Raquel Leviss was living her best single life in the weeks before she hooked up with Tom Schwartz at Scheana Shay's wedding in Mexico — and the former beauty queen's behavior kept tongues wagging in the Vanderpump Rules friend group well before they realized they should be keeping an eye on her connection with Tom Sandoval.
Raquel, 28, and Schwartz, 40, were flirting up a storm on Wednesday's episode, which notably irritated her ex-fiancé James Kennedy when it happened right in front of him.
"Your opening is coming up very soon, right?" Raquel asked Schwartz at Scheana's surprise bridal shower hosted by Lisa Vanderpump at Villa Rosa.
"Yeah, it's on the 31st. I hope you can make it," he joked. "I think everything's OK, I hope. I feel like a little like we're suffocating, but we made a pact to not bitch about it anymore."
"But we're tight. I can bitch to you," he admitted to Raquel, who agreed, "Yeah, of course," and the two high-fived.
In her confessional, Raquel said, "I love the fact that Schwartz and I have gotten to the place where we're tight and who knows — maybe we'll be even tighter in the future?" After a pause, she said with a cheeky smile, "Tighter kinda sounds like vaginal tight, though."
She then told Schwartz, "We've gotta enjoy our time in Mexico. When we're out of the country, there's nothing we can do but to like have fun."
"That's a great attitude," Schwartz responded. "That's very stoic."
James — who was shooting death stares at them through this interaction — tried to change the subject by engaging Schwartz in a a seemingly sex-free conversation about ping pong rules. Unfortunately, though, that plan backfired when Schwartz turned straight back to his banter with Raquel.
"Do you know how I ended with a tattoo of Lisa, LVP, on my ass?" Schwartz asked Raquel. "It was on this ping pong table."
"Honestly, what the f--- is that?" James, 31, asked in a confessional interview. "Why are you flirting with Raquel right in front of me? You look f---ing absurd, mate. You look desperate and absurd. Go hit the treadmill."
Back at the party, Schwartz half-jokingly bragged to Raquel: "My ass looks great with LVP on it."
"I'm sure it does," she said. Schwartz then teased, "I'll show you in Mexico."
The bridal shower eventually migrated to Schwartz and Sandy's, where Raquel and Schwartz did not relent in their flirting.
After Raquel asked him about a sound bath in the bar, he took her to the art installation and said, "It sounds like a cheesy pickup line, but close your eyes and let the sound waves wash over you."
Both of them closed their eyes, inhaled and exhaled together.
Schwartz then changed the subject. "The girls told me one of your happy places is you going into your room listening to, like, some EDM," he said, adding, "I have one of those [galaxy light] projectors too."
Raquel's voice jumped up an octave in excitement at this surprising commonality, and she urged Schwartz, "Bring it to Cancun with you."
Seeing this conversation from afar, Scheana's husband-to-be Brock Davies commented, "Raquel is on fire right now."
Earlier in the episode, when Scheana was arranging the seating chart for their wedding, Brock joked that "Raquel's got a little roster stacking up." In the moment, the fiancés were commenting on the fact Raquel was sitting next to her ex while also being escorted down the aisle by one of Brock's groomsmen. But it wasn't a stretch to connect his remark to her exploits over the last several weeks, including makeout sessions with SUR manager Peter Madrigal and Garcelle Beauvais' son Oliver Saunders during the girls' trip to Las Vegas — on top of her ramped-up (and controversial) flirtation with Schwartz.
The events of Wednesday's episode took place months before Scheana, 37, learned that Raquel had been having a months-long affair with Sandoval, 40. The news came as a major bombshell since the bar owner had been in a nine-year monogamous relationship with Scheana's longtime best friend Ariana Madix.
The tension between the women reached a fever pitch last week during the season 10 reunion filming, when Bravo and VPR producers and cast had to work around a 100-yard restraining order Raquel filed against Scheana over an alleged assault by Scheana when she discovered Raquel and Sandoval's affair. The reunion managed to take place, albeit in a surprisingly "very emotional, very confrontational" fashion, and Raquel quickly signaled she would drop the restraining order, which was officially dismissed on Wednesday.
Meanwhile back on Wednesday night's episode, Katie Maloney was feeling reflective as she approached the day that would have been her wedding anniversary with Schwartz.
"It's kinda weird," she told Kristina Kelly. "It would've been six years, but I'd be remiss to not want to acknowledge our anniversary."
Kristina encouraged, "I think you should. At the end of the day, I feel like it's still important to show people that you guys are friends. I don't want these Scheanas and these Raquels getting in the way."
"This is so much bigger than their idiot faces," quipped Katie, 36. "Also, Tom and I might have a dinner to celebrate the closing of our house ... in Mexico. The whole house situation was really hard for me, so I'm just unpacking a lot of strange emotions this week."
She continued the thought in her confessional interview: "I was not prepared for how I'd feel. Am I supposed to be sad? I do feel sad. Is it OK to feel sad?"
Rolling her eyes, she deadpanned, "The dream is over, you know?"
Vanderpump Rules airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
