# Chapter Two: Research Purposes

The HIIT class idea died somewhere between the park and my dorm, killed by a much more urgent research priority.

I let myself into the room I shared with Derek, locked the door, and stood there in the fading light with my hands on hips that weren't mine, breathing like I'd run the whole way. Which, to be fair, I mostly had. Sarah's body was fast. And light. And full of opinions about stairs that my old knees had never once contributed.

"Okay," I said to the empty room. "Okay okay okay."

I pulled off the tank top, and the world got a lot more interesting.

The first touch was a shock. Not because it felt like anything unexpected, but because it felt exactly like what it was: my fingers on skin, real and warm, except the skin was her chest and the nervous system reporting back was hers too, and my brain was just squatting in the middle of it taking notes like a guy who'd won a backstage pass. I explored with the slow, deliberate greed of someone who knew nobody was coming to take it away. Sports bra off. A handful of earnest, fumbling discovery. I was grinning like an idiot the whole time, I'm sure. My own face, doing something my face had never done before.

The rest went faster after that, if I'm honest. Shorts, underwear, kicked into the corner. I lay back on my sad dorm mattress with Sarah's toned legs draped off the end and got properly acquainted with the rest of the estate, and it was good, it was embarrassingly good, the kind of good where you have to muffle your own mouth with your hand because you're still using your own deep voice and it echoes in cinderblock walls.

Afterward I lay there sweating on sheets that smelled like Derek's laundry detergent, chest heaving, completely ruined as a functional student.

"Best. Find. Ever," I told the ceiling.

I cleaned up, did a few experimental stretches because the body seemed to want to move, and poked through Sarah's phone enough to learn she was a grad student, she had a running club, and her camera roll was 80% her dog. I deliberately did not read her texts beyond that. Okay, I read like six. Then I stopped, mostly.

I was one hour into owning this body, sitting …