Lunchtime, back at the Black house:
Bethany had the mother of all headaches as she sat in her kitchen, her daughter's friend Jay and Vivian, the cover model for her books she couldn't stand, were just yelling back and forth, throwing blame at each other, and somehow Beth was caught in the middle of it. As bizarre as their apparent body swap was, they'd managed to convince her it was legit. She just had no clue what in the hell they expected her to do about it.
Hours Earlier, at the Duncan house:
Vivian was freaking the fuck out and kept pinching his suddenly pale bony arms until they started to bruise. Had someone slipped him something last night and given him the mother of all bad trips? No, I remember everything up till falling asleep on top of what's his name Did his hookup do some kind of voodoo to him to land him in this pimple faced body, and the shithole house he'd woken up in? He looked back down at the cracked old android phone he'd found and reread the texts from his own number. If the person on the other end was to be believed, their name was Jay Duncan, they were in his body, and they were just as confused as he was.
Vivian looked down at himself in disgust, Yeah, I don't buy it. He's probably some crazy body stealing freak who wanted to trade up. Still, this Jay was suggesting they meet up to figure out what was going on, and he didn't have a better idea. It was a good thing the brat's dad had left for work without checking in on him, so he wasn't going to be forced back to high school.
He'd dressed himself with the best of what he could scrounge from Duncan's abysmal wardrobe, a cleanish black tee and a pair of tan slacks form the back of the closet. He wasn't used to having such limited choices, but on the other hand, trying to dress up his current body felt a bit like putting make-up on a pig.
"Think, think, think, Viv," he muttered in his reedy new voice. This whole situation was maddeningly familiar for some reason, triggering a sense of dejavu despite obviously never having lived through something like this before. Then it hit him.
"Black's fucking book!" he exclaimed in realization. He'd totally posed for an erotic thriller with this plot. Well, he thought it was this plot, he never actually read that trash, just cashing the checks. It was definitely something about body swapping though, two people falling asleep and waking up across town in each other's bodies. Maybe Bethany Black would know what they should do. And Maybe she has something to do with this. He shot off a quick text to the body thief piloting his perfectly sculpted form, and told Jay to meet him at the Black address. Vivian was going to get to the bottom of this.
Same Time, Vivian's Condo:
Jay looked down at her I-phone to see a message from the very angry lady who's body she'd apparently ended up in, telling her to meet them at Karyn's house of all things. Jay had no clue what her MILF crush had to do with any of this, but she was open to any sort of help they could get. As cool as it was to wake up in the body of a babe, it was also very disorienting and she wanted answers.
She unsteadily got to her feet, feeling lighter than she could remember but her center of balance totally different. A few hesitant steps on her maroon painted toes had her feeling more comfortable, even if the unconscious sway of her hips and modest bounce of her breasts were still distracting. She resecured the lingerie as best as she could and made her way towards the closet. She didn't have any kind of confidence in dressing herself as a woman, so she instead grabbed a stylish knee length trench coat and shrugged it on over her underwear clad form. I mean, coats are the same for everyone right? She did a few buttons and pulled the belt tight.
Stepping away, she stopped by the large vanity mirror to check that she'd sufficiently covered her new form, only for her big doe like eyes to widen in amazement. She was the hottie in the poster, sans chainmail bikini but obviously the same woman. And she was smokin! She almost started to peel the coat back off so she could properly explore the body she now inhabited, but the incessant buzzing of her new phone kept her in check. Figure shit out first, jack off later. Repeating that thought over and over again in her head, she began trying to figure out where the exit to the house was so she could meet the Uber she'd just called to take her over to the Blacks' house, and hopefully, answers.
Back to the Present, Karyn and Bethany's Home:
The pair had shown up on her doorstep, rambling about her book Under Your Skin, with Vivian in particular almost seeming to accuse her of having caused this just because she wrote a book where the protagonist and antagonist swapped bodies. It hadn't even been one of her more popular volumes, selling modestly. The girl-next-door heroine was essentially head over heels for her boss, but he was engaged to a beautiful but cold woman from his own social strata. One morning a comet swapped the two women and yada yada yada, romance blossomed, but that was all a dumb story she'd banged out in a week because she needed some quick money to fix a bit of flood damage on the house. It wasn't real!
"Alright, listen up!" Bethany called across the arguing displaced pair, and surprisingly they both quieted and looked to her. Bethany took a deep breath and tried to consider the best course forward. She could leave the pair to work it out themselves, but that was cruel. She might not like Vivian, but Jay was a nice kid who didn't deserve to be left out in the cold. She could call, like the cops or something, but what would she say, and what could they even do? She glanced between the pair, both obviously very unused to their current bodies and decided what they needed to do first before anything else. "I have no clue what caused this, or how to reverse it, but in the meantime we need to keep both of you from getting tossed in jail or the looney bin."
She pointed to Vivian's body, currently housing Jay's soul, "you need to learn enough to cover Viv's responsibilites, go to her job, pay her rent, look after her niece, that sort of thing." She glanced over to the real Vivian, "when's your next shoot?"
"Friday," Vivian grumbled, "it's for your next stupid book."
"Right, so we have at least a few days to get prepared for that. You're a model now, so learning how to take care of and move Vivian's body is also going to be necessary so you don't screw up her career."
"Yeah!" Vivian suddenly exclaimed in agreement, "if you lose jobs for me, I'll ruin you!"
Jay bit her lip, looking far more vulnerable than the real Viv ever did when the cameras weren't rolling, "uh, I'll do my best. I don't want Scarlett to have any trouble because of this." She didn't really know the younger girl, but knew what it was like to have a maternal parent run out on you. It might be a temporary position, but she would do her best to at least be decent to her current ward.
Bethany gave her a smile, "that's very nice of you, Jay." Then her expression darkened as she rounded on Vivian, "and while Jay's dealing with that, YOU are going to go to school for him and not miss a single day or screw up a single assignment. I know you're an utter brat, but I'm not going to let you screw up Jay's life just because you don't think it's important!"
