He’s baaack! Years after he pretty much dropped out of Jenelle Evans‘ life, Andrew Lewis, aka Jace’s dad, is ready to start causing trouble again. Or, okay, what he’s really ready to do is finally see his son, but it’s all pretty much the same in the Teen Mom 2 world. When the mom-of-three’s ex popped up again on Monday, January 21’s episode, he had a message for Jenelle — and for her mom, Barbara. Check out the gallery to get all the messy details.
On ‘Teen Mom 2,’ Andrew decided he was ready to see Jace.
Though he’s met Jace before when the boy was just a baby, he hasn’t seen him since. In her 2017 memoir, Jenelle revealed, “He never comes to see his son though he still calls and says he wants to. It just never happens … He signed away his custody and I don’t know if he will ever be in his son’s life again.”
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According to her, Andrew moved away while she was still pregnant.
“[He] came and visited a few times,” she continued. “He was more interested in partying with his friends and getting drunk than spending time with his pregnant girlfriend … I could feel that he wasn’t interested in having a kid … I knew then he wouldn’t stick around. And he didn’t.”
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Now that Jace is 9, his dad wants to be in his life.
The dad reached out to one of the show’s producers, revealing that he was back in New York and wanted to meet up with the family. “Are you down to bring Jace to New York City, and Barbara and Jenelle? I can’t travel because of work. I would love to see Jace. How would Jenelle feel about it?” he said.
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But Jenelle wasn’t sure how she felt about it all.
And Andrew’s done this before. During The Ex Files, the Teen Mom special Andrew filmed back in 2017, he claimed that he wanted to spend time with his son.
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During the special, he talked about reconnecting with Jace.
“I would love to have a relationship with Jace,” he shared. “I dream about him every day. I think about him everyday. The reason I don’t Google him or look him up is because it’ll hurt me.”
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It seems like nothing ever came of that, however.
“I’d rather Andrew be completely out of Jace’s life instead of being in and out,” Jenelle said at the time. “Maybe he should just stay out.” And it seems like he did — so we understand why she’s wary about his attempts to reconnect again.
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This time, Andrew seems intent on seeing his son.
“It’s messed up he doesn’t know he has a grandfather with a medal of honor,” he texted the producer. “A great uncle that’s one of the most successful ghost writers and guitar teachers of all time.”
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But Jenelle’s not so sure.
“I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not cause he already sounds drunk when you read me those text messages,” the Teen Mom star said. “I do feel bad. I don’t feel like shutting Jace’s dad out. But I know how he f–king is. I don’t want to disappoint my son. I don’t want [him] to pop in his life and then pop back out. That’s happened as a child when my dad did it to me and I’m not having it happen to Jace.”
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Barbara was the one who eventually reached out to Andrew.
Now that Barbara Evans and Jenelle are back on good terms, she was an appropriate go between. And as Jace’s legal guardian, she also had a big say in whether or not the reunion would come to pass.
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Barbara had only Jace’s best interests in heart.
“You haven’t seen him his whole life. And I don’t want you to come into his life and see him once or twice and not see him again,” she told Andrew. “You’re hitting me out of the blue. I know in the past you’ve had a drinking problem. Maybe I can come to New York and meet you alone and make sure everything is okay and Jace is safe around you. Let’s make a plan.”
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Andrew didn’t seem interested in waiting to have time with Jace.
“I want to figure out some way to get Jace to know me,” he explained at first. “It’s been 9 years. We can’t hold a grudge anymore.” But when it seemed like it wasn’t going the way he wanted to, he got frustrated.
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He even called Jenelle a “low life.”
“I was drinking and doing all that stuff that I used to do in the past,” he admitted, but insisted he’d changed, gotten a job, and grown up. “I’m 33 years old now. The true low life in a relationship is a woman keeping her child away from a loving father!”
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The whole situation is complicated, though.
Andrew’s relationship with Jenelle was far from a healthy one. In her book, she revealed that they met online when she was just 15 — and he was at least 21. They met up for the first time after her birthday, and things got physical immediately. “I became a doormat for the guy. He came and got what he wanted from me, when he wanted it, and I waited for him to tell me what to do. We had to talk when he wanted to talk, no matter the odd hours. We had to go out when he wanted to go out. We did what he wanted to do.”
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We’re sure that David is bound to have an opinion on all of this, too.
We won’t get to see him talking about it on the show, but considering how territorial David Eason used to be with Nathan Griffith, we can imagine that he’s not going to be thrilled by the idea.
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And he seems plenty protective of his step-son, too.
Getting Andrew and David in a room together sounds like a recipe for disaster — but we’ll have to keep watching to see how it all turns out.