There are moments between you and your best friend that make the world you two are in freeze.

Everybody else is minding their own business, looking in disdain at the linked pinkies between the two children, despite their age in the low twenties. But it doesn’t matter to them.

A promise is a promise and the two of you have never broken a promise to each other. You would promise each other that they would call if there was anything desperately wrong even at three in the morning and the other wouldn’t be annoyed.

You would promise each other to go try that new ice cream parlor down the block before the end of this week. You would promise to each other to read recommended books.

You would promise this and that and this and that…everything except for staying as best friends together.

It’s your fault. You made an excuse that day to not complete the intertwined pinky promise, the sacred oath to children and elders and middle-aged youths like the two of you. You love him. You can’t be best friends forever because someday, you might just break down and confess and ruin everything that has been built up from the ground up since sixth grade.

And now you can’t run away. He’s making you promise that the two of you will support each other in personal relationships with other people and you’re trying so hard not cry, to burst and scream your defiance and run away from the world, from reality, from that bursting truth that he will most likely never return your feelings.

But before you can say "Promise", your phone vibrates in your pocket and you automatically unlink the pinky to answer the call and bid him goodbye before dashing through the halls and the crowds and to the outside where the sun is too bright and the clouds are being sorely missed by you.

You can’t do it.

You don’t think you ever can.