For the Right Reasons (24 page)

Could Lindsay
, I wondered,
one day be my wife?

Honestly, I could see it.

The group date in Montana was, suitably, called the “lumberjack challenge.” The girls had to saw wood, carry hay bales, and canoe—a nice change of pace from the normal bungee cord jumping or Beverly Hills–type dates common to the show. Definitely safer than roller derby. Before the date started, I walked through the downtown Whitefish restaurant with the director, who pointed out all the spots I could sit with the girls.

“Here’s a spot right here,” she said, pointing to a table. “Or you could also sit here,” she said, pointing to an area they’d set up in the corner. The producers thought carefully about where we could sit and talk so they’d be camera-ready when the time came.

The evening portion of the date was going well, and I was dutifully taking each woman to the predetermined, candlelit spots. Halfway through the evening, Catherine grabbed my hand.

“Let’s go outside!” she said. Judging from the way the cameramen scurried to follow us, the producers apparently didn’t know this was coming. When something unexpected happened on the show, they didn’t try to stop it from unfolding. Rather, they did the best they could to capture it on film—which is why close observers of the show sometimes see cameramen running in the background. Usually, that’s when something good is about to happen!

We walked out the back door and went back behind the restaurant/bar into their parking lot holding hands, laughing, giggling, and having a good time. There were a couple of guys out in the back who weren’t impressed by our giddy lovefest.

“Get out of Whitefish,” one of the guys slurred. “We don’t need you here!”

“Why don’t you shut up and go back inside the bar?” I said.

It was a funny backdrop for what was supposed to be a romantic conversation.
Maybe that’s why the producers set everything up in advance
, I thought. The drunk guys’ disapproval didn’t matter to us. Catherine and I sat on a bench and chatted away excitedly.

While the group date was pleasant, the pre–rose ceremony cocktail party that week was a disaster. Tension among the girls bubbled right under the surface, and apparently the drama surrounded Tierra. I was beginning to sense a pattern. I heard rumblings that she was different around me than she was around the girls, but I hated taking secondhand information. I wanted to judge someone based on what I’d seen—not what I’d heard. Tierra was kind and nice to me at all times, so I pushed any criticism I heard about it out of my head. But I couldn’t ignore the snippy fighting I heard all night. During the party, there was an epic battle raging from room to room, focusing on Tierra and putting everyone on edge.

When I finally had a chance to sit down with Harrison before the rose ceremony, I was fed up.

“I feel like I’ve wasted everyone’s time,” I told him. “Including my own.”

“What’s going on?” he asked me.

“I’ve had a good time, but I am so sick of the drama. I can’t imagine my wife is in this bunch.”

Harrison, to his credit, didn’t push me too hard. He just listened and nodded, and assured me he’d seen much worse. “Listen, Sean, I know it seems overwhelming right now, but this, too, will pass.”

I listened to his counsel, sent someone home, and went back to my place.

I couldn’t shake the feeling.

This just didn’t feel like the right way to meet a wife.

Though Whitefish was beautiful, I was glad to pack my bags for Canada. Our next destination was the Fairmont Chateau, nestled on the shore of Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies, which had—over the years—hosted many kings and queens. Surrounded by enormous mountain peaks, the jaw-dropping Victoria Glacier, and a vibrant teal-blue lake, it was the most majestic area I’d ever seen.

The date card that week read, “Let’s find our fairy-tale ending” and went to Catherine. I was over the drama, over the women talking about the drama, and ready to find a partner I could see myself with for a lifetime. Could Catherine be that person? I doubted it but was excited about exploring the opportunity.

Everything was working against us on our date. I arrived early because they had to teach me how to drive a gigantic bus that would take us on an excursion to a glacier in Jasper National Park. However, blizzard-like conditions crept up on us as we prepared.

“You ready?” Mary Kate asked, standing next to the enormous vehicle. “It looks like there’s a storm coming that we didn’t anticipate.”

“Ya think?” Pellets of ice stung my face, causing welts to form.

After a quick tutorial, I drove up to where the producers had dropped off Catherine, who wasn’t dressed for a snowstorm. The wind blew around her, the temperature had dropped well below freezing, and she looked like a Popsicle.

When I opened the door, her face lit up. “What are you doing? I didn’t realize you were driving this thing!”

I walked down the stairs, gave her a snowsuit to put on, and told her about our date. The wind kicked up the snow around us so that we couldn’t see very far in front of our faces. Even though the producers had left us sleds, there were no real hills, and the snow beneath our feet had solidified into ice.

What could’ve been a disastrous date, however, turned into a blast. Catherine joked around the whole time, jumped on the sled, did cartwheels in the snow, and made snow angels. But by the time we spread out our picnic blanket, I couldn’t feel my feet. The storm had started to move in even closer, and we were getting slapped in the face with snow. She laughed because my hair was white like Jack Frost but my face was as red as a tomato. We were freezing our butts off, but we still tried to cuddle up on a little picnic blanket and have hot chocolate. Catherine, as a vegan, didn’t normally drink hot chocolate. Since it was the only thing standing between her and hypothermia, she made an exception.

“All right, guys, we’ve got to get out of here,” the crew said as they packed up their equipment. “We’re not going to get off the mountain.”

Since our date was cut short, Catherine and I prepared to go back to the hotel to rest before the evening portion of the date. During this off-camera time, Catherine and I were supposed to travel in different vehicles since every interaction needed to be caught on camera. I was having so much fun with her, however, I asked Mary Kate for a favor.

“Can she please drive back with us?” I asked, feeling like a high school kid without his driver’s license asking his mom for a favor. “Can she please?”

“Absolutely not,” Mary Kate said, frowning.

“I promise not to do anything interesting that you wish you would’ve caught on camera,” I said.

“Sean,” she said. “I want to help out, but you know the rules: no off-camera interaction.”

“But I’m having such a good time,” I said. “Come on, you guys almost froze us to death on that date. Don’t you owe us?”

Mary Kate looked around, as if to see if anyone was listening. “Promise me you won’t talk about anything important?”

“I promise,” I said. “I just want to be with her.”

Catherine, Mary Kate, Brenner, and I piled into the car and asked the driver to turn up the radio—a novelty, since we hadn’t heard it in such a long time. We were casually singing along to songs we knew and laughing.

When a song by Erykah Badu called “Tyrone” came on the radio, Catherine came alive. The song is a soulful lament that the singer’s boyfriend never buys her anything and always calls his friends instead of being content to hang out with her.

She sang along with every word. But she wasn’t just singing; she somehow had morphed into a soulful hip-hop artist. “Why can’t we be by ourselves sometimes?” she sang along with the song.
⁶

She looked straight at me when she said those words and laughed.

Mary Kate, Brenner, and I watched in amazement as this Filipino-American-Italian girl gave us a soulful rendition I definitely wish we’d caught on film.

“I’m so impressed right now,” Brenner said, watching her belt out this song without missing a syllable.

The drive took about an hour and a half, and our giddiness over being together gradually gave way to the exhaustion of having been in a snowstorm all day. When the hum of the engine began casting its spell on us, Catherine put her head in my lap and dozed off.

A couple of hours later, I was standing in the lobby of the hotel, having showered, freshened up, and gotten a bite to eat. As I stood there waiting for Catherine to emerge from her hotel room for the evening portion of our date, I was excited. The sight of her walking down the stairs at the beautiful Fairmont took my breath away. Then a horse-drawn carriage took us to an ice castle built just for us.

Yes, an ice castle.

They put a fire pit inside and blankets on top of the ice bench, but the walls and seats were made of solid ice. We cuddled up once again, which—of course—I loved. We talked all night. It was picturesque, with the snow falling and the moon shining—though at one point the wind changed direction and the smoke from the fire almost suffocated us.

During the date, the producers took us out separately for the ITMs.

“So it looks like you and Catherine really have something cool going here,” said Mary Kate, who always had a great sense of how things were going. She had listened to every conversation and knew me extremely well by this point. “Now it’s time to give her the rose.” As mentioned earlier, normally during the ITMs, I decided whether to give my date a rose. This time, however, there was no doubt.

When I gave the rose to Catherine, she was so excited. We went out to the grassy field on which the ice castle was built and danced under the moonlight with light snow falling around us. It was a perfect moment.

“We’re not gonna use this anymore,” the producers said as they wrapped up filming for the night. “You guys can destroy the ice castle if you want.”

“Really?” I saw a gleam in Catherine’s eyes.

We took chisels and started tearing the ice castle apart. I made a luge out of the ice castle and tried to pour champagne through it. It didn’t work out well, but we had a blast. I hadn’t shared that type of fun with anyone else besides her. It wasn’t televised, but it gave me another memorable moment with Catherine.

Of course, I had been collecting these really memorable moments—and they weren’t all with Catherine. I’d go on an awesome date, have the time of my life, then wake up the next day and have another amazing date with a totally different woman.

She might be the one
, I’d think.

Then the next date, I’d think,
No,
she
might be the one
.

When I was talking to the producer early on, I described my dream girl as “someone who shares my faith, someone funny and easygoing.” In the beginning, just like in everyday life, you’re drawn to some. But if someone had asked me who would be my top four, I would’ve been wrong. As time went by, I realized that first impressions were not always the right impressions. Over the course of several weeks, I started to mentally rearrange that top four. But I could feel confusion settle over my heart, with so many legitimately wonderful—and different—women vying for my attention.