Every time I come home from school, no matter what time of year it is, I always have a standing brunch date. I’m extremely lucky because I still have three best friends from home. I know this is a college-kid exception, most people tend to lose touch or grow apart when they leave high school. But for some reason me and my three best friends (collectively referred to as “the girls” by my mom) can’t get enough of each other. Even though we’ve known each other for years now, I guess we’re in it for the long run.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we all don’t have best friends at school. Quite the opposite actually. We all have our very separate lives when we’re away, full of other friends, boys, and a slew of other people that each of us will never meet. The girls and I barely talk during the semester, besides the occasional “miss you” text or Facebook picture “like.” But without fail, a couple days before we’re all get home, the group texts starts up again with our brunch plans.

We always go to the same place, a small little coffee shop on main street called Maria’s. Now, I’m a die hard Starbucks girl at heart (despite my recent struggles!), but ‘Bucks isn’t the right setting for our special brunch. Starbucks is for every other coffee date I have, while Maria’s is reserved just for the girls. (Plus, we usually don’t want to run into anyone we know when we’re home. Call us anti-social, but we just like each other more than anyone else haha)

I’m usually the first one to show up to grab one of the three small tables in the dorm-sized cafe. There’s always at least one other patron drinking their coffee while I wait and they always seem slightly startled when I jump up and squeal when one of my besties arrives. (We tend to make a scene each time one of us walks in. Sorry we’re not sorry.)

It seems like the conversation starts as soon as we hug hello and doesn’t stop until we’re saying good bye. It’s usually constant chatter about everything and anything. We fill in the blanks from where we last left off, reference events that we saw pictures of on Facebook, grill each other on the nitty gritty love-life details, and call each other out when someone is clearly not telling the whole story. Sometimes we bring up past memories, and other times we dream about the future. We laugh, we tear up, but for approximately three hours, no one else outside of our table exists. While the owner of Maria’s (most likely Maria herself) now knows pretty intimate details about our lives, sometimes I catch her smiling in our direction. I can only imagine what we look like from the outside: hopeful, giggly, happy, and young.

What amazes me the most is that we always seem to pick up where we left off. We can go months without talking, but somehow those brunch dates always feel the same. I think that’s because we’re honest with each other. We don’t feel the need to put on a front or pretend that our lives are “perfect” at school. We say it like it is, admit when we messed up, brag when we killed it. While we’ve all changed since high school, our friendship has grown with us in a pretty incredible way. When I joke around that they’ll be in my wedding party someday, deep down, I know they actually will be. (Even if we often argue over the color of bridesmaids’ dresses ;))

Here’s to “the girls” & coffee dates when we’re 30. Who says you can’t be friends forever?