At long last, Nick Viall's turn on The Bachelor is finally here, and this time, he's the one being pursued. After three failed attempts on the ABC franchise (Round 1: Andi Dorfman, Round 2: Kaitlyn Bristowe, Round 3: a flopped fling with Jen Saviano on Bachelor in Paradise), Nick has finally "mellowed," according to his fellow Bachelor bros, and is ready to find love. But one of the women in his Season 21 contestant pool is a familiar face. So how do Nick and Liz know each other on The Bachelor? In one sense, she's already lightyears ahead of the other women.
Nick and Liz met at Jade and Tanner's wedding last year, which was televised as part of an ABC special celebrating 20 seasons of The Bachelor. Liz was Jade's maid of honor, and Nick attended as a well-known member of the Bachelor family. (A simple scroll through any Bachelor franchise contestant's Instagram shows that they meet up and hang out with each other at promotional events all the time.) The way she tells it, Liz danced her way over to Nick, and, thanks to a winning combination of good chemistry and alcohol, they wound up having sex.
During her intro package, when asked by producers whether they had "spent the night" together, she played coy, saying, "It depends on how you define that term." The producer replied, "You can define it however you want." Liz then said, "I plead the fifth."
But later, Liz casually admitted in a one-on-one interview that she didn't much mind that Corinne had gone in for the first kiss on the first night, because she had already slept with Nick. According to both Liz and Nick, he asked for her phone number the night they had sex, but she turned him down, because, she said, "I thought maybe he was asking me because he was just being nice."
She even thought Nick might not remember their night together, so she didn't bother reminding him that they'd already met once when she exited the limo. Nick didn't let on that he knew who she was until later in the night (or maybe he really couldn't place her at first), when he brought up their history.
It turns out that he felt rejected after the wedding and feels (sort of understandably) suspicious about why Liz never reached out to him over the past nine months. (He pointed out that getting his number would have been really easy for her — he's friends with Jade, after all.) Liz tried to argue that she had some preconceived notions about him at the time, which seeing him on Bachelor in Paradise helped to upend, but that didn't really seem to help her case.
It seems like the whole thing could have gone better if she had just said, "I wasn't sure if you were really into me," and he replied, "I wasn't sure if you were really into me!" But there's also a lot of alcohol and a lot of chemistry on night one of The Bachelor, so probably no one was on their best vulnerable honesty game. Hopefully, they have a more satisfying conversation where they can clear the air, if for no other reason than to give fans closure.
