I
’d been staring out the window at the majestic Matterhorn in Switzerland for at least ten minutes, a camera hovering mere inches from my face. I was filled with anxiety but tried as hard as I could to look both calm
and
pensive. I pushed aside thoughts of the camera filming me to focus on the man I was here for, the man I hoped was about to ask me to marry him. By the third take I felt on the brink of tears, but we needed these contemplative shots for the finale episode. I wanted to get it right quickly—and avoid having America witness “the high-stakes drama” of a very public meltdown. On his proposal day, former Bachelor Jason Mesnik felt an irresistible urge to run to his balcony and wail like an old Italian woman at a funeral. When I watched it on TV, I thought he looked ridiculous, but now, as I sat in his place, I understood why he was moved to man-tears.

It didn’t help that I kept catching glimpses of my face in the window reflection. Ugh, I didn’t look pensive. I looked like a loser! I cursed myself for not practicing in the mirror last night. I remembered from past modeling jobs that if I looked straight ahead at this exact angle, the camera would only catch the whites of my eyes and I’d look like a zombie. On national television.
Perfect.
So I shifted my glance away from the Matterhorn toward the camera a tiny bit. At least now I couldn’t see my goofy reflection. And I wouldn’t get snow blindness.

What else was running through my head besides avoiding bad angles? Ben Flajnik. My love. My soul mate. My future husband—
if
he proposed today. I’d know in just a few hours whether this would be the happiest, or the most humiliating, day of my life.

I’m not the kind of person who normally gets nervous, but on this morning I was wracked with nerves, my stomach twisted in knots. I thought about our first date in Switzerland, when we flew around the very mountain I was staring at in a helicopter. It was so romantic, but also pretty scary. While safety is a must, to win the Bachelor’s heart you have to do more than look hot in a bikini. You have to be able to participate in an extreme sporting event—in a bikini. Let’s be real. Nobody ever says, “No, I absolutely will not swim with sharks,” because it pegs you as totally boring, high maintenance, and unable to handle adversity in a relationship. It’s an automatic ticket home in
Bachelor
-land.

But I wanted to go home that minute. With Ben as my fiancé. I was truly in love with him.
Wasn’t I?
A few nights ago, someone had given me a strange warning. “Courtney, Ben’s a snob,” she proclaimed. Why would she say that? I’d never seen that side of Ben. He did use the word “lovely” a lot, and not ironically. And when I met his mom, Barbara, a few days earlier at Ben’s chalet, the first question she asked me was, “Why didn’t you go to college?” which made me feel totally inadequate.

“Okay, we got it,” the crew announced, and, finally, my Matterhorn selfies were over.
Thank God.
I’d been doing interviews all day, every day for almost three months and I felt like a caged animal. This suite at the Grand Hotel Zermatterhof in Switzerland was a total mind fuck, too. It wasn’t relaxing or soothing at all. The room was creepy and old and depressing, like a haunted house. A bell tower across from my bedroom went off every thirty minutes. Since I didn’t have a cell phone, computer, television, or music, it was the only sound I heard. The bell was not only deafening, it was driving me insane.

At this point, I was also getting totally paranoid. It was so hard not to start bawling just thinking about the possibility of Ben and Lindzi ending up together. The whole time I was on
The Bachelor
, twelve long weeks, I rarely broke down on-camera. I held everything in until I was in the only truly private place available to contestants—the shower. Finally alone, I would weep like Jason Mesnik. “Never let them see you sweat” was my motto. But thinking about Ben proposing to Lindzi had me on edge, prepared to lose it at any given moment.

As I got ready that morning, I tried not to think about Lindzi and her super cheesy jokes. She had a weird habit of talking in the third person, starting every sentence with “Cox believes …” or “Cox loves …” I think she enjoyed shocking people with her last name and even threw her dad, Mr. Cox, into many conversations for good measure. I didn’t want to think about Lindzi. Instead I thought about Ben and his—cox. We’d had sex three times in the Fantasy Suite at a hillside chalet in the beautiful Swiss town of Interlaken, so I couldn’t wait to be with him again.

My stomach dropped for what seemed like the five hundredth time.
What the heck would I do if he didn’t propose to me?
I couldn’t imagine it not happening. I deserved a fairy-tale ending. I had started to seriously think of Ben as my boyfriend after I’d introduced him to my family in Arizona on our Hometown Date, and I was convinced we were together. If he broke up with me, it would be the ultimate betrayal, especially since he secretly told me on our Fantasy Suite date that he was madly in love with me. I knew I was head over heels in love with him, but could he possibly have been lying to me? It had crossed my mind a few times that maybe Ben was only doing the show to promote his winery in Sonoma.

I tried to push the thought out of my brain, but that night I prepared myself for the worst-case scenario—having my heart smashed into a million pieces. In my mind, I forced myself to rehearse my answer if he dumped me or said he just wanted to keep dating casually. I couldn’t just stand there, mouth hanging open. I decided that I would simply say, “Never contact me.” Then I’d walk off in silence and completely ignore him.

The uncertainty of what was going to happen kept me up all night long. I tossed and turned, only getting a measly few hours of sleep. I didn’t want to be out of it or groggy on the potential day of my very public engagement, but I just couldn’t fall asleep.

Honestly, I probably could have taken horse tranquilizers and it wouldn’t have affected me. Though my eyes were burning from a restless night, when the cameras swooped in at 6:00
A.M.
to film me getting out of bed, I was wide awake and already pumping with adrenaline. Luckily, I was warned about the ambush, so I’d borrowed a floral, booby-revealing nightie, since I usually wear old T-shirts and sweats to bed. A few minutes before the crew came in, I sprang out of bed, brushed my teeth and hair, and splashed cold water on my face. (I’d wished I had an ice cube to rub all over my face. It’s the oldest trick in the book on modeling shoots to not look puffy and like you just woke up.) Then I crawled back into bed, and waited for everyone to come in and “surprise” me.

After shooting me getting out of bed—and gazing with concern at the Matterhorn (again!)—they started to film me putting on makeup and my proposal dress. After a few interviews, I took the dress off and didn’t put it on again until three hours later so it wouldn’t get wrinkled. I hated that dress. I had picked it out three days earlier with the fabulous Cary Fetman, stylist for
The Bachelor.
Both Lindzi and I had to choose from the same eight dresses. I was so disappointed. I thought I’d be wowed—instead, as I walked around reviewing my choices, I thought,
Is this it? This can’t be it.
I knew immediately that Lindzi would pick the really girly, poufy, navy blue tube dress with feathers. I ended up with a black dress with sequins, long black gloves, and a white cape. Yes, a white cape.

Under normal circumstances, I would not have been caught dead in that outfit. If I had known that there would only be a few dresses to choose from, I would have brought my own. I had pictured myself in a white gown, with long sleeves and a low back. I never would have dreamed of getting engaged in this! C’mon, black leather gloves? Cary thought I should take them in case it was freezing out. I practiced taking the left one off in one quick motion, if Ben kneeled down. (Funny enough, the one thing Lindzi and I got to keep from the whole
Bachelor
experience was our finale dress. I’m saving mine for a future Halloween party. She sold hers and gave the money to an animal shelter charity.)

So, I thought the dress was an epic fail, but should all go according to plan my ring would be gorgeous. My handler told “jeweler to the stars” Neil Lane exactly what I liked—cushion cut with a pave setting. Also, like a gift from God, Chris Harrison’s makeup artist walked into my room and worked her magic on the day of. I was so thankful for this. The only other time I had my makeup professionally done was on the first night of filming at the mansion in Malibu. Other than that, the girls did their own hair and face every day. I certainly know how to do my own makeup for modeling assignments, but I wasn’t sure how that would translate to high-definition, wide-screen television. I was hoping I didn’t look like a hooker or a drag queen the whole time. I was actually concerned for some of my housemates, like Blakeley Shea, who spent three hours getting ready every day, and Lindzi, who had thick, black eyeliner tattoos, which unfortunately made her look like she slept with her makeup on 24/7.

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