Heather Gay offered more details about her infamous The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City black eye in her newly released book, Good Time Girl.
“I would love to put black eye to bed, but there [are] a lot of things I’d love to put to bed,” Heather, 50, told Us Weekly exclusively while promoting the book, which was released on Tuesday, December 3. “I’ve just chosen to embrace my failings and try to figure out how they can shape my future. But there’s a part of me that, like, never wants to mention it again.”
During RHOSLC season 3, Heather woke up with a black eye during a cast trip to Palm Springs. At first, details about the injury were kept a mystery. However, Heather eventually revealed that Jen Shah gave her the black eye.
“I knew by writing this chapter and opening Pandora’s box that it can go either way,” Heather explained to Us, anticipating the public’s reaction. “It’s how I feel about it and it’s how I wrote about it. It’s just out there now. I had to take control of the story. I wanna close the chapter on it.”
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Heather wrote in her book that the black eye exposed the “dysfunction” in her friendship with Jen. (Jen is currently serving time in prison for her involvement in a telemarketing scheme that defrauded victims over the age of 55. She is set for December 2027 release.)
“A black eye was nothing compared to the emotional torment I felt trying to navigate that friendship,” her book reads. “Lisa Barlow said it best: Jen Shah gave all of us a black eye every single day. She wounded us with her lies, with her crimes, with her erratic behavior both on and off screen. But we felt stuck with her, and we loved her. As strange as that sounds, Jen sucked all of us in, especially me.”
Discussing the black eye specifically, Heather admitted she was “ashamed” that she had “gotten blackout drunk” and allowed things to escalate.
“I was scared at what might happen if there was evidence that Jen had caused it intentionally. I didn’t want to admit to myself or anyone else that it might’ve been intentional, because it was too humiliating,” she wrote. “And the truth is, Jen was so out of control that nothing she did ever really felt intentional, just random acts of f—ing violence at every turn.”
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She continued, “But more than anything, I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed that I had drunk so much that I couldn’t remember getting hurt; I was embarrassed that I had ridden so hard for a woman who didn’t deserve it; and I was embarrassed that I had been vulnerable enough to let something like this happen in the first place, much less in front of the cameras.”
Heather told Us that RHOSLC fans, and her book readers “deserved” to hear her side of the black eye story. Putting the story in her memoir also allowed the Bravo star to jumpstart her healing process.
“It helped me to understand everything that went down with the black eye and with Jen by writing about it,” she explained to Us. “I guess writing is my own version of processing it and figuring it out. I’m hoping that I can write in a way that’s entertaining and titillating for the readers because it’s really the process that I love doing the most that I work through all of my stuff with.”
Good Time Girl is out now.
