Memphis Garrett went into Big Brother: All-Stars with a girlfriend at home and now has a new one just over a month after leaving the show.
Just days ago on Dec. 1, the 37-year-old restauranteur and reality TV star confirmed to E! News that he is dating former fellow contestant, Christmas Abbott. Now, in a newly aired Reality Steve Podcast interview, Dominique Scalise, the woman he was dating before and while on the show, has shed new light on how everything transpired between her and Garrett behind the scenes.
"I wasn't completely surprised by the relationship," she told Reality Steve of Garrett and Abbott together. "I left Fort Lauderdale I want to say about four weeks ago, about a week after he got out of the show. And when he left, we kind of like just said we were gonna go our separate ways and take some time, and then he reached out to me last week and said, 'Hey, Christmas was in town and some pictures might surface, and we went out and we were drinking and people saw us in bars and I just wanted to give you a heads up.'"
At the time, she gave him "the 'I don't really give a s--t' response." Days later, screenshots flooded in to her phone of reports confirming his new romance.
"It was kind of a shock to me because it more so sounded like, 'Hey, we were at a bar drinking and some fans saw us and took some photos,' which I already knew about because I saw them on Instagram," Scalise explained. "But never did he say, 'Hey, the weekend she got out here, we set up a photo shoot, did a bunch of interviews...and all of that will be coming out this weekend.'"
It was a startling sequence of events for the Chicago native, who has known Garrett for six years, started dating him after he reached out to her around the start of quarantine early this year and had been living with him and his son, River, in Florida up until just recently.
"Before he left [for the show], he asked me to move in. He was like, 'By the time I get back, if I end up doing this in the long run, I hope that you're moved in here when I get back,'" Scalise alleged. "And that kind of was the plan. When he left, he was like, 'My house is your house, and I'd like you to spend most of your time here.' I was gonna take a job in Chicago, and he was like, 'You know, I really don't feel comfortable with you taking this job in Chicago,' and that's when I agreed to help out with [his] restaurant. I mean, he wasn't paying me or anything. I was just doing it as what any normal girlfriend would do."
On the show, Garrett referenced her several times. But, some fans also suspected that he and Abbott had kissed behind a sheet toward the end of the season, which Scalise denied. After he was eliminated and sent home on Halloween weekend, "he was great the first couple days," Scalise said. "He said, 'I'm gonna stay off of social media. I'm not gonna get into this. I'm gonna be in the moment. I'm gonna hang out with you. I'm gonna hang out with my son.' And it was great. He did that for three days, and then it was kind of the minute that he got back on social media, I saw, like, everything in him change."
She claimed he was upset about negative social media comments and that he didn't gain more followers. Scalise further alleged he began talking to lawyers and public relations pros and thinking about how to turn his time on the show into future projects, which Scalise said she agreed with and was a big point of him going on the show.
Now, she feels duped. "To come out of this and just see them downplaying this and talking about me like I wasn't that important of a part of his life, it's upsetting and not in a sad way," she told Reality Steve. "I feel he tricked me. I thought he was a completely different person than what I'm seeing right now."
"Memphis went into the show saying, 'I'm a business man and I look at everything as a business deal,'" she continued to claim about her ex, "so that's all I can say from my standpoint from how I'm looking at it."
But, don't worry about her. "I feel zero sadness. I feel no jealousy whatsoever," she assured. "The last week, [I] feel like I've been in the best place that I've been in in a very, very long time."