Loved Me at the End
In the eighth year of helping Keith Hunter pay off his debts, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
I tested the waters and asked him, half joking, "If I got cancer, would you save me?"
He laughed, saying I was overthinking it. Then he added firmly, "If it ever came to that, I would sell my blood to pay for your treatment."
I lay awake all night, tossing and turning, still feeling like I couldn't drag him down with me.
Before taking a sleeping pill, a notification popped up on my phone about a social media post.
[How do I dump an older woman who paid off my debts for eight years without too much drama?]
The profile picture looked eerily like Keith's silhouette from behind.
He wrote, [Eight years ago, my family went bankrupt. She stuck with me, living off dry toast and squeezing into a rented apartment. She helped me pay back over 600 thousand dollars in debt.
[Back then, I thought she was innocent and cute. Now, I feel like she's just a materialistic woman putting on an act.
[Last month, she even asked whether I would save her if she got cancer. How does someone even ask that?
[Obviously, she was trying to get money out of me. Good thing I didn't tell her that my family recovered three years ago.
[Now, my family has arranged a fiancée for me. She's the daughter of a publicly listed company.
[I want to cut things off with my girlfriend, but I'm afraid she'll cling to me. After all, she wasted a lot of her youth on me.]
By the time I finished reading, I had crushed the stomach cancer diagnosis in my hand into a wrinkled mess.