Eight

The smell of clean cotton sheets. The tweeting of birds outside an open window. The feel of a wet snout on your face.

Wet snout?! I had dated some gross men in my life, but this took the cake.

Actually, the owner of the wet nose wasn't human: it was Henry, wagging his tail and sniffing me curiously. I grinned at the dog's dopey expression despite my massive headache, and felt happy for a moment. Nothing could put me in a good mood like a dog could. But then I got over my little love fest with the canine and better examined my surroundings. This wasn't my bed, or my apartment, and Henry certainly wasn't my dog. I sat straight up, panicing about last night's events. What had happened? Where had I gone? Why did this bed have cowboy sheets?

Before I could find the answers to my questions, a soft knock came at the door. I was pretty sure I hadn't been abducted by a lunatic serial killer or anything, unless murderers these days were going to finishing schools.

"Yeah?" I tried to shout out, but my throat was dry and scratchy like a wool blanket. Greg came in, already dressed in jeans and one of his many "witty sayings" t-shirts. He had even done his hair already – I think.

"Hey," he said shyly, sitting on the end of the bed. Out of instinct, I pulled the bed sheets over my chest, hiding behind them like a 5-year-old. "How ya feelin'?"

"I'd feel a lot better if I knew what was going on," I said, sounding bitchy as ever. I couldn't help it. I was sitting in Greg's bed with a gigantic hangover and my clothes from last night still on.

"You don't remember anything, do you?" he asked, and that's when I noticed the huge red gash above his lip.

"Greg, what happened?" I was suddenly over my body issues, crawling out of the sheets and over to Greg. I tried to touch the scratch with my thumb, but he pulled away.

"I got in a huge fight with your new boyfriend," he replied, slight anger in his voice. Now I really needed an explanation. Greg turned towards me with a mixture of confusion and disbelief on his face. "What happened to you yesterday? I looked everywhere for you after work. And then I find you leaving some seedy bar with a frat boy. Where were you going?"

I had never seen Greg act this way before, maybe because I had never given him a reason to. I felt like he was interrogating me, and that really pushed me over the edge. Who was he to place all of the blame on me when he was just as guilty?

"Who the hell do you think you are?!" I asked, stumbling out of bed and rising to my feet. "If you can have tons of girlfriends at one time, why can't I do the same with men?! You don't tell me what to do!" God, I sounded like a white trash princess on "Cops". Now if only Greg could be drinking beer in nothing but his underwear and a wife beater.

"Tons of girlfriends?" he asked, putting on one hell of a show. "What are you talking about?!"

"Don't act so innocent," I yelled, trying to find my shoes under the bed. I caught a quick glance of myself in a mirror and realized that my hair was doing the "Something About Mary" thing. I didn't even want to think about how it got that way. "Hodges told me everything."

"Hodges?!" he stood up to his full height now, and I was reminded of just how tall he was. I was like a Smurf yelling at the Jolly Green Giant. "Matilda, you can't believe anything Hodges says. The guy hates me!"

"Yeah, okay," I wasn't taking any more crap than I had to. I was frantic, pacing the room like a madwoman. Greg grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me towards him, his face inches from my own.
"Matilda, you've got to believe me," he said, and his tone was suddenly that of the Greg I had first met so many months ago. He was being sincere. "Hodges has had it out for me forever. We hate each other. He's completely jealous of me – of us."

I felt my eyes filling with tears, and Greg's face went blurry in front of me. I knew he was telling the truth. In all of our time together, Greg had never once lied to me. Why was I so stupid? Why did I jeopardize the best thing that had ever happened to me?

"I'm so sorry, Greg," I apologized, my face screwing up into the dreaded "ugly cry". "I've just never had something as good as us. I guess I thought it was too good to be true, so I believed Hodges. I believed that we wouldn't last that long."

I buried my head into his chest, and I felt him wrap his long arms around my body, putting one hand on the back of my head. He whispered in my ear, trying to comfort me.

"Can you forgive me?" I asked, pulling my wet face away from his body. He laughed at my sorry expression, wiping tears and last nights mascara off of my cheeks with his thumb.

"Okay," he replied. "But only if you promise to break up with King Keg from the frat house."