The Switch [COMPLETED]

Chapter 19

Paisley Monroe:

When I finally came to, I was lying on my back on the plush velvet couch that I remembered from the green room a few hours before. Asher was bending over me, the ends of his long brown hair tickling my nose.

I smiled drunkenly and let out a little giggle. It was still so weird to see my own face and know that my consciousness wasn't the one behind it.

"Asher! What's up? How'd I do?" I asked in a croaky voice, squinting at the bright light shining behind his head.

"Well, judging by the press's use of the phrases 'psychotic break' and 'mental breakdown,' I would say you did just peachy," he said sarcastically, glaring at me with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Good, good," I mumbled, still not fully aware of what was going on around me. "Where is everybody?"

"Outside talking with my publicist," he growled, plopping down into one of the armchairs next to me and sticking his lip out like a petulant child. "They're not very happy. They're talking about postponing the tour until after I can receive some therapy for my 'stress-induced anxiety,'" he grumbled, kicking angrily at the leg of another armchair a few inches away.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut against the pounding headache in my skull. Suddenly, the events of the past few hours all came rushing back to me, and I groaned.

"I'm sorry," I said in a small voice, immediately grasping the seriousness of the situation. I had just embarrassed an A-list celebrity on live television in front of who knows how many people, and now his career may very well be on the line.

Asher glanced sideways at me and took a deep breath before finally uncrossing his arms and sighing.

"I should have just had you fake a stomach flu or something. I should have known you wouldn't have been able to pull that off."

Even though I knew he was right, my brow still wrinkled angrily at his remark. I hated being told that I couldn't do something.

"Well it's not my fault that you sent me out there with only thirty minutes worth of trivia and a pat on the back!" I exclaimed, sitting upright angrily and ignoring the way the room spun slightly around me.

"Well I wouldn't have if I had known that you would be such garbage!" Asher yelled back. "You have my voice, all you had to do was use it!"

"It's not that easy!" I bellowed, my hands balling into angry fists at my sides. "I'm not a rockstar, Asher. I'm a regular high school student from Gilbert, Arizona whose never even been out of her own state, let alone country. I have no friends, no idea what I'm doing with my life, and no idea how to talk to people, ESPECIALLY a stranger on live TV. Expecting me to pull that off was cruel and unfair, and blaming me for everything going wrong is even more so!"

I was standing by this point, hovering angrily over Asher while he was still sitting in the armchair, the steely glint never once leaving his eyes.

"No, what's not FAIR is that of all of the people in the entire world for me to have swapped bodies with, I get the friendless, talentless, cowardly teenaged nun with ugly clothes and the inability to even stand up to her own mom," Asher hissed, jumping to his feet and jutting his chin out at me.

In my body he was a good foot shorter than me, but in that moment I had never felt so small.

I opened my mouth to speak, but found that I had no words to say. I could sense the tears coming even before I felt the tell-tale tickle in the back of my throat, and I watched some of the fire drain out of Asher's eyes as he suddenly seemed to realize what he had just said.

"Paisley, I..." he began softly. He reached out a hand to touch my shoulder, but I stepped back and turned away before he could see the tears that had started to slip silently down my cheeks.

If only he knew that the words he had just said to me were the same ones I said to myself almost every day...

"I want to get our bodies back," I said so softly that it was almost a whisper, "and then I never want to see you again."

-

A/N: Hello, lovelies!

So this chapter was super short but I'm going to double-post it along with another one so you don't feel so cheated LOL.

Thank you for your continued support!

Xo, Adrienna