Free Love Made Me Do It by Tamekia Nicole Page A

to be with me.
    I drove the roommate’s car like it was mine.  I let my friends drive it. I was spent his money like it was mine and I was eating dinner every Sunday with his parents. In order for me to reap these small rewards, I had to put up with unnecessary paranoia. He wanted me to drive an alternate route home so that my lover wouldn’t see me. He wanted me to move when my lease was up.  Plus he wanted to call me by my middle name.
    During this time I thought to myself…he should know that I was vulnerable and weak for my lover and not for him.  I wished he would stop acting like he didn’t know that. But I played along.  I fed his ego.  I eventually fed his loins too. I kind of knew what I was doing, kind of. Did the roommate and I have sex…? Yes we did….Was it amazing? No, it was awkward.
    He was still living in the house with my lover and his girlfriend.  I was living across the street, casing their every move. This was a hard job.  I was constantly trying to position myself to be seen by my love.  The first four months I was living there.  I never saw him. But during those months I was being showered with gifts from the roommate. I gracefully accepted every gift. I was caught in a world wind of emotions, erratic thoughts. I was in a spider web of deceit and betrayal. This was hard. 
    What do you do when the person you love the most; more than yourself… is with someone else and you’ve decided to have an affair with his best-friend? No matter how I tell the story.  It never sounds right. My lover and the roommate never fought about me. At least, not to my knowledge.
    Boom, boom, boom…”Tamekia, open up this door!” I ran to the door.  Unaware, of the bad news awaiting me on the other side.
    It was the roommate.  He told me that my lover and his girlfriend had been arguing like cats and dogs.  Then he started going off about me. He ranted about us being together.  Allegedly, my lover said “Johnson is mine blood, until I say other –wise.” “But now you’re putting your dick inside of her?” “What the fuck is wrong with you?” When this was told to me, initially I was in shock.  But I felt that those were words of love, jealousy and envy.  My lover was just mad because it wasn’t him.
    This confirmed that I had his attention. But all attention isn’t good attention. I wish I knew that then. My next move I made would have to be more hurtful than the move before.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 11
    NEIGHBORS
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    What exactly was it that I was trying to accomplish?  What is it that I needed from him? I burned through those questions so many times in my head I was tired of them.  But I wouldn’t stop making moves until those answers came to me. I was sick of the roommate already.  He was so dramatic and unnerving that I couldn’t think straight. He had the ability to give me everything I wanted.  But I just didn’t want it with him. But I played the part.
    I accepted his love but it was hard to reciprocate because I didn’t feel the same. I did love him, but there was no spark.  I wanted who I wanted.  Only God could change that. The roommate knew…he had too, at least by now. 
    When he spoke of my lover I had a twinkle in my eye.  When he talked about himself it had less of an effect on me. I was wrong.  But I wasn’t sure how to stop this monster that was driving me to be so mean, bitter and obsessive. So time went on and we continued to be together and date . We had adventures.  We had an intellectual connection but I was starved for something that he couldn’t feed me.
    My life was good if you just took a glance at it from the outside. I had a good job, made new friends, had an awesome roommate.  But in between it all, there was a devil and an angel sitting on my shoulders.                Unfortunately, I was always siding with the devil. My patience was running thin.  I had yet to be seen by