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.
My cell phone buzzed, and I pounced, hoping that something had happened and Ally had magically forgiven me.
Harry: Del just texted. She read that you dumped Ally for being pregnant with another man’s baby.
Me: Tell Del not to read that shit.
Harry: So you didn’t dump her? I can tell my wife to stop sobbing into her bottle of Merlot?
Me: Ally and I decided we were no longer a good idea.
Harry: Mainlining wine gif.
Harry: WTF gif with a really pissed off face.
Harry: Are you fucking with me right now?
My phone rang. I knew it had been too optimistic, hoping that Harry would give up and leave me alone.
“Man. Seriously?”
It sounded like he was ringside at a professional wrestling event.
“Where are you?”
“At home. Why?”
“You don’t hear that noise? What is it? Banshees? Someone running kittens through a wood chipper?”
“Oh, that,” he said dismissively. “That’s the girls. They’re either mad or happy. Can’t really tell just from the sound. The screaming is pretty much the same.”
There was another blood-curdling shriek on his end. “Oh, good. They’re happy,” he said. “Lay it out for me, man. Don’t go all Vault on me.”
“Vault?”
“That’s your mean, behind-your-back nickname bestowed upon you by the lovely and never-wrong Delaney,” he explained.
Harry had once lost a bet with Delaney. The stakes had been he had to refer to her at least once a day as “The lovely and never-wrong Delaney.”
I sighed audibly.
“Every guy has one,” he continued. “Mine’s Pretends to Be Listening. And don’t insult either of our admittedly limited intelligence by asking me to explain why you’re Vault and I’m Pretends to Be Listening. Just tell me what you did, and I’ll tell you how to fix it. Or get Delaney involved if it’s a bad fuck-up.”
Oh, it was a bad fuck-up. An unrecoverable one.
“I don’t think even Delaney could fix this,” I admitted.
“That bad, huh?” he asked.
“Think about the worst thing you’ve ever done to your wife,” I advised him.
“Uh-huh. Okay. Got it.”
“Then make it ten times worse.”
Harry let out a low whistle. “That’s bad. Did you accidentally cut off one of her limbs?”
“Worse.”
“Okay. I’m with you, brother. We’ve all done really stupid fucking shit. Lay it on me.”
I thought about everything. About my mother, my father. About Ally and the women my father victimized and used. About Elena and Gola and Harry and Delaney. About that jackass Christian and Faith. About how I’d never once confided in Harry, my best friend.
So I told him everything. From my father’s gruesome predilections to my breakup with Elena to my epic, unforgivable fuckup.
“You fucking asshole,” he said without heat when I’d finally finished.
“I know,” I agreed. “I’m a monster. Just a different kind than my father.”
“No, idiot. You should have had this conversation with me or someone a year ago.”
“You have to admit, it was the worst possible thing I could have done.”
“Not the worst. You could have cheated on her in her own bed, and when she walked in on you, you could have chopped off one or two of her limbs. Or you could have accidentally nudged her grandmother with your car eight years ago so everyone in the family had to spend Thanksgiving in the emergency department.”
“That last one sounds a little specific for fictionalized moral lessons.”
“Yeah, so I accidentally hit Delaney’s grandma with the car. To be fair, the woman hated me, and I swear she jumped behind me at the last second. That woman would have been willing to break a femur to make a point. Anyway, she was fine, and Delaney and I recovered. You can too.”
“I abandoned her, Harry. Not only did I live up to the example her shitty mother set, I accused Ally of using me.”
Harry sighed. “Look, the point of a relationship isn’t hiding your stupid wounds and flaws. It’s about showing them to someone and letting them still love you. You were able to hurt her because she let you in.”
“Is that supposed to be good news?”
“I think so, but now I’m having flashbacks to Granny Mabel lying on the asphalt. I’m going to have to call in the big guns.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose while my best friend conferenced in his wife.
“You stupid motherfucking guy.” Delaney didn’t mince words.
“Already acknowledged, Del,” Harry said, stepping in. “How does he fix it?”
“Fix it? The man stuck his fingers in her open wound and rooted around in there. He conned her into caring about him, trusting him, and then he abandoned her just like her mother did.”
Fuck.
“You want someone you can trust with your nightmares. Not just your dreams. She showed you her nightmare, and you walked,” Delaney continued.
“Babe. Focus. How does he make it right?”
“Listen, I don’t know about Ally. But there wouldn’t be any fixing this for me.”
“So what you’re saying is this is worse than Granny Mabel.”
“Harry, honey, you could have backed over Granny Mabel six times, and this is still worse.”
My desk phone had incoming calls. Several of them. “This has been really helpful, guys. I’ve got to go.”
There was a knock at my door, and Irvin sauntered in.
“What can I do for you, my boy?” he asked.
“Irvin, you’re fired.”
