I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends (19 page)

Anyway, there’s no crying—or talking about menstruation—in baseball! Game on!

Though Kacie B was bossy, she
was
a great athlete and an excellent draft pick. We got along the best we ever had. She even put eye black on my cheeks so we’d look like real baseball players. Casey was still feeling the laxatives and had to be escorted to the bathroom several times during the game. I played third base on purpose so I could stare at Ben’s butt while he pitched. He looked really cute in his uniform.

The game was super close and super competitive, and I was surprised at how athletic Blakeley turned out to be. She kept catching my balls and getting me out. She plowed into me when I was trying to run to second base and elbowed me a few times. But in the end, after Jennifer struck out, we prevailed 10–9. The other team burst into tears and I admit I was not very sympathetic. I believe I called them crybabies? Then, in a follow-up confessional, in which producers asked us to put back on our smelly uniforms and reapply the eye black, Blakeley’s all-star performance led me to say, “Who knew strippers could play baseball?” I’ll take responsibility for that one. Nobody put a gun to my head and forced me to say it. If you think about it, though, half of the sentence was a huge compliment. She was a terrific ballplayer!

Listen, Blakeley and I didn’t hate each other. In fact, we had a really nice conversation in Puerto Rico about her trying to break into modeling when she returned home to North Carolina. I told her she was really pretty and I meant it. She said she’d met with agencies there but had been rejected. I promised to make a few calls for her when this was all over. I never did, but still, I offered and would still do it today.

As soon as the game ended, Kacie B and I were definitely no longer on the same team. We were back to competing for Ben’s love. During the group date on the beach, I decided to give Ben a pop quiz to see if he was daring or a total drip.

I whispered to him that I’d love to go skinny-dipping.

“I’ll go right now!” he whispered back eagerly, his eyes lighting up.

“No, the girls are watching!” I wouldn’t even kiss him in front of them. I sure as hell wasn’t going to get naked with him in front of them.

While I was lost in space fantasizing about Ben and me frolicking nude in the sea, he gave Kacie B the rose. My stomach pain may have subsided but my verbal diarrhea was on full blast in my next ITM. Bitter about Kacie B, and thinking about her in the baseball uniform, I blurted out, “She’s just like a little girl in a little boy’s body.” At this point, I didn’t know she’d overcome a serious eating disorder. If I did, I would never have said that.

Not my best moment but you have to understand, I hadn’t had a one-on-one date with Ben since Sonoma. I’d been stuck in these group dates with women who despised me for weeks and I was frustrated. I knew the rules of the game—I knew the drill—but I was impatient and confused. Could Ben possibly like these other girls? Or was he just going through the motions? I needed to know.

I got one small clue at the end of the group date. Ben confided to me that his one-on-one date with Elyse tomorrow would be “short.” Ben’s hint seemed like a challenge to me: Feeling like I had nothing to lose, I went to the producers and told them I wanted to set up a secret rendezvous with Ben after his date with Elyse. They loved the idea. They were all for it, and set the wheels in motion for a secret operation dubbed Team Romance.

That night, while Ben was dumping poor Elyse, I took a shower, put on the sexy lingerie I’d brought, and covered it up with a robe from the hotel. As I sat on the couch listening to the girls obliviously answering Scruples questions posed by Kacie B, the front door swung open dramatically and a bellhop yanked Elyse’s Guess rolling suitcase into the abyss. I made another bad joke that went over like a lead balloon. “Maybe she got drunk and the Jersey Shore came out!” The girls were shocked but I didn’t care. I was about to launch the most epic, diabolical plot right under their noses.

Finally, I got my cue. I went to the stairwell outside of Ben’s room. Ben had no idea I was coming. Although in a confessional, I did say “I hope I’m a sight for sore eyes because after the date with Elyse, his eyes are pretty sore!” I actually liked Elyse a lot. She was one of the few who wasn’t that mean to me, and she was always giving me great workout tips to make the most of our thirty-minute Yard Time. So I do feel bad about saying that.

So, Ben comes home, I whistle at him, and he sees me sitting there in the stairwell wearing a robe, a mischievous grin, and not much else. I think he was shocked and a little petrified. We grabbed some wine and headed down to the beach. This was the moment of truth. I wanted to make sure Ben was spontaneous and fun. I need to be honest here: I also wanted to check out the equipment. They say it’s not the size of the boat; it’s the motion of the ocean. But “they” wouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives with a little dinghy. Know what I mean?

“Should I take off my robe?” I teased.

“Are you going full nude?” he asked, not sure if he wanted to hear the answer.

“We can go in our underwear if you want,” I said. He could tell I’d think he was wimpy if he wouldn’t go full monty.

We stripped down to our birthday suits and ran into the water holding hands. We went out as far as we could, thinking the cameras were far enough away that they couldn’t really see us (duh, zoom lens).

So, let’s get to the good part. To answer your question, yes, Ben and I did have sex in the ocean. On-camera. It was immediate but it was only for about twenty seconds and, um, it was just the tip. We’d gone too deep (in the water, get your mind out of the gutter), and the current was so strong we couldn’t get our footing. We kept getting pulled apart, and waves kept crashing on us and knocking us over.

Ben and I may have made sweet (succinct) love but we also took advantage of not being miked up and had a heartfelt, though brief, conversation that night in the ocean. He told me he was listening to “our song”—“Sleepwalking” by Mariachi El Bronx—over and over and that he thought about me all the time. “I can’t believe I feel this way already, so soon,” he said.

I told him I couldn’t stop thinking about him either, and for the first time I told him, “I like you love you.” It was basically a coward’s way of saying I liked him so much I was on my way to loving him. We briefly touched on the situation with the girls but I made a point to say I didn’t want to talk about them when I was with him. He did hint to me that he didn’t like Emily. I was relieved.

We didn’t want to get out of the water, but we couldn’t stay in there forever. As we waded to the shore, I pointed at Ben’s loins and joked, “I could marry that!” After, in my ITM, I wouldn’t confirm or deny that we’d done the deed.

When I returned to the hotel, a producer let me blow-dry my hair in her room before I went back to the suite glowing. The girls were in the middle of a wild dance party. My roomies were jumping up and down on couches, going absolutely apeshit to a Justin Timberlake song. It was the first time they’d heard music in weeks and it was like they were possessed.

They had no clue where I’d been and they didn’t care. They were euphoric.

Everyone was still on a high the next day, when we were getting ready for the Rose Ceremony. I even had a rare special moment with Nicki. My dress was really wrinkled and I didn’t know what to do.

“Kacie B has a mini steamer,” she said. “I’ll get it for you.”

Nicki knew I wouldn’t ask Kacie B for a glass of water if I were on fire. She also knew if Kacie B found out she borrowed the steamer for me, it’d cause some drama. But she went out on a limb for me anyway and I thought that was pretty cool. She got the steamer, I ironed my dress as fast as humanly possible, Nicki returned it, and Kacie B never had a clue.

During the cocktail party, the producers gathered us on the couch for a game of twenty questions. Magically Jennifer asked out of the blue if any of us had ever gone skinny-dipping. I raised my hand, quite self-satisfied.

I was also feeling self-satisfied that Ben would finally get rid of Emily because of our talk. Once again, in her one-on-one time, she bad-mouthed me, saying I was “weird.” Ben told her to drop it and to tread carefully but the warning fell on deaf ears. I had pushed Emily’s buttons so hard she was obsessed with ruining my life. Instead, she was ruining her relationship with Ben. Mwah.

But Emily would get yet another lucky break. Jennifer, unaware that Ben was now completely whipped by me after our dip in the ocean, made the mistake of being the first to tell him during her private time that she loved him, which totally wigged him out.

She got the hook.

By the way, Lindzi got the first rose during the ceremony, which was kind of a slap in the face, considering Ben had had his penis inside of me less than twenty-four hours before.

I cried the entire way to our next destination—Panama.

Oh, I didn’t cry because I was upset about Lindzi. I was in pain: my whole body—including my vajayjay—had been bitten by some sort of little water bugs or mosquitoes while I was cavorting in the water with Ben. I was having an allergic reaction, itching like crazy and covered in a huge rash.

I hoped Ben wasn’t in this much pain and prayed we wouldn’t run into him in the airport. If the girls saw
both of us
looking like giant red tomatoes, there’d be a lot of ’splaining to do.

As soon as we arrived in Central America, a paramedic gave me a shot in the ass and some antihistamine pills and I was cured within twenty seconds. I was relieved. That meant Ben was probably okay, too.

Because I’d been so sick, producers gave me my own room at the exclusive Trump Ocean Club. I was the only one who didn’t have to share so I was ecstatic about the privacy—and the clawed bathtub with a privacy curtain around it, smack dab in the middle of the room. I wanted Calgon to take me away, hint hint. After being sexually dormant for the last month, the skinny-dipping incident reignited my libido.
Oh my God, this is definitely happening,
I thought as I stared at the spigot. I tried a few times but failed miserably. I was too paranoid someone would come in and see my shadow through the curtain, my legs in the air.

I also started plotting a way to sneak Ben into my room for secret tryst number two. I was right next to the elevator; he could have snuck in and out so easily. I wasn’t planning on more sex. I really just wanted a little affection or a snuggle.

As happy as I was about my luxurious accommodations, I had a complete freak-out when my second bag didn’t arrive in Panama and I had absolutely nothing to wear. I had designated the first suitcase for all the clothes I’d already worn a million times and were worn out and dirty, like the H&M maxi dress you saw me in like five hundred times. Doing laundry on this journey was a major operation and hard to organize. You couldn’t just do it whenever you needed it. We had to be in a location where it was doable for a PA who didn’t have a million other things to do. Then we all had to give them our stinky clothes and they mixed them all together. Blech. And it wasn’t like you could borrow clothes from the other girls. Not only were we
all
running out of new options, you couldn’t be seen on-camera in something another girl had worn.

KEEPING IT REAL

Casey Shteamer’s Best-Dressed Awards

My BFF may not have given a shit about Ben, but she definitely cared about what we were all wearing. Here, the cast’s fashion guru (and editor of ImperfectWonder.com) gives out roses for the most gorgeous gowns.

1.
I remember seeing Jenna the very first night and thinking,
This girl knows how to dress.
Her white, loose-fitting sequined dress, paired with black strappy heels, could have looked dated if it had been formfitting. This look was ahead of its time, and I love that.

2.
Samantha won week two in her LBD. Rarely does a little black dress catch my attention. However, this gown by Pleasure Doing Business has such great thick material and is structured so well that when I saw it I put it on my “need to have” list.

3.
In week three, Jennifer nailed it with her color-blocking red-and-pink number. Ever since I saw Sarah Jessica Parker wearing this combo (perfection in my eyes), I’d filed it away in my mind to re-create her look. Jennifer beat me to it and did it effortlessly.

4.
Jaclyn’s orange “Women Tell All” Ani Lee dress with the daringly deep V cutout had me at hello. I love things that not everyone is brave enough to wear. It is also fabulously flattering.

5.
Courtney’s purple Alice and Olivia dress was perfect for her complexion. This flowy, drapey number was sexy without trying. It wasn’t skintight, but it still made her look gorgeous—not that she needs any help!

Luckily I didn’t have to worry too much about my outfits on this leg because Kacie B got the first one-on-one with Ben, cracking coconuts together on a deserted island. I was going to be wearing traditional garb on the group date—playing soccer and dancing with the natives in the remote Embera Village. They’d never been filmed before and spoke no English.

So, everyone went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs that I spent that afternoon shimmying and seducing Ben in a see-through bikini top. That’s not entirely true. Here’s what really happened. When we arrived, soaking wet from riding in a canoe in a torrential downpour, the native women took us in a hut to try on their handmade beaded bikini tops. They did
not
wear bras under their handmade beaded bikini tops and asked us all to take them off. The other girls were prudes and declined. I’m very comfortable being naked from my modeling gigs, plus I didn’t want to offend our hostesses, so I happily ditched my bra and wore
two
of the beaded bikini tops.

My fine-feathered frenemies totally overreacted but Ben sure liked it. By the way, he was way more embarrassing than I was in his little loincloth: he was going commando underneath.