I remember how I once told her: I do not believe in monogamy. You should not forever be with the same person, maybe back in the day, when we didn't live past the age thirty-five, but not anymore. And now I sit here in front of her and she tells me how drunk she was last night and how she made out with at least seven men, I think, maybe that's just the same with friendships. You're not supposed to always be together with just one person.

"Maxime?" She says.
She looks at me. Waiting.
"What was his name?" I ask her, I pick up my wine and shake it back and forth in the glass.
"I could not really care much about that last night Max, Do you always ask  the name of the girls with whom you kiss?"
"Men," I interrupt her. She looks confused.
"They are men, they are older than twenty-five. Do you have a lighter? "
She gives me her lighter. And just before she is about to say something she is distracted by her phone. She looks at the screen and then starts laughing.
'Terry. His name was Terry, "she says.

The waitress comes by our table and asks, "Everything to your liking?"
And I want to say, 'No, not really. "
Instead I smile and say, "Yeah, thanks."

I look at Rachel. Her white hair falling over her face, she has spots in her neck caused by her too dark foundation. She then turns to her head toward me and says, 'but yes, we are  here to talk about that incident on my birthday of course. "

When I was eight I called Rachel my best friend. And now that I think back of it, I do not really know if I called her that because she really was the nicest girl in school  to play with, or simply because she was the most popular and she would always braid my hair so beautiful. Later, when we were twelve and went to high school, Rachel and I got back together in the same class. We wrote in each other's agenda, slept  together every weekend. She was there when the police called and said 'are you Maxime? There's something going on with your mother, "and I was there when she was kissed for the first time by Tom. On our fifteenth we made up excuses to tell our parents, if we secretly went out.
We fantasized about student life, Rachel would study Communication science and Id study Media and Culture. We would have classes in the same faculty and perhaps would even become roommates.

"Maybe we just shouldn't do it anymore," I  then say to Rachel.
"What?"
"Just Christmas, dinners, meetings, birthdays."
She looks at me. And  I really just want to leave right now.
"What do you mean, no longer do?"
"Just less. I just do not understand why we always have to do everything together and why we have such high expectations of each other. I just did not want to go out and come to your birthday. Why cant everything just be a little less. '
"That would just mean the end of our friendship then?"
 I think; "Yes it is indeed '.
But I say; "It doesn't have to be."
She nods and says, "Okay, we are not going to live together anymore?"
And I shake my head and think: "Now she must really think that our friendship is over."

Later, when we are saying goodbye, and I can finally go home, we hug each other at the tram stop and then suddenly Rachel says: "I really hope we remain friends forever."
I look at her and with a smile I say: "Me too. I also hope we can remain friends. "

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