God Bless This Mess(61)

I was like, “Oh. Well, I don’t know. I know that we’re not exclusively dating, but I know for me, I just dated thirty guys and that didn’t work out so well. So I want to focus on seeing if this will work out between you and me. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But that’s where I’m at.”

“Okay,” he said, “I’ve gotta go, so can we talk about this later? I’ll call you when I’m free.”

“Okay,” I said, and we said goodbye.

But he never called me back.

I woke up the next morning to find paparazzi photos of Tyler tagged all over Instagram. Tyler, in New York City—on a date with supermodel Gigi Hadid.

Tyler met up with a supermodel after getting off the phone with me.

This wasn’t a TV show. This wasn’t some game. My time with Tyler at my apartment wasn’t some meaningless hookup, the way it was portrayed in the press. My heart was on the line. And he broke it. With a supermodel. Can you imagine? I was so embarrassed, and hurt, and it was all so public. Again. It all caught me so off guard.

And what’s crazy is, I loved Gigi Hadid! I thought she was the coolest. I still do. I get it. I would even go on a date with her. I wanna be her friend! But never did I expect to be in a love triangle with her.

I was far too broken to put up with it. I had just been so vulnerable with him. I was so honest about how I felt about him. And then this?

I had to do press the next morning for ABC, and everyone wanted to know what was going on. “I don’t know what’s going on!” is the only thing I could say.

I finally messaged him: “I know why you didn’t call me last night, but I’m about to go do press, and I don’t know what to say.”

He didn’t respond. Which meant I had no choice but to go on camera and try to play the role of the strong, independent woman again. I had to play it cool.

When he finally called me, he tried to explain himself, like every guy tries to explain himself, and argue his side of the story. “You got to date thirty guys, so I’m gonna date around and see if I still want to be with you,” he said.

“But this isn’t a TV show,” I said. “You just told me you weren’t seeing anybody else. And then you said you wanted to talk about it, but we never talked about it, and like an hour later you went out with her!”

On the show he’d treated me with so much respect. I said, “I hyped you up as this respectful king, and this feels like you’re disrespecting me more than anybody ever has in my life! I’m going to be asked about you and Gigi now, constantly. Do you not understand that? I’m the one who has to answer for what you’re doing.”

I was so mad.

We basically hung up on each other.

I had picked myself up and dusted myself off and tried, again, to be open to love, and got lied to again. And hurt again. By a man who had given me every indication that he wanted to try, too. And it made me feel like I could never trust a man again—just as I was getting ready to start rehearsals for Dancing with the Stars.

*

Now I had even more reason to throw myself into this competition with everything I had. I didn’t want to think about anything else. No men. No heartbreak. Nothing but winning that Mirrorball trophy at the end.

I was laser focused. I was used to having cameras around me now, so much so that I barely even noticed they were there. I met Alan, my dance partner, and I was ready to get down to work.

I had no idea just how much work it was gonna be, and how much it would wreck me, emotionally and physically.

There were times growing up when I went to dance practice right after school until right before bedtime. There were weekends when I felt like all I did was dance.

None of it felt as brutal as the rehearsals for DWTS.

In the first two weeks, they wanted us to be there only four hours a day, so we wouldn’t wear ourselves out. We were using muscles most of us hadn’t used in years, and in some cases, the contestants had never danced before in their lives. We needed to ease into it. But I knew I wanted to stay longer, to learn as much as I could and practice as long as I could. I didn’t want to go home to an empty apartment and think again about Tyler, who still hadn’t reached out.

Pretty soon, we started rehearsing long hours every day except Sunday. But Sunday wasn’t a “day off” for us. We did camera blocking on Sundays for the live shows on Mondays. So we were usually at the studio all day Sunday, too.

Pushing a body to its limits and dancing multiple hours a day is tough. It would be hard enough if I were doing it on my own. But everything I was doing had to be in tandem with my partner, and I had such a hard time with that at first.

Alan kept saying, “You have to trust me if we’re going to do this.” But trust was the last thing I was prepared to give a man I’d just met.

Ballroom dance and partner dances in general require huge amounts of confidence. With the spins and pulls and lifts, with both of you moving so quickly at times, if you don’t know deep down that your partner’s got you—I mean really got you—either one of you can get seriously physically injured. And when it came to dancing, confident was the last thing I felt. As a child, I had been told repeatedly that I wasn’t talented enough to be in the spotlight. I was always put in the back of the group dances. That feeling kept haunting me on DWTS. It gave me this paralyzing fear at times, to the point where my feet would freeze up and I wouldn’t even be able to try new steps. And there was no time to waste.