Nicolandria Nation, rise up! They may not have emerged from Love Island USA as the winners, but now that they’re stateside, Nic Vansteenberghe and Olandria Carthen are feeling the love—and the pressure from fans to explain what took them so long to get together. This week, Nic and Olandria explained what happened after that Soul Ties kiss and gave fans an update on where their connection is heading now that they’re back in the real world.
Fans shipped Nic and Olandria from the beginning of the season, but #Nicolandria Nation really got activated after the duo kissed in Soul Ties to see if there was a spark. At the time, they both agreed to remain friends out of respect for their already existing connections—Cierra Ortega and Taylor Williams, respectively—but fans saw the fireworks.
“I know for me, I just thought I was doing a disservice to Cierra,” Olandria explained to Us Weekly when asked about the Soul Ties kiss.
“Because I was in Casa Amor with the girls at first, and I knew how she was feeling over there about Nic,” she continued. “I felt guilty in a sense, which is why immediately after the kiss, I’m like, ‘I have to tell Cierra and I have to tell Taylor,’ I didn’t allow myself to feel a spark because I felt like I owed those two people so much.”
In a separate interview with Elite Daily, Nic echoed Olandria’s sentiments, saying that while there was clearly something there, they were just too focused on their other relationships. “I had a strong connection and so did she, and those doors were still open, so we weren’t 100 percent invested into each other until both of those strong connections were no longer there,” he explained.
Speaking of Nic’s other connection, that’s still TBD. Asked whether or not he had reached out to Cierra since leaving the Villa, Nic told Us Weekly, “I’m still processing everything with what’s happening. I need more time to think on it and go from there because it’s only been, what, a day?”
In Nic’s defense, he’s been pretty busy giving interviews and navigating this new connection with Olandria. “It’s something that we haven’t labeled yet,” Nic continued. “We’re going at the comfortable pace that we want to go at. When we look at the grand scheme of things, we’re just taking our time and investing in the real world and enjoying each other’s company.”
What do Nic and Olandria do to enjoy each other’s company, you ask? Olandria told Elite Daily they share one very specific new hobby: “We lay in bed and watch [#Nicolandria edits], like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so cute.’”
