Pre-natal exams are boring. I was hoping not to learn that until I was having my own kids rather than body swapping with some knocked up chick, but never mind.

Also, I have to say, Justin Timberlake is either the world's most attentive boyfriend or the world's clingiest. In all fairness this was a fictional version and not the real one, but my GOD he would not stop calling. I don't get it. In the very first message he figured that I'd be in the clinic and thus have the phone switched off, so could I call him back… and then proceeded to leave two more such messages. I wasn't even in there that long. Clearly if she hasn't picked up the first one yet she is not going to have picked up the second or third, so why the multiple messages? He even sent a text too. Seriously dude, back off. Breathing room is your friend. This chick's already got one stalker.

Speaking of said, I am never going to write about anybody being stalked ever again. I had not appreciated just how paranoid it makes you. That cramped feeling of dread in your stomach, the muscles in your neck getting tight, the constant running of various awful scenarios through your head. As far as I was concerned he was about to rear end the car or jump out from behind a corner at any moment; it's deeply unpleasant to say the least. Given that I was also headed for a pre-natal appointment when I did not want to alert him to any possibility she's pregnant, this was just heightened. One meeting was quite enough for my life time yet I knew she had a few more to go in hers until he finally and deservedly bit the bullet. Or, to be accurate, took the bullet in the chest but who cares about semantics?

Anyway, as I was saying, Timberlake's a little overzealous. To be fair I think this might have something to do with being a first time parent but trust me, this whole fan fiction 'perfect boyfriend' thing is not so cute in person. Really. I kept waiting for him to display a couple of faults so I could determine that he was in fact human and not a cyborg. The constant attentiveness was freaky and disconcerting. It's like the man wasn't real.

For instance, because I didn't turn back up to his house (I may have forgotten the address) he turned up at the apartment. I was already asleep when Shannen showed up so they'd apparently been chatting while I napped - though for about the last ten minutes that napping was feigned rather than genuine. I had no idea why I was constantly exhausted, but from what they were saying it was because Hollie's morning sickness is really early morning sickness. Like three am early, which if you ask me is absolutely criminal and Timberlake's not the only one who looked less cute to me after all this. Chloe's gone down in my estimation too if she requires getting up at that god forsaken time of the morning to toss your cookies. And with that I thought the following to myself: 'God, do I get to do that too tonight? Fucking hell, I hate this dream and I'd like to wake up now.'

But yep, they were now having a heartfelt conversation about how they thought Hollie was coping and the logistics of constantly going back between his house and the apartment. My weirdness that morning had been attributed to pregnancy and not their all powerful author being given a taste of her own medicine. I suppose that when you're the one it's directed at all this love and concern is very sweet and touching, but when you're an objective observer it's deeply nauseating. It's like watching those couples who can't stop with the PDA and the sickly sweet pet names in inappropriately public places. It's yet another fan fiction cliché that is not that cute in person.

In fact, take it from me, fan fiction in general is just not cute in person. This experience sucked monkey balls.

I won't recount all the saccharine affectionate parts or the boring pregnancy stuff. That part can be pretty accurately summed up by saying that Shannen was a lot more worried about Hollie than I ever let on in the story and Justin had read a lot more parenting books than I ever let on in the story. Quite frankly he could have retrained as a midwife and skipped about half the seminars. He was like a walking encyclopaedia. I will skip straight to the more intriguing parts. Or what I thought were the intriguing parts, anyway.

"Umm… not to ruin the nice congenial vibe and all, but…" Shannen started uneasily.

"What?" Justin said, suddenly on guard. I suppose years of interviews will probably give a good grounding in when you're about to get bad news. That and she'd been kind of ominous anyway.

"I will murder and disembowel you if you repeat this to Hols, but I may have bribed the security guard to tell me when anybody matching Carl's description shows up here." Wow - for an underdeveloped character this woman was sneakier than I'd thought.

Since I was pretending to be asleep and couldn't break this façade, I didn't see exactly what happened. It sounded like glass shattering, that's all I can say. It also sounded like somebody went to a cupboard and started sweeping it up. All in all, it sounded like Justin had taken something out on the nearest glass. Damn, I did give him a violent streak.

"You're about to tell me he showed up here today."

"No, I'm about to tell you maybe," she said tonelessly. "It may not have been him though, he said he didn't get a good look and he is supposed to be in jail."

"True." You've never heard anyone more relived in your life. "Richard would have called and told Hollie the second he got out anyway. And she was at my house all day before her appointment anyway."

Well THAT was a stupid assumption, since clearly I wasn't at his house all day. Oh well, no need to enlighten him. I was sticking to my 'don't rock the boat' plan and saying nothing that didn't appear in my published version of Letting Go. It was just safer that way.

"I just… I have this fear that when he finds out she's pregnant he'll do something even shittier than he already has." Points to the brunette, she was definitely not wrong. "It's only a matter of time."

"Well he's going to get found guilty and stay locked up and the restraining order's on him anyway." No points to the pop star. He was definitely not right.

"Yeah. Is it bad if I hope he gets butt raped by the nastiest looking guy in there?"

"Remind me not to piss you off."

"Well, you don't hit my best friend and then stalk her and we're good. Though you did already seduce and knock her up out of wedlock, so technically I probably owe you some pain."

"Hey, I'm not taking responsibility for that; she was the one who…"

"Do NOT complete that story. Please. I just don't need to know."

"You started it."

"Look pal, I know we're friends now and all but I just do not need to hear any tales which could lead to me picturing your scrawny white butt without any pants on."

Have you ever tried pretending to be asleep when you really want to laugh? It's exceedingly difficult and I'm no good at it. I once creased up laughing in the middle of a drama production at school too. Lucky for me I am at least enough of an actress to disguise it as a sneeze. In true clingy style, I immediately had Mr Perfect hovering over me looking worried. Sheesh, boy, it was just a sneeze. A little dust never hurt anybody or their unborn child.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"How was your appointment?"

"Appointment?" The parrot tendency was back.

"Yeah, that thing I already reminded you about once today. Didn't you get my messages?"

See? Clingy. Told you. It's just not cute.

"I just came straight home to sleep. Tired. Everything's fine though, blood pressure and stuff." That was about as much detail as I could remember at that point, since I'd been bored stiff through that appointment. I'm sure if anything worrisome had been mentioned I'd have found that a little more attention worthy.

"Cool."

Without invitation, Justin had picked my feet off the couch and sat down in their place, keeping them in his lap and rubbing my ankle. I suppose when you're in a relationship you don't need permission to disturb a perfectly comfy person instead of taking the free armchair. Instead Shannen did that, though not before ruffling my hair on her way past.

"So you feeling sick as usual babe or you want take out?" She asked as she curled her feet under her. "I have no energy to cook."

"Take out sounds good to me."

"Sorry brain trust, I wasn't talking to you." They clearly bickered gently in sibling style, if their exchanges were anything to go by.

"I know but even if she's sick I still have to eat. Thai?"

Again, without invitation he was there for dinner. I was betting I'd be sharing a bed with him that evening too. I'm sure a lot of you are sitting here wondering why the hell I'd be complaining about that since it led to the possibility of seeing the one and only JT sans clothing, but you have to understand that the whole debacle was mentally exhausting and quite frankly the idea of anything more intimate than 'hello' and 'goodbye' terrified the hell out of me. I'm not the slut who fools around with somebody else's boyfriend and also, intimacy equals familiarity and I had no idea how to keep up the act in such a situation. Hell, I hadn't had a boyfriend myself in months, I wasn't even sure I remembered how to talk to boys.

Also, there was a large chance that if I saw Justin Timberlake's penis in person that I would burst out laughing. It would just be that one step too far into surrealism for me.

"If there's green curry involved I could do Thai." That was as much as I was prepared to contribute to the conversation.

"Works for me," Shannen replied lazily. "Oh, and David called while you were asleep, I told him that unless you tell him otherwise you'll be at work tomorrow."

Great, I thought. It was the most I could do to work a disposable camera, never mind professional equipment.

***

The entire trip was full of thoughts I never thought I'd ever have. The mother of all these was "I really wish Justin would stop hitting on me."

There, I said it. Justin Timberlake hitting on me was a problem.

Never mind years of romance stories and fancying the bloke and swooning at concerts or whatever - Justin Timberlake coming onto me was hugely inconvenient and not very welcome.

Aside from previously mentioned worries about fraudulent impersonation of his girlfriend and messing around with somebody else's guy, et cetera, the fact was that I was tired and nauseous. I felt bloated. My breasts were a little tender. All in all, I was very uncomfortable and I felt kind of murderous about it. There was a serious possibility that I could wrench somebody's head off with my bare hands, and given that I'd already found his thoughtfulness overbearing and irritating Justin was first in the firing line.

I know that's unfair. His only crime was loving his girlfriend and being concerned enough to express it. Millions of women across the globe spend their time wishing their guy was more expressive and attentive in his affections and let's face it - Justin was only that way because he was a fictional character. My fictional character, so really any qualities of his that I might wish to complain about I was solely to blame for and as such should not have been threatening to kill him for like it was his fault. What you need to understand is that to process such thoughts would have been logical, and I was hormonal. Hormones do not understand logic. They understand 'crush, kill, destroy.'

It began first after dinner. With a deadpan face and only a slight raise of the eyebrow he mentioned he was going to take a shower. This was his most subtle come on and as such the easiest to side step; I busied myself with clearing up the kitchen and trying to look like I knew where everything was supposed to go. Handily, this then gave me the excuse to get into the shower as soon as he'd come out, and I am exceptionally good at taking forever over showers if it so suits me. Hollie handily had a deep conditioning treatment in her bathroom that required at least fifteen minutes before rinsing, so I made full use of that too. Hats off to me, once I'd done that and then lingered over body lotions and moisturisers and whatever else, I had wasted the best part of an hour. I had to suffer through incredulous comments about being able to watch Titanic at least twice in the time it took me to shower (which is an enormous exaggeration) but it was worth it to avoid sticking my foot in it as I am so prone to do.

Seriously, if you knew somebody else's future would you be able to avoid any inadvertent slips? It's a bloody nightmare, I tell you, especially when you're hormonal and suffering from the knowledge that if you stay in this body too long you are going to have an abnormally lengthy childbirth. I needed gas and air just thinking about it and once again, the hormones made me prone to blame him and his stupid seed for being so wily and able to circumvent not one but two forms of contraception. Did he have Super Sperm or something? Why did I write that stupid plot twist anyway?

Oh yeah, it was to save the dog from a Fatal Attraction style moment a la Carl. I figured a baby was more dramatic.

Next, he made excuses to be in the room while I was changing. The silly boy had not counted on the fact that I, unlike his girlfriend, had spent my high school years at an all girls' school and as such I was extremely adept at changing clothes without flashing very much. What can I say? The changing rooms were a cruel and embarrassing place. I purposely chose the least sexy pair of pyjamas she had, though part of that was because I felt ill and when I feel ill I need comfy pjs. As much as it pained me, I turned my back on him and pretended to be engrossed in some menial task while he was stripping behind me. That one was physically painful, I have to say. It was certainly the last chance I'll ever have to perv on JT while he's changing and I was forced to squander it.

He was unperturbed by any of this. A perennial Mr Happy, he was still chatting away despite my noncommittal grunts in response and every time he moved past me I had a hand on my back or my shoulder or through my hair or a kiss on the forehead or something of that nature. They were slightly grabby and intimate little touches, invitations to something a lot grabbier, but I pretended not to heed the message. Not being Miss Touchy Feely myself, this was an extremely odd experience. Again, given that this was the first and only chance I'd ever have I wish I could have enjoyed it a little more, but worrying about the possible effect of hallucinogenic drugs on your liver and kidneys is a very effective mood killer. Even when I rudely got into the bed and started reading, thereby practically ignoring him, he didn't seem to care; I'm not sure if he noticed how rigid I became when he settled his head on my lap. I was already annoyed enough that he'd taken my side of the bed - I suppose my imaginary counterpart preferred the other side.

"Good book?" He asked congenially. With him on my lap I was forced to rest one arm across his shoulder and it felt like I was laying it across a hot stove, the skin contact burned. Possibly with shame.

"It's okay," I shrugged. I'd already read that one myself, funnily enough.

"If it's not entertaining enough I can think of something else you could do."

"There's nothing good on TV tonight," I riposted. The one thing I was grateful to myself for was making her a sarcastic little so and so who bordered on verbal abuse with him - it meant I could play off turning him down as a joke.

"Well that was going to be my second suggestion."

"If that was a line to make me ask what the first was I'm not biting."

Justin heaved a big melodramatic sigh, jostling my arm and making the book wave in front of my face. "You know, it's really hard work being with a girlfriend who has to make everything so difficult. You could just take the line every so often you know, wouldn't kill ya."

"Yes it would. It'd defy my very nature." Did I mention it's really weird hearing yourself talk in an accent that isn't yours?

"It defies my very nature to let you abuse me so much but we all have to make sacrifices in a relationship."

"Hey, you spend half your day throwing up and then you can talk to me about sacrifices." I said that in all seriousness, I was very bitter about it. Since I hadn't been the one to open my legs I resented being the one to accept the consequences - again, the fact that she was only pregnant because I ordained it so had conveniently slipped my mind.

"Really? How bad was it today?"

Oh Lord, I'd set off the Daddy radar again. He'd immediately sat up (though if he'd sat any closer then he would have been straight back on my lap), put his arm around me and started stroking my hair. Every nerve ending she possessed was going and it was like I had full body pins and needles. It was unpleasant to say the least, when really I ought to have been enjoying this. It was irritating. In all honesty I was too easily irritated at that point, hormones, but I do feel that was genuinely irritating.

"Define bad."

"Scale of one to ten?"

This was awkward, I had no idea what the usual standard was. "Eight?" I hazarded a guess, and then hazarded a rejection. "Suffice to say that I feel sea sick enough as it without rocking the boat. Or bed."

Well, apparently my creations are at least sycophantic enough to think that I'm funny because he laughed. In a brief moment of magnanimity towards him (really I think I was just bitter that I was Justin Timberlake's girlfriend for the day and couldn't enjoy it, it wasn't his fault) I noted that he had a very melodic little chuckle.

"Rocking the boat? Lord, woman, when are you going to learn to just call it sex? You're pregnant for God's sake, it's a little late for euphemisms."

He may have found me funny, I found him less funny - probably because I was the butt of that joke. I was eighteen at the time, okay, back then I was a little more prudish about sex and it showed. These days I'm dropping the words 'fuck' and 'shag' everywhere (my latest leading ladies certainly don't have her issues), so to hear him making fun of the phase I was long since over kind of grated. As you may have gathered everything grated, I really was a crabby bitch. Pregnancy does not become me.

"What's a good euphemism for annoying bastard?" I sniped back. Infuriatingly, though I meant that as an insult he took it as a joke. Kissed my cheek and everything. Honestly, he really was touchy feely.

"You love me and you know it."

"That's debatable." I did not tell a lie. His girlfriend may have loved him but I was still on the fence.

"You love me and you know it," he repeated with a grin.

"Repeating it doesn't make it any truer."

"You love me and you know it."

"Now you're just being childish."

"Wanna fuck?"

"WHAT?" I screeched, entirely unprepared for that. Of course he immediately took that for the aforementioned prudishness rather than the utter incomprehension of what it had to do with the immediate conversation that it was, and the grin came back.

"See, I told you. You need to loosen up."

"Fine. Sure. Let's have sex now; I find people I've just called childish really hot and it's so sexy when I'm nauseous, my fantasy is to puke all over a guy while he orgasms. Giddy up cowboy."

At this point, I am willing to admit that by use of the phrase 'giddy up cowboy' I may have been guilty of the same childishness I'd just accused him of. At that point, I was ready to wrench his head off his shoulders like I mentioned earlier. On the bright side, by the way his mouth had just dropped open I'd managed to turn the tables. I can't really imagine Ms Masterson ever telling him to giddy up or talking about fantasies and orgasms. See? I really have become more liberal with the sex references since I wrote that story.

"If you leave your mouth open like that for much longer your jaw's going to seize up," I told him mischievously after about a minute of him failing to comment.

"Who are you and what did you do to my girlfriend?"

"I'm a Hollie from another universe who's taken over her body," I told him. Nobody can accuse me of misleading him - I told him the truth, is it my fault he chose not to take me seriously?

"Not like you to take my advice so seriously… or at all," he spluttered while trying to recover.

"I'm full of surprises."

"Yeah well, point taken. Next time I'll check how the evening morning sickness is going before I proposition you."

"Much appreciated," I replied. I'm sure Hollie would appreciate it too if she ever got her own body back.

Have you noticed that the more I talk about this the more I talk about it like it was real and not a figment of my insanity? I need to stop that… but just in case, could somebody get the men in white coats on standby? Much obliged.

"Do I at least get a cuddle or are you gonna be gross about that too?"

I'm not sure I've ever heard a grown man use the word 'cuddle' before - unless talking to his children, anyway. I made a big show of umming and ahhing and pretending to weigh it up while I was actually weighing it up. A cuddle couldn't hurt, right? I'd got out of the sex but he was going to think something was weird if I banned him from touching me at all. In the interests of maintaining the illusion, I was going to have to submit to cuddling. Woe is me.

"I could manage."

The book went on the nightstand, the lights went out, and after settling down properly in the bed I permitted Mr Timberlake to pull me over to him and put his arms around me. I even reciprocated. It wasn't so bad. There was a comfortable enough nook between his arm and shoulder and thankfully he was at least wearing boxers so he wasn't too naked for comfort (though in the unlikely event I ever get into this situation by mutual consent and in my own bloody persona with the real one, then I will have less of a problem with nudity).

"That really was gross, you know," he announced to the darkness.

I remained unrepentant. Still do, really. "Don't start what you can't finish."

"I worry about me sometimes for loving you. Saying stuff like that just isn't normal, you're kind of weird."

He couldn't see it, but I kind of smirked at the second sentence. I think it fair to say that one's applicable to the author too.

"Take it or leave it."

His answer was a kiss. In the interests of fan fiction and maintaining the romantic illusion I'd like to tell you it made me melt and sigh or whatever else, but actually it was very awkward because I was kissing a stranger three minutes after talking about puking on guys during sex. Also, I'd been homicidal towards the guy not long before. It was tough to relax and enjoy it. Still, points for technique. And for using mouthwash - nobody likes stinky breath.

"G'night, Hols."

"Night, Justin."

It wasn't thirty seconds before he'd opened his mouth again. "Hols?"

Lord, did this man ever shut up? "Yes?"

"You're not likely to vomit on me are you?"

I'd probably asked for that. "Not when we're laying still, no."

"Okay. Night."

"Night," I said in long suffering self pity.