Page 38 of Exchange of Heart

‘See, honey, she loves you.’ She motioned her head at Corey who must have looked like my beautiful girlfriend with that gorgeous hair I’d been growing for the last year and a half.

He puffed his chest like an infuriated gorilla which flashed my bra, considering he hadn’t done the buttons back up. ‘I do not,’ he blubbered.

‘Oh.’ The waitress frowned.

‘Of course you don’t. No one could ever love this tiny brain.’ I smiled sweetly.

The confused waitress took a step back, then shuffled to another table to take their order.

‘Well, no one could love this hair. It looks like a horse’s tail.’ Corey wrapped his hands around his black hair and held it to the side.

There was no way I’d let him have the final insult. ‘It looks like I’ve got a skin disease.’ I raised his tattooed right arm.

The couple next to us glanced over, then ducked their heads together and giggled.

‘My nipples are an uneven colour.’ He stood so hard his chair fell out behind him, leaning forward as if that would give his words more power.

This time, two other tables stopped eating to stare at us with parted lips.

‘I shave my balls in summer, so they don’t sweat.’ I didn’t know if that was true, but he deserved to die a humiliating death for that comment.

We were yelling random things by this point, and now there wasn’t a table that hadn’t turned to watch us. Even the waiters paused what they were doing to listen.

‘I eat my snot when no one’s looking,’ he bellowed.

That one earned a gasp from the small Greek lady to our left. Corey’s lips twisted in vengeance, and when I didn’t reply, they lifted in victory. It’s not over ’til the fat lady sings, and she prepared her vocal cords for my next one.

‘I spent a year stretching so now I can suck my own d—’

‘Enough.’ A large lady barrelled through the back door and stopped, red-faced, at our table. ‘You both need to leave. I don’t care how many lives you’ve saved today. This is entirely unacceptable.’

My gaze darted around the room at a mixture of entertained and appalled faces. I didn’t know what had come over me. I couldn’t believe some of the words that had come out of my mouth. In public! Corey threw his serviette on the table and stormed out.

I cleared my throat and nodded in submission. ‘I’m so sorry. We got a bit carried away.’

A bit?

I wanted the ground to swallow me. My walk of shame through the crowded café shocked me back to reality. Had I really yelled that I shaved my balls? I didn’t even have balls. Not normally, at least. Corey had obviously lost his appetite, because we walked to his building and took the elevator straight down to the carpark in silence.

Out of the elevator, my feet refused to go any further than the few steps they’d taken towards his car bay. ‘You really think my nipples are an uneven colour?’

The look he summoned to my face was purely Corey to the point I didn’t even recognise my own face. ‘No. I just knew it would piss you off.’

I released a sigh as slow as I could, keeping my mouth closed, and letting relief slide out my nostrils.

Corey stopped walking. ‘This has to stop.’

‘I know, but we don’t even know where to look for the umbrella, if that’s even the answer. I have no idea how we’re meant to switch back.’ I threw my hands in the air.

‘Well, that, but I meant this bickering. It’s gotta end.’

He looked like a lost puppy with my brown eyes, but something about his face resembled the old him; the face I now wore. It nuzzled emotions inside of me I could no longer ignore. Every man was flawed in my eyes thanks to my father’s actions, and this ongoing hatred was poisoning my core.

But Corey wasn’t my father.

I sighed and stepped closer to him, breathing in the peppermint and lemon that joined forces to refresh my mind from the anger I’d directed at him earlier.

‘I’m envious,’ I admitted, ‘of your job, your money, your lifestyle. It’s infuriating watching everything come so easy to you.’