I don't want to be your friend anymore

50| Just another year...

Ugh, another year, another birthday alone... I miss you, guys... I miss you so much...

Jessica had been feeling down for a couple days. Her birthday, as well as her mother's, was coming up. The dates were never heartbreaking for her until she lost the people in her life who made her feel like she was worth it all. It had always been her, her mother Raquel and her father Roy. When she had just turned 8 years old, he suddenly passed away. There were no warning signs, no illnesses, no hospital admissions... nothing. He had just gone to work that day and never came back.

Something similar happened to her mother. One day she was fine, the next she was gone.

Jessica had finals that day, she remembers. She was in the cafeteria of her high school with Nadia, David, River, Ken and Payton when her mother called. Raquel said that she wasn't feeling well and had gone to the hospital to get checked out. Jessica immediately stated that she would be on her way but her mother told her not to worry, that she was probably just exhausted and needed to rest. It took a total of 20 minutes to convince Jessica that, when she got home, her mother would be there waiting for her. Later that day, though, as she finished her last exam, she got a call from the hospital asking her to get there as soon as she could.

When she did, the receptionist guided her to the Resuscitation department and said that someone would come talk to her soon. She tried to call her mother's phone but got no answer. By then, Jessica was shit scared. A junior doctor finally came in the room with other student nurses and sat down with her, a somewhat guilty expressions on their faces. They had explained what happened and basically told her that, 'unfortunately, your mother has passed away at 4:45 pm today', literally 5 fucking minutes before she had arrived at the hospital.

To say that Jessica was shocked was an understatement because, as soon as she heard those words, her brain seemed to have stopped working. She didn't say anything and just hummed, looking down at her hands. It wasn't until someone else came to tell her that she could go see her mother's body that it hit her.

She walked into the emergency room and there Raquel was, laying on a bed with her eyes closed, dressed in a hospital gown with tubes coming out of her mouth and not a single sign of life in her. Jessica called for her mother, grabbed her hand, shook her shoulder, she even opened and closed one of her eyes but there was no movement. She remembers stepping back with a wide gaze, collapsing against the white wall behind her and sighing heavily. It was too much for her to understand so she just walked out, muttering the words 'I can't, I can't do this'.

She called one of her cousins, Raquel's goddaughter, and told her what had happened. At first, nobody in her family believed her but once Jessica finally broke down on the phone, it registered in her family members' minds that it was no joke.

The funeral was horrible, even when her friends were by her side. Looking at her parents' lifeless bodies in a casket was the most disgusting thing she had ever seen. Not because of the dead bodies, but because it was her parents. The people who never let her down, who stood by her and encouraged her to keep pushing until she achieved whatever she had on her mind.

Losing both of them just 9 years apart completely broke her. The rest of her family members fully blamed her for 'draining Raquel and Roy of their energy until their last breath', and cut all ties with her.

And then, recently, she found out one of her best friends was also plotting against her. Jessica lost all confidence in herself, she no longer felt like she could take on the challenges in her life or even make friends. From that time on, the majority of people would judge her and make fun of the fact that she had no one left to look after her, as well as degrade the way she looked, so there was nothing else she could do but think that nothing was worth her energy anymore.

Until she met Eli.

He had this weird effect on her, like... he made her nervous. He made her want to believe she was good enough and that she was somebody who deserved to be loved. Eli had been the one to break her free from her gloomy prison. Her friends were all for the two of them but, more often than she would like, her insecurities made their way from her mind down to her heart, impairing her ability to open up and accept someone else's feelings.

She missed that man but she didn't want him to be hurt like she had been for the past 3 years. That was the only reason she decided to break up with him.

Lately, though, she felt like Eli was breaking her walls down once again. She would let him hug and kiss her, to a certain extent, and she even let him stay over since he would always insist. And now, she was thinking of taking him back because she just couldn't hold onto her feelings anymore.

Eli had asked her to go to a party with him that weekend. She didn't want to do that, not on her birthday. She ended up getting in that car with him because she thought she could, at least, get drunk and maybe let Eli take her mind off of negative things, again, and like he used to do when they were dating.

Ruthless and shallow, yes... she knew how it sounded but that was her mindset at the moment.