Southern Charm’s Venita Aspen Details ‘Refreshing’ Friendship With JT Thomas

“Yeah, I have a crush on Mr. JT,” Venita told Leva. “He’s just like, funny and charming. He works out every day, you know, he has a great relationship with his mom. I’m like, oh, okay, he’s kind of like me, but a boy. I like that.”

Venita planned a dinner for JT to discuss their flirtation

The fashion influencer acknowledged her feelings and invited JT for dinner to “talk it out.”

“When I’m interested in a guy, I’m not going to wait for him to make the call,” Venita shared. “I’m going to be the first one to say, ‘Hey, how you doing? So today at 12:30 I expect you to pick me up.’”

Venita prepared a proper spread of vegetables and branzino. JT felt “very spoiled” and called the meal “very nice.” Also, “sweet and spicy, kind of like us.”

JT opened the conversation to the chemistry between them. He said, “You know that there’s something, right? Like, you know that there’s chemistry here. I do.”

Venita responded, “I had a feeling it was there, but I didn’t think that you would actually like, say it.”

“Do I know we have chemistry? Am I extremely attracted to you? Yes and yes. But it’s just, I’m just being real, like, I’m seeing someone, so…,” he continued.

In a confessional interview, JT explained that he’d “been just getting out of the gates.” The girl in question is named Ally.

“I’ve got to give myself a little bit of credit because I don’t cheat, and that’s a slippery slope,” he said.

JT described himself as “flippant”

Venita reacted to the shocking news in a confessional interview.

“I won’t say that I knew he had a girlfriend. I could say that I knew he was talking to someone, but it wasn’t like a ‘this is who I’m dating,’” she told producers.

Coyly, she told JT, “Don’t act like you don’t want this just as bad as I do.” The former Southern Charm star wanted to “play this out” with the fashion influencer.

“Say that it’s an alternative universe that it was me and you, but you knew that I had the propensity to see new opportunities and be flippant,” JT said. “You wouldn’t want to be with somebody like that. Then you would always wonder in the back of your mind, is he going to do the same thing to me?”

 Venita responded, “I’m not a home-wrecker and I don’t want to be.”

But after thinking the situation over, she felt “equally parts angry and equally parts sad.”

“How long have we been flirting? And you’ve had a girlfriend this whole time?” Venita told producers.

As it turns out, JT quit the show. And Venita told People that she “wishes him well, if this is what’s it’s going to be.”

“I think JT gets in his own way a lot of the time, and this is a prime example of that,” she added.