Bachelor and Bachelorette alum Ali Fedotowsky, who was in town, popped by with a twelve-pack of beer, her hair in a bun, wearing a touristy San Francisco sweatshirt she bought at a CVS. I thought she was hilarious, cool, and laid-back, but Ben wasn’t a fan. He ironically didn’t like that she always traveled with a sycophantic entourage. He used to make fun of her name, drawing it out like a Downton Abbey butler: “Ohhhh, I’m Ali Fedotowwwwwwsky.”
Ali and I got along great and she opened up to me about the demise of her engagement to Roberto Martinez. She was very upset about rumors that he might be the next Bachelor because their breakup was still fresh. To make her feel better, I told her that Ben and I weren’t doing well either. It felt great to be honest about our situation with someone other than my sister.
At one point in the night I spotted Ben on the outside staircase by himself, texting. Um, Ben was never by himself. And he had the posture of a man trying to hide something. Around 1:00 A.M., the party was dying down and he said he was going to grab some food with the boys down the street at Pizza Orgasmica (yeah, Kacie B’s parents would have loved Ben) and would be right back.
While he was gone, I cleaned up his apartment. An hour later, he came back and didn’t even say thank you. “Where have you been all this time?” I nagged. When he went to the bathroom, I saw the PR girl’s name pop up on his phone. I’d met her once when he went to pick up some cases of Fernet at her office. She was cute, but a little standoffish with me. Ben told me she was married, but I never checked if that was true or not.
It read: Are you at Hi-Fi?
He’d responded: Darn, I just missed you.
When he came out of the bathroom, I ripped into him.
“Were you just at a club?”
“No! Why are you going through my phone? We just went out for pizza!”
I told him that was bullshit and asked if he was cheating with this PR rep. He denied it, but then added, “I have to maintain relationships! Sometimes for my job I have to be flirty!”
I was drunk and pissed so I said, “Oh really? Well sometimes Chris still texts me!” It was true. I’d actually told Chris he couldn’t text me anymore, but Ben didn’t need to know that right now.
“What!”
“We’re just friends,” I said sarcastically. “I’ll show you the texts and pictures. You can go through my phone.”
“That’s not okay. This is a problem.”
“Every time I see your phone her name keeps popping up!”
“Everyone knows I’m in love with you,” he said, starting to soften. “I don’t want you talking to your exes anymore. It makes me feel like they gave you something I’m not giving you, which makes me want to try harder.”
And then we had sex.
14
BUILDING & BREAKING
We kept building up the relationship and then breaking it. Build and break. Build and break. At this moment, we were building toward something, though I wasn’t sure what. Ben was starting to be more supportive of my career and when I’d come up to San Francisco he drove me to castings for Gap and Old Navy. I spent time exploring the city and taking the bus all over, meeting Julia for lunch, and trying to get used to the fact that San Fran would be my new home soon.
Ben seemed very happy with me lately, and had no clue that I was unsatisfied in our relationship. I felt like there was no end in sight, in terms of moving in together, and the long distance was getting old. At the end of August, Arie Luyendyk Jr., the sexy race car driver from Arizona who was the runner-up on Emily Maynard’s Bachelorette season, tweeted Ben and me that he was coming up to San Francisco for a race. It was funny, because at brunch once with Ben’s sister, Julia, we’d both admitted that we had crushes on Arie. To get even, Ben said his celebrity crush was Zooey Deschanel and Garrett admitted he liked Kate Upton. It was one of those harmless hall-pass conversations.
I private messaged Arie that I was going to be out of town, but Ben would love to meet up with him. I’m not going to lie. I was a little flirty. I’d heard through a very reliable source, another former contestant, that Arie was the best sex she’d ever had. “Next time we’re in the same place, let’s rendezvous,” I teased. Eeek.
Ben met up with Arie and Lucas Daniels, from Ashley’s season, and had a blast. Arie even took him for a spin around the track. After they hung out, Arie tweeted that he had fun with Ben and that seeing how happy we were together renewed his faith in love. Ben also told me that he gushed to Arie that our relationship had never been better, bragging, “We are in such a great place!” Then he made the mistake of telling Arie that I had a crush on him. “I better keep you two away from each other,” Ben joked.
Ben wasn’t worried about telling Arie I had the hots for him. In his mind, we were happy and moving toward marriage. He was thinking fall 2013 and now wanted an over-the-top, glamorous affair. “We should have a fancy black-tie wedding!” he said, all excited. “It’ll be really cool! Everyone will get dressed up to the nines and it’ll be really chic!” I was confused. He knew I’d always wanted a rustic, outdoor wedding at the Farm.
“I guess so,” I said, totally deflated.
Then we had the other big conversation.
“I have baby fever!” Ben said out of the blue one day while we were driving to get him new furniture. “Me, too!” I said. We talked about our parenting styles and we agreed that Ben would be the disciplinarian and I’d be the pushover.
This was a thrilling turn of events, but it scared the shit out of me. We’d been up and down so many times—and now he was actually talking about marriage and babies? I didn’t know if I should get my hopes up. Ben had recently joined not one, but two co-ed softball teams. He did whatever he wanted at all times with no real consideration for me. Was he mature enough to be the father of my children? I mean the guy was constantly showing me dick tricks, like his famous fruit bowl or “the stork.” (Sorry for the visual.) I pictured him out having beers with his softball team(s), while I was home with our colicky baby. I’d text him and ask, “Where are you??” and he’d say, “I’ll be right there …” And we all know how that goes.
Anyway, marriage and babies were both moot because he still had not officially asked me to move in with him. And there was still the issue of his mother, who I was convinced had tried to kill me on an extreme bike ride through Sonoma. As she whizzed through narrow paths and rugged terrain, she yelled at me like Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels: “Keep up! Come on!” At a stoplight, she brought up The Bachelor again, reminding me how Ben almost gave up on me when the negative press got to be too much. I didn’t understand why she’d want to rehash the past, other than to stir the pot.
“You know Ben came to me and said, ‘I don’t want to have to defend this woman for the rest of my life.’”
“Well, I think when you love someone unconditionally, you do anything for them,” I responded. “I think he was very weak.”
Babs was flabbergasted.
“And by the way,” I continued, “I get asked constantly about him being a cheater. Perfect strangers walk up to me and tell me to get rid of him. I always defend him.”
When Ben heard about this argument, he called Babs and warned her that she better get on board and be nice because he was in love with me. Ironically, she agreed to make more of an effort and bought me a beige scarf as an olive branch. But the truce didn’t last long. And Ben’s support of me was short-lived, too.
I’d always had Ben’s back throughout our entire stressful experience—both on the show and after. I was always supportive of him. And, ironically, the one time I wasn’t became the breaking point in our relationship. In the end, I was the one who totally blew it and caused the thin ice of our relationship to break. I made an incredibly insensitive mistake.
On Ben’s thirtieth birthday his beloved family dog, Sophie, had to be put down. Ben, Julia, and Babs went to the vet and I met up with them afterward for lunch. They cried and told stories about Sophie. I gave Ben his gifts, a set of
All-Clad pots and pans, a Boos cutting board, and a beautiful framed photograph of him and Scotch on Baker Beach heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge. “Look, he’s running away from you,” Babs said to me.
That past weekend we’d already had a fun pirate-themed party on Angel Island for Ben, so he spent the evening of his actual birthday sitting on his couch, tooling around on his laptop. I sat next to him, wiping his tears away and rubbing his head. He seemed so sad. I thought he might want to be alone. And to be honest, I was exhausted from spending the day with his mother. I changed my flight and left that night instead of early the next morning. He didn’t seem to be bothered by it at the time.
On the way to the airport, Julia texted me.
Why did you leave?
Only then did I realize the gravity of what I’d done. I’d just left my fiancé alone on his birthday, after his dog died. This was very bad.
And that one decision marked the end of my “fairy-tale” romance. Ben’s feelings changed for me that day and we never recovered as a couple. I apologized over and over again for leaving, but we spent the next three weeks apart, barely speaking. He canceled a trip down to L.A. to see me, and I didn’t go back to see him until early October, to help him with his winery’s grape harvest in Sonoma. Of the countless flights I’d taken up there, this was the only time during our relationship that he’d bought my ticket. Normally I would have considered it a lovely gesture, but I had a hunch it was an ominous sign. Unbelievably, my flight was canceled and I ended up buying the replacement ticket.
The weekend was truly abysmal. As soon as he picked me up at the airport, I could tell he was still mad about the dog incident and wasn’t happy to see me. He was cold and quiet, and barely looked at me.
“I can’t do this back and forth thing much longer,” I said.
“I agree,” he said. “It’s getting old.”
We had dinner and the silence was the worst it had ever been. He again brought up his reality show Young Sonoma. He really wanted me to be on it, but I told him I wasn’t ready for another reality show. He also talked about a falling-out he’d just had with a very close friend. The guy had written him a Dear John e-mail. “You’ve changed,” it said, reaming him out for being selfish and a bad friend.
We had to be up at 5:00 A.M. for the harvesting so we slept on a bed in Ben’s office in Sonoma. After picking the grapes, which was actually quite fun, I changed out of my dirty clothes in the backseat of the car and Ben didn’t even look in the rearview mirror once. I was waiting for him to look back at me, so I could flash him or do something sexy and playful, but he stared straight ahead at the road.
That night, Ben had an event at the Envolve tasting room and his mom tried to interfere with our relationship again. She told Ben that my friendly good-bye to one of his friends was inappropriate. “Bye!” I’d said innocently to his business partner. Babs gave me a death stare as we all walked to the car and Ben picked up on it. Later, he asked me, “What happened with my mom? That was the meanest stare she’s ever given anyone in her life.”
“I have no idea!” I said. “What did I do?”
“She told me, ‘You didn’t hear what I just heard.’”
“I don’t even know what she’s talking about!” I complained. “Your mom is never going to like me. I feel like she’s trying to sabotage me!”
“Your mom is no walk in the park either,” he retorted defensively. “I have no respect for your mom. I’ll never have a relationship with your mom.”
Where in the world did that come from? How did my mom enter this conversation? Once I told her that I was in love with Ben, she’d gotten completely on board with our relationship and had been nothing but nice and complimentary the two measly times they met. She would say to him, “Let me give you a smooch!” or “You have the best smile!”
He knew he’d crossed the line with me and tried to backpedal with a ludicrous plan to estrange himself from his own mother.
“I can’t lose you,” Ben said. “I just have to cut her out.”
“You can’t cut her out. She’s your mom! I can’t be the reason you don’t have a relationship.”
The next day we spent the day in a park back in San Fran with Julia and Garrett. Ben was in a horrible mood, and would switch between ignoring me and being overtly nasty. When I said that we should be cowboys and Indians for Halloween that year, he got overly pissed off and barked, “That’s a dumb idea!”
“Whoa, Ben,” Julia said. Even she could see he was being unnecessarily mean.
We went to a bar for his favorite activity, day-drinking, and Ben spent the entire time blatantly with his back to me. He wanted to go to a friend’s pizza party, but I’d had enough of his silent treatment and verbal abuse.
“I can’t go anywhere with you right now. I’m too upset,” I said. “You go.”
“That’s not fair,” he moaned. “It’s a trick. I’m not gonna go.”
“Go, I’m just sad.”
“I get it,” he said with a bad attitude.
Instead, we went to get a burrito and we had another fight about my spending habits. I think Ben was looking for any excuse to break up with me. Then a Bachelor fan came up and interrupted us, making Ben even tenser. When we got back to his apartment, of course, his friend and his brother were there, so we went into Ben’s bedroom to continue the fight in some semblance of privacy.
“Nobody has ever treated me this poorly,” I told him, heartbroken, as we lay side by side. “You talk to me the way your mother talks to you and that scares me. I have concerns.”
“I know. I have concerns, too. I’m stressed about my mom. And it really bothers me when you talk in your baby voice.”
Tears rolled down my cheek.
“I need a break or a breakup,” I said.
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” he said.
When we woke up in the morning, we had sex, but it was quiet and there was no talking. I took a shower and asked Ben if he’d take a walk with me but he said he wanted to sleep longer. Before I left to go to the airport, we stood in the garage. Ben asked me to call him as soon as I got home.
“No, I’m not going to call you later. You’ve treated me so poorly I need a couple days to figure out what I want and you need to do the same.”
I gave him a quick hug. I got in his Jeep to drive myself over to Julia’s so she could drive me to the airport. He got in his BMW and drove behind me for a short time on his way to work. I never waved and I never looked for him in the rearview mirror.
He sped off and that was the last time I ever saw Ben Flajnik.
15
REBOUND & RENEW
Two days after I got home, Ben texted me. “Hey babe, just wanted to let you know I’m still doing some soul-searching and straightening out my life. Hope you’re well, love you.”
I wanted a few days to talk myself back into this. I kept replaying our relationship in my head. There was so much silence and crying. There were so many deal breakers that I’d tried to ignore like the way he was always cutting me down. I really don’t think he liked anything about me. The kicker was my voice: I couldn’t change that if I tried.
I texted him that I was ready to talk.
He asked if it could wait, because he had two softball games that day.
“Haha,” I wrote back, not even slightly amused. “Call me.”
Ben and I had a five-minute conversation.
“It’s over,” I said. “It’s not working.”
“You’re right. It’s not.”
“I’m sorry. I love you and I wanted this to work.”
“I totally understand. This has nothing to do with me wanting to be with other people or single. I just turned thirty and my relationships are changing and I’m having a hard time with it.”
“I can’t talk to you for a long time.”
“You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Stop. I can’t hear you say that because you sure as hell haven’t been
treating me like that.”
We talked for a minute more about putting out a joint statement together, agreeing to take the high road. I told him to have a good softball game and then we hung up.
I let out a guttural cry. I knew my mind was made up. I’d seen enough.
Ben did not fight for me.
On October 5 we gave the exclusive to In Touch Weekly: “After meeting over a year ago, we have decided to end our romantic relationship. The ups and downs weighed heavily on us both and ultimately we started to grow apart because of the distance, time apart, and our need to focus on our respective careers.”
Not wanting to deal with the impending shitstorm, I decided to get the hell out of Dodge. Before I left L.A., I told the waiting paparazzi outside not to bother following me because I was driving home to Arizona. On the way there, I played Mumford and Sons “Holland Road” on repeat like fifty times.
With your heart like stone you spared no time in lashing out
And I knew your pain and the effect of your shame
But you cut me down,
You cut me down
Zoned out, sobbing, and singing, I accidentally drove over a blown tire in the middle of the highway and basically ripped apart the underside of my car. I was stranded in the middle of the desert near Joshua Tree, thirty-five miles from the nearest service station, my cell phone at 5 percent. Now I wished the paps had been following me. I was so isolated that AAA couldn’t find me. Big rigs kept slowing down when they passed me, and I was terrified I’d be kidnapped and skinned by a serial killer trucker. Four hours later, I was saved by a police officer, who helped me get my car hauled to a garage. Around 11:00 P.M., $1,300 down the tubes, I arrived in Scottsdale, sweaty and spent.
It was the worst day of my life.
I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends: Confessions of a Reality Show Villain Page 21
