Collide Into You: A Romantic Gender Swap Love Story (17 page)

Keira

W
HILE
I
LOOK
OKAY
IN
Dillan’s body—T-shirt, jeans, tennis shoes, I force Dillan to change out of the clothes he picked for my body this morning. He’s next to me as I pick out a quarter-sleeve, green jersey knit top and a pair of black capris. I point out a pair of black slip-on Keds, and he slides a foot into each.

“Lovely,” he says sarcastically. “I look like a grandmother now. Thanks.”
 

“I don’t exactly have a designer wardrobe, Dillan.”

“I’m telling you now, if Ellen doesn’t change us back, I’m going shopping at the Pentagon City Mall. I refuse to wear what’s in your closet. I’ve been a woman for a hour, and I have more fashion sense than you do.”

“Whatever you buy, I get to keep.”

He scoffs. “As if any of it would fit my body after the change, and Stacey’s pretty much an Amazon compared to you.”

“Right,” I mutter. “Now it’s my turn to say
thanks
. Jerk,” I say under my breath.

Dillan laughs. “You get riled up too easily, Keira. Loosen up. You might have more fun if you do.”

“Are you having fun, Dillan?”

“You’re missing the point, and I’m not talking about this situation exclusively. I’m talking in general.”

We leave the apartment.
 

“So you’re the expert now?” I ask accusingly. With Dillan’s legs, my stride is longer than normal, and I have to rein in my step. Dillan isn’t that much taller than me, maybe three or four inches, but it makes a world of difference in looking around. “Being tall is awesome,” I say.

“Yeah, well, being short isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be,” Dillan says beside me.

“Just wait until they whistle.”

“Really? Do guys still do that?”

I just laugh. Once outside, it isn’t long before we’re standing outside of Ellen’s Corner Bakery. When I read the sign on the door, the urge to murder someone is overwhelming. Namely, one Dillan Pope. But if I did this now, it wouldn’t be murder. It would be suicide.

“Closed for renovation. Ellen’s Corner Bakery will reopen on Tuesday for our 30th Annual Celebration. We hope you’ll join us then.”

“Ellen didn’t say anything about this last night,” Dillan says. His tone is dejected and pitiful.

“Does she live upstairs?” I ask.

He looks up at me quickly. “Yes! Maybe there’s a door around back.”

We aren’t messing around anymore. We literally sprint around the block and head straight down the delivery road that serves the business. What gets me is that Dillan, in my body, gets there much faster than I do, in Dillan’s body. The man’s in shape, but compared to my runner’s body, he’s a bit of a clunker.

Dillan stops at a door labeled 34. “Are you sure this isn’t just a delivery door?” I ask.

“I’m not sure of anything, Keira,” he whisper-yells at me. He knocks on the door. Then he starts to pound on it as if his very life depended on it. And, in a way, it does.

I join him, and after several moments, we hear movement behind the door. It opens with a metallic creaking, but it’s Ellen, all right.

“Dillan, Keira,” she exclaims in delight. The telling part is that when she says our names, she looks at the true person, not the gender. At first, I wasn’t sure Ellen was at fault, but now I know for certain. Ellen swapped our bodies. She smiles, then says, “I wondered when I might be seeing the both of you. Come in, come in. Pardon the dust, please.”

Dillan

I
T
’
S
A
DARK
HALLWAY
AND
in any other circumstance, I wouldn’t follow someone I barely knew down a darkened hallway. But this wasn’t just any other circumstance. This was me getting my body back. My genitalia back. My dignity back.

If Ellen could do something like this—make people switch bodies—what else could she do? Should we be worried? Should we be scared?

It’s just Ellen, I keep telling myself. Then the other part of me keeps saying,
Yeah, the same Ellen that gave you a vagina this morning. So keep moving, buddy, figure this out, and get on with your life.

Keira’s close on my heels when Ellen opens another door that leads into her bakery. We pass a huge electric mixer as well as boxes of ingredients: flour, sugar, stacks of coffee, stuff like that. Last night, it smelled like chocolate chip cookies. Today, it smells like cinnamon buns.

“Have you had breakfast yet?” Ellen asks.

“Eggs and toast,” Keira answers. “Normally that would satisfy me, but…” She trails off.

“You’re still hungry, I imagine. Different appetite with that body, I’m afraid,” Ellen says. “I’ve made a few things. I knew you’d come by sooner or later, and I’ve got some sticky buns straight out of the oven that need icing. If one of you will do the honors, the other can help me make a pot of coffee.”

I stop short. “Ellen, you know what we are here for. Let’s not play games. Frankly, I’m not sure if I ever want a cup of coffee from here again.”

“Really, Dillan,” Keira says. “If you’re not careful, she will turn you into a toad.”

Ellen laughs. “This isn’t fairy tale magic, Keira. Besides, I don’t do toads. Messy creatures.”

“So it’s magic?” I ask.

“Not really,” Ellen answers. And that’s all she says on the topic. She pulls out the sticky buns and thrusts a jar of white icing in my hands. “Apply liberally,” she orders. We sit down at a small bistro-styled table that, with dozens of deep scratches, has seen better days.

“But there’s fifty buns here,” I protest. Ellen gives me the evil eye, but that doesn’t deter me. “You’re closed until Tuesday, Ellen. What are you going to do with fifty icing-topped sticky buns?”

“It’s for my granddaughter’s Sunday School bake sale.”

“Oh,” I say.

“So, you are probably wondering why all of this is happening?” Ellen says conversationally, as if we just happened to stop by for some
other
reason.

“I’d say that’s an understatement,” Keira says. “We’d like you to change us back.”

I watch for Ellen’s reaction. Or lack of one. Other than taking a sip of her coffee, she barely moves a muscle. “I can’t,” she says at last.

“So you admit that you did this?” I say. “But you can’t change us back? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Only the two of you can change yourselves back.”

“Dillan,” Keira says, “I told you that we had to learn a lesson. We just have to find out what it is first.”

“Very good,” Ellen says, praising Keira. “Last week, I gave each of you a task. A task you didn’t fulfill. So, I had to take matters into my own hands.”

“A task?” I nearly yell at her. Trust me, I’m not proud of myself. “What are you talking about? I don’t remember any tasks.”

Ellen takes another sip of her coffee. I smear icing all over sticky buns with a little too much force. Some are flattened now. Keira eats a plain bun, and watches us both wearily. Just because she’s in my body, it doesn’t mean she can eat whatever junk she wants to.

“Dillan,” Ellen starts, oblivious to my selfish thoughts. “I said you could use a
challenge
. Keira, I said you could do with a bit of
disorder
. You may think you know what I meant, but obviously you did not, because as of two o’clock this morning, you swapped bodies, and will remain so until you fulfill the tasks.”
 

She inspects my work and
tsks
. I’m almost done with spreading the icing on the smashed buns. I have a feeling that once I’m finished, our time limit is up.

“What about a clue?” Keira pleads.
 

Ellen smiles understandingly. “Think about who you’ve swapped into and go from there. Thank you for your help today, Dillan. These should sell like, well, like hot cakes.” Ellen chuckles at the smashed buns. She looks at the old-style watch pinned to her apron. “You two have until the celebration to figure it out.”

“But that’s days away,” I say. There’s no way I can be Keira for several days.

Keira stands. She looks as hopeless as I feel. “What happens if we don’t solve it?”

“Then the switch will be permanent.” My stomach falls. “Worry not,” Ellen says with cheer. “I’ve yet to have a couple fail.”

So she’s done this before?
I think.
How comforting.

Keira

T
HE
WALK
BACK
TO
THE
apartment is a quiet one. Each in our own thoughts. A task. A lesson.
You could do with a bit of disorder, Keira.
Well, this certainly qualified as disorder, but I’m fairly confident that this isn’t what Ellen meant.
 

Disorder is the exact opposite of what I need or what I want. As a soldier, my life is a series of rules, regulations, and order. A big stress on the
order
part. It’s what I liked about being in the military. I always knew what was expected of me.

I don’t know if I can do the unexpected. I don’t know if I can be Dillan. I’d go crazy. Insane. We’re talking about the man who wanted to jump from the top of my parents’ house into our swimming pool at my high school graduation party. To impress me, of all things.

Oh, I knew about that. Jon told me a week after it happened and I pinky-swear-promised never to let Dillan know. Sort of a secret within a secret. It was an easy promise to make, since, at eighteen, I had no intention of ever talking to Dillan again.
 

Now that I
am
him, for all intents and purposes, I feel certain that I am about to get to know him even better. Way better. I am not prepared for this.

I’ll never be prepared for this.

Take, for instance, the way he smells. It should be virtually impossible to be attracted to oneself, but here I am, in Dillan’s body, loving the way he smells. God, I’m so disgusted with myself right now that I want to vomit up the cinnamon bun I just ate.

And don’t get me started on all the sly looks I’ve been getting from the women we’ve passed on the sidewalk. Not just sly looks.
Invitational
looks. Even at ten in the morning, Dillan’s a stud. I’m not denying that. What I want to deny is the fact that I’m now suddenly experiencing the feeling firsthand. How tiring it must be to be Dillan Pope. He’s probably used to it, like how I work out a muscle group until I plateau. You have to change things up in order to see results.

Well, Ellen certainly did that. Changed things up. And this is the result. The head on my shoulders is like twice the size of my own. I swear, my hands are huge paws. I feel like I’ll crush everything I try to touch. Everything about the essence of me is trapped to a clunky, muscled male body that could never run a mile in under six minutes.
Don’t forget the junk, Keira.
Oh, I’m not. With every step, I can feel Dillan’s
package
. His impressive package. Walking is tough enough. Running? Dear God, let’s not think about what happens to the stuff downstairs when men run.
 

Okay, I’m sort of grossed out now. Thankfully my phone rings and I pick it up without thinking.

Dillan

I
GLANCE
A
COUPLE
OF
times at Keira. She plods along in my body as if I’m just too heavy for her to operate my legs. In a sense, I can understand. In her body, it feels like I’m floating on thin air. She’s just so light and tiny compared to me and, as an experiment, I want to sprint the rest of the way back to the apartment. Even up the stairs. Of course, I do no such thing. Not after seeing how women are looking at my body, and noticing Keira’s reaction.

She sort of looks ticked off.

For all I know, she’s internally calling me a man whore and every other negative adjective she can think of. It’s disappointing that she thinks of me as a man whore. Granted, I don’t begrudge her the thought. Fair game is fair game, and women who do the same thing are often called worse. Much worse.
 

So while I don’t think that I deserve the title—it’s not like I go out and randomly have sex just because someone has given me the
come hither
look—it comes across as disheartening that she of all people would think of me in that way. I guess what I mean is that since she’s a soldier, her job, in a sense, is to protect our freedoms and equal the playing field between our genders. At least, that’s how
I
see her job. Doesn’t mean that she sees it in the same light.

Keira’s phone rings just as a man on the sidewalk lifts his head slightly and gives me the “What’s up?” line. He just hit on me.

Oh, wait. Strange as it may sound, for a second there, I actually forgot I was in her body.
 

“Hello?” Keira answers her phone. It dawns on me that whoever is calling her will not expect my voice on the other end of the line. And, by the expression on her face—my face—I can tell she didn’t think of that, either. Shit! “Uh…” my masculine voice says slowly into the phone, then, “Our phones look the same. I must have picked up the wrong one.” Pause. I wonder who’s calling her. “Yeah, h—she’s…uh…right here. Hold on.”

Keira cups the mic on her smartphone. Sweat beads her forehead. “It’s Alec,” she mutters. “I don’t care what you have to say, just find a reason to end the call.” Her eyes—my eyes—shoot laser daggers at me. I look at the phone rather stupidly. I could really mess things up for her with Alec. But she’d never forgive me, even if she didn’t like him. Keira would not appreciate me taking control of her life.

But she may not have a choice.

Both of us may not have a choice.

You could use a challenge, Dillan Pope.
Ellen’s sweet voice pops into my head. Pretending to be Keira will be a challenge. And I have to start being her, oh, right about…now. I take the phone from Keira’s outstretched arm. We’re still outside and about ten feet from the apartment’s entrance. Actually, it was at about this spot that I gave her the coffee last night.

Somehow it seemed fitting.

“Hello,” I say in a shaky voice. I’m not sure if I’ve mastered Keira’s voice mannerisms. I doubt I’ll ever master anything about her. Including wearing women’s underwear.