My Official Rebuttal to Hannah Montoya
I have sat down no less than 25 times to start this blog. I’ve always taken the stance that I do not want to throw my coworkers under the bus. However, as people continue to play dumb, I get thrown further under the bus. I do not care to deep dive into Austin and Hannah’s relationship because I can’t speak to some of the shit referenced. In fact, Big Cat and Mook also decided those same things couldn’t be said. And for the record, I obviously didn’t want to expose certain things I heard through Hannah but my back was against the wall. And to be honest, for Hannah to pretend like her frustration with me comes from what I said on the Yak is absolutely absurd when she wasn’t on speaking terms with me, starting from the moment I came back from Spring Break. This is not about a singular group chat and this is not about Brady.
On par for the course, we need to walk this back a little bit. I don’t think anyone understands the extent of our relationship. Damn near anyone within the walls of Barstool could tell you that Hannah and I were attached at the hip. Our desks are back to back and we spent nearly every waking moment either chit-chatting in the office, hitting the bars together, or jet-setting to different states. In the interest of getting this out in a timely manner, I cannot go point by point. However, if the people want it, I can spend a month going point by point in a future blog. For now, I will attempt to tell my truth.
Now, let’s fast forward to Spring Break. I went through literal hell. That was definitely a mixture between my own actions and the whirlwind of the entire show. During this experience, Hannah reached out to me to tell me that I should hook up with Craig Conover because Dave and Austin felt that it was a good plot line for the show. That is the conversation she was referencing in which she told me to do a certain thing on the show. Following that, our next conversation was when she reached out to talk to me about Kelly talking about her on one of the recap shows. We went back and forth for a few texts, in which I explained that I believed Kelly was unfairly coming after her. And given that Hannah had watched the recap, I know she also saw me heavily defend her.
The next time we texted was when I left Las Vegas. She had sent me a nice message expressing support and letting me know that she had my back. I replied to that text, telling her how upset and embarrassed I was, as well as how drained I felt. After that? Essentially radio silence. And to clarify, that means I also did not receive any response to my text back. I know she isn’t the best texter so I assumed she would have my back as soon as I came back to the office. However, when I came back it was blatantly obvious that she was avoiding me. There is absolutely zero way for her to pretend like that wasn’t the case. Nearly every time I was in the same vicinity, she was walking away from me. I also know her well enough to know when she is actively avoiding someone.
And sure, we had surface level conversations within the office and group banters. I tried to start the conversation of, “Ya know, I think some things may have been spun to you and Oona.” Her reply to that was along the lines of “I don’t want to talk about this right now,” and she got up and walked away. A few days later, I was made aware of a group chat in which she texted asking the guys to get drinks. It was also relayed to me that she started this group chat. Apparently, that minor detail was wrong. Whether or not she started the group chat is honestly irrelevant. We were connected at the hip for a year and as soon as I was back from Spring Break, she was making plans in a group chat that she knew I wasn’t a part of. The night and day shift after I returned to the office was palpable to anyone in the office who was used to being in our presence.
After the immediate aftermath, everything seemed to simmer down. A group was going to get drinks, and I invited myself to attend in hopes of things going back to normal. Besides work trips, this was the only time I had been to drinks with her post Spring Break. After that singular time I invited myself to drink with the crew, it was back to damn near radio silence again. We then went on our Cape Cod trip and honestly had a blast. Everything felt like it was close to back to normal. However, yet again, as we got back to Chicago I continued hearing about a group chat that I knew she was texting in for plans.
And to be quite honest, I have no idea how much of my friendship with Hannah actually relates to Austin. What I can say is that both her and Austin knew that I thought them getting together was a toxic situation that should’ve been avoided. And as for the argument about, “We were just getting drinks because we knew it was a bad idea for anything to happen.” Please. Avoiding sex in order to say that you weren’t stepping on toes is a cop-out. As far as I am aware, things got more serious between Austin and Hannah while I was at Spring Break. Once again, we have not spoken about our personal lives in months, so this is just what I heard through the grapevine. It’s for this reason alone that I question whether or not Austin played a part in my friendship with Hannah ending. It almost feels like there has to be a correlation when things got serious between them the same week I got iced out.
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Post Spring Break, I would’ve given Hannah about two weeks to reach out and support me as I’d expect a best friend to do. She had a conversation with Nick in which he directly told her she had been a terrible friend to me. She agreed with him and did nothing about it. Obviously, a lot of what happened to me on Spring Break was self-inflicted. But whether or not it was self-inflicted, should not change the fact that I deserve a best friend that will not ice me out when I am mentally going through the toughest week of my life. For that reason alone, the chances of us being as close as we once were is basically non-existent. I am lucky enough to know how a good friend acts in a time where you desperately need them, and I won’t subject myself to a one-sided friendship in the future.
I don’t think Hannah is a horrible person. I think that she was a bad friend to me and I had to finally decide that there is a very small chance of ever coming back from that. I think her and Austin handled everything wrong in every step of the way and it is now blowing up. I simply wish that either one of them would own up to their shitty behaviors and acknowledge that they have both made quite a few mistakes. But we’re all human and we all make mistakes. It’s about learning and growing from those mistakes.
And to stay on theme for this entire debacle, allow me to leave this off with a cryptic note to all of my coworkers- the real truth will set you all free.