CARA

Scott was not looking good. He looked like he never slept for days and now he was facing me with apprehension.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, my arms folded over my chest.

“You’re making him nervous, Cara,” Bridgette told me. She was sitting beside him in the couch while I was positioned in the single chair adjacent to them.

“Why would you be nervous?” I directed my question to Scott.

“Actually, I’m not that nervous,” he said, looking up at Quinn standing behind me as if asking for support from his own specie. “This just feels very weird.”

“You’ll get used to it,” everyone told him.

I didn’t expect Scott Newman to be nervous toward me at all, really. He had never treated me easily in the past and I got used to it. And I was certain he was not sorry about it either, because let’s face it that both of us were just doing our job.

“What do you want to talk about, Cara?” asked Bridgette.

For a moment, I just stared at the two of them. Then I took a deep breath. “I didn’t actually just want to talk to Scott. I realized what I want to say is for everyone else in this room.” I felt Quinn shift his weight from one foot to the other behind me and then his hands went to my shoulder for support. “Since everything is kind of settled between all of us and I guess we will all eventually learn to live with this situation,” I continued, “I guess the first step we need to take, Bridgette, is to start living this life. We don’t know how we can get back, we don’t know if we ever will. And we can’t hang our lives waiting for that to happen.”

“I agree. I was just about to suggest something like that now that you have officially resigned as a nurse. I want to go back to work as a wedding planner and I need to do it fast now that Quinn here decided to cancel his wedding,” Bridgette said, looking at Quinn with amusement.

“Okay, I guess that’s settled then,” I announced, getting up.

“Wait! I have one question,” Bridgette said, jumping to her feet.

“What?”

She grimaced and walked up to me. By the look on her face, I knew what she wanted to ask. “How about the…you know, the physical thing?” she whispered the question.

“Bridgette--” I started, but she held my hand strongly.

“You know what it feels, right? You know now that you’re with Quinn and sooner or later, the two of you will have your own needs,” she relayed her desperation with her eyes.

“For now, I don’t want to think about it. But you can do whatever the hell you want, Bridge. As long as,” I rushed before she jumped on her feet in joy, “you never mention it to me. Don’t ever dare tell me what you have been doing with him or whatever else you plan to do. Just don’t. I might just get back inside that body.” I finished my sentence in a very low whisper. The guys had stood up and were in the kitchen talking.

“I love you,” Bridgette said as she hugged my midriff. “I shouldn’t have fought with you ten years ago. It shouldn’t have happened. I love you so much, you know that, right?”

“You’re not just saying that because I told you about me being okay with you having sex, right?”

“No, of course not!” she gaped. “I love you, Cara. Whatever happens, know that I will never hurt you again. I will never do anything bad with your body.”

“That’s really weird to hear, but I believe you. I love you, too,” I said with a smile, hugging her back.

After a few minutes, while Bridgette went to the bathroom, I signaled to Quinn to give me a private time with Scott. He did so by walking to the kitchen to wash our cups of coffee.

An awkward silence reigned between us for a moment. I broke it before Bridgette could come back.

“Look, I know everything is still weird for you, but I just want to tell you something.”

He looked at me with hesitation. I smiled inwardly. Okay, so he might be comfortable around me after all.

“I’m not going to talk to you about our past,” I told him and I saw the tension slowly ease away from his face. “But I want to tell you that I am willing to forget everything you’ve done to me. No, don’t say they were just part of your job. I understand that. But sometimes, you get too overboard, you know? You’re too serious with what you do that you don’t really care how you make others feel. But that’s not a problem anymore. I can’t change the way you do your work.”

He never had the chance to utter a single syllable as I attacked him with my gaze.

“But I can’t have you hurting Bridgette again. I won’t forgive you for that. The past week has been hell for both of us. She was like a double-dead zombie and I don’t want to deal with that again.” I searched his eyes and held his gaze with mine as strongly as I could. “Do you understand what I mean? Whatever happens to us, I want you to make sure that Bridgette is safe, okay?”

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“Whatever happens to us, to our bodies, I want you to make sure that you will be there for Bridgette whichever body she will be at in the future.”

He frowned. “Of course,” he answered without batting an eye. “I’m not going anywhere, Cara.”

I stared at him for quite some time before I finally nodded. “I’ll hold you to that, Scott.”

BRIDGETTE

It seemed that the day Cara and I decided to finally end things in the hospital was also the same day that everything fell into place. Well, not everything, of course, because we were still as trapped inside each other’s body as before after a few months.

And then there were our families. My mom and dad and Lorraine still had no idea that I was not in the same body. My parents rarely called or came to visit and every time, Cara was the one who faced them. They never stayed for long. I had long accepted that they would never be the parents I had always wanted. I realized it was the only way they knew how to be actual parents. Things became better with Lorraine though. Now that she knew I knew of her secret, she had always confided in me, thinking I was Cara. I had told Cara about the little secret my sister was keeping and she chose to act like she didn’t know whenever Lorraine was around. But Lorraine also took a liking to her saying I was better than I was a few months ago. The three of us would often go out and do girly things. It was still difficult for me to not tell her the truth though. I so desperately wanted my sister to know, but I was still hoping, at the back of my mind, that Cara and I would go back. If we didn’t, then I might just tell her. Someday.

Cara’s dad was still the same. He would pop in without notice and knowing Cara missed him like hell, I started to introduce her to him and whenever he was around, I would call her to come over my place and in time, he got used to her presence. He started to love Cara. He even pointed out one time that she was so much like me. Of course, she was his daughter after all. I didn’t know if Cara wanted to tell her dad the truth, but I had a guess that she felt she couldn’t because the man was…well, not that young and he might take the news badly.

Cara started studying nursing for the second time. And mind you, people, she was the best in her class. Who wouldn’t? She had years of experience prior her education! And while she was studying, she was working with me in my office. Hey, somebody had to keep up appearances, right?

Scott and I were doing great. Well, kind of. It took him weeks to finally get used to calling me Bridge when he was in the mood and Bridgette when he was totally pissed. He would call me Bridgette about ten times in a week.

“But I’m glad you’re finally out, you know,” he had told me one time.

“What do you mean?” We were out on a date, just walking down the street. He had picked me up from the office.

“That you don’t have to pretend you’re Cara. I realize you have been holding out a lot of yourself from me.”

That moment I thought he was going to say he didn’t like the rest of me after all. “And?”

“Apart from your obviously bossy attitude, I think I love everything about you.” Now, that was the winner, right?

But sex was still not happening. Well, I guess not yet. We still enjoyed the tension if you know what I mean.

I could also say that things started to feel normal in a different kind of way. Yes, we still had a lot of glitches here and there because of our situation, but Cara and I tried as hard as we could to feel normal. I was feeling confident being inside her body and I learned to love her body--small breasts and all. I didn’t have any choice anyway. Longing for my original body would only make me miserable and I had been feeling far from it ever since Scott decided to go back to me.

CARA

Leaving the hospital was not an easy decision on my part. But it was the right thing to do. Danica would still visit Bridgette and sometimes, I would tag along. My friend finally managed to accept me, Bridgette, into her circle and it was one of the things that made the transition easier.

We were living a normal life in our own way, in a way we knew how.

I missed my dad a lot and I would still cry over it from time to time. But I couldn’t tell him my secret. He would surely have a heart attack if he realized I was telling the truth. Or if he wouldn’t, he would think his only daughter had gone insane. Maybe in time I would take the courage to tell him, but I was still hoping Bridgette and I could go back.

Quinn was a constant bother. But a nice bother, I should say. He started to take me to the usual spots where we used to date back in high school. And we went back to the bridge. Did I tell you the story of that bridge?

It was nothing big, really. It was where he confessed to me back in high school. It was the place where he told me why he had been a constant pain in my ass ever since kindergarten. It was there that he finally admitted that he didn’t care if people at school would laugh at him if they knew he liked me. It was on that bridge that we first kissed. And it was on that bridge that he promised me he would join me to college. No one knew of that bridge, not even Bridgette. It was ours and we started to make new memories in that place.

“I still can’t believe we’re back here,” he had said to me one night.

“Yeah, me too. I had always avoided this place ever since high school.”

“I never even thought of this place since that night,” he admitted.

“But we’re here; we’re back.”

His eyes were happy and content when he looked at me that night. “Yes, we’re back.”

We would often make up funny scenes of how the people from our old high school would react if they saw us together. Sure, they would wonder why Quinn was back with Bridgette. But then, what would they think if they heard Quinn call me Cara? And then, we would try to come up with reasons that ranged from acceptable to outrageous.

Things were great for a couple of months. I was happy being back at school and helping Bridgette in the office. I was glad I had Quinn. I was thankful I could spend time with Danica and my dad despite the fact that they only saw me as Bridgette. To sum it all up, I was happy I could finally be me inside Bridgette’s body.

But things had to come to an end, right?

Just as when everything was feeling great and normal, it happened.

And neither Bridgette nor I had ever imagined things to end up the way they did.