I doubt I’ll be successful at that.”

“I don’t blame you. It isn’t exciting work, and everything I’ve read to this point leads me to believe that the letters are benign. However, I get the feeling it may go in a romantic direction. When you get home tomorrow night, we can discuss it.”

I nod. “I think I can survive one day as you. If I get lost or seem confused, I can always blame it on the fact that I’m new there. Plus, you are pretty. People like helping pretty people.”

“Do not, under any circumstance, act like some wounded bird that needs constant assistance.” She says this through clenched teeth.
 

I recoil slightly. God forbid that I compliment her. “Lighten up. Seriously. You’d think I just signed you up for a filmed gang-bang. I have one more question.”

“What?” She looks ill at ease. Her face is white, her mouth grim. I already know she won’t sleep a wink tonight due to worry.

“Do I get to wear a gun?”

I duck easily when Keira throws her pen at me.

Keira

I
SPEND
THE
NIGHT
TOSSING
and turning. I chat with Jon on instant messenger, but he won’t discuss what’s wrong between him and Tanner. Jon only wants to know one thing: Has Dillan hit on me? I roll my eyes.
Big brothers.

“No, of course not,” I type. “You’re being too hard on him, Jon. Don’t forget that several years ago, you told me that Dillan couldn’t be that bad if he was your best friend. Besides, he and I have compared notes. I know what you told him and he knows what you told me.”

The screen blinks as I wait for his response. “You remember that? Okay. This is worse than I thought. Who are you and where is the real Keira?” he types back. Then he does a quick smiley face in the next line.

I’ll admit that my tune is drastically different from what it used to be when it came to Dillan. Usually I have no qualms with making fun of him, calling him a man whore, stuff like that. I find that I can’t bring myself to do so right now. I’m not surprised that Jon is suspicious.
 

“Just tired is all, I suppose,” I type back. “Plus, I’m worried about Tanner. I think he hurt his wrist pretty bad on Friday’s game.”

“He didn’t tell me that…” Jon writes. “Did he seem okay when you saw him last?”

“I can tell something’s wrong, if that says anything. You didn’t break up, did you?”
Because I will strangle you if you did. Tanner is the best thing that’s ever happened to you, Jon.

“No,” he types back, and for a few minutes, that’s all he writes. Then, “We had an argument.” Pause, then, “About you.”

“That’s…odd.” Tanner, who wants Dillan to
go after me
, mentioned that Jon didn’t agree with him.

“Keira, how do you feel about Dillan? Truthfully.”

He had to bring in the
truthfully
caveat, didn’t he? He only does that on special occasions or when he thinks I will lie to him. Which means he suspects something.

I think about what to type. I can’t be too fast or too slow about it.
Obviously, I’m not over-thinking any of this…
 

“He isn’t all that bad,” I finally write back.

“
He isn’t all that bad, Keira?
That’s like you saying he’s wonderful. You’ve never said that about anyone before. Ever.”

“I know.” I can’t think of more than that right now. “What was the argument about, Jon?”

Silence. I’m about to write another message when he finally replies. “Tanner has this idea that Dillan really likes you. I happen to disagree.”

“That’s it? That doesn’t sound like an argument to me. So what if Dillan likes me? I thought he was like a brother to you. Would you be so—” I pause typing, wondering if I should finish my question, but I press on. It’s too late now to stop. “—opposed to the match if it were true?”

I hold my breath. I didn’t know until I wrote it that it would mean a lot to me if Jon was okay with the arrangement. Not because I want him to rule my life or make decisions for me. It’s because I love and trust my brother and his opinion means the world to me.