going to suffocate and die.
By the way, I owe you a new dress on top of everything else I owe you.
I know what you brought to my life. I know nothing I gave you could ever compare. But I’m going to fix that.
In the meantime, Brownie and I are still hoping you’ll walk back into our lives. He doesn’t know that I don’t deserve you. Please don’t tell him.
Love,
Dom
To: Ally
From: Dominic
Subject: Getting to know me
The first time I saw you—before you yelled at me and sagely said “Fuck You” with pepperoni—I was infatuated with your hair. I called you Sex Hair in my head because I wanted to put my hands in your hair while I kissed you.
Love,
Dom
To: Ally
From: Dominic
Subject: Getting to know me
When I was a freshman in college, my roommate lied and said he didn’t have a place to go for Christmas break so I would invite him home with me and he could attend my parents’ annual New Year’s bash. Think models, champagne, caviar, fireworks. He snuck twenty of his closest asshole friends into the party, and I had to break his friend’s nose when he wouldn’t let a seventeen-year-old model out of a bedroom.
Elena dated me thinking I could make her a household name, and when tipping off the paparazzi every time we went out didn’t work, she started sleeping with my father.
My mother knew I was honor-bound to our family and used that to make me walk away from a career that fit me to clean up a mess my father had made.
You never once used me. Never once asked me for anything. And I threw my baggage in your face because I thought I had no idea what a healthy relationship looks like. Harry and Delaney have since informed me differently.
Love,
Dom
To: Ally
From: Dominic
Subject: Getting to know me
I lay in bed last night thinking about all the things I miss about you. Here’s the Top 10 out of infinity.
10. The way you’re dead to the world when you sleep. A marching band could parade by and you wouldn’t even hear the tubas.
9. The way you play the piano (badly but with charming enthusiasm).
8. Your horrible taste in ice cream.
7. Your optimism. I’ve never been around someone who always believed that things would work out. I hope I didn’t break that because your hopeful heart is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known.
6. The way you spell things with pepperoni.
5. Your breasts. Let’s be honest. You wouldn’t believe this list if they didn’t make the Top 5.
4. The way you dance. The way you teach others to dance. The way you’re always moving to a beat.
3. The way you say my name in any mood. Sleepy. Hungry. Annoyed. Wanting. I miss it so much sometimes I think I can still hear you calling my name.
2. How you not only conned me into adopting a dog, but you taught me how to make a home for him.
1. Your heart.
Love,
Dom
To: Ally
From: Dominic
Subject: Getting to know me
I will make this right. Also, I’ve decided that I’ll continue to email you daily for the rest of my life. If you have a problem with that, I encourage you to tell me. Please. Say something. Anything.
Love,
Dom
To: Ally
From: Dominic
Subject: Getting to know me
When I was a senior in high school, I had a girlfriend who dated me just to meet my mother in hopes that she’d be discovered as a model. My mother didn’t discover her. But my father did.
I walked in on them in the garage the day before my eighteenth birthday. Dad was “showing her the car they’d bought me.” He had her backed into a corner with his hand up her shirt.
At the time, I thought she was as much to blame as he was. I made it so much worse by blaming her. I know better now. I wanted to reach out to her last year. After my father was forcibly removed. After reading the affidavits of his victims. After I paid for his crimes from the trust fund he’d set up for me that I’d never touched.
I finally understood the damage that he and I had inflicted on a seventeen-year-old girl. But I didn’t reach out. I didn’t think I could handle hearing her story because I was still keeping secrets.
It wasn’t the first time I’d walked in on my father and someone who wasn’t my mother. The first time, I was thirteen. He was with a neighbor’s wife on the brand-new couch my mother had ordered