Important dinner

“Come on, Dad, I’m ready!” Samuel announced as he stepped into the room.

Paul froze, blinking twice before managing to form a single coherent thought.

“What… what exactly are you wearing, young man?” he asked, teetering between shock and disbelief.

Samuel let out a long sigh, the kind of sigh de quem já explicou aquilo mil vezes naquele dia.

“Oh, please, go complain to Mom,” he said, waving a hand. “This whole insane idea of swapping my body with your secretary just to see if you were having an affair was hers, remember? And now, thanks to that brilliant plan, I’m stuck in this body. Don’t even think about blaming me. And thank God the poor woman has no idea how she ended up in the body of a teenage boy — we told her some cosmic freak event caused everything and she bought it.”

Paul rubbed his face, trying to organize his thoughts.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Your mother honestly believed that switching you two right there, during those few tiny minutes of my commute time to work, would give you just enough time to set the stage and catch me hitting on her, exactly the way she imagined. She thought it would all happen quickly enough not to trigger that so-called ‘permanence lock.’

But of course the plan backfired completely: now the poor woman is stuck in your body for good.”

He pointed at Samuel’s outfit, exasperated. “And you still don’t have to dress like that.”

Samuel shrugged, perfectly unaffected.

“Oh, I know I don’t. But the original owner of this body texted me insisting I wear it. She said she really wants that promotion and — in the worst possible way — I found out what was actually going on. The affair isn’t with you, Dad. It’s with your business partner. And there’s a very important dinner tonight.”

Paul went pale.

“You’re not actually planning to go to that dinner, are you? Please tell me you’re not…”

“Of course I am,” Samuel replied with a bright, victorious smile. “We have to keep up appearances, don’t we?”

Paul was stunned as the realization hit him: his business partner had no scheduled meetings that day — none, not even a casual check-in. Which meant that this so-called “important dinner” Samuel mentioned had absolutely nothing to do with the company.

And Paul already knew, with terrifying clarity, exactly what kind of evening his partner had in mind…

Right down to what he probably expected to happen after dessert.