Clearly, no breakup that happens when an engagement seems like a really serious possibility is going to be easy. Ditto any breakup that happens in public/in front of lots of strangers. This combination, is, of course, at the heart of the built-in drama in any Bachelor or Bachelorette finale. It’s down to getting down on one knee or awkwardly explaining “it’s not you, it’s me” and it’s happening in the deeply public forum of reality TV.
Given all of that, no Bachelor/Bachelorette runner-up is particularly *happy* during their final SUV ride to the airport, but Zach Shallcross left his runner-up, Gabi Elnicki, feeling even worse than the average almost-winner of the show.
This, as you know if you watched the most recent season or have an active social media account of any kind, was thanks in large part to his spectacularly awful handling of Fantasy Suite week, during which he vowed to have sex with no one, broke said vow and had sex with Gabi, and then put his own feelings of self-disappointment seemingly ahead of even thinking once about her feelings at all and revealed their private overnight date details to Gabi’s fellow finalist, Kaity Biggar (on camera and, thus, also to all of Bachelor Nation), all before ultimately dumping Gabi and proposing to Kaity.
OOF.
Even though the season is over and Gabi had her chance to confront Zach about the effed-upped-ness of the whole sitch during the After the Final Rose taping, she’s still (extremely understandably, btw) not over said effed-upped-ness.
“Do I think I’m going to be, like, pals with Zach? No. Am I still angry and hurt? Absolutely,” Gabi told Bachelor Nation veteran Kaitlyn Bristowe on the “Off the Vine” podcast (per Us Weekly). “But he is going to hopefully marry one of my close friends and I plan to stay in Kaity’s life. And, you know, for me to hold hate toward him and anger and resentment — I’m hoping I can let that go at some point. But I do think that, at this point, I still feel violated. And I’m still getting over all of it.”
Still, FWIW, Gabi also insisted that she doesn’t “hold grudges,” which seems like an important factor even just for the sake of her friendship with Kaity—which, is her top priority in the aftermath of her Bachelor experience.
“It’s difficult because I only want what’s best for Kaity, but I don’t think that Zach is a bad person. I don’t think that he is a vindictive, mean person. I don’t think he meant to hurt me. I think he just did because he wanted to save his relationship with Kaity—that’s a person he loves and he wants to spend his life with. And so I can’t fault him for that,” Gabi added. “I’m upset and I’m disappointed and I have a lot of emotions, and some of them don’t necessarily have words, but I want the best for her. And so, if he makes her happy and he respects her, and he shows her, you know, love and he protects her, then I’m happy for them.”
Yet more proof that The Bachelor is firmly in its Women Supporting Women Era (or, its contestants are, at least).