“And no spending money on me.”
“Excuse me, why are you allowed to make that a rule, and I’m the one with a dozen pairs of La Perla thongs that magically appeared in her drawer?”
“Because I have money to spend, and I’ll take great pleasure in taking those thongs off you. Consider them a birthday gift for me.”
“Well, consider this,” she said, reaching for the door. “I’m wearing one of your birthday gifts right now.”
That night, I made dinner while Ally worked on her laptop at the island with a glass of wine. It was a nice, normal scene that I was still having trouble adjusting to.
“How’s Gola working out?” she asked.
“We’re getting along reasonably well. She doesn’t yell at me as often as her predecessor.” Work had been going well. In an unforeseen consequence of announcing my relationship, the women of Label—with a few notable exceptions—had seemed to finally embrace me as human. Nina from advertising had actually told me a joke when we’d both arrived early for a meeting. And I’d actually laughed.
“Har har,” she said. “Have you heard from Greta?”
I sighed and threw a pinch of fresh herbs on top of the pasta I’d just plated. “Greta has decided to officially retire.” I still wasn’t ready to think about my life without her. I didn’t deal well with change. Especially change that I had no control over.
“Apparently sending her off on a European jaunt backfired,” Ally said, giving me a look over the rim of her wineglass.
“Or maybe I still got what I was after.” She grinned at me, and I slid her plate to her. “In here or at the table?”
“Uh-oh. Hang on,” she said, squinting at her screen.
“What?”
“Faith just sent this to me.” She turned the laptop so I could see. “It’s about us.”
It was a popular fashion gossip vlog run by a woman I considered to be an obnoxious pain in the ass. “Don’t waste your time with it.”
“Too late. Already playing.”
“Rumor on the catwalk has it that serial model dater Dominic Russo is finally settling down with a dancer he just met. Inside sources say Russo was so infatuated with her ‘moves’ he created a position just for her in his mother’s fashion empire.”
“That lying little twerp! She makes me sound like a stripper,” Ally said indignantly.
“Well—”
“Do not finish that sentence if you want to continue not breathing out of your neck,” she said, wielding her fork.
“This is why we don’t watch this garbage,” I told her, making a move to close the screen.
She swatted my hand away instead.
“Most of you will remember Russo’s scorching hot affair with model Elena Ostrovsky, a Russian beauty known for her Calvin Klein contract.”
Oh. Shit.
Ally slowly turned to face me. “Did you forget to tell me something?”
I took a hasty step back and put my hands up. “First of all, it was not a scorching hot affair. It was more like a series of lukewarm—”
“You mean to tell me you had a relationship with the cover girl of the May issue? And I’m just now hearing about it?”
“When you say relationship—”
She cracked a grin. “Relax, Charming. I’m just messing with you. You dated models. I know this. They’re disgustingly beautiful. It’s not news. Holy crap. Is she like a million feet tall?” She peered at the screen as the idiot vlogger plastered image after image of me with Elena during our short but unsatisfying relationship.
“We weren’t serious,” I insisted. At least not serious enough for me to feel anything but seriously pissed-off when I’d found out exactly what she’d been up to.
The last picture was one from New York Fashion Week two years ago. I was towing her by the hand through a crush of photographers outside a restaurant. I was scowling. She was smiling smugly. I’d had a reason to scowl. The paparazzi had an uncanny way of finding out where we were every time we went out. I didn’t like having cameras shoved in my face and questions hurled at me, but Elena didn’t seem to mind.
It was only a week or two later that I’d found out she was the reason they always knew where we were. That she’d been using me to grow her followers and, in turn, increase her visibility. She’d been the last person in a very long line who’d used me.
“This is a story about us, and they’re running more pictures of you with Elena, the long-legged gazelle. Oh, wait, here I am,” she said, cheering up.
It was my turn to get annoyed.
“Ally Morales is the mystery woman widely photographed with designer Christian James. So the question is: Is this real love, or will Delena find their way back together again? Cast your vote below—”
“Delena? Ew. Barf. Hey!” Ally said when I slammed the lid of the laptop closed.
“No more garbage gossip. It’s time for dinner.”
“Fine. I just have to do one thing first,” she said, opening her laptop again.
“What?”
“I’m writing that vlogger a strongly worded email and attaching some naked pictures of us,” she said, brown eyes sparkling. “Oh, and we need a celebrity couple name. How do you like the sound of Alominic?”
I sighed. “Eat your pasta, weirdo.”
59
Dominic
The morning of my forty-fifth year on this revolving circus began with my naked girlfriend rolling on top of me and fucking me until I went blind and lost the power of speech. It was, what I considered to be, the best birthday gift I’d ever received to date.
Apparently, Ally was just getting started. She insisted we stop for “birthday tea” on the way into the office. Then gave me an entirely inappropriate birthday kiss just outside the office doors.
I’d actually gone a little weak in the knees when she walked away. Chalking it up to more dehydration, I watched that sexy ass sway in the curve-hugging Dior skirt I’d snuck into her side of the closet.
Gola was waiting outside my office with a smile and a goddamn birthday cupcake. It had an actual candle in it.
I was oddly touched and covered the moment by threatening to fire her if she sang one bar of “Happy Birthday.”
A month or two ago, that threat would have had every woman—and several of the men—in a twenty-foot radius running for cover. Now, Gola laughed and reminded me that I had birthday lunch plans with Ally.
What the hell were birthday lunch plans?
Food truck ramen. That’s what. Maybe it was holding Ally’s hand on the three-block walk. Or maybe it was listening to her talk about the graphics she was designing for a June piece on espadrilles. Maybe it was that nudge of spring I could almost smell on the air. April was coming.
Whatever it was, I felt almost… light.
She squinted up at me. “What’s happening with your face right now?”
It was probably having an allergic reaction to the ramen. I reached up to touch my cheek, and she snickered.
I got the joke.
What was happening with my face was that I was sitting on a low wall with a woman I’d brought to orgasm with my tongue before most people had opened their eyes for the day. A woman who was doing her damndest to make my stupid birthday special.