Signs of Tom Sandoval and Raquel Leviss' affair started to emerge on Wednesday's episode of Vanderpump Rules.
The Schwartz & Sandy's co-bar owner wasn't keeping his secret flirtations under the radar as he asked Raquel to sit in between him and Tom Schwartz while she was on the clock.
While Raquel recognized that she was "in trouble," Lisa Vanderpump noticed how happy Sandoval, 40, was, in particular, to be up close with the pageant queen.
"Why do you like it so much? You've got a smile on your face," she told her business partner, to which he stuck his tongue out and rubbed his hands together.
Raquel, 28, proceeded to ask both men if they have spoken to their costar Katie Maloney, who was furious that Raquel and Schwartz, 40, made out after she repeatedly asked both of them not to do exactly that.
Sandoval admitted that he did talk to Katie, 36, earlier in the day, beating around the bush that she called Raquel "a little f---ing w----."
Raquel couldn't believe it. "Katie is so rude and so bitchy. I'm always trying to grow and be a better version of who I was," she said in a confessional.
"I think a big thing that has been a roadblock for me is trying to be liked by other people," she continued. "There's people that you surround yourself that either charge your battery or drain it. All the girls drain my battery and I don't want to have that in my life."
Sandoval further recalled his conversation with Katie, saying, "She's like, 'You know, Schwartz doesn't need to go around like f---ing all of our friends.' Like, you gotta be kidding me."
"Why does she assume that we're f---ing?" Raquel questioned before Sandoval immediately defended her. "I was like, 'That's not the case," he said.
As Sandoval encouraged Raquel to "do your thing" and put their orders in, Lisa told him that "you probably really upset her now." Right then and there, he called for Raquel and with his hand on her shoulder, asked if she was OK.
She responded, "I mean, I don't appreciate being called a w---- and being slut-shamed for making out with somebody. That's not cool." Sandoval agreed, "Yeah, I don't think it is either."
"I didn't anticipate Raquel being so upset about Katie calling her a w----," Sandoval confessed in an interview." I figured she would just like, shrug it off. But I definitely want her to know what people are saying about it."
"To me, it's an eye roll. It's a laugh. That's what it is," he reassured Raquel, before continuing in his confessional, "I feel like Raquel doesn't have a lot of people in her corner, and she's a really sweet girl. She doesn't have a bad bone in her body."
Meanwhile, back at Sandoval and Ariana Madix's house, the musician brought up how "it's tough to talk to you about stuff" with his then-girlfriend of nine years, who was just confirming that he would make a sperm deposit to fertilize her eggs.
"I feel this summer specifically, like when I try to bring any sort of point up, I feel like you—" Sandoval said before Ariana, 37, interjected. He then told her, "You literally never agree with me."
"We're allowed to have different perspectives," Ariana asserted.
"I know, but it gets frustrating," Sandoval shared. "It feels like for the past few months, I will explain to you a situation. I'll explain my point of view, and it feels like to me that you are very quick to take the other person's point of view when I tell you something."
He continued, "I don't want anybody to ever have my back unconditionally, but it just it sometimes makes me feel that you like question my intelligence. You think I'm an idiot in ways."
However, Ariana clarified, "Tom, I wouldn't be with anybody I thought was an idiot, first of all. And second of all, if I thought you were an idiot, I would be so nice to you all the time because I would be like, 'Oh poor thing.'"
He added how "sometimes I feel like I just annoy you," to which Ariana lightheartedly quipped, "Well, Tom. You annoy me on purpose."
While he understood her joke, Sandoval explained he feels that way even "when I'm not doing it on purpose." Ariana continued to comfort him, saying, "We've been together for a long time. I can only imagine how annoying I am."
However, Raquel's ex-fiancée James Kennedy's girlfriend Ally Lewber revealed that she "saw Sandoval and Raquel dancing together at The Abbey" in West Hollywood after See You Next Tuesday, James' DJ gig at Sur.
"I thought it was kind of weird," Ally told James. "It was like 1 a.m., and we were like, 'Where's Ariana?'"
She added in a confessional, "I personally wouldn't be comfortable with it, I guess to have my boyfriend out at 1 a.m. with girls, but everyone's different."
James then echoed her sentiment, saying, "I've noticed how much Raquel has been hanging out with the Toms, both of them. So yeah, best of buds these days."
Later in the episode, Raquel learned that Oliver Saunders, the eldest son of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Garcelle Beauvais, was not entirely separated from his wife when they began their fling.
Her costar Lala Kent caught wind of the situation after his wife posted about it on social media, to which Lala, 32, said at her birthday party, "This bitch sat across from me and goes, 'You're a mistress.' Well, bitch, I wouldn't be so quick to throw daggers at me. I bet your mom's real proud of you, bitch. There's a woman on the other end of this who's suffering."
Katie then claimed, "She never thinks about the woman on the other end of it. She never has. She never cares." She added in a confessional, "This is Raquel we're talking about, so I don't know why we expect her to make a wise choice."
She continued to revel in the irony, calling Raquel a "dumb bitch." But Sandoval wasn't cool with her saying that.
"You seem like you get a lot of joy out of that," he said, to which she responded, "I don't get a lot of joy out of it. It's just funny to me."
However, Sandoval didn't believe her as he said in a confessional, "I've seen Katie over the years be a very proactively vindictive person, so she is savoring this like the best piece of wagyu steak that you've ever had."
Katie wasn't going to let Sandoval off that easy, telling him, "You get a lot of joy out of Raquel as well, I think."
"Yeah, cool person," he responded.
"You go to The Abbey together at one o'clock in the morning," she told him, to which Sandoval shiftily denied. "Dude, what the f--- are you saying, dude? Get the f--- out of here, man," he said.
News eventually broke of Sandoval and Raquel's off-camera affair in early March, and Ariana ended her nine-year relationship with the Tom Tom co-owner shortly after. Both Sandoval and Raquel have issued apologies for their involvement in the affair. All parties will appear on the Vanderpump Rules reunion to speak about the fallout of their affair.
Sandoval also seemingly called out his female VPR costars for being the ones who are driving continual interest in his affair to TMZ, saying, "The people that are perpetuating it the most are…you know, the squad of it all."
When asked how Raquel was doing after she entered a "voluntary facility for mental health counseling" last week, he replied, "I don't know, man. There's no comment on that one."
Raquel checked into a program in Arizona — a plan she'd been considering for some time, according to her rep.
"Raquel and her family decided before the relationship was discovered that she would enter a voluntary facility for mental health counseling," her rep told PEOPLE. "She was scheduled to go in pre-reunion but decided she wanted to finish her filming commitment. Bravo and production were aware and in support of her journey towards better mental health."
Her rep confirmed she is not there for "rehab" but rather a program focused on "mental health and trauma therapy."
Vanderpump Rules airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
