By a Thread: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy

Ifelt warm and cozy and safe and happy. And very, very drunk.

I couldn’t hug Ally because she was driving, but I could wrap up in her coat. So I shoved my arms through the sleeves and wore it like a blanket.

“What kind of a milkshake do you want?” she asked, double-parking and throwing the hazards on in front of the golden arches. She was so pretty.

“Pfft,” I snorted. “The only kind there is.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Chocolate?”

“Duh. Don’t say the v-word in my presence,” I warned.

She gave me a “you’re so stupid” smile, and in my drunken state, I decided to treasure it always. “I love it when you smile at me.”

The smile faded from those lips, and I realized I’d said the words out loud. “Oops. I’m not supposed to say that stuff.”

“What other stuff aren’t you supposed to say?” she asked.

“That I think about you all the time and I really want to see you naked.” Somewhere deep in my brain, where the obscene amount of scotch I’d consumed hadn’t yet penetrated, I was yelling at myself, pushing alarm buttons, and tapping out Morse code. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Man.

“Oh, boy,” Ally sighed. “Wait here. I’ll be back with your milkshake.”

She slid out of the vehicle and jogged around the hood. I pushed all of the buttons on my door before the window went down. “Get us burgers too. Those spoon thing appetizers were stupid,” I called after her.

She waved over her shoulder, and I watched her disappear into McDonald’s. I entertained myself by making up songs about her.

“Ally in the red dress makes me feel like a mess,” I crooned through the open window.

A guy in a yellow ski jacket threw a buck at me.

I was working on the second verse when Ally came back with a greasy fast food bag and two chocolate milkshakes. She looked tiny, dwarfed by my coat.

“Look!” I held up the dollar triumphantly. “I was singing, and a guy gave me this.”

“Wow, Dom. Maybe you can quit your day job.” She thrust the bag and one of the cups at me through the open window and then climbed behind the wheel.

“If I quit my day job, I wouldn’t get to see you,” I reminded her.

“Gee. Darn.”

“You’d miss me. Like a lot.” I knew she would. At this point, I couldn’t imagine not seeing her five days a week. At this point, five days a week wasn’t enough.

“Did you pay Greta to leave for two months?” she asked.

Those warning bells were clanging loud and clear in my head. But I was too drunk to pay attention. “Yep. She deserved it after all those years of putting up with me.”

“So you sent your admin away to give me the job?”

Danger, Dominic Dumbass. Danger.

“Uh-huh.”

“Was it because I needed money or because you wanted to pull my strings?”

“Pfft. You don’t have strings. You’re a person, not a Pin… pinochle puppet. You were so tired. And scared. And I have money. But you wouldn’t take it. So I made you take it.”

“I want to be so mad at you right now,” she said.

“Let’s go home. You can be mad at me at home. Brownie’s there, and he loves me,” I sighed, grabbing a fistful of French fries and shoving them into my mouth.

She looked at me and shook her head.

“Wha?” I asked, and a French fry fell out of my mouth into my lap.

“Nothing.”

“Hey, do you see all this glitter in here?” I asked.

“Shut. Up. Dom.”

She sounded serious, so I kept quiet. I drank my entire milkshake and ate fries—all of mine and accidentally half of hers—until she turned onto my street.

She found a space at the end of the block, and I climbed—or, more accurately, fell—out of the SUV. Ally, carrying the rest of our food and her milkshake, hurried around and picked me up.

She started laughing and then couldn’t seem to stop.

“What?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I can’t handle how cute you are right now.”

“Cute? Me?” I frowned. “That’s not right. I am very sexy and handsome all of the time.”

She guided me up the steps to the front door. “You sure are. And right now, you’re super cute. I think it’s because you’re still wearing my coat.”

“Can I keep it?” I asked.

“No. It’s winter. I need it.”

“We could just swa-swa-swapsies. No one would have to know. You could wear my coat, and I could wear your coat, and it’ll be a secret. We could pinky promise again.”

“I think someone might notice you wearing a wool women’s trench backwards.”

“You think?” I was disappointed.

“Dom, did someone put something in your drink tonight? Did Malina show up in disguise with a pocket full of roofies? Keys, please.”

I dug through both of Ally’s coat pockets and then my own pants before producing the keyring. “Found them,” I sang. But no one gave me a dollar this time.

“Good job, Charming,” she said, taking the keys from me. I leaned heavily against her while she opened the door.

“Hang on there, big guy. I think these heels have a weight limit,” Ally said, propping me against the doorframe. She slipped off her stilettos and managed to wrestle me and the food into the vestibule before shutting and locking the door.

There was a ruckus on the other side of the main door to my house.

“Brownie!” I had temporarily forgotten I had a dog. This was an excellent reminder. I yanked the door open, and a brown blur of fur hurled himself at me. “Hi, buddy! Hi! Did you miss me?”

I miscalculated the wind speed of an excited chocolate lab and ended up on my ass as Brownie devoured my face.

“Ouch! What did we say about stepping on my balls?”

Ally made a choking noise, and I looked up. “Are you okay?” I asked, closing one eye to bring her into focus.

She cleared her throat and looked everywhere but me and Brownie. “Stay strong, Ally,” she was chanting.

Brownie, sensing a human being who wasn’t currently giving him all of her love, danced over to her and plopped his ass on the floor.

“Who’s the most handsome boy?” Ally crooned, ruffling his ears.

“I am,” I insisted. “But Brownie’s okay too.”

My dog shot me a “hehe” look and went back to seducing my girl with his big, dumb brown eyes.

“Get your own girl, dog.”

“Don’t you listen to your daddy,” she said, smushing Brownie’s ecstatic face between her hands.

I had the sudden, intense urge to tell all the women in my life how much I appreciated them putting up with me.

“What are you doing, Dom?” Ally asked when I wrestled my phone out of my pants pocket.

“First, I’m going to email Shayla—the one who hates me—to tell her she does a really great job. Then I’m going to record a song for my mom and send it to her.” My phone’s screen seemed unusually small and out of focus.

“Okay. Let’s put that on hold before you damage a retina,” Ally said, taking my phone from me. “Here’s a free Ted Talk. Drunk texting never does what you want it to.”

“But I need to say good job!”

“You need to get to bed,” she countered.

Bed sounded really good. Especially with Ally. But I was still the aforementioned super drunk and wasn’t too confident in my performance abilities.

“I might need a few minutes and some tea and maybe a shower before I can… you know…”

Both Allys were staring at me like I’d started speaking Swahili.

“We’re not having sex, Dominic. I’m putting you to bed so you can sleep this off.”

“Will you sleep it off with me?” I tried to wink and show her my underused flirtatious side.

“Are your eyes bothering you?” she asked.

I tried the wink again. “No.”

“You’re blinking weird.”

“I’m not blinking. I’m winking.”

Brownie drew our attention with a whimpery noise. “Hafta to go out, boy?” I climbed to my feet and grandly opened the door for dog and woman.

“I can take him for a walk,” Ally volunteered.

“Why are you so nice to me?” I wondered out loud. “I’m an asshole, and you’re all like ‘I’ll walk your dog.’”

“Brownie isn’t responsible for his father’s personality,” she pointed out.

I felt like there was a deeper truth ringing around in those words, but I was distracted by her red dress and that light lemony scent that followed her everywhere.

I led the way into the kitchen and brushed off Ally’s concerns about me falling and hitting my head in the backyard. “Pfft. I have perfect balance,” I scoffed.

I tripped over a table leg and barely managed to stop myself from taking a header off the deck.

My backyard was a neatly landscaped scrap of—now dead—grass enclosed by a fence tall enough that my enthusiastic dog couldn’t vault over. He’d certainly tried since the Vargases next door got their beagle, Cornelius. Brownie trotted out to the middle of the grass to do his good dog business, and since I was here and a man, I joined him in a communal pissing.

Back inside, I found Ally plating up burgers in the kitchen.

“You’ve got a nice place here, Dom,” she said, sliding a tall glass of water in my direction.

Of course I did.

“You’re so beautiful,” I sighed, sinking down on a stool. “Not just because you’re in that dumb guy’s dress. But like all the time. You just light up every room you walk into. It’s like the sun coming up. Every time I see you, I feel better. I love it when you walk into a room.”

“Dom.”

“I’m super drunk, Ally. You can’t hold any of this against me.”

“I know,” she said and stroked a hand through my hair. “We’ll never speak of this again.”

She took the stool next to me, and we ate greasy burgers in companionable silence in my kitchen. It might have been the scotch talking, but it felt right. I wanted more of this. More of Ally Morales in my home.

Finished, she put our plates in the sink, topped off Brownie’s water, and returned to me.

“Let’s get you upstairs,” she said.

“’Kay.”

She helped me up two flights of stairs and put up with me stopping to rest with my face in her hair every few steps. I was in excellent condition. But being embarrassingly intoxicated provided the perfect excuse for me to sniff her hair.

She didn’t need directions to my room. And I hoped that meant she’d spent as much time thinking about that night that she’d been here as I had.

“Stay?” I breathed when I flopped down on the bed. My eyelids were so heavy.

She flicked on the bedside lamp, and I felt her move around the mattress.

She untied one of my shoes. “Dom, I can’t do that. And you don’t want me to do that.”

But I really, really did. “This bed is so big. And Jersey is so far.”

“Yeah, well, I’m taking your car,” she said.

“You can have anything you want,” I offered. I was a magnanimous drunk guy. Especially when it came to the woman I couldn’t stop thinking about.

“Just not you,” she said. I was too drunk to tell if she was teasing or serious.

“Just not me,” I agreed. “I can’t be like him. I mean, not more than I already am.”

“Who?” she asked.

“My dad. He sucks. Hate ’im.”

“I know,” she said, and I felt the shoe slide off my foot.

“I’m my father’s son,” I slurred.

My other shoe disappeared.

“You’re also your mother’s son. And last time I checked, you happen to be your own man. You make your own decisions.”

“Yeah, well, I decide I don’t want to be anything like him. I can’t sleep with you, Ally. No matter how much I want to. No matter how much I like you. No matter how many times I pictured you spread out right here under me. I want you so much, but I can’t have you.”

“Why not, Dom?” Her voice was so soft, and she was playing with my hair again. I decided that was my new favorite physical sensation. Ally’s fingers in my hair.

“’Cause he would have taken you. Take take take. Whatever he wanted. I don’t want to be him.”

“Oh, honey. You’re not.” I liked her voice. Liked how she called me honey.

“You say that. But I’m ’zactly like him. I jerk off in the bathroom thinking about you. Well, not anymore.”

She was quiet for a beat, and then her fingers were on my necktie. “Why not?”

“Doesn’t seem right. You’re right outside the door. It’s disrep—disruh—dis-re-spect-ful,” I enunciated clearly. I was so fucking tired.

“You’re not responsible for your father’s actions. What he did isn’t your fault.”

I covered my face with my hands. “Yes, it is. It’s my fault he was there to do the things he did.”

“Why?”

“Never mind. Forget I said anything,” I told her. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It made me sad and sick, and I just wanted to feel good. Even if I didn’t deserve it. “’Sides. I don’t deserve you anyway.”

My tie loosened, then vanished, and those glorious fingers were working the buttons on my shirt free. I really liked that.

“Dom?”

“Yeah?”

“Open your eyes for a second.”

I did as my Angel Ally asked.

“You’re nothing like your father. You never have been, and you never will be. You’re a good man. You take care of people who need it. You protect them and build them up. You’re going to make some woman very lucky someday.”

“Wish it was you.”

She cupped my face in her cool hand, and I rubbed my jaw shamelessly against it. That easy, physical affection Ally gave was something I had no idea I needed. And I was going to have to go back to living without it.

“Get some sleep, honey,” she said softly.

My eyes wouldn’t open anymore. I felt the weight of the blanket she pulled over me, the bounce of Brownie jumping onto the bed.

“Thanks for taking care of me, Ally.”

“Back at you, Dom.”