Rachel just got out of a long relationship.

Four years. It may not seem that long, but for a nineteen years old girl it was. And those four years don’t include all the time it took for Adrien to get her. She had played hard to get for a few months before he could finally kiss her cheek.

It was perfect for the best part of their relation, and by no means she wishes to forget him. I guess in the end they just weren’t meant to be together. I may have been a bit jealous, but I've always supported her until the end. I saw her as he made her smile, I saw her as he started to forget to come to their dates. I was there as she wouldn’t stop crying, I saw the look in her eyes when she realised everything was over. I witnessed her whole range of emotions, the pain she felt when she realised he didn’t love her anymore. She cried and cried, but when it was finally over she simply went silent. The tears stopped flooding, the tissue box remained full. She finally had an answer, she didn’t have to seek his attention anymore. She could stop worrying about what he thought, about whether he still loved her or not.

She explained to me that she cried so much over the last few months that she just couldn’t anymore. She had lived her breakup through the end of their relationship, and now she was ready to be set free. She said we’d be single together, that life went on and that, someday, we’ll both be laughing it off at each other's wedding. Obviously, I nodded to hide my embarrassment. That wasn’t what I wished for at all, but right now she needed me by her side.

Of course, I was sad for my friend. This guy had been her everything. And through it all I’m the one who stood up for her, I’m the one who will always be there. And I know she’ll always be there for me.

Rachel always says I'm a loner. That I'm never getting myself a girlfriend because I don't go out. But it's more complicated than that. If only it was easy for someone like me to find someone...

With all these couples already filling up the reading club, it makes it quite hard to bear to be my little single self. Last year we would find Rachel and Adrien always cuddling on the flowered sofa. Over the last semester, they’ve been replaced by Nicolas and Sally who're acting all cute to the extent where I feel creepy just to lay my eyes on them, as if I was invading their bedroom. Next to them, on the old one place cushioned chair, Oliver always sits. His boyfriend never comes here, always stuck in the art room, but Olliver won’t shut up about him. And I almost forgot Jacques and Martin. They’ve been friends for so long that they still act as if they were. Only remove a few hugs and occasional kisses and you’ve got the best of childhood friends. Honestly speaking, they're adorable.

And there’s me.

On the small comforter, trying to read without paying attention to all the love around me. The only reason why I still come is that I’ve been here so much that it feels more like home than my actual home. Whenever I try to come home over the weekends, my mother makes the air hard to breathe. When are you getting yourself a boyfriend? She always asks. Sometimes I feel like regardless of how much I try to explain she’ll never get that it’s not what I want.

But it’s no use trying anymore. It doesn’t matter what I say because she doesn’t want to hear it. She has shut her mind, she has refused to understand.

You just haven’t met the right man yet.

The phrase echoes in my head every time I think of my mother. Whenever she says she loves me, when she calls me her little girl.

And every single time my heart breaks a little because I know it’s not me she wants me to be. She has got this conception of the perfect girl that I’m supposed to be in her head. That version of Jamie she adores, blinding herself voluntarily to the real one, refusing to see me.

To say she almost cried when I moved out of the house to get closer to my university.

When it becomes too much Rachel understands. I don’t need to say a word, I don’t need to ask her to come over to our dorm room; she simply does. She’ll bring eggless cookie dough and we’ll watch a movie of my choosing even if she hates my taste in movies. No matter how boring she thinks it is she sticks through it until the end.

We'll always stick together;

Together until the end.