Sorry, readers, but this is going to be a very short chapter. I know it has been a little while since I've posted anything, and I swear I am going to finish this story. It just may take a while with everything else I have going on. Stay with me. Besides, it builds suspense.

Four

After our night of movies and milkshakes, it felt like Greg and I spent all of our free time together. When we weren't exchanging quick glances or goofy faces in the office, we were plotting our next immature prank or thinking of something to cure our boredom. I would have never assumed that I would become bored in Las Vegas, yet here I was on a Saturday night, organizing my shoe collection (and that's sad, considering I only have six pairs of shoes). Greg was like my savior: he saved me from a life of sheer pointlessness.

Like two nine-year-old best friends, we started a sort of community notebook, if you could consider Greg and I a community. It was where we wrote our ideas, our thoughts, our frustrations. It was a place for anything and everything that we couldn't share with other people. Oh yeah, and we also thought out some of our best plans. We once dressed in black turtlenecks and berets, and snapped our fingers in applause at a beatnik poetry jam - as a joke of course. Another time, we took a late night trip to a toy store to play with the hoola hoops until we were sternly asked to leave and never come back. Afterwards, sitting in Greg's car, we could barely breath from the fits of laughter. We acted like stoners without the Mary-Jane.

The only problem was that whenever I wasn't around Greg, I wasn't happy. And I don't mean that in a possessive, clingy way. I just mean that compared to everyone else, Greg had so much life and energy. It was like the energy he emitted was bright yellow, and everyone else's was poop brown. Missy caught me in a daze one day at work, and decided to confirm her suspicions.

"It's the one with the hair, isn't it?" she asked, startling me. I was sitting at my desk, my chin resting on my hand and my eyes glazed over. My body was there, but my mind wasn't.

"I'm sorry?" The fat cells in her body had obviously taken over her brain now, too.

"The boy that works here, the one with the strange hair-do," Missy said, seeming more strict and uptight than she had ever been before. She went from grade school teacher to prison guard. "You can't stop thinking about him."

"Missy, that's ridiculous," I began to say, but she cut me off.

"I notice these kinds of things. I'm not here just to look pretty," well I could have figured that out on my own.

"What are you trying to say?" I knew exactly what she was trying to say, but I hoped that my innocent act would throw her off. No such luck for moi.

"I'm just stating the obvious: that you like this guy. I have nothing wrong with it, but if it starts to hinder your work, you and I will have to have a chat about men." And with that, she turned on her fat foot and walked away, towards the donuts, I think. What could Missy possibly have to say about men? Did she think I needed help in the romance department?

After sitting there for a moment, the biggest question of all popped into my head: was I that obvious? Had I been doing this everyday, not noticing? I thought about all of the meetings I had been too, and all of the messages I had taken absentmindedly. If Missy noticed my spaciness, I'm sure that her much more intelligent co-workers did, too. And if they knew that I and Greg were hanging out, they would think I was in love with him or something. And then they would tell Greg, and I would have to face his accusations at a later point and time....

Breath, Matilda, breath...This is not high school. It just feels like high school in a fancier building with better lunches. I put my head back on my shoulders, and viewed my options. I needed to find Greg and talk to him before someone else (like Missy) did.