There are some very shocked reaction shots of the audience as they do just that, without bringing Madison out to talk to Preston first as expected. I wince as I watch myself hobble up to Preston, watch my own shocked and then horrified face as Preston delivers his proposal.
“Tell me how you really felt,” Nate says, elbowing me gently.
On screen, I fumble through my refusal, and I expect that the show is going to cut it there, or at least edit out Preston’s reaction.
But they don’t.
Nate and I both gape as on-screen Preston delivers every word of his hissy fit and then throws the shoe, which shatters on the ground with a resounding crash that I think must have been added after the fact.
Nate looks over at me and I stare at him. We’ve spent hours dissecting all the ways they might cut this together, but never did we imagine they’d really air every moment of their star losing his shit at me.
Madison appears, rushing out of nowhere, even though Nate and I have pieced together that Levi must have had her on standby in case I didn’t behave the way they wanted me to when Preston offered me the slipper. Madison gives Preston her (second, apparently) impassioned speech, accusing me of sleeping with Nate, though the cameras aren’t really focused on us, instead working out a happy ending for their happy couple, and on-screen Preston, confronted by one of the other twenty-nine chicks who wanted to marry him, drops immediately to one knee.
The footage ends there, without showing any more of Nate and I. Swiss appears on stage, calling out Madison and Preston to join him.
“No,” Nate says. “No way.They’re doingthemfirst?”
I’m equally stunned.The showalwaysends with the happily ever after.They don’t bring out the final couple andthendrag the Prince through more interviews with women he didn’t end up with.
What the hell are they doing?
Madison and Preston both walk onto the stage, but they aren’t smiling or holding hands. In fact, they’re walking a good six feet apart from each other and looking very uncomfortable to be here.
“Well,” Swiss says as he sits them down. “Tell us what has happened since that day.”
“I’m guessing a lot,” I say, my eyes wide, and Nate silently nods, just as riveted to the screen as I am.
“I’m sorry to say, it hasn’t all been slippers and roses,” Madison says. “We’ve found we have some irreconcilable differences.”
The audience members in the reaction shots look more confused than anything, but they’re obviously eating it up, and Madison goes on to say that it “all began with an Instagram post” and elaborates about how Preston, for all she thought she knew him, has turned out to be in favor of gun reform. Which, she says firmly, isnotwhat she stands for. “You don’t slam the NRA in my house,” she says resolutely. “No, sir.”
“Oh my god,” Nate says, and I echo him.
Swiss asks for Preston’s take, and he gives a bland answer about how he’s just not sure that Madison is in their relationship “for the right reasons,” an answer that makes a whole lot less sense now that they’re no longer dating on a show.The two of them begin talking over each other, both clearly intent on coming out of this as the one least at fault.
“They’re awful,” Nate says.
“They are,” I say. “I mean, we knew that, but theylookawful.”
Nate looks over at me. “What are they going to do withus?”
I don’t know, but as Preston holds up his hands like he can no longer abide to talk with Madison any longer and Madison responds by snatching the roses from the centerpiece on the coffee table in front of him and whipping him across the face with them, it’s hard for me to imagine that we’re going to come off looking worse than them.
“All right!” Swiss says. “We’re not quite done. What about Becca? What about her mystery man?”
“Hermystery man?” Nate says.
I appear on the screen again, and Nate steps forward, sweeping me off my feet and carrying me away from the glass.The footage shows Nate and I reuniting and kissing on camera, there for the world to see.This is interspersed with dozens of reaction shots from the audience as some of these women are losing their shit. None of them seem angry. Just shocked and a bit delighted at the drama.
“Oh my god,” Nate says again as we run from the cameras, me ordering an Uber on his phone. “Are they makingustheir happy ending?”
I can’t quite bring myself to believe that’s what’s happening. It feels like a trap, like they’re trying to make me comfortable before they reveal their actual intentions. But then there’s a knock on the door, and it opens.
“Becca,” one of the pages says, “Swiss is ready for you.”
Shit. “Just me?”
“For now.”
