Office Retreat - Part 5

 

When I came to, my head was pounding and my mouth tasted like wine and lipstick. I blinked, groaned, stretched out every limb, and felt the ache travel through new, unfamiliar muscles.

The hangover was a beast. But it meant I’d really lived in her body, not just as a tourist, but as someone who got drunk, got emotional, got reckless. I wasn’t just an imposter using her voice and face for a few hours. I’d done damage. I’d made mistakes. I was suffering the consequences, as her, in a way that was so weirdly validating.

Somehow, being hungover as Jessica wasn’t just tolerable. It was fucking erotic.

I sprawled on the bed, one leg hooked out from under the comforter, and ran my hands over her body’s curves. I could feel the pinch of the mesh dress where I’d fallen asleep in it, and the heat radiating off my own chest.

After a while I forced myself upright, feet planted on the carpet, and took inventory. My hair was a bird’s nest. Her eyeliner had migrated in greasy wings down my cheeks.

I grinned—Jessica’s mouth, Jessica’s teeth—and padded over to the bathroom mirror. I took a long, lingering look at myself, drinking in every detail.

For a few minutes, I just stood there, toes gripping the bath mat, shoulders rolling themselves back into a posture that was not quite mine, and watched Jessica’s—my—reflection blink and breathe.

I tried to see myself as Jessica herself might have, first thing in the morning, slightly puffy, a little worse for wear, but essentially herself. I watched as my—her—hand traced the orbit of her eye socket, thumb and forefinger stretching the skin. Her eye. my eye.

I let my palm flatten over the warm rise of breast, squeezing tentatively, then more firmly, through the thin mesh of my dress.

“Good morning, me,” I whispered, unable to keep the smile out of my voice.

I peaked out through the blinds, towards the lake, where some of our colleagues had started gathering.

To them. Hell, to the whole wide world, I was none other than Jessica.

I watched them: the early risers in their logo windbreakers, the herd of sales and marketing execs shuffling out toward the dock with oversized coffee mugs, the pair of young engineers already skipping stones at the shore, and, trailing behind, a clutch of women in yoga pants heading for a lakeside stretch class.

I watched them, and I watched myself watching, and I let the borrowed body flex and breathe and exist in the morning as if this was—had always been—my life.

I forced myself to breathe as Jessica would, slow and full, filling the lungs with morning air and letting out a little involuntary sound, a hum, just to feel the cord of her throat vibrate. The hum was answered by a faint knock through the wall—some other hungover attendee already up. I smiled at the interruption, the way it made me feel both exposed and untouchable.

As I stood there in front of the mirror, I found myself slipping into something like character. It was as if I couldn’t simply be Jessica—couldn’t just exist in her body—I had to perform her, moment by moment, as if I were acting in a movie and the invisible camera was always rolling.

I tried to stop thinking about the thrill of the dress against my thighs or the way my breasts jostled with every movement. I tried to ignore the echo of my old self, the lazy and slightly predatory part of me that wanted to lounge in the borrowed body and sink into every sensation. Instead, I made the bed and lined up my toiletries on the counter.

I felt a strange, breathless sort of calm settle over me as I moved through Jessica’s room. The frantic sense of trespassing, the Jake-ness that had pulsed under my skin before, receded, replaced by a lightness I hadn’t expected. Instead of wanting to gorge on forbidden sensations—I found myself almost reverent. I didn’t want to vandalize the Jessica illusion anymore. I wanted to honor it. Sustain it.

I went to the suitcase and pulled out her running clothes: black leggings, sports bra, a zip-up windbreaker.

I stood in front of the full-length mirror, holding the clothes against my body, and for a moment considered undressing there. But I carried the bundle to the bathroom, shed the mesh dress, and turned on the shower.

It took the force of all my willpower not to let my hands drift further, not to lose myself again. I’d spent yesterday wallowing in every curious and illicit sensation; now, in the hard, afterlight of morning, restraint felt like rebellion.

I steadied myself on the edge of the bathroom sink and watched, with the detachment of an actor preparing for a role, as I went through the motions of Jessica’s morning routine.

First, I dragged the hairbrush through my—her—blonde hair, untangling the knots, delighting in the scalp-tingle.

I coaxed it into a ponytail, fingers separating the strands and looping the elastic without hesitation, as if I’d done it all my life.

I flipped through her old photos –Jessica and her kids, Jessica and Adam, Jessica at the beach– as I brushed my teeth, pretending they were all of me.

I just wanted to see what her life looked like, filtered through her phone, her photos. But as I scrolled past the expected snapshots—family, kid, a thousand brunches and lakeside selfies—I stopped.

There, nestled innocently among the filtered candids, was Adam.

It wasn't a sexy photo. It was a perfectly unremarkable, slightly blurry shot of him in a coffee shop.

He looked like every other mid-thirties guy waiting for his latte to cool down. Completely, profoundly uninteresting.

This is him, I thought. This is the man I am currently married to. His name, when I said it aloud, felt both strange and inevitable: Adam. Husband. Spouse.

This man, so ordinary, so predictable, had not only had sex with Jessica—this body I was currently wearing—but had made a child with her.

What did she find so attractive about him, anyway?

I looked. I really looked.

I tried to imagine the body I now wore—breasts, thighs, and all—folding itself into his arms.

My stomach churned. Okay, I was still absolutely a straight dude.

My hands, meanwhile, had started fidgeting with the wedding ring, spinning it on my finger as if that would somehow unlock the secret of Jessica’s marriage. I wondered if wearing the ring made the illusion more real, if the gold band could trick my body into wanting what I should want.

The experiment demanded I take it further. That I give myself over, fully, to the character.

I wondered what Jessica would say to Adam if she really wanted him.

I forced the words out, “God, Adam, I’m the luckiest woman in the world.”

I think I managed to freak myself out a little bit when I said that. 

The line didn’t just sound like Jessica. It was Jessica. It was the voice I’d heard in a dozen work calls, a hundred meetings, and now it poured out of me with unthinking, unfiltered ease.

For a second, the body I’d spent hours marveling at, cataloguing, and, yes, exploiting, was simply…myself. The gap between the real and the act, the “Jake in Jessica” and the “Jessica in Jessica,” vanished, and I was left dizzy by the completeness of it—not just the performance, but the transformation that had grown up around it.

I stood there, toothbrush midair, mouth tasting of mint and last night’s sauvignon blanc, and I let the phrase cycle through my head: I’m the luckiest woman in the world. It was so ordinary. So totally sincere.

I could feel Jessica’s facial muscles arrange themselves into the familiar, lopsided smile she made. A memory surfaced: me, watching her on a Teams call, the smug little tilt of her lips when she closed a deal or outmaneuvered a client. I felt that same smile radiate from my own—her own—face.

There was something illicit about it, something both erotic and terrifying: a perfect mimicry.

And then, nothing. Just the bright, cold silence of the hotel bathroom, morning sun slicing through the window.

“Huh,” I remarked to the mirror, “Would you look at that.”

“I should get dressed,” I continued.

The sports bra, a heathered gray thing, was first: I struggled just enough to make it feel authentic, then reached behind and hooked the clasp. I couldn’t help but marvel at the way the bra cupped and contained my—Jessica’s—breasts, how they sat high and proud, almost weightless beneath the compressing fabric. My hands found themselves lingering, shaping the flesh, adjusting the straps with a practiced tug. It was disturbingly easy to slip into the choreography of a woman getting ready, even though my heart sped with every touch.

The leggings came next. I thumbed the waistband and pinched the slick material between my fingers, savoring the tactile difference before stepping in, one foot, then the other. I balanced on the edge of the bed, pointed my toes, and began the slow, mesmerizing process of rolling the leggings up my calves, over the knees, and onto the dense, sculpted curves of Jessica’s thighs.

I shimmied them up, feeling the fabric snap into place, and nearly gasped at the sensation: the gentle squeeze, the containment, the way my entire lower body was hugged and sculpted. It was impossible not to grope myself, just a little, to test the reality of it, my own hands sliding greedily over the new terrain, pausing, kneading, exploring.

It was impossible to ignore the way the sports bra clung to me—all of me—flattening my chest but highlighting it too, making each breath a tactile event. My nipples stiffened against the fabric, practically broadcasting themselves with every shift of my shoulders.

I felt the absence between my legs, the startling flatness where there was supposed to be something else, and I smoothed my hand over it, just to be sure.

For a second, I wondered if I was hallucinating, if the past twenty-four hours had been some elaborate psychosexual fever dream. But my reflection didn’t blink out of existence. She—no, I—stood upright, spectral and perfect in the manufactured morning light, blinking, breathing, shifting on the balls of my new feet.

I tried not to dwell on it.

I glanced out the window again. The lakeshore was more crowded now: a group of colleagues setting up for some kind of team-building relay.

I ran my hands down my body one more time, savoring the push and pull of skin and spandex, the secret pleasure of my own touch. Then, taking a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped into the hallway.