April 13, 2020
"Are you ready for the most dramatic night of your life?" Rebecca asks, with relish, when she opens the door, armed and dangerous with a full glass of red wine in-hand, to a bemused Nathaniel.
"You say that every week," he replies with a smirk as he brushes past her into the apartment.
"But tonight is extra dramatic," she elaborates, excitedly, closing the door behind him. "We're down to three. And you know what that means."
He walks to the kitchen and Rebecca trails close behind - she would be skipping if she could without spilling her wine - and he opens a cabinet door above the counter.
"I have no idea what that means," he replies, pulling out a glass from the cabinet and holding it up to the ceiling light to check for spots.
"It means fantasy suites," she says, her eyes going wide.
He doesn't react.
She pulls on his forearm, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Stop that and listen to me! It's fantasy suites."
"Still not following," he deadpans, pretending not to care, pouring himself a hefty helping from the open bottle of wine. But she can read him like book. The shine in his eyes and his subtle smile betray him. He's charmed by her enthusiasm, and, in fact, does want to know what exactly this means.
"Kyle's gonna go one-on-one dates with each woman and then they decide if they want to spend the night together in the fantasy suites. No cameras. Overnight." She wiggles her eyebrows. "Catch my drift?"
"Sex?"
"Pretty much," she giggles and raises her glass to him as an offering. He closes the distance, clinking them together and they both sip.
By their third Monday night of appointment television watching, they dropped any pretense of trying to impress the other with their appearances. What was the point anyway? They had seen each other in every state of dress and undress in the past. So, Rebecca, accordingly, is swathed in head-to-toe comfort - a slouchy, long-sleeve heather gray t-shirt with Napping Champ emblazoned across the chest in navy blue lettering with drawstring lounge pants on the bottom. Similarly, Nathaniel dons a simple black t-shirt and grey sweatpants that boast Stanford Water Polo in cardinal red down the leg. Yet somehow, in some mystery wrapped in an enigma, no matter what he wears, she thinks he looks like he waltzed right out of a J. Crew ad.
"Let me get this straight. He's going to have sex with three people in a row? Kind of crass, don't you think?"
"They don't have to have sex," she says, defensive at first, but then thinks better of it. "Yeah, they probably have sex."
Rebecca saunters over to the couch and plops down, settling into the cushions with a leg tucked under her. "Speaking of dates, how was your date?" she asks and reaches for the remote, as if she only casually wants to know.
"Oh, fine," he says, nonchalant, walking over to the couch to join her.
"Just fine?" she asks, dubious, as she turns on the TV, "What was wrong with her? Too thin? Too blonde? Too tall? Tits too perky?"
"Can you not say tits? It sounds weird when you say it."
"Answer the question."
"She was nice enough. There just was no -"
"Spark?"
"I was going to say connection. What's a nice way of saying she wasn't the brightest bulb in the box?"
"Ha. So not a Stanford woman, I presume."
He shakes his head in the negative and winces.
"So, did you let her down easy?"
Nathaniel sips his wine and pointedly looks at the TV, dodging the question.
"Come on, don't ghost her. That's the worst," she scolds, gesturing with the remote.
After he swallows, he admits, "We're going out again, actually."
"What? Why?"
Again, he sips in the same deliberate way and avoids her eyes.
"Oh, I see," she says, knowingly, and sets her glass down on the coffee table.
"What?"
"You are such a man, you know that?"
"What does that mean?"
"You're going out with her again - even though you have zero connection - so you can try to fuck her. Admit it."
"When you put it that way, it sounds so -"
"Crass?"
He shrugs, sheepish. She's got him pegged and it annoys her probably more than it should.
"No, I get it," she says, "Meanwhile, I'm doing the responsible thing for once, not having any one-night stands, and taking matters into my own hands, so to speak, with my new vibrator, Buzz Aldrin."
"Why is that more responsible?"
"No one gets hurt. I'm done hurting people with my carelessness. And you are stringing this poor girl along!"
"Oh please," he scoffs, "Who's to say she doesn't want the exact same thing?"
Rebecca rolls her eyes in lieu of a verbal response.
"Sorry, but taking things into my own hands, as you put it, is just not the same."
"The end is sure the same."
"No, you cannot compare those two things. Being with a woman is…"
She leans forward, intrigued by his train of thought, but he stops short.
"No, go on. You've piqued my interest."
"You sure?"
She nods vehemently.
"Being with a woman is a whole...sensory experience. It's not just about getting off." His eyes dart to the floor, a little self-conscious, but he plows on, "Women smell good and taste good. They're soft and they feel a certain way that's impossible to replicate by yourself."
After a few moments of weighty silence, she realizes she's been staring at his mouth the entire time he was speaking. She swallows and her own mouth has gone dry - a bit stunned by both his frankness and the inherent romanticism in his explanation - and her body releases a tiny, almost imperceptible shiver.
Is that how he used to think about her? Did he think about how she smelled? How she felt?
Tasted?
As their platonic friendship rapidly flourished over the past six-or-so weeks, their talks have grown increasingly more open and honest. Without the pressure of a romantic relationship and all the accompanying expectations, and without any preoccupation of presenting herself in a certain light, she speaks to him almost as freely as she would with any other friend.
He is her first straight male friend. Well, to clarify, it's her first friendship with a straight male in which she has no ulterior motives, at least consciously. And besides the fact that she enjoys his company, getting an unfiltered straight male perspective on things - presumingly from someone who also has no ulterior motives, at least consciously - has been a mixture of fascinating and enlightening. Even his takes on the overly-produced fantasy of The Bachelor have given her food for thought to mull over in the days between episodes.
However, despite their growing mutual comfort, conversations like these still manage to be mired in layers of meaning, leaving Rebecca struggling to parse out what's personal to her, and their past romance, and what isn't. She tries not to take any relationship or sex talk personally, but, despite her best efforts, she still occasionally gets blindsided with a twinge of longing here or a sting of jealousy there.
The Previously On The Bachelor recap begins and she clears her throat, grateful for the distraction. "Oh, show's starting," she stammers as she grabs the remote and turns up the volume, using the other hand to discreetly rub away the goosebumps raised on her arm.
The show opens with the first date between the bachelor and contestant Amanda. She's the classic all-American girl-next-door type, tall and leggy with mousy brown hair, who speaks in a charming (though gratingly high-pitched) Southern twang. They're in Bora Bora, on location, and everything is planned down to the tiniest detail by production. The couple are treated to a day trip on a catamaran followed by a romantic dinner date on the beach. The couple are not very physical with each other but have an easy back-and-forth, and Amanda is portrayed as innocent and sweet. The entire date goes off without a hitch and Amanda confidently says, to camera, just before they retire to their private night alone, "I know that Kyle loves me. I know in my heart it's going to be the two of us in the end. I have no doubt in my mind."
When the program cuts to commercial, Nathaniel immediately says, adamant, "No chance. She has zero percent chance of winning."
"What are you talking about? She's such a doll!"
"There's no sexual chemistry. They're like two kids punching each other in the arm on the playground."
"Listen to what she said. She's so confident! How could she be that confident if there wasn't something there?" Rebecca gestures wildly at the TV with one hand, wine sloshing in its glass in the other.
He bites his lip and she senses he wants to say something but is holding back.
"What? Spill it." she urges.
He strokes his chin with his thumb and forefinger. "I was that confident too, you know," he says, hesitantly, "About us. The way you acted on our date, I really thought you were going to choose me. I was that sure." He nods at the TV screen.
"Oh," she murmurs and drops her eyes.
"Hey, no," he says, touching her hand, "I don't want you to feel bad. I'm fine. I'm just saying I thought you felt the same way about me, but you didn't. That's all."
"The funny thing is, I did feel the same way. In the moment. That's why I...we…"
He raises an eyebrow, "Circumvented the rules?"
She pinches the bridge of her nose and squeezes her eyes shut. "We shouldn't have done that. Though, technically we didn't break any rules. As undignified as it was."
"True, no shirts, or any other articles of clothing were removed." He looks down at his glass and lets out a nervous chuckle, "I hadn't, um, done that since high school."
"Cum in your pants?" she says, laughing, "No, me neither."
She let things go way too far on their date. In the moment, kissing him had felt so good, so right, an overwhelming catharsis after all the tired months of back-and-forth between them. So once she grew tired of stretching up to reach his mouth, she broke their kiss and tugged at his hands, dragging him down to the blanket where they proceeded to shamelessly make out in the open air of the Hollywood hills, Marty Macaroon crooning on in the background unaware. But things escalated, the way they always do with the two of them, and before long he was grinding against her, whispering hushed promises in her ear, while she melted into him, unabashedly reveling in the friction and letting her climax wash over her, despite the small voice in the back of her head saying it was against the spirit of the agreement.
In the haze of the come-down, their faces flush and hearts racing, his fingers caught in a knot in her curls, the reality set in and he laughed, full-bodied and deep, into her neck. The absurdity of it - two grown adults dry humping each other in public view with absolutely no shame - certainly was not lost on her and soon she was giggling right along with him. He propped himself up on his forearms and grinned down at her like a lovestruck dope and, in that moment, she truly believed she would choose him.
"Listen, what I'm trying to say is on your date, I thought it would be you. And when I was with Josh, I thought it was him. And Greg…"
"I get it."
"Though, to be clear, what we did...I didn't do that with Josh or Greg. In case that makes it any better. Which I'm sure it doesn't."
"The whole game was a dumb idea anyway. We shouldn't have agreed to it in the first place."
"In retrospect, the fact that I made columns on a whiteboard to try to make the decision should have tipped me off that I wasn't ready for a relationship with any of you, honestly."
The show comes back on and Rebecca is happy to drop the subject. The next date is with Jenna, blonde bombshell and occasional troublemaker in the house. (Nathaniel's favorite, thus far, Rebecca can tell.) But, unlike Amanda, she and the bachelor have nothing but chemistry and can barely keep their hands off each other. On their date, the two are taken to a small, private island where they have a picnic on the beach and jump off some steep cliffs into the ocean, but most of the screen time is dominated by the two making out under a waterfall. At the end of the day, Kyle says to camera, "I'm falling in love with Jenna." Cut to commercial.
"I changed my mind. It's Jenna," Rebecca says, proverbial hearts in her eyes, "He said he loves her."
"Mmm, that's not exactly what he said. He said he's falling in love with her," Nathaniel replies with skepticism, "Though, I agree he's clearly into her."
"Falling in love. In love. Whatever. He loves her. Everyone else can pack it in."
"No, there is a difference. He didn't say I love her or even I'm in love with her, which are different things."
"You either love someone or you don't. You can't half love someone."
"When you're falling in love it's like pre-love. You think you have potential to love someone in the future. In love is more like infatuation. The puppy-love stages. Love is when it's deeper than that."
"What, are you some kind of love expert now?"
"Do you really think that one moment you don't love someone and then - bam - suddenly the next moment you do? And that's it?"
"Yes!" she exclaims, getting heated, "There is always a moment, whether you consciously realize it or not, that you start loving someone."
"Wow."
"What?"
"It's just...everything is so black-and-white with you."
That gives her pause, of course, as she's so acutely aware of her problems with less-than-nuanced thinking. He probably has no idea the weight those words carry for her.
She still remembers, clear as the day, the moment she knew she loved him. In the midst of the affair, and, not coincidentally, the pinnacle, intensity-wise, of her post-suicide attempt therapy, Rebecca abruptly retreated to the supply closet mid-workday. Nathaniel, misinterpreting her disappearing act as an invitation, walked in on her having a full-blown, crippling panic attack. He hesitated only a few seconds, his brain switching gears on-the-fly, then drew her to his chest, holding her tight against him. (She still wonders, to this day, where he learned this very specific, valuable skill.) She buried her face in his shirt, smearing mascara all over the crisp white fabric, and wrapped her arms around his waist in a vice grip until she was able to breathe normally again and finish out the rest of the day.
But it wasn't even that moment that she knew she loved him.
In the aftermath, as they sat across from each other in their shared office, he didn't draw attention to it. He didn't ask for thanks or an apology or anything at all. Though he kept a watchful eye on her side of the desk the remainder of the afternoon, they discussed nothing but work. He made her feel like everything was normal.
Like she was normal.
When he left at the end of the day, he put a warm hand on her shoulder and gave it a small squeeze.
And she loved him.
But the timing was all wrong, with his having a girlfriend, with their having an affair, and her dedication to her recovery sans relationship. So she packed the feelings away in a tiny mental box, until months later when he finally confessed his love for her in the holding cell and she couldn't hide it any longer.
She briefly contemplates telling him the story, as proof that these moments are real and can happen.
"Did I say something wrong? Where did you go?" he asks, noticing her change in demeanor.
She decides dredging up the past isn't worth what it could stir up, especially given how loaded their conversation tonight has already been with the show's all-too-relevant, down-to-three-contestants, so-meta-she-could-scream episode.
"Sorry," she finally says, shaking her head, "You're probably right. I tend to do that - think in black-and-white - when I shouldn't."
The final date of the episode is with Brooke, a petite, quiet, down-to-earth Midwesterner with dark hair and soulful eyes. The two make an intimate mahi-mahi dinner together at a resort and eat their creation out on a terrace during sunset. It's definitely the most understated of the dates. That is, up until the strategically-timed fireworks ignite and fill the sky with color as the couple gaze out on the horizon.
"I've changed my mind again. It's Brooke," Rebecca says, causing Nathaniel to laugh and then tip back his glass to drink the remainder of his wine.
"They're clearly trying to make the audience think it's going to be her," he says, waving a hand toward the screen.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because they did something subdued and not over-the-top romantic. Save for the fireworks, of course." There's an annoyed edge to his voice, like he's been personally slighted. "They're presenting her as the different choice compared to the other two, showing a more, quote, normal side and how they could settle down together. Or something."
"Why are you upset about this?"
Ignoring her question, he goes on, "Plus, they showed her last. They always show her last. Classic recency bias."
"He did only say he loved Jenna, though."
He sighs, "We've been over this."
"But also," she continues, holding up her pointer finger, "his conversations with Brooke have all been totally surface level. Actually, now that I think about it, that's true of all the relationships. Why don't they ever discuss the real stuff?"
"Like what?"
"Religion, politics, kids, money. What they really need out of a relationship."
"And what would you tell him? About what you really need."
"Well, if it were me, I would say Hi, I'm Rebecca Bunch. I have BPD. I have therapy every Thursday at three o'clock that I cannot miss - no skipping or excuses - no matter what, not even if we're in the middle of doing the naked pretzel. Kick me out of bed, if necessary."
He gives her a half-smile. "Cute. What else?"
"I would probably tell him about my whole abandonment thing."
"Care to say more about that?"
"I won't bore you with the details but it all stems from my father leaving me as a child. Every man I love tends to abandon me, leave me at the altar, move away, yadda yadda yadda. You know how it goes. And when I feel abandoned I tend to throw back a bunch of shots and show up completely wasted at my ex-boyfriend's apartment and try to sleep with him. You catching on?"
"Ah," he says in acknowledgement, "Yeah, we never, um, really talked about that night."
It dawns on her how confusing it must have been for him. She blew in and out of his apartment like a hurricane without one word of explanation. And now it's overdue by more than a year.
"Greg and I had a big fight that day and he left in the middle of it. I can't blame him. I mean, he had to put his mental health and sobriety first and how can I argue with that?" She takes a deep breath and sighs. "It's really my own fault. I didn't even communicate what I needed. How was he supposed to know?"
She pauses and realizes she's gotten a bit carried away with the conversation, revealing more than necessary, making it more about herself than necessary. It makes her sad, thinking back to that night and her subsequent backslide and how she tried to pull Nathaniel and Josh down with her.
She meets his eyes and he's listening intently, his expression soft and vaguely curious.
Wanting to take the attention off of herself, she asks, "What about you?"
"What would I tell Kyle?"
"Or the bachelorette, in your case. If you were totally upfront about what you need, what would you say to her?"
He bites his lip, thinking, and then says, softly, "I think all I really need is to know she loves me back."
Rebecca's taken aback this response, her eyes going wide.
He takes that as a cue to further explain, "The next time I'm with someone, I don't want to ever wonder how they feel. I don't want any ambiguity. If she loves me, I want her to say it. Out loud. Unapologetically. That's all I want."
The way his expression is so open, she can tell the gut punch is unintentional, but it hurts all the same. In the heat of their tumultuous relationship, it was so easy to paint him as the villain in her mind, absolving herself of any guilt for her side of the relationship, since he was so obviously in the wrong for things like his infidelity and stealing her diary. But when she's honest with herself, in retrospect, she recognizes that, despite these behaviors, she nonetheless wielded the power to hurt him, by her constantly keeping him at arm's length, by pushing him away every time he let himself be vulnerable.
She reaches out and takes his hand. "Well, um, you deserve that. You really do. I hope you know that."
"Thank you."
He smiles, looking down at their joined hands, and laces their fingers together. Exhaling deeply, she rests her head against his shoulder and leaves it there for the remainder of the episode. The way Nathaniel traces his thumb across the back of her hand in an infinity-like pattern makes her feel gooey and warm and relaxed.
Amanda is eliminated during the rose ceremony at the episode's conclusion.
When the credits begin to roll, Rebecca lifts her head from its resting place to see Nathaniel lightly dozing, his head leaning against the back of the couch. She tries to untangle her fingers from his as discreetly as she can, but it rouses him and his eyes flutter open as he takes in a deep breath.
"Sorry," he mumbles, "I must have fallen asleep. What happened?"
"Amanda's gone."
"Figured," he says, rubbing the corner of his eye, "Well, I guess I should go."
They both stand and she says, "Get some sleep. You've been working too hard between MountainTop and all those pro bono cases."
"I'm fine. I can handle it," he says, dismissing her concern, as they walk to the door. "Until next week, then," he says, bending down and planting a kiss on the cheek, as has become their ritual, "or tomorrow, if I need coffee."
"You aren't coming to my birthday party Saturday?"
He furrows his brow and she quickly ascertains he doesn't know about the party.
"The girls didn't invite you?"
"I guess my invite got lost in the mail," he says, shrugging.
"Well, you're invited."
"I don't want to crash -"
"It's a party for me, you are my friend, and I am inviting you. It's at Home Base at seven. It's gonna be fun. Everyone will be there."
"Am I part of everyone now?"
"You are."
"Then I'll be there."
Rebecca can't help the goofy grin that spreads across her face. "OK. I'll see you there."
"OK," he says, fidgeting, as if realizing he's been lingering in the doorway too long, drawing out the farewell. "Bye," he whispers and leans down, pecking her cheek again. "Sorry, I already -"
"No, it's fine," she giggles.
"Bye. For real now."
"Bye, Nathaniel."