For the Right Reasons (15 page)

I was done.

As I sat on the outdoor furniture, fuming, I heard someone come up behind me.

Emily put a hand on my shoulder. She was followed by her producer.

“Listen, guys,” Mary Kate said. “I’m not supposed to let her talk to you off camera, but she begged me.”

Without a word, I motioned for her to sit down.

“Sean, I’m so sorry if you heard anything or saw anything,” she said, her voice soft with emotion. “I really care about you.”

Her words couldn’t cut through my anger.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Whatever.”

When she and Mary Kate left, I knew I hadn’t handled the situation very well. My friend Charlie came out with a producer named Jonah to commiserate. Jonah is the kind of guy you can’t imagine living outside of Hollywood, with his wild hair he wears like an Afro. He looks like Sideshow Bob from
The Simpsons
, but with an unkempt beard. (His hair even has its own Twitter handle.) Normally, Jonah and I kicked back and had a great time on set.

Not that night.

“I want to go home,” I told him. “I don’t need this, and I don’t need her.”

He let me rant for a while before he finally decided to push back a bit.

“Listen, Sean. This is a show about making relationships with multiple people. Maybe she shouldn’t have done it in the house where someone else could have seen her, but of course that stuff is gonna happen.”

We spent the night in front of the fireplace in the courtyard talking about the situation. By around four o’clock in the morning, I’d finally managed to cool off.

Reluctantly, I realized Jonah was right.

I’d signed up for a show with a premise that flew in the face of the way things were normally supposed to work. Being mad at Emily for following the rules of the show wasn’t fair. Plus, she was concerned enough about it to follow me into the courtyard. It made me think,
Okay, she really doesn’t want me to leave. She wants me to be in this.

I shuffled back to my room, exhausted but satisfied that Emily did care about me.

In my heart, however, something didn’t feel quite right.

six

GETTING ON MY SOAPBOX

“Love takes no prisoners,” the date card read.

Though I had no idea what that cryptic message meant, I was excited my name was on it so I could—finally—spend real time with Emily.

It had been a long time coming.

The morning after the cocktail party, Chris Harrison told us we were leaving Charlotte for good. Within two hours, we were packed and on our way to Bermuda. While there, I’d done nothing but sit around in the sun while she went out on group dates and two-on-one dates with the guys. Without a cell phone, laptop, or any ability to connect with friends back home, I was left to hang out with the guys and my thoughts. The guys were great, but almost all my thoughts were of Emily. Sadly, I wasn’t able to spend too much time with her until my first one-on-one date during our next stop: London, where—apparently—love would take no prisoners.

The show makes a big deal out of location changes, and they really played up London. Chris Harrison met us in historic Trafalgar Square around seven o’clock in the morning. There weren’t many people out and about, and the morning sun was reflecting off Big Ben down the street. It was a great moment, even before Harrison put things in perspective for us. “Only one of you will become Emily’s husband. Yeah, I said it—
husband
.”
Just hearing that word sobered us. Well, some of us. It was evident by this time that some of the guys were into Emily and some weren’t. Though I had always maintained that it would be ridiculous to find love on a reality TV show, I was gradually being convinced. Maybe I was wrong.

When I met Emily the next day for our one-on-one date, she didn’t look as radiant as normal. Somewhere between Bermuda and London, she’d gotten pretty sick.

“We’re going to take a tour of London, in the most perfect and iconic way,” Emily said after greeting me. As she was talking, one of those red doubledecker buses came around the bend and stopped just for us.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” I asked as we sat in the open-air bus with the wind cutting through our jackets.

“I wouldn’t have done this,” she said, holding back a sniffle, “had it not been you today.”

We drove around the city, seeing Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace. It felt so natural to be with Emily, and I looked for any sort of reassurance that I might be winning her heart. Because of the context of the show, Emily couldn’t openly express preference for one guy over another. Even if she developed feelings of love, she wouldn’t be at liberty to express it to anyone until the proposal.

This is not a show policy. Rather, it’s just how things work out. It would be inconsiderate to tell one guy she loved him when she might not necessarily have had the time to develop feelings for the others. That meant, on our date, I began looking for clues to how she really felt. In the mean-time, I enjoyed putting my arm around her and pulling her into me to keep her warm. Plus, I thought it was cool that she didn’t complain about being under the weather.

“I’m really glad today’s date is with you,” she said. “Normally, when I meet guys who look like you, they’re really boring. But you’re the opposite of boring.” Throughout the day, she grabbed my hand several times and said, “You’re just perfect.”

There was that word again. Every time she called me that, I felt flattered but corrected her. I knew—and she’d soon find out if we got to spend real
time together—I was far from perfect. Nevertheless, I appreciated the fact that she seemed to be falling for me. Emily was beginning to seem like the ideal woman for me—not because of her outward beauty, but because of her faith.

One-on-ones were daylong affairs, followed by an evening dinner date. Though, it must be said, the dinner portion was never as romantic as it seemed. Before we went on the date, the producers sent food to our hotel rooms. We ate in our rooms and then went out for dinner, where we were given beautiful food arranged nicely on the plate. This was just for show. No one looks good eating, and microphones pick up all kinds of chomping. (Just listen during the next season when someone slurps wine during the date.)

We were told to keep things light during the day portion of the date. If we had something serious to bring up, we waited until the evening. Throughout the date, the producers pulled us aside individually for ITM chats. The at-home viewers saw us doing our various activities, but periodically the camera would cut to Emily or me talking about the date. The producers did this so the viewers at home could sense our feelings about how the date was progressing in real time.

“How do you think the date is going so far?” they might ask. “What did you think when Emily said this?” and “Are you excited about tonight’s dinner date?”

During one ITM chat in Hyde Park, the producer named Scott—who became a great friend—said, “We have an idea. We’re going to go on a walk, and we’re going to come to Speakers’ Corner.”

Speakers’ Corner, I soon learned, used to be a site for public hangings, but now it’s a spot where people bring their soapboxes—little stepladders—to say whatever they’d like: religious sermons, political diatribes, or jokes. It’s located on a famous strip of land between the green lawns of Hyde Park and the city’s bustling traffic. Only two things are off-limits: profanity and insulting the queen.

“We think it would be really cool if you got up there and spoke on love,” Scott said.

“Love?” I asked, incredulous. I’ve always been deathly afraid of public
speaking. I’m even more afraid of public speaking on topics that might sound cheesy. “What specifically?”

“Just whatever comes to mind,” he said. It didn’t take me long to relent. “Once you walk up to the crowd,” he said, “look for a guy on a soapbox giving a speech. Emily doesn’t know anything about this, so just act like you’re listening to him. We’ve arranged for him to ask you if you want to come up and say anything. Then it’s up to you.”

When we approached Speakers’ Corner, the energy was palpable. People were pontificating, hecklers were punctuating speeches with insults, and the crowd was very attentive to some guy’s rant. Suddenly, one of the guys he was jarring with looked at me and asked, “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“Freedom of speech,” he said.

“I agree with that one hundred percent.”

“Why don’t you come up here so everyone can hear you?”

Even though I knew it was coming, I had no idea what I was going to say—absolutely no idea. I got up on the soapbox and started saying what came to mind.

“Let me tell you what I think about love,” I began.

“Okay,” a man said from the crowd. “All right.” The atmosphere was part political rally–part church revival.

“Love is about giving yourself completely to someone . . . with an eternal type of love. Love is a bond much deeper than most people can comprehend.”

The crowd was getting into it, and their enthusiasm was energizing. “Now, I’ve never experienced that type of love, but I’ve been in the presence of it. My parents have it, my grandparents have it, and I’m searching for it.”

“You haven’t found it yet?” someone yelled.

“I’m with this beautiful woman today. I’m not saying love is there yet, but I’m hopeful it will develop.”

At least, that’s what the viewers at home saw. In real life, my speech was interrupted by a guy on the front row who kept yelling out political questions.

“What do you think about double taxation?” he yelled.

“Hey, I’m talking about love here, buddy,” I said. I tried to ignore him, but he kept asking me weird financial questions.

This speech was a turning point for me. Making a speech at the famous Speakers’ Corner about love was about as far out of my comfort zone as I could get. I didn’t want to say those things in front of the crowd in London, and I definitely didn’t want to deliver a speech in front of the millions of people watching from home. By the time I stepped down off the soapbox, I was glad it was over but felt proud of myself.

We toured the city all day. We took a break to change and get ready for dinner, which gave Emily and me about an hour to rest. During that hour, we nestled into a couch, and I had my arm around her. Every once in a while the cameras had to reposition, so the crew would leave us alone. Those moments with just the two of us always felt special. During those times, I held her.

“I’m having such a great day,” I said.

“Me too,” she said, giving me a light kiss.

I was very aware that her lips should’ve been the last thing I was putting on mine, but there’s no way I was going to miss out on this intimate time with her just because of her cold. (When I got back to my room, I dropped Emergen-C vitamin tablets into water and probably drank ten glasses of it.) By the time we made it to our evening date, Emily’s voice was as raspy as a five-pack-a-day smoker.

The date card’s mysterious “Love takes no prisoners” referred to our evening dinner in the Tower of London’s dungeon, a former prison where Anne Boleyn was famously beheaded in 1536 for treason against Henry VIII.

Bon appétit!

We managed to have a nice evening, even though Emily didn’t feel well. I could tell she was trying to figure out if I was as perfect as she’d thought.

“So is this the night when you’re going to drop the bomb and tell me that you’re divorced three times and have seven children?”

“What you see is what you get,” I said.

“You have everything that could make you perfect, but you are humble in a way that you don’t try to sell yourself,” she said. “I like that.”

By this time, I had zero doubt I was the guy. This was partially due to the fact that I’d gotten to know all the other bachelors really well. My friendships with the guys—Jef, Arie, Wolf, Charlie—were a great bonus. While they were all nice guys, I knew from a faith standpoint I was really the only one who matched up with Emily’s beliefs. I noticed she was different around me than she was when she was with the others. It gave me hope—almost a certainty—that I was the one for whom Emily was falling. Plus, she kept sending me messages: she told me she wanted to have a big family; she told me I set the whole tone of the show ever since I got out of the limo first. At the end of the date, she told me something that I took as reassurance.

“Days like this make me excited for what’s next,” she said.

What’s next
, of course, implies a future.

“I know what this show is all about,” I said. “But I’m confident in what we have.”

“Me too,” she said.

My sister was right. Being a part of the cast of
The Bachelorette
took me all over the world. We went from North Carolina to Bermuda to London to Croatia. In Croatia, I didn’t get to spend much personal time with Emily since I was relegated to the group date. We were able to steal a bit of private conversation, however.

“You know where you stand. Don’t worry if you’re not spending as much time with me as you want,” she whispered. “More time will come, I promise.”