Office Retreat - Part 3

 

I didn’t even realize I’d said anything out loud until the faint echo bounced back from the wall: “God, I love being her so much.” The words escaped before I could net them, raw and embarrassing in the quiet of the room. I buried my face deeper in the pillow, mortified for a second, but then almost immediately giddy.

Then a knock on the door. I was so deep in my own fantasy that it made me jump.

I grabbed the nearest thing—one of Jessica’s worn university t-shirts, maroon and soft—and yanked it on over the bikini.

“Just a second!” I yelped.

Another knock, lighter, and then I heard it—my own voice on the other side, “Hey, you alive in there?”

I opened up, face flushed.

It was Jessica in my body, "Hey, Jake!"

She grinned—my grin, lopsided and lazy—and darted a glance up and down the empty wing. Then she stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

“Figured I’d check in,” she said, surveying the chaos of the room.

Her eyes flicked to the suitcase, still half-spilled open, then to the bed where I’d burrowed in, then to my face.

She really took herself in—true curiosity, as if she were encountering my body for the first time, which, in a way, she was. A flicker of amusement crossed her—my—face, but it wasn’t mean. It was more like two conspirators confirming, yes, this is insane, but we’re both in on it.

“I’m good,” I said, a little too brightly, managing to cross my arms right as I remembered how that would look, the way it pushed the borrowed cleavage up and together under the shirt. Jessica’s gaze landed there and she immediately barked a laugh, then clapped a hand over my mouth—her mouth. Our mouths. It was suddenly too much.

We both lost it then, spiraling into helpless, ragged giggles, clutching bellies and falling sideways onto the bed, where we lay breathing hard, tears leaking from both our faces.

“Holy shit, I still can’t get over this,” she said, "I’m sorry, the reason I came over… I just realized. You need to call my husband. He’s expecting a check-in. Just a quick call, but you have to do it, or he’ll get weird.”

“What?” I gasped, “For real?”

Her face was so serious that I almost snorted again, “You want me to—no, wait, Jessica, I can’t—"

But she was already hunched over my phone, swiping the passcode with an ease that startled me.

“It’s Adam,” she said, and scrolled through her contacts, “I told him I’d call once a day and let him know how the retreat was going.”

She eyed my panic, “You just have to bullshit for two minutes. He’ll think it’s me. Of course. Who else would I be?”

I sat up against the headboard, clutching the phone with sweaty palms, and scrolled through a mental script.

“You got this, Jake.”

The screen filled with Adam’s face, his eyes softening when he saw “Jessica.” I plastered on her best smile, tried to tilt my head the way she would.

“Hey, babe,” Adam said, “You look… wow. You look amazing.”

“Hey!” I chirped, a little too emphatically.

Jessica snorted from the bed, then slunk over to the window to give me “privacy,” but of course she was listening—they were her ears, after all. Adam’s greeting was so effortless, so intimate, it nearly short-circuited my brain.

“Hey, love,” I tried.

Adam was close, easy, “You get a swim in?”

“Yeah, water’s amazing. Pretty cold, but, uh—nice.” 

I stole a glance at Jessica—myself—by the window. She gave me a thumbs-up.

The conversation slid into a comfortable rhythm. I don’t know what happened to the time. Maybe it was Jessica’s coaching, or maybe it was the fact that Adam was so disarmingly…normal, but we talked for what must have been close to an hour.

The line between pretending and being blurred. I caught myself listening as Jessica would, answering as she might, even picking up her little phrase-ends—“Right?,” “I know!”

We fell into a companionable silence, nothing awkward about it. I could see in the little self-view window how soft my eyes had gone, how relaxed my posture was.

“Love you,” he said, just like that, so offhand and gentle it didn’t even sound dramatic.

I hesitated a beat too long, then made myself say it back, “Uh—love you, too.”

I tried to land the phrase just right, somewhere between casual and genuine, but I could hear the catch in my own voice.

I cleared my throat, “I’ll call again tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah. I’ve gotta go pick up Charlie, anyway.”

He hung up.

I glared at Jessica—myself, whatever—who was already grinning like a maniac on the window seat. “Hey, Jess?” I hissed, “Do you have a kid?”

"I do have a kid, yes, he doesn’t exactly come up in conference calls about Q3 projections, Jake," Jessica picked up a pillow and flung it at me.

I caught the pillow, dumbfounded, and then burst out laughing—except it was less laughter now, more a kind of giddy, existential panic, because holy shit, I was a MOTHER.

"No, I mean, I know, but… a whole person exists who thinks I'm his mom?"

Jessica and I talked for a while longer.

At some point, Jessica rolled onto her side, propped her head up with my—her—hand, and asked, “So what are you going to do with the rest of my Saturday?”

“Well, there’s that dinner, right?”

“Have you thought about what to wear …’Jessica’?”

“I… hadn’t really gotten that far,” I admitted.

Her eyes flicked to the suitcase. 

She nudged it toward me with her toe, like it was a dare.

“C’mon,” she prodded.