Love Island Australia contestants Ryan Reid and Tayla Mellington walked from the villa last night after their fellow Islanders voted them out.
Ryan and Tayla were selected to leave by majority vote, but it seemed the reason behind the votes was that they’d come as far as they possibly could while coupled up in the villa, and had perhaps had hit a snag in their relationship.
Tayla had voiced her concerns about a lack of feelings for Ryan multiple times, and had pulled him aside to chat about it in their second-last episode.
“At the moment with Ryan, I’m just not 100% sure that I’m fully into it, but to be honest I don’t think he’s getting that message,” she admitted in a confessional.
“I don’t know how many conversations I can keep having to say this is what I mean, I want it to just be friends,” she continued.
Despite this, it seems they might be making it work after all, with both confirming to WHO that they’re currently still talking and FaceTiming each other.
“We’re just going to take it slow, but we’re definitely still talking and we’ll see where it will all go,” Tayla confirmed.
The pair are currently navigating being separate by states, with Ryan based on the NSW Central Coast, and Tayla on the Gold Coast in Queensland.
“At the end of the day, if the connection’s right, you make it work,” Ryan said of the distance.
Ryan and Tayla took up after Casa Amor, a feature of Love Island that attempts to tempt the original cast out of their existing couples. The original boys are separated from the original girls, and each group is given a cast of new ‘bombs’ to get to know over a few days.
Prior to Casa Amor, Ryan was paired up – seemingly quite happily – with Lexy Thornberry, the first bomb of the season.
However, Tayla turned his head when she walked in among the Casa girls.
“I obviously had second guesses going into Casa,” Ryan admitted.
“I actually had probably three or four conversations with Mitch and Aaron about this, unfortunately you can’t see everything,” he said.
“Actually, just before we had the compatibility test with me and Lexy, unfortunately they didn’t air it, but I did actually pull her aside and say, ‘it is light-hearted and very fun’, and I just didn’t feel that serious connection.
“I probably should have voiced myself to Lexy a little better to tell her that I really was concerned about this, and not just dwell on it myself,” he said.
Lexy was, inevitably, very hurt by Ryan’s choice to take up with Tayla at Casa Amor, and come back in a couple with her.
“I know that she was feeling hurt, and I don’t think she did anything wrong,” Ryan said of Lexy.
“At the same time, it definitely did affect my relationship with Tayla, and how we did keep going, but without the external pressures of the villa … me and Tayla are still talking and FaceTiming every day, and it’s going really well,” he confirmed.
However, Tayla did elaborate on the struggle she felt in the villa regarding her feelings.
“I felt towards the end I kind of kept explaining that I wasn’t – because he’d still be really affectionate with me – so, I didn’t want to lead him on,” she said.
“I just kind of had to keep saying ‘look, it’s just friends for now, if something happens from there it does, but at the minute, I’m not quite sure’,” Tayla explained of their time in the villa.
“I didn’t want him to wait around for me, because I wasn’t sure.”
However, Ryan definitely turned on the charm, with both Tayla and Ryan insisting that not all of their relationship was shown.
“I pretty much spent the whole two days with Tayla, and we got along very, very well and I didn’t want to have any regrets…” Ryan said of his time meeting Tayla.
“Obviously there’s not enough time to show everything that happened – he was so nice to me in the villa, I’d get a coffee every morning, he’d make me breakfast, he followed me round with my water bottle, bring me a jacket, like it was just so nice,” Tayla admitted.
It definitely seems these two will be giving it a good shot outside the villa, and hopefully, the list of lasting Love Island Australia couples will slowly begin to grow.
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