We relocate to the kitchen, Susan-as-me sitting down at the island as I start the coffee machine, making a cup of tar black coffee for myself and her usual mocha latte, sliding the cup over as she gratefully accepts it with my giant hands wrapping around the "#1 Wife" mug. She takes a sip and gags, giving me a baleful stare.
"What did you do to screw up my coffee?" I shrug, annoyed at the accusation, and notice my body's eyes immediately jumping to the breasts that I just bounced. I scrub that thought from my brain.
"Same thing I do every morning, Susan. Nothing different." Sitting alongside her, I take a sip of my own coffee, coughing and spraying the black liquid across the white quartz island. "Shit, that tastes horrible. What the hell happened to our coffee machine?"
Giving me a smug look, as if it's my fault that our coffee machine broke, she tosses me a sponge to clean up the mess. While I'm doing that, she leans over, suddenly curious, and takes a sip of my coffee. "Hey, this isn't bad," she says, sliding my mug over to her side of the island and drinking from it again. Susan loathes black coffee, what the hell? She practically slurps down the entire cup, "Ah, that was great."
My jaw is hanging open, unable to cope with this change in my wife's behavior. I mean, sure, we apparently swapped bodies, but now she likes black coffee? I wonder if that works in reverse? I reach out, grabbing the "#1 Wife" mug, sliding it over to me and take a tentative sip, the flavors of the mocha latte exploding on my tongue and feel my body perk up. This is so weird.
As I drink my wife's usual coffee order, she grabs a yogurt from the fridge and opens it, handing it over to me. "Here's your breakfast." I stare at her, shaking my head.
"I normally eat a half dozen eggs, a glass of milk, and some bacon for breakfast. This won't even take the edge off," I protest.
"You're not putting that much food into my body," she argues. "That's like an entire day's worth of calories. I have a cup of coffee and a yogurt for breakfast, that's it."
With a sigh, I accept the yogurt and a spoon, taking a bite. It's not bad, it's just not what I'm used to. Grumbling, I helpfully advise, "You best get started cooking your own breakfast, in that case. If I don't get at least 1500 calories by 9am, I turn into an asshole."
I can hear her mutter something snarky under her breath as she turns to the fridge, but I'm not able to make out the words, my body's deep voice not carrying as well in the kitchen. Probably for the best, I suppose. Eating my meager breakfast, I watch as Susan fumbles around in the kitchen, struggling to make my usual meal. It's not that she doesn't know how to scramble eggs, but more that she's just not used to doing it after so long only caring about herself.
Before I can help myself, I've gotten out of the chair and walked over, hip-checking my large body to move her out of my way, taking over the skillet, expertly cracking the eggs into it and starting to stir. I add just the right amount of salt and pepper to flavor it, while I slice an avocado and plate it alongside some leftover bacon. Susan watches, a complex expression on her face, as I make her breakfast for her, finally handing the towering plate over and gesturing back toward the island. "All set."
"Thank you," she says in a quiet voice that sounds quite weird coming from my body. She starts to eat mechanically, glancing up once at me. "This is very good."
I nod, knowing that it is. I mean, I eat the same meal every day and have for years, ever since making the varsity squad in college. I should be good at making it by this point. Food is fuel, but there's no reason it can't taste good while I do it. I've always been the primary chef in our relationship, mostly because I tend to eat two or three portions to Susan's one, and so I felt bad about making her do so much work.
"Okay, now let's plan how we're calling out sick," I begin. "I'm guessing I can just call your office and tell someone there?" Susan gets up and grabs a notepad from a nearby drawer and a pen, jotting notes.
"Not quite. Here's the office number, but it's also programmed into my phone. You call, you ask for Marisol. You tell her that you're not feeling well and need to call out today. I also have the morning shift tomorrow for our Saturday clinic, and she's going to ask if you're up to that. Let's just go ahead with yes, because it's going to really screw up scheduling if I skip that as well, and hopefully we'll be back to ourselves by then. Don't get pulled into any other conversations, just tell her you're not feeling well, it's not contagious, and have a good weekend."
I walk back to the bedroom, retrieving our cell phones from where they'd been plugged in on our bedside tables. Instinctively, I raise my own up to my face and it fails to unlock. Oh right, wrong face. On a whim, I unlock Susan's, but before I get the chance to be nosy, I'm back in the kitchen and sitting down next to her.
Punching the numbers into the phone with Susan's manicured fingers, she watched me like a hawk as the phone rang twice, then a female voice picked up. "Thank you for calling Happy Smiles Dental, Marisol speaking. How can I help you?"
I coughed experimentally once, then tried to pitch my voice to sound like what I thought Susan sounded like. "Hey Marisol, this is Susan Hayes. I'm not going to be able to make it in today, I'm feeling pretty sick." Susan groaned audibly from next to me, resting my forehead on the table. Look, this is all new to me. I can do better.
"Hah, Susan, you're so funny. Sick, huh?"
"Yeah," I tried to continue the 'Susan voice', hoping she believed it was me. "Sorry about that, I need the day."
"Oh kaaaay," she said, stretching the word out, almost sounding like she didn't believe me. "Doctor Vance was looking for you this morning, said he wanted to speak to you about that conference down in Atlanta in three weeks and making sure there was coverage." What conference? Atlanta? Who all was going to this thing? I gave Susan a blank look, but she was still staring at the table and not me, an expression of pain on her face.
"Uhm, I'm not sure yet, I'll let him know later." Shrugging helplessly. "Well, I'll let you go now..."
"You think you'll be good for tomorrow's shift? It's our light day and I wasn't planning on being in. I already had plans."
Luckily, Susan had prepared me for this one. "I should be good, yeah. Just a twenty four hour thing, I'm thinking. Have a great weekend."
"Okay, glad to hear it. I'm sure Doctor Vance will be pleased to see you back in the office tomorrow. Bye!"
"Bye," I said, my tone wooden, as I hung up the phone. I turned to Susan, "What conference in Atlanta?"
She raised her head and I stared at a somewhat guilty expression on my face. I hadn't realized I was so bad at concealing my emotions. "I, uh, was going to tell you next week. It's a dental staffing conference, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it work yet, so it wasn't worth the discussion. Also, what the hell was with that voice you were doing?"
I felt like there was more to the story, but really didn't want to dig into that right now. "I wanted to make sure I sounded like you."
"You do sound like me, Ed. You are literally in my body. Just talk normal. You sounded like a fucking weirdo."
Whatever, I grumbled, and passed her my phone. "Call Jerry, the number is saved here. Tell him you've got a stomach bug and you're out sick, we need Randall to supervise the concrete pour at Pinnacle Lot Seven. If he suggests that Carl can do it, tell him Carl is an idiot and not to be trusted. Then tell him you'll see him next week and hang up."
She picked up my phone, placing it on speaker as she tapped the number to call my boss. It rang a few times, then went to voicemail. I tapped the button to hang up and redial. "Sometimes he doesn't answer the first try."
"Hey Ed, where the fuck are you?" Jerry's voice was stressed and I could hear machinery working in the background. Shit, this isn't going to go well.
"Jerry, hi." I looked at Susan in disbelief, what in the fuck was she doing? She was trying to sound super macho right now, almost like a damn cartoon. "This is Ed, I'm not feeling well today."
"Fuck your feelings, Ed, I need you over at Pinnacle to supervise the concrete pour. The guys are already setting up the forms and I'm worried they're doing it wrong. You can whine about a tummy ache another time."
Susan blinked, unsure of how to cope, and I gestured wildly at her, miming something coming from my ass.
"I've, uh, got the spraying shits," she finally stammered, giving me a confused look. Oh god, what the hell is wrong with her. "I can't come in today."
Jerry growled in frustration. "Okay, fine, but you're calling Carl and telling him to bust his ass getting over here to supervise." I shook my head frantically no.
"Carl is an idiot," Susan said to the phone, wincing as she did, and I could see her mouth 'Sorry Carl' as soon as the words left her mouth. "You need someone else."
"Yeah, I had someone else," Jerry snapped. "You. Fine, I'll go supervise, I hope you shit yourself into a coma, making my life miserable like this. No excuses, I need you on site tomorrow afternoon to check that none of the trades fucked anything else up, okay?"
"Sure," Susan agreed quickly, "I hope your day goes better. I'm really sorry about this."
"Yeah, fuck you too." Jerry hung up the phone.
Susan glanced at me, an expression of shock on her face. "What the fuck is your boss's problem?"
I shrugged, "That's Jerry. He's a nice guy, just gets a little stressed at times. You get used to him."
"He'd be fired for abusive language so fast in any real business."
"Building homes is a real business, Suze. One that doesn't care about feelings." She shrugged, and I felt like I'd won the point. Now we were both officially out sick for the day, what should we do next? And how did we get back into our own bodies?