It’s down to 2 — oops, we’re back to 3 men — on ‘The Bachelorette’

Things got messy during the fantasy suites episode of “The Bachelorette” — and I don’t mean because Tayshia and Zac spent part of their date slathering each other in paint.

Their time together was one of the cleanest parts of Monday’s episode in that it seemed pretty straightforward: Zac said he loved Tayshia; she said she loved him back; Zac seemed like the man to beat in the proposal derby.

But Tayshia’s journey hit a couple of big pot holes. First, Brendan Morais, the man who seemed like the biggest threat to Zac’s frontrunner status, sent himself home after deciding he wasn’t ready to commit to Tayshia. Then Ben Smith, the guy Tayshia sent home last week, came back to declare his love and complicate the hell out of everything.

Here’s how I thought the night was going to go: Tayshia was going to send dear sweet Ivan Hall away and make Zac and Brendan the final two. Even if Ben did come back, as everyone expected, Tayshia would send him home . . . again.

Now? Well, considering we saw Tayshia kissing Ben in the promo for Tuesday’s episode it looks like she might give him another chance. What does that mean for Ivan and Zac? Guess we’ll find out tomorrow night.

In the meantime, we’ve got a couple of fantasy suites to talk about.

Ivan was first up. I’m not sure who decides who gets what date, but from my point of view he got a raw deal — as in raw from the cold. He and Tayshia set a record for “world’s longest coldest kiss” by smooching while sitting in tubs of ice water for more than six minutes. “How is this going to affect his performance in the fantasy suite later tonight?” quipped host Chris Harrison, who oversaw the event with “Bachelor” security dude Big Paulie.

Things warmed up from there. Later, at another one of those dinners where nobody actually eats, Ivan told Tayshia he was falling in love with her. Personally, I was suspicious of the fact that she looked down instead of right at him when he said it, but she did tell him, “I definitely have been falling for you too.”

After going through the charade of reading the fantasy suite card (as if he was going to say no to forgoing his individual room) they repaired to possibly the cutest fantasy suite ever in an Airstream trailer. Ivan said they stayed up all night talking. The end result: Ivan was ready to propose and Tayshia said she could picture “a really beautiful life” with him.

One down, two to go.

There was no ice involved in Zac’s date with Tayshia. They started hot and just kept sizzling along. Having to strip down to bathing suits and cover each other with body paint fuelled their natural chemistry. There was much smooching.

At dinner, Tayshia, who’s said a couple of times that she wants five children, questioned Zac about his mother’s contention that he didn’t want any kids. Zac assured her he was ready to be a dad and, furthermore, “I don’t think, I know that I love you,” Zac told her.

“I love your smile, your strength, how you treat other people. I just love the human being that you are.”

Tayshia put her hand to her face, seeming overcome by emotion, and replied, “It’s just wild because I love you too.”

She seemed delighted by Zac’s admission, laughing and kissing him, and making him repeat the words. The laughing and kissing continued in the fantasy suite, where it looked like Zac and Tayshia might stay up doing more than talking, but who knows?

But despite how thrilled Tayshia seemed with Zac — they even jumped on the bed together — she noted that Brendan had had her heart “since Day 1.”

Nobody who saw her heartwarming “hometown” date with Brendan could doubt there was a real bond between them, which made what came next all the more shocking.

Going into the date, Brendan said he was nervous about the idea of proposing, but in the normal scheme of things you’d expect those jitters to subside in the fantasy suite. Except Brendan gave off a deer caught in the headlights vibe when he and Tayshia met up with resident “Bachelor” jeweller Neil Lane and Tayshia tried on bling, including wedding rings.

It seems so Machiavellian. The guy’s getting cold feet about getting engaged so trap him in a room full of engagement and wedding bands. If the point was indeed to stoke Brendan’s doubts it worked like a charm.

Holding back tears, he told Tayshia at dinner that he wanted a wife and kids “more than anything on the face of this Earth, but then coming to the realization that there’s a big part of me that’s still broken, there’s a big part of me that still needs time to heal,” Brendan said.

“All I want is to give you my whole heart, but as I sit here today my heart isn’t whole and it really breaks my heart, because you deserve a man that is complete and you deserve a man who is healed from his past and, unfortunately, right now I’m not that man.”

It was one of the more heartbreaking goodbyes we’ve seen in the franchise. Tayshia cried as she and Brendan hugged at the waiting SUV. He kissed her hand and said, “Thank you, Tayshia. God bless you, OK?” And then he was gone and Tayshia cried even harder.

But she was composed the next day, when former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay showed up for a pep talk, on top of the one Tayshia already had from JoJo Fletcher. Not that it wasn’t nice to see Rachel, but I’m a bit mystified as to why these former Bachelorettes keep popping up for what amounts to filler, especially in the middle of a pandemic.

Anyway, Tayshia was all ready mentally to hand roses to her final two when Ben turned up, first at host Harrison’s door, claiming he simply had to tell Tayshia that he loved her.

Tayshia didn’t seem thrilled to see Ben. Nonetheless she let him in and listened as he blamed his complete lack of emotion at their breakup on how caught off guard he had been.

“The feelings that I’ve had for you, I just didn’t know what it was, but I’m in love with you,” Ben said. “Like the life we could have together, the thought of that, it keeps me awake at night and I’m not sure what to do right now.”

Say thanks for your time and head back out the door is what I would suggest, but that wasn’t happening. Tayshia was the one who left the room, looking very upset. “I mean, I just want to cry. I don’t know what to do,” she told an unseen producer.

Frankly, it seems like there’s a lot to do in tomorrow’s two-hour finale. Tayshia has to figure out what to do with Ben; there’s a rose ceremony; the final two have to meet her parents; she has to have a potentially upsetting conversation with her father. And then, maybe by the end of it all, she’ll be engaged.

It airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Citytv.

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