God Bless This Mess(65)

We stayed in touch as the first few episodes aired—the ones I appeared in—and he confided to me that he and Hannah Ann were having some issues. He also told me he still had feelings for Madison.

Peter would have to keep up a good face for the press for the next couple of months while knowing his engagement might be in trouble. It was crazy. This show was meant to be focused on romance and love, but so many of us who went on it found ourselves caught up in emotional disasters.

I started journaling more, trying to make sense of it all and break some of my unhealthy patterns, but I also was still drinking a bit more than I had before, to numb the pain. And that was definitely the case one night in February when I went to Hannah Godwin and Dylan Barbour’s engagement party. Tyler wasn’t there, but every other guy from my season of The Bachelorette was, including Jed—and his new girlfriend. We avoided each other at first, until I got up the courage to walk right up to him and say hello. I didn’t want it to be awkward. He said he was doing good, and I said, “Good. Good for you.” And that was about it.

I talked to most of the other guys, too, but the guy I wanted to see most was Peter.

“Hi!” he said. We got to talking, and we just hit it off.

“I have so much to tell you about,” he said, but there were producers and other people from the show around. So he couldn’t get into it. If we’d spent too much time together, people would’ve talked.

“I’ll just text you later,” he said.

“No! I want to know! What’s up? I want to know now!”

“We can’t talk here,” he said. “I have a flight in the morning. I’m about to leave, but I’ll text you when I’m in my car. Come out then.”

The idea made me feel like I was sneaking out of my parents’ house, like a teenager.

Peter left, and then he texted me to come out.

I said my goodbyes, went outside, and hopped in the passenger seat of his car.

He offered to drive me home, so we could just catch up on everything on the way. And in the next few minutes, he told me that he had broken off his engagement to Hannah Ann, he had tried to make amends with Madison, and that after all of that, he and Madison still hadn’t worked out. But as he pulled up to my apartment building, we weren’t done talking.

“Do you want to just come up?” I asked.

“Well,” he said. “I have this flight in the morning. I still have to get my stuff together. Do you want to come to Agoura, we’ll keep talking, and then I’ll drive you back?”

I didn’t want to say goodbye yet, so I said, “Sure.”

He took me back to his place, which, if you didn’t know from the show, was also his parents’ house. He still lived with his parents, in the very same town outside LA as the Bachelor mansion—and his mom was still awake when we got back. We ended up talking, just small talk and stuff, and she told me all about her feelings about the women Peter had brought home during his season. It was so uncomfortable for me . . . and Peter just went upstairs and went to bed and left me there with his mom!

His mom said I should just spend the night, and offered me Peter’s brother’s room. She was always super nice to me, but it was all so weird.

I crawled into Peter’s brother’s bed, and a few minutes later, Peter texted me: “Come cuddle.”

I lay there in the bed, hitting my head against the pillow, like, “Hannah, what are you gonna do? Don’t do it!”

But I did it.

I didn’t go there expecting us to have sex. But we did.

I’m not sure what to say about it, except that it wasn’t good. I thought we were reconnecting. I was lonely. But it wasn’t right. Our connection wasn’t the same as it used to be. He wasn’t as caring in bed. It was awkward to have to be quiet, knowing his parents were basically down the hall.

The sex didn’t last very long, and afterward, we both rolled over and fell asleep.

When he woke me up, he was already dressed in his Delta uniform and getting ready to leave.

“Sleep as long as you want,” he said. “My dad’s downstairs and looking forward to saying hi to you. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I . . .”

I was groggy and tired, a little hungover, and so confused.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Call me later?”

“All right,” he said.

He kissed me on the cheek, he walked out of his bedroom, and he closed the door quietly behind him.

I definitely wasn’t going back to sleep after that. I got up right away and put on a pair of Peter’s sweatpants and a T-shirt and did the walk of shame into his family kitchen. Carrying my dress over one arm, my high heels dangling from my fingertips, I walked in to find Peter’s dad, in a robe, drinking his morning coffee.

“Hello,” I said awkwardly.

Peter was still there. “I’m sorry. I have to go,” he said. “Can I give you some money for an Uber?”

He handed me a hundred-dollar bill. And I took it.

I was so ready to go home.

I stayed and politely talked with Peter’s dad until the car showed up, then Uber’d back to my apartment.

*

I truly didn’t think I could feel any worse about myself and my decisions than I did in that private moment, which I’ve never told anyone about until right now.