TJ Ch. 10

I stood up and followed him out back. We sat at the poolside table. He pulled out his phone and pulled up his messaging thread. He long-pressed John's thread and chose delete. When the phone popped up, "Confirm Delete?" He didn't hesitate and hit "OK." I looked at him.

"Thank you. I know how hard that was for you. After you showed me your box, I didn't expect you to delete them, and I wasn't going to ask you to. I didn't want you to feel like you had to make me happy. But honestly, thank-fucking-god for doing it. It means a lot."

"It wasn't hard at all. I saw the hurt in your eyes earlier and was going to do it then. But we started making out, got interrupted by Josh, then Aaron came over, and everything else happened. I knew I needed to do it, and I wanted you to see I really don't care about him. I wanted to do it for us. Now, let's make a phone call to tell him to back off."

He pulled up John's contact information and hit the green button. The phone rang twice. "Hey babe, I've been waiting for you to call. Did you finally wise up and dump T-fag?"

Sean took a deep breath to keep his anger in check.

"John, please don't call TJ that again. I'm calling to ask you to stop sending me messages and pictures. For the past two weeks, I've ignored every text you sent me. I was hoping if I ignored you long enough, you'd get the hint and leave me alone. I had no idea the shit you were saying about TJ. I don't appreciate you saying shit about him and disrespecting my relationship. I'm with TJ and that's not going to change. Please leave us both alone."

Before Sean could hang up, we heardJohn speaking,

"You'll fucking regret this. You led me on for a fucking year."

"Actually, I stopped encouraging you in December if you look at the messages. You're nothing like the person I met last year. Do you honestly think you impress anyone with the way you act? I thought you were a nice guy. Now I see you're nothing but a vindictive slut who thinks he has to sleep with everyone he can to make friends. None of those guys are your friends and if you're not careful, you're going to get hurt. You need to take a few steps back and look in the mirror. Goodbye, John. Don't talk to me, message me, or think about me again."

He did hang up that time. He looked over at me and smiled.

"It feels good to get all of those thoughts off my chest."

"Again, you didn't have to do that for me."

"I didn't. I did it for us. I love you. Let's go inside."

As we were walking in the backdoor, Sean started looking through his phone. He sat back down in the chair and as I went to sit between his legs, I heardSean asked a question.

"What's this?"

Before I could ask what he was talking about, I heard audio playing through his phone speaker. It was my voice saying, "I need to record this."

I quickly stood up and walked towards the door. As I was about to open it, eSan shouted.

"You asshole! You really recorded that?"

When I entered the room again, I was wearing an innocent smile. Lori, Kevin, Josh, and Jacob were all laughing. I said, "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you taking advantage of your poor boyfriend when he wasn't sure what was really going on. Don't worry, though, I deleted it."

I pulled out my phone and quickly sent a text to Josh and Kevin with the video attached. I said, "Deleted what? This?" I hit play.

He called me an asshole again and started begging me to delete it. Kevin and Josh both pulled out their phones and started playing the video. Sean was trying to look angry but every time he heard himself say, "You can call me Lupe," he had to fight the smile that was tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Robert walked back in and told us it was time to head home. As we were walking to our cars, I asked what Mr. Landrum wanted to talk about. Robert smiled.

"Mel dropped the custody case. She always thought Mom and Dad had money stashed away I wouldn't tell her about. I'm not sure where she got the idea, but I could never convince her they weren't rich. Her lawyer requested my financial records. Mr. Landrum handed them over and received a phone call a few hours later saying Mel decided she was not going to pursue full custody. He asked if she was still going for shared and was informed she wasn't interested in custody at all." He turned to Josh, "I'm sorry. I know she's let you down so many times and now this. You know I love you, right?"

Josh actually smiled.

"Dad, all I need are you, Teej, Kevin, and our friends. You're my family now. I don't want or need her. I'm better off without her. Besides," he winked at Lori, "maybe I'll have a stepmom in the near future." He laughed, leaving both Robert and Lori standing there with their mouths hanging open.