Viewers of Vanderpump Rules watched the aftermath of Scheana Shay’s affair with Eddie Cibrian play out in early seasons of the show. The pair became involved while Cibrian was still married to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Brandi Glanville. In her new memoir, Shay reflects on the affair and explains how she didn’t know he was married.

Scheana Shay said she met Eddie Cibrian when she worked at a cigar lounge

In 2006, Shay and Cibrian met at a cigar lounge, where she worked as a waitress. She immediately took notice of him.

“If you were to ask me when I was growing up what my exact type was, to a tee it was Eddie — tall, dark, and handsome, with dimples,” she wrote in her upcoming memoir My Good Side (per Entertainment Weekly). “The second we made eye contact, he smiled at me with those dimples, and I melted. How could I not? He’s undeniably a gorgeous human.”

She said Cibrian was always a “consummate gentleman” to her, and their relationship eventually turned physical. She said she did not know he was married at the time.

“Of course, I’ve been asked a zillion times how I didn’t realize he was married. Why would I have thought he was?” she wrote. “He never wore a wedding ring, so I assumed he was single.”

As it was 2006, she could not check social media, and she did not own a laptop at the time. 

Scheana Shay said Eddie Cibiran gaslit her when she asked him if he was married

Shay said that she could see herself ending up with someone like Cibrian, and their relationship eventually became more serious. She admitted that she didn’t see “a single red flag” in him. Eventually, though, things changed.

“The first crack in Eddie’s perfectly constructed façade appeared one night at the cigar lounge, when one of the members approached me,” she wrote. “He said, ‘Listen, Eddie is coming in tonight. And I just want to let you know—before you do something you might regret—that I heard he’s married.’ He must have seen that we were getting more serious and didn’t want me to get in too deep.”

While Shay said she didn’t want to believe it, but she sent Cibrian a message saying, “I have to ask, before we hang out tonight, does something belong on your ring finger?” He denied it.

“Eddie acted like he didn’t understand exactly what I was getting at, so I posed the question straightforwardly,” she wrote. “And his answer was ‘No, that’s insane. Why would you ask me that?’ It was gaslighting in its most basic form. Yet, I trusted him, so we continued hanging out.”

She eventually ended things with him

Eventually, Cibrian admitted he was married. Shay cut off communication with him. He eventually won her back over, though.

“Then I run into him one night at my work. He comes by and wants to explain himself and ask me out for drinks,” she told Us Weekly. “He says he’s now separated from his wife — bulls***, bulls***, bulls*** — and I’m like, ‘Okay, whatever, I’ll go with it.’ But come to find out shortly after the encounter that we had, there’s a story posted the next day saying that he was with LeAnn [Rimes] and he was still married!”

This was her final straw.

“It was just a mess,” she said. “I ended things there, I stopped talking to him, and I’ve never talked to him again.”