by Score, Lucy
Ally certainly wasn’t complaining. She loved her new position. And she was a great addition to the graphics department. Not that I was checking up on her.
Okay, so I was checking up on her. I wanted to make sure no one was saying or doing anything to her that would hurt her or piss me off.
There had been a few items about us in the gossip blogs. Someone had leaked the office-wide memo, and it had been shared far and wide. But there hadn’t been any real fuss.
Yet.
It would come. It always did. And when it did, it wouldn’t be a warm and fuzzy “we wish them the best.”
Ally stopped on the sidewalk.
“This doesn’t look like an ice cream shop,” I observed, checking out the three-story brick house behind the iron fence and neatly trimmed hedgerow.
“It’s not,” she said. “This is the big house on the corner.”
“I can see that.”
She hugged herself, and I stepped closer to block the wind.
“When I was growing up, I always dreamed of living here. I’d put the Christmas tree there,” she said, pointing at a wide wall of glass on the front. “And the piano over there in that window on the north side.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
She grinned. “I’ve been obsessed with this place since I was eleven.”
Right around the time her mother left. I guessed it wasn’t a coincidence.
“What is it you like about it?” Brownie joined us in our real estate perusal and gave the fence a good sniffing.
“I think it was the life that went on inside it. There were kids who lived here who were a few years older than me. They had a mom and a dad and each other. A basketball hoop in the driveway. Lemonade stands in the summer. It just always looked idyllic. Still does. Their kids are grown. Now it’s the grandkids playing basketball. They have dinner parties here and Christmas mornings.” She shrugged. “It’s stupid. I know.”
“It’s not stupid,” I told her, taking her hand again. I’d known that kind of longing too. Not that I’d admit it. For siblings. For parents who were around and not fighting or ignoring each other in stony silence. For a family to belong to.
We started walking again, but I noticed she kept her gaze on the house until we crossed the street.
“Do you still play the piano?”
“Not really. If Dad’s having a good day, I’ll sit with him, but I haven’t practiced in forever. Did you ever play?”
I shook my head. “I was into baseball,” I said.
“I bet your butt looked really cute in those uniform pants,” she teased.
“My butt looks good in all pants,” I insisted.
“Speaking of birthdays—”
“We were not.”
“We are now,” she said, guiding me down the block toward the ice cream sign. “What’s with the birthday hating?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t hate birthdays.” Just my own.
“Just your own,” she said, apparently reading my mind.
“It’s just another day,” I insisted.
“It’s just the anniversary of you surviving another entire year on this planet. It’s a celebration of being here. Didn’t you love birthday parties when you were a kid?”
“Growing up, it wasn’t so much of a celebration as just one more day for my father to either disappoint me or pit himself against me in a competition.”
She stopped outside the cheerily painted shop with a hand-lettered sign in the window promising homemade hot chocolate. “That’s terrible.”
“Ally, I’ll be forty-five. I don’t need or want a celebration. I don’t like receiving gifts. If there’s something I want, I buy it for myself. My worst nightmare is a bunch of people who have better things to do singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me.”
“But, Dom—”
I shook my head. “Stop looking at me with pity eyes.” Her brown eyes were wide and sad for a privileged kid she’d never known.
“Can I please do something for you for your birthday? Please?”
She was not going to let me say no. And letting her do something for me would make her happy, which would make me happy. This was one of those stupid compromises she’d been talking about.
“Fine,” I said. “One thing. One small, inexpensive thing.”
“Yes!” She threw her arms around my neck and pressed a noisy kiss to my cheek.
I realized I’d be willing to say yes to a lot of things if it always got that reaction out of her.
“No singing,” I warned her.
“No singing,” she agreed.
“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.
I, Dominic Russo, was smiling.
That odd facial contortion stayed with me as we walked back to the office. As I brushed a kiss over Ally’s lips, once, twice on the sidewalk in front of the building.
Her hat—a felt, emerald green trench I’d snuck out of a photo shoot for her—made her brown eyes even warmer.
“You’re beautiful.”
Her cheeks pinked up, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the wind. There was a stirring in my chest. That odd, heartburny glow rose up again. I realized I’d be content to stand right here with Ally Morales looking up at me just like that for the rest of the day. The week. Hell, I’d free up all of April if it meant I could keep feeling like this.
“Dominic.”
God, would there ever be a time when my name on her lips wasn’t a fucking shot of adrenaline?
“Ally.”
“When you look at me like that it makes me dizzy,” she confessed
“Good,” I said. I didn’t want to be the only one off-balance here. This was something… different, almost comforting. Something apart from the lust-fueled obsession I’d gotten used to. I hoped to hell I wasn’t just imagining it.
* * *
That afternoon, Linus dropped off a very nice bottle of whiskey tied with a black bow. My meeting with the online content team was kicked off with fancy teas and muffins. Even Shayla had muttered a “Happy Birthday” before insisting that we were going in the wrong direction with a sidebar on bucket bags.
My mother sent me a huge arrangement of showy white flowers, a ridiculous gold paper party hat—which made me roll my eyes—and a very nice Armani jacket that I didn’t mind at all. She was out of the office all day working with designers and coordinators for the upcoming gala in May. It was one of the biggest nights in New York fashion every year, and as always, my attendance was expected.
I wondered if Ally would like to go and how creatively she’d commit to the theme. Or, more accurately, how creatively she’d make me commit to the theme.
And then I realized how quickly I’d begun making plans that revolved around her. It was less of a battle every night to get her to stay. She had things at my place, space in my closet. I’d insisted that she start doing her laundry at my place so I wouldn’t have to miss out on a few hours with her every weekend.
We had routines now. Early morning and late night walks around the block with Brownie. Naked Sunday brunch. I knew where all the hardware stores within a five-mile radius of her father’s house were because we spent so much of our weekends in them.
It was disconcerting to wake up one day and find myself… well. Here. Making plans for two instead of one. Looking forward to sharing things like beds and weekends and closet space. I’d dated before. But I’d never gotten this deep, this fast. I’d never made space in my home for a woman before. Change was happening, and I didn’t know how I felt about it.
Did I like it, or did it terrify me? Should I start applying the brakes?
After all, we hadn’t talked future. Not really. Ally was just trying to survive the next few months. Things would be different when the house was sold. When her father’s situation was secure. When she had choices and the resources to make them.
Would she choose me when she didn’t have to rely on me for a roof? For good cheeses and nights out and clothing not previously owned by half of the city?
Did I want her, or did I want to be needed?
There it was. That little icy finger of doubt that I’d been waiting for. I’d learned over and over again to be careful. To not give too much of myself. Because it never seemed like it was enough. That’s why I did things anonymously. Like Buddy’s wife’s physical therapy. Buddy didn’t know it was me. Which meant he couldn’t ask me for more.
When would Ally start asking for more?
A text popped up on my phone.
Ally: Getting to know you birthday edition. Gun to your head. If you had to choose between vanilla cake with chocolate icing or a chocolate cake with peanut butter icing, what would you choose?
And there it was again. That stupid smile on my face.
> Me: I thought I told you not to use the V word in my presence?
* * *
I let myself into the foyer, leaving the cold night at my back. I’d stayed late for a generally useless conference call with the west coast. All I wanted was a quiet night with my dog and my lady. Ally had promised me a home-cooked birthday dinner and one present to unwrap.
Brownie trotted up to me.
“Hey, buddy. What are you doing out here?” I leaned down to give him a good scruffing and found he was wearing a sparkly green bowtie. “Let me guess. A birthday bowtie?”
Brownie jumped up and licked my face from chin to hairline.
“Really have to call that trainer.” I sighed, leading the way into the house.
It was dark inside, but something smelled good. Like home-cooked meal good.
“Maleficent?” I called out.
The lights—all of them—came on in a flash.
“Surprise!”
“Jesus H. Christ,” I groaned. I hated surprises.
My kitchen was full of people. Harry and Delaney were there with their girls—who were currently shrieking “happy birthday, Uncle Dominic” at the top of their lungs. Linus, his wife, and their three kids wore matching all-black outfits and were blowing the hell out of those obnoxious noisemaker things. Gola and Ruth were pouring champagne.
My neighbors, Sascha and Elton, waved from the stove where they were dishing out bowls of something. Jace was hugging Brownie and letting the dog eat his face. My mother, who was supposed to be on a plane right now, beamed at me from where she sat at the island, a gin martini in front of her. Her long-time best friend, Simone, was beside her. They were laughing. Ally’s New Jersey neighbors Mrs. Grosu and Mr. Mohammad were lighting candles on a chocolate cake.
I counted four guys from my old office lingering near the alcohol, typical for them.
Ally’s best friend, Faith, was playing DJ in the corner with my wireless speakers. And Christian Fucking James was lurking near the cheese tray.