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Salley Carson is speaking out about Charley Manley keeping her kiss with Craig Conover a secret.
Following last week’s episode of Southern Charm, which featured a continuation of the love connection made between Charley, 28, and Craig, 36, amid production, Salley, 31, admitted that Charley’s secrecy hurt their friendship as Charley explained why she opted against telling her, and Craig reacted to their dynamic.
“When she has, like, the smallest feelings for someone, or the smallest things happen with guys, I am the person she’s calling or texting. And then she has a whole f*cking makeout with Craig and doesn’t tell me,” Salley began on the February 25 episode of the Southern Charm: After Show. “[So] I am sad that I’m learning this information from someone other than my best friend.”
Although Salley said that she understood why Charley was “nervous” about telling her, she explained that it wasn’t the outing itself that upset her.
“What hurt our friendship was her hiding it more so than her going on a date with Craig, because Craig’s not mine,” she revealed. “Me and Craig never hooked up. We never kissed.”
After Salley went on to say that Charley’s decision to keep the kiss from her was “weird,” Molly O’Connell, 38, agreed, adding, “Especially when she would call you after every single interaction she had with anyone in the friend group or anyone in general.”
Continuing on, Salley said that while Charley was always “very good at owning her stuff,” her blossoming romance with Craig was different.
“When it comes to Craig, I think she used the excuse of, ‘Well, y’all aren’t close,’ and ‘Y’all aren’t getting along right now, so it was awkward for me to tell you,’ and I get that, but it wasn’t about Craig anymore,” she reasoned. “It was about our friendship at this point. I’m like, ‘Girl, are you my best friend or are you not? Why do we not tell each other stuff anymore?’”
In her own After Show segment, Charley said that because she was “still trying to figure out” how she felt about Craig, she didn’t want to share details about their kiss with Salley.
“I just knew that everyone in this friend group was going to have an opinion on it, and I just kinda wanted to keep it to myself for a second,” she shared. “I’m navigating a new friendship with Salley, where I don’t tell her every single thing about every part of my entire day… No, my feelings for you in this friendship are not changing, but my actions are, because I gotta start acting like an individual.”
According to Charley, she felt that her friendship with Salley, whom Craig friend-zoned earlier this season, was holding her back from giving Craig a real chance.
“I do know most of [the cast] through Salley, and as much as she doesn’t mean it, her opinions do affect my opinions,” she explained. “[So] that was me kind of trying to draw a boundary, and I think that subconsciously, I was feeling like a bad friend for pursuing something with Craig knowing that Salley had once liked him — even though she liked a lot of other people at the same time.”
Meanwhile, in his interview, Craig admitted that trying to get to know Charley after Salley’s pursuit was “tough.”
“It made Charley uncomfortable to tell her friends the reality of our situation. And out of respect, I did that too, because I thought eventually, one day, we wouldn’t have to live in secret. She just was always scared to tell Salley,” he recalled.
Southern Charm season 11 airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.