Playboy's Backburner

intro

[Keith]

We've met before.

He was a crybaby. I was your normal spawn of trauma ensued from a divorced household. Him however, was loved by his family--the eldest son in a crowded home. We were best friends and were inseparable. He would cling onto me whenever he felt frightened, and I would defend him with all my life. As ugly he was on the outside, he was soft and vulnerable deep inside. We would exchange our times with each other and he took care of me while my father was busy working and my mother was busy leaving us.

He and I were like two peas in a pod. His sisters would always tease him for not being able to get a girlfriend because he was always sticking to me. He would respond by shouting and crying, even throwing tantrums on the floor and they would just laugh at him. I don't do it, because I know he is responding to his feelings in the only way he knows how. I would hold his hand tightly, but he shakes it off and runs away. 

There are times he rejects me out of embarrassment of being thought of as a wimp. I was never liked by our peers because I act so coldly towards them. They think that I deserve to be alone with the way I treat them. But I don't need anyone else, I just need him. He says I shouldn't act so brashly and that there's something wrong with me when I stick to him only. He introduces me to a girl, then cries the next week begging me to not leave him alone. Like I said, we're inseparable. No one could exist without the other. I thought it was going to be like that forever. I hoped it would.

However, this story isn't about how the both of us stick together unconditionally until the end. No, we grew up. I grew up physically, but he did a complete one hundred eighty. He was no longer the shy, innocent kid I once knew. He hung out with other people more and flirted with multiple girls. He became one of the very people who said I deserved to be nothing. He became my nightmare. But still, I'd go out with him whenever he needed me. I'd run out in the rain to get him an umbrella because he forgot to bring one. I'd give up my homework ideas for him because he needs it more than me. And I'll be on the beck of his call, because I'm the only one he can rely on.

You can say I'm a pushover, a doormat, or a backburner. I still care for him. I still like him.