“Just hang in there,” I whispered to myself.
It must not have been a whisper because the woman next to me shot me the side-eye.
“Sorry,” I mouthed.
“Don’t you be sorry. Men are dirtbags,” she said.
I closed my eyes. I was going back home to Jersey. Or back to my father’s house. I guess I didn’t really have a home.
Home had been my father’s house. Then Dominic’s. Nothing had been mine since I’d moved back.
Maybe it was time I remedied that. I had a lot of freaking decisions to make… after my impending breakdown.
The meeting with the real estate agent went well. Better than well. Even though I was a broken shell of a human being who just couldn’t quite keep my shit together.
I got teary-eyed showing him the bathroom where Dominic had helped me level the vanity. Because of course everyone got sentimental over bathrooms.
The agent was a cute guy in his early thirties, and when he told me what price he thought we should list the house at, I burst into tears and hugged him. He’d patted me awkwardly on the back and then announced loudly that he needed to go meet his girlfriend for lunch.
When he left, and I was all alone in the house that no longer felt like home, I got antsy. I took advantage of the warm weather and walked to the nursing home. I found my father in a chair in the lounge staring out the window.
But when I told him about the house, he called me my mother’s name and asked if I’d seen his term papers.
I left feeling abandoned by the two men I loved the most.
And that’s why it hurt so, so much. That devastation simmering beneath the surface just waiting to erupt.
I loved Dominic Russo.
And he’d cast me aside like I was nothing. Thank God I’d been too chicken to tell him I loved him.
I reached for a lifeline.
Me: I know I swore I’d never say these words again. But I think I need tequila.
Faith: I. Am. Here. For. This.
She arrived an hour later with a bottle of much better stuff than what we’d nearly gone blind on last time.
“My boyfriend yelled at your boyfriend, and then I slapped him in the face, and it was pretty fucking hot,” Faith said, stepping inside and closing the door.
I chose to ignore the latter part of that statement for now. “Your boyfriend? Wait a second, what happened to ‘we’re just having mindblowing sex,’ ‘we’re too different to be serious’?”
“Look, I’m not here to rub your face in my new awesome relationship. I’m here to get you shitfaced.”
I nodded somberly. “But just because I’m sad doesn’t mean I can’t also be happy for you. Are you happy? Do you like him?”
She reached for my hand and squeezed. “I’m happy. I like him. He’s gorgeous shirtless. Now, how are you? Are you ready to talk?” she asked, pulling the stopper out of the tequila.
Ah, the sound of bad decisions.
I shook my head. Maybe there was something to be said about keeping the bad stuff inside. I’d trusted Dom with so much. With my fears, my secrets, my heart.
And look what had happened.
“The real estate guy is going to list the house on Monday. In the meantime, I need to find gainful employment.”
“Christian said you were doing some branding work for him? But I think he said it with his shirt off, so I wasn’t listening very closely.”
I nodded. “It was the other half of our deal for Dom—the vest.” His name used to mean so many other things. Its definition, my association with the arrangement of those seven letters, was irrevocably changed.
“Christian said the concepts were really good.”
I shrugged. Apparently getting your heart stomped on made it hard to care about anything.
“Do you want to go on a revenge spree? Maybe drive by his house set his bushes on fire? Rub some dog shit all over his Range Rover? We could get all the girls from the office together and make shirts that say Domidick.”
I should have laughed. But the cracks couldn’t hold back the hurt anymore. Thanks, tequila.
“I really loved him, Faith. Like really. A lot.”
She pushed the emergency box of tissues at me and pushed my hair off my forehead. “I know, babe. I know,” she said grimly.
69
Dominic
As if to prove what an asshole I was, Christian’s new Instagram post was a picture of Ally and Faith, both in couture, laughing and lounging on those same rumpled sheets. It was followed by a picture of Christian and Faith in a lip-lock.
I was a champion asshole. And I’d spent one too many hours last night listening to people who should have felt comfortable talking to me in the first place. But apparently I didn’t encourage open communication and honesty. My attitude convinced people that I didn’t care about them and left them to deal with things on their own.
I’d spent an uncomfortable hour with Shayla, followed by a trip to HR to get Gola’s home address. For the second time, I’d shown up unannounced on a woman’s doorstep to ask her tough questions about abuses of power and trust.
I was still turning it all over in my head when my mother summoned me to her office to talk about cover stories.
“We can’t get Amalia,” she was saying. “She’s on location shooting some music video for six days. So that’s out.” She sat perfectly still, staring up at the whiteboard someone had wheeled into her office. Ideas for the cover were listed out in order of potential. Over half of them were crossed out.
“Mom,” I said wearily. “I can’t talk to you about stories. I don’t know anything about stories. You know what I do know? Secrets. I know how to hide the dark, dirty truth. How to be ashamed of it.”
“Oh, lord. Dominic, I really don’t need you having some sort of existential crisis right now,” Mom sighed. “We have an issue to discuss.”
She was talking about the magazine.
“Actually, we have several issues to discuss,” I countered, leaning back and shoving a hand through my hair.
Issues.
Stories.
Secrets.
Ally.
I sat up a little straighter, thinking it through. I heaved myself out of the chair and crossed to the board. “Secrets and stories,” I said and picked up the eraser.
“What’s gotten into you? Are you having a breakdown right now?”
“Probably,” I said, starting to erase the list.
“Dominic!” Mom appeared at my side. As I scrawled the words “secrets” and “stories” at the top of the spot I’d just cleared.
“We foster secrets. We encourage people to keep secrets and hide things, and this is what happens. Everything rots from the inside.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dad. Irvin—who I’m firing in twenty minutes if you want in on that. Me. You. Simone.”
Mom went still again.
“We’ve all kept secrets,” I said. “But what happens if we stop keeping them? What happens if we tell our stories?”
Twenty minutes later, I was back in my office with calls in to HR, the magazine’s general counsel, and the family attorney. Mom was working her magic on her favorite designers and photographers. There was a new energy, an excitement. But I could only watch from the outside.