Should he try to blend in? Or fuck with her husband, finding ways to challenge his worldview from within until he could figure out a way back?
But there was something tempting about sabotage. About seeing just how far he could push things before Mike noticed.
What if he started rearranging their bookshelf—swapping out Tucker Carlson for feminist literature? Or a biography of Barack Obama?
Maybe, he thought, I’ll see how much havoc I can cause before this all wears off.
But first—he needed to survive the day.
He practiced smiling in the mirror. The right angle curled the lips but didn’t show teeth, the face neutral but warm.
He risked a full laugh—something closer to a yelp—and watched the corners of his new eyes crinkle and brighten with impossible animation.
Downstairs, the television was firing off a parade of headlines. Mike had a take on every one.
Milton coughed, “Wow, crazy…”
Mike patted the couch, made room for him, and before he knew it Milton was tucked under his arm.
“You want to order in?” Mike suggested, “Pizza?”
Pizza. Of course. Milton wanted to roll his eyes.
But Lizzie’s mouth, now technically his, stretched into what he could only hope was an acceptable smile.
“Sure,” he heard himself say, “Pizza sounds awesome.”
He caught a glimpse of his phone in Lizzie’s—his—jeans pocket, the screen pressed flush against the tight denim, and a wild hope flared through him: If he could unlock it, he could find out who Lizzie really was. She was probably on Facebook.
He slid the phone from the pocket. It was slim, rose-gold, the home screen a grid of pastel icons with a wallpaper of Mike and Lizzie beaming in front of a Disney castle. Jesus.
His thumb hovered; her thumbprint didn’t work. Face recognition? He lifted it to his new face. The lock dissolved, replaced by a flood of notifications.
The unfamiliar tactile smoothness of the freshly manicured nail tip made him fumble for a second, but then Lizzie’s feed exploded onto the display: a digital deluge of filtered self-portraits, declarations of love for her husband and dog, and an unbroken parade of memes so staggeringly insipid it was hard to believe an actual human being, possessed of even a glimmer of interiority, could have created them.
He dove for Facebook. The bio, rendered in a perky third-person, described Lizzie as “Wife to my best friend, fur mom to Bella, lover of country music. Proud American. Blessed beyond belief.”
The phrase “blessed beyond belief” was bracketed by twin dove emojis. He wanted to scream.
There was the familiar smear of political memes, flags, eagles, and inspirational quotes in fonts that looked like they were designed for church billboards.
Milton scrolled back through years of digital sediment. Photos from tailgate parties and Applebee’s happy hours, Lizzie radiant in every frame—often with an arm around Mike or clutching a glass of pinkish wine. Flurries of hashtags clustered beneath each post: #CoupleGoals #Blessed
“This is me now,” he thought, awash in equal parts horror and incredulity, “I’m a fucking trad-wife.”
“I’m a …trad-wife…” Milton found himself smirking, shaking his head.
He set down the phone and leaned back into Mike’s arm, letting himself be held by a man who had no idea who or what he was holding.
“When in Rome…” Milton thought wryly as he snuggled deeper…
“Pepperoni and mushroom?” Mike asked.
“Pepperoni’s great,” he heard himself chirp.
“My…” Milton thought to himself, as he took a deep breath, “…hubby…”
Why not, for now?
Why not lean into the bit, ride out the façade until it wore thin?
Milton dared himself to nestle closer, just to see what it felt like. To play “wife” for a moment—not as an impersonation but as an experiment. A social drag act performed for an audience of one. How hard could it be? Wives had been doing this for centuries.
He slipped his hand up Mike’s arm experimentally. Felt bicep tighten beneath his fingers. Smiled again.
Was this what Lizzie wanted? Was this what wives wanted?
He looked down at his smaller womanly form, nestled close to the man by his side.
He glanced at Mike—his husband?—and tried out a smile that matched the one framed above the living room mantelpiece. “I am Lizzie,” he mouthed silently, watching how it made her lips move in the TV screen’s reflection. It looked disturbingly natural.
“Wife to her best friend,” he repeated internally. Was that actually true? Was Mike, beneath his cable-news bluster and Dad Joke affectations, truly this woman’s best friend?
He was Lizzie now. All evidence pointed that way.
And evidence did not lie.
The thought arrived uninvited, as so many thoughts had since the switch, but instead of rejecting it outright Milton let it linger, made a mental game out of how far he could push this borrowed body before either his own nerves or Mike’s suspicions snapped.
Milton found his hands moving almost on their own: One traced lazy circles on Mike’s forearm, the other crept to the waistband of his jeans, fingers splayed like he was reading Braille through layers of denim and elastic. There was an odd excitement in the new strength of these small hands—the way they could be both sly and decisive at once.
He slid his hand down, knuckles brushing coarse hair before wrapping around the length of Mike’s penis—a word that now felt clinical in context, inadequate for what pulsed hot and alive in his grip. It was odd being on this side of things—odd feeling a cock in hand and not having it attached to one’s own body.
Mike watched him with a lazy satisfaction, one arm draped behind his head as if this were the most natural scene in the world: wife on husband, domestic bliss embodied. Milton, for one brief second, wondered what Lizzie would have done in this moment—then remembered that he was Lizzie now, and whatever came next was canon.
Mike ran his hand through Milton’s hair (her hair), pulling gently until waves of platinum tumbled across his shoulders. Then Mike grinned in a way that said: I know what comes next.
Milton did too.
But consent was still required—or at least performance of consent—so when Mike guided his head downward Milton let himself be steered by the nape like he’d seen done in so many pornographic vignettes that they’d practically become folk wisdom.
Then Mike guided his head down towards it.
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