God Bless This Mess(55)

“No, Jed,” I said. “I told you after our night, I knew it was you and I wasn’t intimate with anyone after you.”

That caught him off guard.

“Was I not the first person?” he asked.

“No. I had my date with Peter first.”

“And you two were . . .”

I nodded, and he got up and started pacing the room, asking all sorts of questions.

I explained again what had happened, and he wanted details. He wanted to know if he was better in bed than Peter, and I lied and said “Yes.” I didn’t want to bruise his ego any more than it was already bruised.

He also asked me if his thing was bigger than Peter’s. Why do guys always ask that? “I don’t even remember,” I told him. I just didn’t see how answering that question would be good for anybody.

Here’s the thing: to me, when you’re in love, when you’re connected emotionally, none of that stuff matters. Sex is a whole different thing when you’re connected by the heart. It truly is. I hated that this was happening. I hated that he was feeling jealous about it all. I was battling all sorts of internal guilt and shame over everything that had happened myself. I let these fleeting feelings lead to making choices that affected a lot of people. I didn’t take the time, and there wasn’t enough time, for me to think through all of the consequences. There was a lot of hurt going around because of the choices I’d made, and I was worried Jed was going to say the horrible words I’d already heard from two other men in my life: that because of this, he would think I was unworthy of his love.

But he didn’t say it.

“I chose you,” I reminded him. “I choose you.”

After fifteen minutes of pacing, Jed calmed down.

We spent the night together, and things seemed to go back to normal, even though we didn’t know what “normal” really meant for us at that point.

The next day, we hung out by the pool and drank and had fun all day.

After dinner I went to take a shower, and as I was getting out, Jed came in, looking visibly upset about something. I asked him what was wrong. We sat on the bed together. He said he had just talked to one of the producers and learned that there was a girl spreading a story online, about the two of them hanging out together just before he came on the show.

I didn’t get upset at first. There were always rumors on social media from past girlfriends or boyfriends or other people trying to get attention for themselves once somebody made it to the final four on one of these shows. So I didn’t think it was that much of a big deal.

“What do you mean, hanging out? Like, what does that mean? Was she your girlfriend?”

“No, no, no. She wasn’t my girlfriend. We just hung out.”

“I don’t even understand, then. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was nothing worth telling you.”

But he still looked upset about it.

“I have to go do press tomorrow,” I said, “and if they’re gonna ask me about this, I need to know if there’s something to talk about. Like, what is it? When’s the last time you talked to her? Was it a month? Was it a week? When was it?”

At first he said a month. Then he said maybe it was more like a week.

“Oh, my gosh, Jed. Okay. But you weren’t anything with her?”

“No. We just hung out. That’s it.”

He stuck to his story, and I took him at his word.

Before we headed to the airport for our flights back to the US, one of our handlers was going over Jed’s ticket information and she read his name out loud: “Jared Thomas Wyatt.”

“Jared?” I said. “Who’s Jared?”

It freaked me out. How could I not know my fiancé’s full name? Who was this person?

I asked Jed, “Why didn’t I know your name?”

“I never went by that,” he said. He didn’t think it was a big deal. But alongside everything else, it just made me question whether any of this was real.

How could I be engaged to a man when I didn’t even know his name?

And his name was . . . Jared?

*

I went back to the States to face a whirlwind of press. The pressure never let up. The only real sleep I got was on the plane. And then I was hidden away, so I wouldn’t get ambushed by the paparazzi and there wasn’t a chance that I’d slip up and give away any spoilers.

Away from the cameras, the pressure and the worry of it all was too much for me. I started drinking more than I ever had in my whole life. I didn’t want to drink more, but I felt like I needed something. I was self-medicating. And I knew that wasn’t good for me.

In one of our very few chances to see each other in person a few weeks later, the show secretly took Jed and me to a California hideaway for a Happy Couple Retreat. It was so good to see each other, and hold each other, and reconnect for three days straight. I remembered why I’d chosen him, and why I said yes.

I said yes because we had fun together. We got silly and built a fort in the living room, like a couple of kids. We tied sheets to chairs and tables, and crawled under it, and made a video on my phone, looking so blissfully happy.

I said yes because Jed seemed like the safest choice.

I even wrote it in my journal:

He comes from a southern background. He is safe.

He is Christian. He is safe.