One of the biggest shocks so far of Becca Kufrin’s season of The Bachelorette is when contestant Colton Underwood revealed he had previously dated Kufrin’s friend and former Bachelor contestant Tia Booth before trying to win her heart.
So when Tia showed up to surprise Colton — along with some of her fellow Bachelor friends — during a group date on Monday’s episode, things were bound to be a little awkward.
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“When I turned the corner and saw Tia sitting there, I thought, ‘Oh s—,’” Colton said in his confessional interview. “To be honest, I’m scared.”
But Tia was quick to tell her friend that her relationship with the former NFL player was never anything serious.
“The most we ever did was kiss,” she told her friend, adding that Colton revealed early on that he had applied to be on The Bachelorette. Tia said she was reticent to write him off before he was even selected for the show, but when he was cast for Becca’s season, the two decided their brief fling had run its course.
Tia’s only concern, she told her friend, was that Colton was interested more in romancing Becca than being on TV.
“Hopefully he is here for the right reasons,” she said.
But Becca seemed torn.
“I don’t really know anything about Colton at this point … and I want to know if there was a small part of him hoping [the Bachelorette] was her. And if there is, I’ll have to send him home,” she said. “It’s tough because Colton seems like a catch … if Colton is willing to truly be here, is it really for me?”
Tia expounded on her and Colton’s brief relationship in an interview with PEOPLE Monday.
“We started talking before my season started airing,” she said. “Colton was in the casting process for The Bachelorette, and he followed me on Instagram.”
Continued Booth: “I DM’d him first and within a few days he told me he had applied to be on The Bachelorette. But he hadn’t gotten the final call so we thought, we get along well, we might as well just keep talking and doing whatever this is. The whole time I kept thinking, ‘What are the odds that he would get on the show?’ “
She didn’t want their history to rule out a future for Becca and Colton, however.
“I just wanted to make sure they would give each other a chance,” she added. “I didn’t want Becca to see our friendship as the most important thing and not give him that chance.”
The Bachelorette airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
