Chapter 10: Leader of the Pack

Blaine was...

It was a difficult thing to quantify. Words should have sprung to his head so easily to complete the sentence. After all, he was just describing himself, wasn’t he? Yet the concept of himself was proving increasingly elusive. He had been a man, and then a nerd, and then a surfer dude, and now a roided-out beach stud. He’d cycled between them all in rapid succession. And at every single stage of that development, that version of him had felt utterly real.

Now, he was even more confused. Moving onto one stage of development usually meant letting the previous ones fall by the wayside. But Bunny’s burst just now had done something strange to his neurons. Suddenly, he found himself wrestling with four different versions of himself at once.

He had had the hot Asian babe right where he wanted her. She’d been swooning over him, wet for him, ready for him. Then, sudden as a storm at a beach, it was over. And he was left not just unfulfilled in the department of horniness, but also feeling ... bad? She’d overreacted at being called a bimbo, and it was definitely overreacting, but maybe he shouldn’t have said it?

Nah dude, she’s totally just PMSing or something, came one voice.

She doesn’t appreciate you denigrating her like the rest of this regressive setting, insisted a second.

Shut up, nerd, chorused the other voices inside him.

It was all giving him such a headache. How could all these versions of himself be true? And if they were equally true, then what had he done, diving so headlong into this new version of himself? What reality was possible if he–?

A beach ball soared through his open window, smacking him upside the head. He staggered back into the wall, his huge body heavy enough to make the whole beach shack shake, it seemed. And the impact only added to that; though slight, Bikini Week rules still applied to all impacts, and sure enough another ten pounds of muscle sprouted across his body, evenly distributed across all the major groups to turn him into a serious slab of blonde, all-American beef.

Blaine grumbled. He should’ve known the narrative wouldn’t appreciate existential philosophizing on its watch. In fact, he was probably dancing on dangerous territory, even thinking a phrase like “existential philosoph–”

A second beach ball soared through the window and beaned him right on the head again. Another ten pounds of muscle pushed his veins even closer to the surface beneath his sun-tanned, cancer-free skin. His calves now looked bigger than his old self’s biceps.

He staggered to the window. A whole group of beachgoers were playing volleyball, even though elsewhere on the beach it was raining. It was as if the continuity on this cheap 80’s movie was as slapshod as its other production values. “What just happened?” he called to them, annoyed.

“Sorry, Blaine!” said Mimi, a long-legged brunette with a coy demeanor. “We accidentally knocked our beach ball out of bounds, and then our do-over with our backup beach ball accidentally followed the exact same trajectory as the first one!”

“What’re the odds?” Blaine grumbled.

Mimi frowned thoughtfully. “No, I’m pretty sure two is an even number...”

Her redheaded friend Ginger nudged her aside. “Come out and play with us, beefy boy!” she called with the kind of spunky, in-your-face attitude that was bound to get this exact clip of her character taken out of context and turned into a meme in about thirty years.

So that’s where that gif is from, thought a voice inside him.

Shut up, nerd, came the others.

Blaine considered this. He knew he should be racing off after Bunny. He didn’t like his best gal storming off like that. Didn’t like her being mad at him. He was the coolest guy on the beach, right? People were supposed to like the coolest guy on the beach. It felt bad that she didn’t.

You’re supposed to run off after her because you’re her partner, came that annoying voice. Help fix things, so the two of you can escape back to reality. Remember? Divert some blood back to your brain and remember.

He knew the annoying voice was right. He really did.

But the beach ball court had hot girls.

As he enjoyed the afternoon-and-then-evening of beach ball, he had a fucking blast. Every single time the ball came to him, he went horizontal in a dive, regardless of its practicality. His new body was incredible at this game, even when theoretically his bulk should have been at odds with the required agility. And the whole time, he was being adored.

The guys loved it, even when he scored on them. They were always high-fiving him, tossing him beers, subtly deferring to him in conversation. The girls were hanging all over him between plays, re-upping the tanning oil on his gleaming muscles, taking turns openly ogling the contours of his speedo over the top rims of their sunglasses. The synth vibes were tight, the neon sunset was hot, and he felt like the center of all of it.