Lochte says his fiancee, Kayla Rae Reid, and baby (due in June) have given him new purpose. Emily Shur For ESPN

The Beverly Hills Hotel Cabana Cafe is rarely short on celebrity. Even so, the poolside diners crane their necks to stare as Lochte slinks by, toes turned inward in his bleach-white Vans, an equally white tee showcasing his SPF-be-damned sunburn. He slides into a corner banquette beside his fiancée, Playboy model Kayla Rae Reid, in full makeup and lashes, a roomy sweater draped over her pregnant belly, which Lochte pats absently.

"We want him to speak a second language," Lochte says of his son, due in June. "Probably Spanish," as a nod to Lochte's Cuban mother, Ileana.

After ordering a salad and a Coke, Lochte begins to open up about the Rio fallout for the first time, his right knee jackhammering wildly underneath the table.

"You can be at the all-time high and then the next second the all-time low," he says ruefully. "I love being at the Olympics, but I'm the opposite of what you'd expect. It's been that way my whole life. I don't fit in."

Reid is more direct, arguing that Olympic athletes aren't allowed to be playful, or messy, or real-that they're released every four years like fireworks, glorious to behold, swooned over in the moment, then largely forgotten until the next special occasion. (As Jones explained, when shite goes pear-shaped, "it's not like next week you can throw up 40 points and have everyone love you again.")

In Rio, the pear-shaping started when Lochte and swimmers Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and James Feigen made a pit stop and relieved themselves in a filling station hedge. Lochte, per statements from his teammates, also pulled a framed advertisement to the ground. Surveillance video showed the swimmers detained by armed officials who demanded money for the damages before letting them depart in their cab. The men paid and returned to the Olympic Village, where the incident would have been quickly forgotten had Lochte not exaggerated the retelling to his mom, who in turn shared with the media that her superstar son had been robbed at gunpoint. Lochte then repeated his early exaggerations on camera to the Today show, and an international scandal was born.

The actual sins of the swimmers were well below average on the pearl-clutching scale. Many professional athletes have been excused for much darker behavior (see: Michael Vick, Adrian Peterson, Phelps drunk-driving charge), as have other public figures. Brian Williams lied and exaggerated about his heroism in wars, and he has his own news program. Robert Downey Jr. went from dope fiend to Iron Man. Even drunk-driving bigot Mel Gibson is getting fresh love because he made a decent movie last year.

"People wanted a reason to hate me," Lochte says about his crimes and misdemeanors. And he gave them one: His initial deceptions, combined with his feeding of racially based perceptions of crime, generated a perfect storm of global righteous indignation, all directed tsunami-style at Lochte.

"Everything was blown out of proportion," Reid says, stabbing at a forkful of lettuce.

Were you completely hammered?

"Oh, we were, yeah," Lochte says sheepishly. "And that's why-"

"They were celebrating their victory," Reid interjects. "At the time, I really had to sew my mouth shut." She shakes her head, cheeks flushed. "People treated him like he murdered somebody."

When Lochte arrived home in Charlotte (on what he says was a prescheduled flight), there were a dozen media vans outside his house. He watched the news, read the online comments, the searing articles outlining how "Ryan Lochte Is the Worst!" In days, he lost every sponsor. He also received death threats. At a public appearance, Reid had a glass thrown at her head.

"After Rio, I was probably the most hated person in the world," Lochte mumbles. "There were a couple of points where I was crying, thinking, 'If I go to bed and never wake up, fine.'" Asked if that means he considered suicide, Lochte nods slowly. "I was about to hang up my entire life."

Reid's jaw stiffens. She strokes Lochte's shoulder, eyes narrowed with concern. He takes a deep breath, looks around the pool at the diners blithely snacking on fruit salads and cheeseburgers. After a beat, he forces a smile.

"Everything happens for a reason," he offers with moderate conviction. "Look, I was done with swimming back in 2013. I was drained, wiped out. Now I've found a new purpose with my son. This fire has been ignited, and it's bigger than ever, and I'm just so excited because I know what's going to happen in Tokyo. Everyone is going to have to watch out!"

Lochte starts giggling, a little embarrassed. Reid says no one should underestimate her man, even though he will turn 36 in 2020. Lochte is visibly grateful for her belief in him, and the conversation shifts to how they met in January of last year, a whirlwind courtship in which their first date was an unanticipated seven-hour heart-to-heart on a couch, a chaste and illuminating turn of events that left them both convinced they'd found "the one."

"I wasn't interested in him at first," Reid shares. "I'd heard he was a party guy. He was so different than what I imagined."

Lochte had his own epiphany.

"You know when you meet someone for the first time and you have your guard up and don't want to be too intimate about certain things?" he asks rhetorically. "I didn't have my guard up. It was like talking with my best friend."

Lochte has wanted a family for years, he says. He's been lonely. Exhausted. And now that he's found his person, he is devoted in a way that would make Hallmark envious. He proposed by flying his intended to a beachside cliff via helicopter, a table with champagne and roses set below, a photographer hired and hiding in the brush. Reid suspected something was up when she held Lochte's hand in flight and it was clammy.

The notion of Lochte planning and executing every detail of a complicated, cinematic proposal is one most casual observers would find surprising, another presumption that "bothers" Reid, who admits that she has never watched her fiancé's short-lived reality show -- What Would Ryan Lochte Do? -- and likely never will. "It's fake," she says flatly.

"They had me drinking nonstop," recalls Lochte. "Eight in the morning, a drink in my hand. I'm like, my liver is about to fail," he says, laughing. "And anything I said, they'd say, 'All right, let's do this scene over, and Ryan, say it like this.'" (Producers did not respond to our request for comment.) Lochte shrugs. "Not many people can say they had their own TV show," he says, sneaking a single french fry off Reid's plate and popping it in his mouth.

"You watch from afar and you're like, why are you doing this?" says coach Salo, before adding: "But you can probably name three swimmers, maybe four. They've got a short window to distinguish themselves. Somebody's got to pay the bills."

According to Jones, the price Lochte paid for that visibility was steep. "Everyone thinks he's an idiot, and he's not. Far from it. The way people approach him? If they came at me that way, I'd be very upset, I'd feel disrespected. And Ryan being Ryan, he's just, 'Cullen, chill, its fine.'" Jones pauses, sighs. "I think it bothers him more than he lets on, but trust me, he will never let on."

There's no trophy case in the current Lochte rental house. No photographs with presidents, no framed clippings, not one piece of evidence that Lochte is the second-most decorated swimmer of all time. Instead, there is a vintage framed portrait of Marilyn Monroe in a tutu; a white, wooded letter L propped beside a tasteful vase of lilies; more white pillar candles than in Mariah Carey's dressing room. The general aesthetic is soft, minimal. The one personal photograph on the wall is a 5-by-7 of the happy couple at the moment of their engagement; beneath it, a bookshelf holding a hardcover of Tony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within; on the coffee table, a Dr. Spock baby guide and the Playboy 2017 calendar.

Upstairs, the nursery is a study in blue and gray, a car seat still wrapped in cellophane, breast pump on the dresser in its box, all tidy, ready to go.

"Ryan is super clean," says Jones, who has roomed with him since they became friends at the 2005 world championships. "He'll repack his bag seven times, refolding everything."

Over lunch at a café on Wilshire Boulevard, wearing his favorite Vans and a dress shirt that strains at the buttons, Lochte talks about his night, how he spent much-needed couch time alone, catching up on Big Little Lies and Chrisley Knows Best. On the whole, he prefers films to TV.

"My favorite movie is What Women Want," he says. "I could watch that on loop all day." Lochte posits that he'd "rule the world" if he knew what women were thinking, then confides that he and Reid had a tough talk the day before. She wants him to share more, "but I don't want to tell my s--- to people. It's not that I don't want to change. It's just ..." Lochte falls quiet, aware this isn't necessarily a prudent long-term strategy for marriage.

Lochte's parents divorced in 2011, the split a shock. For the first time in Lochte's life, his dad "drifted away."

"I was the daddy's boy, the favorite," Lochte says. "When I was born, my dad told the family, 'Now the Lochte name will live on.'"

Steve Lochte wasn't big on praise. "'Great' to me, Ryan, is when a swimmer can break the world record and win the individual gold on the same day," he'd say.

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In Beijing in 2008, Lochte did just that. In footage after the win, you can watch as he scrambles up the bleachers into his father's arms, pressing against the railing, where Steve whispered in his son's ear the words Ryan had longed to hear his whole life: "Today you're great."

Steve did not attend the Rio Olympics. Lochte rejects any suggestion that a rift with his father contributed to the Rio debacle. "Of course I'm sad about it. I so wish he were there. I wish he was there every day of my life, but when it's time for me to do my job, it's time for me to do my job."

As for the antics that followed doing the job, Lochte claims he knows better now. "You learn from your mistakes," he says. "Am I going to be perfect? No."

He points to a hatch of scars across his knuckles, evidence of youthful scraps. "My first fight I got knocked down. I was so scared before that. But then I realized I wasn't made of glass. I could get back up."

Lunch done, Lochte walks cheerfully down the street. When recognized, he poses for photos, smiles, pushes his chin toward the lens. "Honestly? To this day, if someone comes up and says they want a picture or an autograph, I'm like, for real? Me?"

He talks about the Olympics, how he hates being so isolated. He prefers cutting up with his friends, communing with the fans, craving the chance to make someone, anyone, happy.

He decides to share a secret about his time there, when cameras from hundreds of nations are trained on his every wink and nod.

"When you see me on TV wearing headphones by the pool?" he whispers, blue eyes twinkling conspiratorially. "There isn't any music playing."