It was another thrilling day of mixing paint. Natalie began her shift trying to avoid getting paint on herself but eventually she realized she was wasting her time and shouldn’t even bother. You can’t go to a paint job and not expect to get a little messy.

Kira and her still hadn’t talked yet, which was a shame because Kira seemed like a very nice lady. Good looking too, Natalie usually didn’t like unnatural hair colors but Kira made it work. Her violet hair somehow didn’t look out of place with a Home Depot uniform on. How did she manage that?

“Umm, Sir?”

Natalie jumped upon hearing that voice. She had gotten so lost in her own world. The voice also sounded very familiar. It almost sounded like…

Ashley’s voice.

Natalie turned toward the voice and was stunned to see Ashley right there in front of her.

“I was wondering if there were any soft yellows here, I can’t find any.”

Natalie just stared at Ashley, wide eyed and amazed.

She was… real.

“Sir?” Ashley asked.

Natalie shook herself out of her daze. “Sorry, all the soft yellows are out of stock. We could mix a soft yellow for you.”

“No, that’s fine.” Ashley answered. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Natalie said back. “What’s your name?” She asked before cringing.

Ashley gave her a confused look. “Umm… Ashley.” She paused for a second. “Have a good day.”

She turned and walked away as Natalie tried to cover her face in embarrassment. “What’s your name? Seriously?” She thought to herself. Did she not remember that Ashley didn’t know her in this reality? What was she planning on doing with that information anyway?

Natalie heard someone quietly laughing off to the side. She looked toward the source of the noise and saw Kira.

“Is something funny?” Natalie asked her.

“No, sorry.” Kira answered. “I was just being dumb.”

“You were being dumb.” Natalie scoffed. “No, you were watching someone being dumb.”

“It’s not a bad thing to ask someone what their name is.”

“She was a customer.” Natalie explained.

“So?” Kira asked. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s just a little embarrassing. I’m not supposed to do that.”

“And people aren’t ‘supposed’ to work at Home Depot. It was a perfectly fine thing to ask.”

“Alright, fine.” Natalie’s face turned into a smirk. “What’s your name?”

Kira smirked along with her. “It’s Kira, thank you very much. And your’s?”

“Nathan.” Natalie answered. She snickered. “This is so dumb.”

“Well, maybe we need a little stupidity in our lives. This job is really fucking boring.”

“Yeah, it is.”

Kira nodded and after a bit of silence, she began walking away. Natalie was thinking of going up to her and asking for her phone number, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

***

It was a good thing Nathan was starting to get used to these sudden switches, or else he probably would’ve caused an accident on the way back.

Inside his apartment, Nathan was spending the rest of his day doing his usual activities, or at least what used to be his usual activities. Sitting on a chair, eating a takeout pizza, and drinking red wine.

He hoped Natalie wouldn’t mind. He just wanted some comfort. It’s been a long time since he’s done this. And this pizza even had basil leaves on it. There wasn’t another pizza place anywhere near him that did that.

While watching a show on the TV, he heard his phone vibrate in his pocket and took it out, annoyed by the disturbance.

It was a text from his sister.

“Are you gonna visit us soon? We haven’t seen you in so long.”

He stared at his phone screen for about a minute, unable to come up with a response.

Another text came.

“We miss you.”

He sighed. “I know Kate, I miss you too.” He typed.

A third message quickly followed.

“Promise you won’t drink so much tonight?”

Nathan felt his heart stop upon reading that. He slowly turned his head toward the bottle of red wine resting on a small cabinet to his left. It was half empty at this point, it hadn’t even been ten minutes since he started drinking it.

He blinked and stared at the bottle, snapping out of his relaxed state. He turned back to his phone and promptly sent Kate another text. “I won’t, I promise.” He paused. “I love you.” He typed out.

He saw Kate quickly text “I love you too” back to him and put the phone back into his pocket. He turned off the TV and took the bottle of red wine back to the refrigerator, placing it right next to the potion. He slammed the door shut.

Then he threw the phone straight toward the nearest wall.

“Fuck me.” He mumbled quietly, looking at the dent the phone had created.

His back hit the wall and he slid to the ground, hitting the floor.

What in the world was he doing? Drinking again? What the hell did he think was going to happen? He didn’t have any control over himself, he’d just get shitfaced again and wake up with another horrible hangover as his liver got more fucked up than it probably already was. Why was it so hard for him to just, for once, think of someone other than himself and not fucking drink like he was going to die the next day?

“But I was going to control myself this time.” A part of his mind protested. “Just a little bit, that’s all.”

Yeah, that’s what he said last time too. For some mysterious reason, it didn’t work out.

He looked down at his shirt and smelled it. He cringed. He even smelled like alcohol, an all too common scent on him, and not just because he drank so much, but also because he very frequently spilled some of his drink on his clothes.

He laughed bitterly. He had only come back very recently and it did not take long at all for him to fall back onto his old, terrible habits. A night of getting so drunk he’d throw up was just something he had to share with Natalie.

…Shit, Natalie.

He lifted a hand to his forehead and immediately got dizzy. He quickly walked over to a couch and fell onto it, the cushions hitting his back. All the while his hand remained on his head.

It wasn’t bad enough that he hadn’t considered the feelings of his family. He hadn’t considered the feelings of Natalie either.

That same part of his mind from earlier protested again. “Natalie is twenty-four years old too, you know. She’s probably had a bad hangover before.”

That made sense. So much sense it almost made him forget how bad of an excuse it was. He wasn’t really trying to justify subjecting the person he shared his body and experiences with to his alcoholism was he?

Wait, no, he needed to get himself out of that mindset. Natalie and him were not different people, they were both part of the same consciousness. He was Natalie, and Natalie was him. The only difference was that sometimes he had his male memories and sometimes he had his female memories. Other than that, they were the same.

And they should be the same.

Nathan closed his eyes and tried to focus on himself being Natalie. How he had felt the short time he was living as her. All those scary thoughts he wanted to push away at first, he welcomed. Living as a woman, enjoying living as a woman, having sex as a woman, having breasts, having a vagina, having periods, he tried so hard to pull those experiences closer to him.

He actually felt his mind grow strained as his recollection of life as Natalie went from near empty to vaguely recognizable. Yes! It was working! He just needed to try harder. He pulled on these faint memories even more, and as he did he felt more of them come back stronger and stronger. He was exhausted but he didn’t care. He was doing it! He was making things the way they were supposed to be.

Nathan couldn’t do this without Natalie’s memories. He needed her, she was a much, much better person than he was.

Suddenly, all those memories escaped his reach and began fading away again. He panicked and strained his mind hard to get them back, but they didn’t budge an inch. Breathing heavily, he tried to concentrate on nothing except his life as Natalie, to think of literally nothing else, but obviously, it didn’t work. No one had that level of control over their mind.

Nathan’s eyes slowly opened back up, his heart rate and breathing as fast and as heavy as ever. He found he was sweating too, and he reached his hand up to wipe his forehead.

He was so close.

A tear fell from Nathan’s eyes. Once again, he couldn’t do a single thing right. Everytime he was in control of his life he messed it up like the drunk piece of shit coward he was. He drove everyone in his life away and became a lost cause before he was even in his late twenties. Every bad thing that happened to him was his fault, and he deserved it. He deserved all of it. He was a disgusting fucking college drop-out slob wasting around in an apartment by himself all day. He deserved everything Astian did to him. The only thing Astian did wrong was not fully erasing Nathan from existence.

He should’ve fucking died when-

Natalie suddenly saw herself standing up from the couch. She was massively disorientated, and had a pounding headache, but she tried her best to ignore it. She wanted to go to bed to sleep the miserable night off, but quickly found she couldn’t move her body an inch. She was frozen in place. Come to think of it, the couch she was just sitting on wasn’t behind her anymore. Where did it go?

At some point, she felt her body stumbling around the place completely out of her control. She wasn’t moving it, it was doing it all on its own. To make matters worse, she saw the apartment she was in was very different from her’s. It wasn’t remotely the same set up. What had happened? Where was she?

Her body walked into the kitchen of the apartment and her eyes caught a calendar on one of the walls. Her heart sank upon seeing it. She instantly recognized the month and year from the trial, just four months before Nathan got fired and had to move in with Astian.

Oh god.