... over the hum of the washer, I told him I would always be his brother, and that I loved him. We embraced. It felt so weird. Strange. New. Not that I hadn't hugged him before, but maybe this was the first time we realized the world around us... that we were growing up and things would never be the same... that things were already bending to the will of reality. Cruel, unfeeling... reality.
Tears, disolving cold realization to detached joy, fought forward faster than I could look away.
Promises we made that we broke. Arguments we had that amounted to nothing. Weekends we chose to spend elsewhere. Apathetic replies to enthusiastic questions. Times we ratted the other out. Apologies we render ourselves incapable of making. Maybe we'd spend it differently if all that time could be had over again. And when I put hundreds of miles and a career between us; I'll still think of him frozen in that place and time... | 
