Eight Weeks to Mr. Right (15 page)

Not that that made it much better.
 

I had been so happy, I remembered. So excited to be spending time with Andrew, so excited about what the future would bring. I’d lost sight of the job by that point, and just wanted to be with him. I was imagining a life with him, years and years unfolding in beautiful detail, kids, houses, vacations, morning coffee side by side. And that was so much of what had made this day so horrible: that I had started it so happy, so oblivious. Looking toward the future and daydreaming.

This had to be over soon. I couldn’t sit here and relive The Horrible Day in such excruciating detail. But then the second moment happened, the other thing I was hoping had been lost forever to a lack of cameras and sound equipment when we were all alone in our private room.
 

“Andrew,” my voice said, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

And the show had also caught Andrew’s awkward reply: “I — I like you a lot too.”

I blinked to keep the tears welling up in my eyes from spilling down my cheeks. It was too much. It was all too humiliating. To even remember this day was so painful, but to rewatch it, to listen to it all unfolding again, to know that hundreds of thousands of people around the country — maybe millions! — were also watching and listening and judging, was so much worse.
 

And he hadn’t even dumped me yet.
 

I finally got up the nerve to glance at Ben. He looked back at me with an unreadable expression. I squeezed his hand, needing comfort, but instead of squeezing back, he pulled his hand away. My heart plummeted.
 

We sat in silence through the last commercial break, and then watched us three women standing together in front of Andrew.
 

“Abby,” he said first, “I feel like I’ve really gotten to know you on this journey. You’re a wonderful woman and it was a pleasure to spend some alone time with you.” He gave her a paper heart.
 

And here it came. On the screen, I saw myself taking a deep breath, not believing he would let me go — not after sleeping with me, not after leading me to believe he was falling for me too, even if he wasn’t ready to use the word “love.” Not talking with the other women about their dates with Andrew, I had led myself to believe that what he and I shared was special, that I was the only one he was having these experiences with. It didn’t seem possible that the intimacy we’d developed over the previous six weeks could’ve happened between him and any of the other women. For me, at that time, he was the only one, so it felt natural that I would be the only one he’d have feelings for too.
 

That girl on the screen had no idea what she was in for.
 

“Isabella,” he said next, and you could see the shock visible on my face as I took in the news that I was being eliminated. I felt that same shock again now, even though I’d known, this time, that it was coming. “Isabella, you make me laugh, and I have so much fun when I’m around you. And I like that you know how to be a wild woman too.” He’d winked at Isabella, and she’d giggled in return. He handed her a paper heart.
 

“And last, January.” He turned to me. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. You’re a great girl, but I just wasn’t feeling the connection.”

On the screen, I nodded, my face turning pink. I could see the raw emotion in my expression. There had been so many questions I’d wanted to ask him, not least of which was, “How could you have slept with me if you weren’t feeling the connection? How could you have led me on like that?” But I couldn’t ask any of what I wanted to know, not here with the cameras on us, not when I’d wanted to keep everything private that had happened between us.
 

But I was the fool. None of it had been private anyway.
 

As the episode ended, I watched myself walking away and starting to fall apart in tears, and I wondered what all the haters on the Internet were thinking and saying now. I bet they were having a field day.

I glanced over at my phone, on the end table next to the couch. It was lighting up with a new Twitter notification every few seconds. I turned it face-down on the table. All of those people who had wanted me to fail would be loving this. They would be taking such perverse joy in my misery.
 

I had had one last tearful interview in the confessional in which I had said I didn’t know what had happened, an interview that was now playing on the screen, and then I had been free to go. But I hadn’t really been free to go. For almost four months since that day, I’d still been tethered to the show, to Andrew, and even now I wasn’t entirely free. My episodes were over, but the final episode, the live show, was still to come.
 

In that moment, I needed Ben more than I had needed him after any other episode. This was the most mortifying thing that had ever happened to me, the most mortifying thing I could imagine. But after this, I had no idea whether he’d still be there for me.
 

Ben turned to me for the first time since the truth had been revealed, a stunned look on his face. “You slept with him? You told him you were falling in love with him?” The pain was obvious in his voice.

“But it doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “It’s over. I care about you now. Ben…you’re the one I’m falling in love with.”

“It doesn’t matter?” he exploded, and I recoiled at the force of his rejection. “You lied to me!”

I hadn’t lied, exactly. I just hadn’t told him the truth about how invested I’d gotten in Andrew.
 

“Are you really that concerned that I slept with someone else? I know it was hard to see it on screen. Believe me, it was hard for me to watch it too. It was humiliating. It was the most humiliating moment of my whole life. But you’ve slept with people in the past too. What about your ex?”

He shook his head like I truly didn’t understand. “Yes, it was hard to hear you having sex with him on TV. It was really hard to hear you tell him you were falling in love with him. But I’m upset because…because you led me to believe that you were only interested in the job, that you never got that attached to him. And now I see that you’ve been lying to me all along.”

“I wasn’t lying!” I protested, but I knew in some part of me that he was right.
 

“If that’s the kind of guy you’re into, I can’t compete. I’m not a CEO, I can’t give you a job, I don’t have tons of money. I work for a nonprofit. I have student loans. I live in an apartment with a roommate. But I would never leave my family the way Andrew did to his. You want someone rich and fake. Well, I’m poor and honest.”

“I don’t care about that!” I said. “That’s not who I am anymore. That was months ago. So much is different now. And it’s all finally over.”

“Is it?” he asked, stopping and staring straight at me.
 

“Yes,” I whispered.
 

“You’re so concerned,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully, “with what the show’s viewers think of you. What strangers online think of you. Why aren’t you concerned with what I think of you?”

He stared at me, but I didn’t have an answer. He continued: “You’re so worried that they won’t like you, or that they’ll think you’re only interested in the job and not interested in Andrew. And then you turn around and tell me that you’re only interested in the job, and not interested in Andrew. Which is it, January?”
 

I blinked back tears. All I could do was shake my head. Even if the lump in my throat hadn’t been big enough to prevent me from speaking, I had no idea what to say. I had no defense. I could tell he was hurting, and I wanted so badly to make everything better, to make him smile at me, to make him lift his eyebrow at me to let me know none of it mattered. But I could tell just how betrayed he felt.
 

But I felt betrayed too. The show had betrayed me. The producers had made me think they were on my side, that they would present me to the world the way I presented myself, just edited down to an easy-to-consume, half-hour version. Instead, they had demonized me, made me the villain where I should’ve been only me. My feelings for Andrew had been honest at the time, and I’d only been doing and saying what I felt. I just hadn’t known that so much of it would make it into the show.
 

And now, on the most humiliating night of my life, I needed Ben more than ever. I needed him to stand beside me, to know that even if I’d done things back then that I wouldn’t do now, that in my essence, my core, I was still the same person. I needed him to forgive me, even if the viewers didn’t. And to love me.
 

“Maybe people think you’re acting fake and manipulative on the show because you are those things,” he said. “You try to take the easy way out. You don’t want to earn a job at La Joie. You want to sneak in the back door by sleeping with the CEO.”

The force of his words hit me in the gut, and I collapsed onto the couch, deflated. My eyes stung, and then the tears began spilling.
 

“I can’t do this, January,” he said, his voice quieter now, but firm. “I can’t be with you. You’re not the person I thought you were.”
 

I felt myself crumple inside. I’d never needed him more than in this moment, and he was abandoning me.
 

“And you’re still afraid,” I said, choking on my tears. “You’re giving up that easily? Inside you’re still that sixteen-year-old boy who wants to leave me before I can leave you.” I knew the accusation would hurt him, but I said it anyway. It was true. And I was so hurt right now — by Ben’s words, by the producers’ betrayal, by watching Andrew dump me all over again — that I didn’t even care. Nothing mattered anymore. Everything was falling apart, and anything I did to try to salvage it only made things worse.
 

Ben opened his mouth as though to respond, but instead grabbed his wallet and headed for the door. “I have to go,” he said. “I can’t do this right now.”

“At least stay and talk to me,” I begged. “I know that was hard to watch, but we need to talk about this.”

He just shook his head and continued on his path.

As the door shut behind him, I yelled, “That’s right, go! Just walk away.” I collapsed in a sobbing heap on the couch, and whispered to the empty room, “You’re more like your father than you think.”

WEEK 7

In the days after my final episode aired, I did my best to wade through the pile of Internet hatred that was flowing in to me. It seemed like an endless supply, and it exhausted me just to think about it.
 

Most of my Twitter messages could be divided into three categories: those calling me a slut, those calling me a manipulative liar, and those voicing their support. This last category were much sparser than the others, but I was so grateful for the occasional vote of confidence, the fact that even a few people didn’t think I was the scum of the earth.
 

I’d moved back into my parents’ house for a few days, wanting to give Ben the space he needed in his own apartment to think things through, even though it killed me not to be near him when I needed him most. I tried texting him a few times, letting him know I was thinking about him and missed him, but I hadn’t heard back.
 

I did my best to respond to the comments, but I often couldn’t see through my tears. There were moments when I wasn’t sure whether I was crying about the constant barrage of strangers telling me what a shitty person I was, or whether I was crying because I missed Ben. Probably both at once.
 

It was so hard trying to get through the hatred without him. I missed him like crazy, and every night that I went to bed without his comforting arms around me, I lay there beneath the covers wide awake, my mind churning and wondering what new slaps in the face Twitter was serving up to me at that moment.
 

Why had I ever wanted to go on a reality TV show? What a stupid idea that had been. I couldn’t believe now that it had ever seemed like a good idea, that it had ever seemed like a way to get my foot in the door with La Joie. Now it threatened everything in my life. I wondered whether I’d ever be able to get a job in the perfume industry, much less with Andrew’s company.
 

With every negative comment I received, I tried to imagine how Ben would’ve coached me to respond to it. And every time, I wished he were there with me to help me in person, to guide me through it, to tell me it would be okay and that I wasn’t a horrible person just because a stranger online who didn’t even know me was telling me I was.
 

And what was he thinking? I couldn’t stand the thought that he might now think I was a horrible person too. And, almost worse, I knew he must be hurting also, and I wanted to be there to comfort him, to make it all better. I hated the fact that I had caused his pain.

I didn’t leave my bedroom much during those days. My crying jags were unpredictable, and the last thing I wanted was to go out in public and start to cry — or worse, to be recognized and then start to cry. I didn’t even want my parents to see me cry, or to know how bad things were.
 

The days crawled by. Once I made the mistake of googling my name and found that countless websites were weighing in on me. Some said the same things as Twitter users, though usually more eloquently: that I was manipulating Andrew, that I didn’t really love him, that sleeping with him and telling him I was falling in love with him was a low-life ploy. Others said I was a casualty of the carefully edited reality of reality TV. Still others said they felt sorry for me, or even pitied me, and others yet said I’d brought it on myself by going on the show.
 

Maybe they were all right. Maybe none of them were. I didn’t know anymore. But I knew one thing with a burning certainty: I missed Ben. I checked my phone constantly to see if he’d texted back, or called, but always nothing.
 

On Sunday, four days after the show aired, I took a deep breath and checked Twitter again, feeling the now-familiar feeling of dread in my stomach, so strong I thought I might vomit. Over the past few days, the hate hadn’t died down nearly as much as I’d expected, though I kept telling myself it would. I hadn’t been outdoors since I’d come to my parents’ house after Ben had left on Wednesday night, after the episode, and I’d been sleeping and eating erratically, getting antsy and nervous every time I’d avoided Twitter for a couple of hours, knowing that the hate was only building up in my absence.