The wife of James's estranged friend moves in and threatens to derail James's new life in Emily's body. Only...she's got a secret of her own in Jailbroken 2, available on Body Swap Stories, Smashwords or Amazon.

Michael sat with Lauren, his mom, at the kitchen table. She had her arms crossed on the table, legs spread beneath. James would have called it ‘manspreading’ if she’d been a man. She was already a tall woman and seemed to want to take up even more space. She kept brushing her tangled auburn hair out of her face every few minutes only to have it fall back down.

Michael sat next to her, dumbfounded, the grief of losing his father—James’s former best friend—not quite setting in. He queried her again and again how it had happened so out of the blue.

“It must have been the gas leak everyone’s talking about,” She said again, as James set down a cup of coffee in front of her. “She—he was driving. Going through an intersection and a truck just came out of nowhere. I’m lucky to be alive.”

Michael rocked back and forth slowly, a blank gaze on his face. “I just talked to him last week.”

“I didn’t want to be alone without him there.”

“You can stay as long as you need,” James said, tapping Emily’s fingers on the table and staring off into space, trying to process the news. “I can’t believe Robert’s dead. I always thought I’d be the first to go.”

“What?” Michael sniffed, wiping away tears.

“I mean…that’s how healthy he looked,” James tried to cover his mistake, forgetting momentarily in his grief that he was now a twenty-three year old female athlete.

“Jesus…this is…Jesus,” Michael said.

“I’ll go get the spare room set up,” James said, casting about for an excuse to leave so he wouldn’t slip up again.

Being alone for a few moments allowed him to gather his thoughts. James didn’t doubt that the swapping bubble—or whatever the hell it was—had caused this. Probably the truck driver swapped bodies with someone and crashed into his Robert and his wife. From the sound of it, she was lucky to be alive.

James came back downstairs just as Lauren was lugging her suitcase inside. She was a graceless woman, her body moving in a weird, unbalanced rhythm. Like her hips and legs had different ideas of how to walk. Strange, because she was obviously fit judging from the solid curves of her arms and legs. Maybe she was just ungainly in her grief. James took pity on her and took the suitcase from her and rolled it up to the spare room. One of the latches was undone, and when James let go of the handle the suitcase overbalanced and tilted onto the floor. The other latch popped open, spilling some of the contents.

It looked like it had been hastily packed. Clothes shoved inside with no rhyme or reason. Shorts. Dresses. Pants. Tops. A ton of bras. A purse.

Over the rest of the day, James helped out Michael and Lauren in their grief. There must have been a funeral to plan. Insurance to arrange. Practical things like that, but neither seemed ready to face it.

Lauren kicked off her shoes and slouched back on the couch in the entertainment room, letting a rerun of an old football game play out onscreen, only sometimes paying attention. Michael sat beside her. James sat with them, occasionally offering to bring food or drinks as they processed their loss.

Lauren reclined like a man, legs akimbo, one hand resting between her legs absently scratching herself. She kept looking over at James with eyes that seemed…what? Needy? Lustful? Maybe that was just James’s reading because she was a gorgeous woman in distress.

James didn’t have the opportunity to study makeup for the rest of the day. Nor try on Emily’s clothes and get used to walking in high heels. But he acted as ladylike as he could. As Emily-like as he remembered, which consisted mostly of staying quiet and making comforting noises. It was all he’d known of her from when they visited him in prison back in his old life.

Michael stayed home from work the next day and they began the process of funeral preparations. Lauren was no less disheveled after a night’s rest. When she came downstairs in just a tight white top and leggings, James had to stop himself from doing a double take. Her body was tight. Muscular and firm like his own, with legs for miles and a beefy butt practically begging James to take a bite. Her nipples dimpled out the top almost obscenely.

She brushed past him to grab the carafe of coffee and poured herself a mug. As she concentrated on pouring, James let his gaze flit down her solid form, her taut buttocks, back up to her breasts and then to those wild green eyes that were now looking at him and had caught him staring.

“Like what you see?” She said, quirking an eyebrow.

It was a strange, almost flirtatious response. There was something off about her.

“Wow, I still can’t believe you got caught up in that weird incident,” James said, taking a sip of his coffee and watching Lauren carefully. “It must have been pretty chaotic. What actually happened?”

She shrugged and scratched idly at her chest, sending her breasts bobbing. “We were just driving along and then the next thing I know she just went into shock. Like everything had just…changed suddenly.”

“She?”

“I meant ‘he’. Robert. Or whoever was in his body.” Her eyes flitted away briefly, then returned to James. “I guess in their panic they didn’t realize they were driving.”

“So you believe the whole body swapping thing?”

Read the rest in Jailbroken 2, available on Body Swap Stories, Smashwords or Amazon. https://bodyswapfiction.com/enter/?p=14965