What's His Is Mine Read Free

Good-bye,” I said as I powered my phone off. If I didn’t turn the phone off, it was guaranteed he would call back.
    I hated my daughter’s father, DeCarious Simmons. He is a certified asshole. In the beginning of our relationship he would do anything for me. The first day I met him in Vegas, he took me shopping and had a car take me to the airport. Back then you couldn’t have told me that I didn’t hit the jackpot. He was a rookie in the NFL and played for the Seattle Seahawks, making great money, and wanted to be with me. When I got pregnant he was so happy. But then his hating-ass cousin Rock told him he wasn’t my first athlete and a bunch of other shit. Some of it was true, some of it wasn’t. Okay, so what if I hung out with other guys in the league before . . . And? I didn’t think it was a deal breaker, but DeCarious thought it was.
    Once he heard about my other indiscretions, he confronted me and I did what I was supposed to do, which was deny, deny, deny, and deny some more. I wasn’t there, it wasn’t me, wrong girl, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. But it didn’t work or matter, because his whole attitude changed toward me.
    He changed from “Baby, whatever you want” to “I’m going to do whatever I want and you can take it or leave it.” I decided to leave it, and as soon as I did, I felt like I took a flight from the glamorous life back to the below average life. Let me tell you, it was not a fun transition at all. I had to go back to work and pay my own bills and do everything for my daughter on my own. And it’s been so hard.
    And to make matters worse, he was not in Seattle anymore. He got traded to his home team, Atlanta, and was doing good. So he thought he was somebody for real now, and he was not. He was just a dumb jock who was making a lot of money. You would think that since he was in the NFL and made two million dollars a year, I would have had it made. Wrong! I only got four thousand a month in child support. How the judge did that math, I will never know. You might think four thousand a month was a lot, but it wasn’t, because I had real bills.
    My mortgage was twenty-seven hundred dollars a month. Then let’s not forget day care, student loans, my car note, car and home owner’s insurance, gas, electric, cable, cell phone, clothes, and all the money I paid my mom for keeping Asia overnight. And then I had so much debt. When I was with my daughter’s father, I paid my credit cards down, but over the last year, I’d run them all back up. I didn’t know how, but I guess because I found a reason to shop all the time. I just liked shopping. Me and Asia always needed things. It’s like after the third time I wore something, it lost its newness and I didn’t want to wear it anymore. I just couldn’t walk past a store without buying something. When I was at the mall, I always saw cute shoes or sneakers for Asia and I had to buy them.
    So, long story short, living off of my child support was not an option. I was about to try to see if I could get my child support modified. I needed seven thousand a month to take care of myself and daughter properly, at the very least. That’s not asking a lot. And don’t try to judge me and say I needed to be happy with what I had. Please. My daughter needed to be living the same lifestyle as her father.
    Okay, let’s get something clear right now. Everybody wants money and likes money. Everyone wants to be comfortable and not have to work hard every day. That’s why people play the lottery—to get ahead, to get that extra. I was trying to get my extra by having my daughter by someone rich. I thought I was securing my future for the next eighteen years and making an investment, but I wasn’t and I didn’t. All I did was buy myself a lot of headaches. My first headache would be DeCarious’s ass. My second headache was