Vacation

This chapter is about the first vacation that J.C. and I went on together.

I went on vacation to Galveston with him, his family, and some friends during the second weekend of June. Our first night seemed to go pretty well. As for the rest of the weekend...well...not so much.

 

In addition to having gotten "bored," J.C. had also said that he felt like I needed to be my "own person" more than I had been. I could easily see what he meant by that; I had always tended to stick by his side a little too much throughout the duration of our relationship. There were several times during the vacation that I had the opportunity to do my own thing--such as when his cousins and friends invited the two of us to tag along to the beach with them. J.C. chose not to go, but I agreed to make the trip. If he wanted me to do my own thing, then I was surely going to give him what he wanted.

 

The day before, his cousin, Tamecia, and I had been texting back and forth and discussing the situation involving J.C. and me. It wasn't like we were bad-mouthing him or anything like that; I just expressed how confused I was about everything and asked her for her opinion (since she had obviously known him longer than me and was closer with him, given the fact that they were family).

 

However, not everything that Tamecia and I had to say was polite. Not long before then, a teenage girl that was like a little sister to J.C. had made her way back into his life, and the two of them had been talking extensively on Facebook and through texting. She had even come to spend Memorial Day weekend with him and his family.

 

Although they had been raised to think of each other as siblings and she was so much younger than him, I would be lying if I said that I wasn't at least a little bit wary of her. I met her during the weekend that she stayed with him, and she seemed like a really nice girl...but I found myself feeling quite resentful of her intrusion on my time with J.C. Being a little sister myself (and remembering how I had done some of the same things that this girl had done when my brothers visited with female friends in tow), I decided to just keep on doing my best to remain civil and let her enjoy the time that she had with J.C.

 

The day before we left for Galveston, I logged onto Facebook to find that she had tagged him in a post. This was most definitely not unusual, so at first, I didn't think too much about it. And then, I actually took the time to read the post...and that changed completely. This girl, along with her mother and one of her friends, would apparently be joining us in Galveston on Saturday. J.C. had told me ahead of time that she was coming on Memorial Day weekend, but obviously, that was not the case this time. And for some reason, that did not sit well with me; I felt like I should have been given a heads-up about it.

 

I was worried that her presence would deflect J.C.'s attention from me entirely and that I would end up not getting to spend any quality time with him throughout the duration of our stay in Galveston. However, to my pleasant surprise, I ended up being wrong. The girl, her mother, and her friend did, indeed, show up at the beach...but other than saying hello to him, she did her own thing and was headed back home later that day.

 

During our conversation, Tamecia had mentioned her name, and I'll admit that I said some things about her that were not very polite. The point that I was trying to get across was that I felt left out whenever she was around J.C. and that all of the attention that they gave each other made me slightly nervous. Tamecia, although she did not actually know the girl, expressed her own disdain.

 

I usually take my cell phone everywhere with me, but toting it along to the beach seemed to be an accident waiting to happen, so I opted to leave it lying on our bed (it needed to be charged, anyway).

 

I'll bet you're probably starting to guess that J.C. ended up stumbling upon the messages while I was frolicking around in the waves. If you are, indeed, beginning to form that assumption...you are absolutely correct.

 

Apparently, I had received text messages from a couple of friends while I was away from my phone, and J.C. just happened to be lying right beside it at the time. When it vibrated upon receiving the messages, he took the liberty of reading not only the newly-received texts...but also the ones from my conversation with Tamecia.

 

I experienced mixed emotions upon learning of his discovery. On one hand, I was upset and even a little hurt that he had gone through my phone like that. On the other hand, however, I felt incredibly stupid for not deleting the texts between Tamecia and me, for saying those things in the first place, and for not turning the phone on silent or just carrying it with me in my beach bag.

 

Of course, I couldn't stay mad at him for very long at all for going through my phone, and he said that he forgave me for talking about him and his "little sister" behind his back with Tamecia. In the days that followed our return home, however, things seemed...strained. He didn't really talk to me much and did not seem to have any particular interest in seeing me. When I asked if it had anything to do with the texting fiasco, he responded that it did...but that that was not the only thing that was causing his reluctance. Although I pressed him about the issue, he refused to provide any further information.