[busenfreunde -  german origin;  means "bosom friends." translates to very close friends who are always there for each other, and they're so close that they feel as if they are part of each other's chest.]

"The Find-My-iPhone app is an amazing device."

The sight in front of Vera was blurry, blocked by the tears that would not stop falling from her eyes. Several shoulders bumped past her, coupled with various apologies, before she could even reply. The door slammed shut in front of her, leaving her alone in her hallway, stood in her mismatched pyjamas.

"You didn't have to come over." Vera found herself saying as she walked into the living room.

Blaire, Rani and a couple of her other friends were dressed in onesies, armed with snacks, a laptop and a projector. Blaire collapsed on the sofa opposite the TV, her leg hanging over the edge and another leaning on the wall. Her hair was tied into two lilac buns on top of her head, with strands falling over her face in the style of a mock fringe. Rani stood up to raid Vera's cupboard for bowls, muttering in Hindi when she failed to find them. Melissa was hunched over the electronics, her glasses almost sliding off her nose as she attempted to set them up.

"Vee, turn off the lights." Amreen grunted as she attempted to find a suitable seating position.

Vera's body was on autopilot. Her mind was a mess and her brain was triyng to make sense of it. Her fingers clumsily found the switch and turned the lights off. Her knees were going to buckle at any moment and it took too much out of her to pretend to be fine.

"Vee, babe. Sit down." Blaire patted the seat after sitting up straight.

Vera did what she said. Once her body hit the sofa, she realised just how deflated she was. She felt Blaire's arms around her, her head resting into the crook of her neck.

"It's okay." Vera found herself saying. The words were out before she could yank them back in. "I'm fine, honestly."

"You wouldn't be crying if that were true." Blaire mumbled, wiping off Vera's tears from her face. "Seriously, you're raining down on me here."

Vera chuckled, despite herself. She gratefully took the tissue from the box and patted her cheeks dry. She blew into the tissue, regretting her choice to look at it, and threw it into the bin. First time for everything, she thought as she did a congratulatory shimmy in her mind.

"Are we watching a rom-com?" Vee asked, genuinely curious to see how she was going to spend her evening.

Her friends paused – Rani stopped in her tracks, carefully balancing the bowls and glasses in her hands; Amreen's hand paused mid-air, the miniscule crisp dust floats from her hand and into the packet; Melissa's head popped up from behind the screen and stared incredulously at Vee; and she could feel Blaire's chin turn upwards, as if to join them in this stare-of-disgust. (It was just a question, she couldn't be punished for that, could she?)

Wrong. Her friends descended into a spluttering fit of insults and laughter. Rani almost dropped the bowls onto the table, causing Blaire to immediately rush to her aid. The sudden breeze caused goose bumps to appear on her bare, and slightly hairy legs. Sadness got in the way of shaving, and doing anything else, really. Vera's shower consisted of her crying and singing sad love songs, so she couldn't blame herself for giving up halfway through. Anyway, who was she shaving for? Leon?

The thought of Leon made her eyes well up with tears again. The image of Leon with that girl made her chest swell with anguish and despair. As much as she wanted to forget, she was sure that her nightmares would recreate that scene, over and over again, until it forced her to wake up and face her broken reality.

"We're gonna be watching action movies and- oh, Vee..." Amreen's voice was sympathetic, turning everyone's attention to her.

Vee waved them off, even though her tears were already down her face. "Action movies? Like Mad Max?"

"-and the Fast and Furious saga!" Melissa interrupted, her grin showed off her dimples.

Amreen started to nod and then she realised what Melissa had said. "But that there's so many!"

Melissa grinned, this time it was far more devilish. "That's even better! We'll just stay at Vee's?" Melissa turned to Vera, her eyes were pleading. "...if that's okay with you?"

Vera nodded. She knew that Melissa had been desperately trying to get the gang to watch Fast and Furious with her (to everyone's disapproval), and honestly, Vera didn't want to be alone this weekend. She knew she'd slip back into her old habits (of using her bed as a metaphorical fort and not moving from it for the entire weekend) if she was alone. The leftover wine bottle at the back of her cupboard would be her only motivation to leave her room, then she would crawl back into her bed in her half-drunk and mostly-sad state.

She wasn't prepared to deal with the hungover mess that she would be on Monday. Wine and sleep did nothing to solve her problems – if anything, it just made her procrastinate. Her problems would still be there when she awoke, sober and still alone, and still sad.

"See? We'll just stay at Vee's for the entire weekend, nursing her back to life and making her realise that she doesn't need anyone except from herself. And, we get to see Fast and Furious!" Melissa sang the last sentence, clapping her hands excitedly.

"You're awfully excited about helping our very sad friend get over that dickwad of a-" Blaire's rain of expletives were prematurely interrupted by the slapping of Vera's palm on her thigh.

"It's okay. Which film are we watching first?" Vera was desperate to take the attention from her, and she didn't want her friends to fawn over her (even though she knew that that they would).

Amreen huffed. "Well, Mad Max is first. Might as well get the critically acclaimed movies out of the way." She rolled her eyes as Melissa threw a pillow at her, letting the pillow hit her square in the face.

She yelped, then she laughed. She tied her Rapunzel-like brunette hair into a ponytail, that Vera only assumed that would be used as a ladder for very tiny people. Even Blaire, who despised long hair with a passion (out of bitterness that her own refused to move past her shoulders), adored Amreen's hair. Vera watched as Amreen wrapped her hair around itself, creating a very neat ballerina bun.

Melissa shrieked as she jumped out of the way, as Amreen attempted to rugby-tackle her to the ground. Vera, Rani and Blaire shared a look as they watched their two friends chase each other around Vera's living room, shouting Arabic and Dutch threats at each other.

"I'm just gonna click play." Rani said, raising her voice above the sounds of physical exhaustion.

*

Three hours had passed. Fast and Furious played quietly in the background, with only one person listening intently to it. Melissa's glasses sat comfortably on top of her head, staring at the projected screen on the wall.

Amreen had returned back, armed with various snacks and alcohol bottles. She patted the plaster down, wincing when her fingers made contact with it. Vera caught the end of her glare, aimed at the back of Melissa's head. Melissa had accidentally scratched Amreen with her nail, in a desperate bid to separate herself from Amreen's hair.

"I know that I have no reason to be sad." Vera mumbled, after she dug her spoon in the middle of the dollop of ice cream. "It wasn't like he was my boyfriend and it was literally the first date, so there's no reason for me to be sad."

"You can't rationalise sadness. There's no reason why you shouldn't be sad." Melissa turned to look at Vera. "There's nothing wrong with being sad. You shouldn't be ashamed of feeling the way you feel."

Blaire nodded. "Exactly! We're your friends – you're allowed to be ugly sad in front of us. Nobody's gonna judge you here – especially after Amreen's dying whale noise." She put her hand up to interrupt Amreen's protests. "Venting will help you, and you can't keep all of this locked up inside of you. So, vent. We're listening."

"It's just..." She didn't know how to put into words. She knew what she wanted to say but the words would not make connect into sentences. At least, coherent sentences. "I hate myself for getting my hopes up. After everything that's happened, I still have the audacity to hope that something will work out. I let myself get invested in a guy, after a first date. Do you know how dumb that sounds?"

Rani licked the spoon before curling her legs under herself. "To be honest, if a guy took me to a posh Italian restaurant and phoned in a song request for my favourite song, I'd think he'd want to settle down too." She leaned forward to dig her spoon into her ice cream. "Which, by the way, is one of the most romantic things I've ever heard."

"You can't blame yourself for getting sucked in! Instead, we can blame that dickwad of a boy for selling you dreams." Blaire grinned devilishly. "I still opt that I get to grate his face."

"I can blame myself for getting sucked in and I will. At the end of the day, we were never exclusive so he's allowed to date other girls. I just wish that he hadn't said all the other stuff about me being the 'last girl'. Why would he make me feel like I'm the only girl he's seeing when it's not true?"

"Because guys like to keep their options open. It's a messed up way of not putting all of your eggs in one basket. But in several, nicely decorated baskets who have no idea that the other baskets exist." Melissa piped in, then returned to her movie.

"...somehow that makes a lot of sense for someone who thinks that Fast and Furious deserves any recognition." Amreen murmured, smirking when Melissa replied with her middle finger. Amreen turned to Vera, her voice steady. "Look, you shouldn't be beating yourself for falling into the trap that every girl falls into. Sometimes, you meet a 'great' guy and it turns out he's a dick. Sometimes, you meet a guy that is the literal explanation of why karma is a bitch, and it turns out he's your fucking soulmate."

"Romance isn't dead guys. It's still alive and vulgar." Blaire ducked out the way as Amreen chucked a pillow at her head.

Amreen rolled her eyes and fiddled with her nose ring. "You shouldn't be blaming yourself for anything. Vee, babe, nobody needs to tell you that you are one in a million and that any guy would be immensely lucky to have you."

Vera was about to reply but her phone rang.

"Booty call?" Blaire asked, dodging Vera's slap. "Didn't know you were into that kinda recovery."

Blaire stood up and snatched a pillow from the sofa, and walked out of the living room. Vera shrugged, as she dug into her melted ice cream mess. Caramel syrup would go magnificently with this concoction. She walked over to the kitchen, peering into the cupboards. Did she even have any caramel syrup? The answer was no. She did have – what was it? – chocolate syrup. She peered closely at the label. Expired chocolate syrup. She dumped the squeezy-bottle in the bin and walked back into the living room with her bowl.

It didn't hit her until she had walked a couple of steps towards the sofa. Everyone was huddled around Blaire. Even Melissa, who was knelt in front of Blaire.

"What's happening?" Vera asked, highly suspicious of the scene in front of her.

Blaire waved a phone in the air. Vera looked closer – that was her phone. Vera looked from her phone to Blaire's expression. She had a dangerous grin on her face, the type of grin that only resulted in disastrous consequences.

"What are you doing with my phone?" Vera looked closer, realising that the text box was slowly increasing in size. "Who are you texting?"

"Leon." Her friends chanted in unison, before arguing amongst themselves on which response is better.

Vera froze. She almost dropped her bowl in shock. The tightening of her chest started to grow and she could feel her world grow a little smaller. One, two, three. Her hands were shaky as she willed her body to walk forward. Four, five six. She sat down and rested her hands on the sofa. The world was steady. Seven, eight, nine. Her chest didn't feel so tight anymore. Ten. She was good. Her world was good.

"Can I have my phone, please?" Her voice was much steadier than she expected. "Please." She repeated, holding out her hand.

Once the phone was in her hand, Vera turned it off. She placed the phone away from her, on the table, and looked back at her friends. "Can we just go back to watching movies? We can talk about feelings tomorrow but right now, I just wanna focus on Vin Diesel."

*

3am.

Vera scanned the room around her. Her friends were slumped onto the sofa beds and the floor, collectively snoring in a graceful union. The weight on her chest felt lighter, but she knew it was still there. She knew that nothing would rid her sadness, except time.

She turned her phone on, and squinted when the sudden brightness almost blinded her. Just a mere glance at this name made her heartbeat increase. Time. That's all she needed. She didn't need to see his message. One quick swipe. Deleted. Removed. Blocked.

Vera looked around the room, once again, and smiled to herself as she listened to the gentle snoring and the whirring of the projector.

As long as she had her friends, everything was going to be a-okay.

__

[remember to vote, comment, tell me what you liked, what you thought, or if you just wanna celebrate that there's no Gemma in this chapter, haha!]