The Biggest Bombshells Inside of Scheana Shay's New Memoir: From Questioning Her Sexuality to Phone Sex with John Mayer

For 11 seasons, Scheana Shay shared everything from marriage to divorce to friendship drama to her postpartum struggles. But the timing for a memoir? It never felt quite right for the Vanderpump Rules alum. That is until 2023, when she discussed it with her team. "Then it was like, what am I waiting for?" the 40-year-old reality star tells PEOPLE over Zoom from Los Angeles.

That conversation led to Shay's memoir My Good Side, out now via Grand Central Publishing. But truthfully, she had been contemplating what her first book might look like long before that. In fact, for roughly 10 years, the reality TV star had already been meticulously compiling chapter ideas, titles and stories.

While Shay doesn’t spare herself or others in the book — listing past celebrity paramours and dishing out reality TV tea — she does believe she could have gone into more detail. However, she was trying to be respectful of everyone featured in the book.

"I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus with this book," says Shay. "I'm trying to tell my truth and my story, and there are things I probably could have gone into more detail about, but I felt like I put everything in the book that I wanted to."

From how she discovered she had OCD to how she found out about Eddie Cibrian and LeAnn Rimes' affair, here are the biggest bombshells from her book.

"Naturally, I am a storyteller, and I tend to be long-winded,” she says. “So, how do we put 39 years of time into a book. What do we tell and what do we leave out?”

For Shay, the most challenging part of the book to write was chapter 16, which details her husband  Brock Davies' affair. “That was hard to put into words because putting it into words and deciding to put it in the book meant it all was real,” she explains. “And for almost two years, I completely buried that and didn't tell anyone.”

Shay Realized She Might Have OCD Due to Her Fixation on Instagram followers

Since she was a child, Shay had experienced early signs that she might have OCD — from organizing things, to jumping on different color titles, to making sure the volume was on a certain number. “It was just something in my head," she says.

However, it was her fixation on having 420 Instagram followers, an homage to her affinity for marijuana and a pattern people began to notice, that gave her an inkling that it might be something more. “Sometimes if an account gets deactivated or whatever, I would drop down to 419, and I would have someone message me like, ‘Oh, your following's at 419.’ I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to go follow Kim Kardashian or something.’ ”

Shay had noticed those “little quirks for years, but after she gave birth to her daughter, Summer Moon, in 2021, they magnified. “The intrusive thoughts were on a new level, and it was a part of my everyday,” she recalls, holding back tears. “It was every time I would read her a book or [put] her down for a nap.” Eventually, Shay received a diagnosis and sought treatment for her OCD with medication, therapy and EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing).

“I was going to the worst-case scenarios instead of enjoying those parts of life with [my daughter],” she says. “So, I felt like OCD kind of took the first couple years from me, but now I know I have the tools and I know what to look out for.”

Shay Decided Not to Share Brock’s Affair When It Happened to Protect Their Daughter

While Shay discovered Davies had an affair while she was pregnant in 2020 amid the fallout from Scandoval in spring 2023, she made the decision not to share it with the world. “I hadn't fully processed what had happened,” she says. Still, she believes it’s “absolutely fair” for people to question her decision not to share his affair at the time.

“I would just hope people understand, after reading this book, more of the context — and why I didn't share it,” she says. “It wasn't that I was even protecting Brock. I was protecting my daughter, and I was protecting our relationship before I was ready to reveal this to the world.”

Shay, who found out about the affair two months prior to Scandoval, was also concerned that if she revealed what had happened that people would think she was trying to take the narrative off of Ariana Madix. “I felt like I was being selfless by not sharing it,” she recalls.

Shay also wasn’t ready to share the news — and she wanted to do couples therapy off-camera with her husband. “I don't know that our marriage would've survived it had I revealed it then,” she says.

When She Began Dating Brock, She Was Questioning Her Sexuality with a Female Friend

When Scheana first started seeing Brock in 2019, she also faced an “inner battle” when it came to her sexuality. At the time, Shay had been questioning if she was bisexual, as she would hold hands and make out with a friend of hers she refers to in the book as DD. In the book, Shay writes that she was “concerned with what the VPR audience would think” and that people would think her feelings for this female friend were “fake.”

Because of the “spark” she felt with Davies, Shay says she didn’t “fully explore” that aspect of herself. “I think if it had been a few more months, maybe we would've taken things to another level,” she says. “But we were such close friends who drunkenly made out, would hold hands and go on our little dates.”

Shay believes her friend knew that her connection with Davies was undeniable. “I don't think either of us were necessarily ready to have the talk, like, ‘Okay, so what is this? Are we just friends who make out sometimes, or should we try and date?’ ” she recalls.

She Claims Her Romance with John Mayer Overlapped with Eddie Cibrian — and That the Former Allegedly Enjoyed “Phone Sex”

After initially meeting John Mayer in 2008 while she was working at his birthday event — and he was dating Jennifer Aniston — the pair ended up casually dating for six months. At the time, they weren’t exclusive, and that relationship, she writes, overlapped with the one she had with Cibrian, 52, with whom she also wasn’t exclusive. In the book, she reveals that Mayer “seemed really into phone sex.” “I was willing to do whatever he wanted,” she writes.

However, their romance was allegedly cut short after one of her girlfriends allegedly spoke to the tabloids about her and Mayer, 47. “Once it was public, he didn’t want to speak to me or see me anymore,” she writes.

Shay tells PEOPLE that “out of respect” for Mayer, she kept some details of their romance private. “I know him and Andy Cohen are very good friends, and I'm not trying to burn any bridges with this book,” she says. “I'm just trying to tell my truth and tell enough of it to give context.”

PEOPLE reached out to reps for Mayer for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

Andy Cohen Allegedly Handed Shay a Fake Court Filing from Rachel Leviss During the Vanderpump Rules Reunion

After Rachel Leviss issued a restraining order against Shay, alleging she punched her during an argument in March 2023 — which Shay denied happened — the pair still needed to film the Vanderpump Rules reunion. In order to not violate the restraining order, they needed to stay 100 yards away from one another, so there was a “carefully orchestrated” swap so that they both didn’t cross paths or appear onstage together. While she was allegedly onstage, Shay claims in the book that Andy Cohen gave her a piece of paper, which he said was a court filing “showing that Raquel was dropping the restraining order against me.”

However, Shay felt like something was off about it. After sending her lawyer a screenshot of the document and debriefing, she discovered it had “no legal significance” and that it was a “stunt.” According to Shay, she allegedly ripped the paper on-camera; however, the footage has never been seen.

A rep for Bravo claims the piece of paper presented to Shay was "not complete" but was the first step in dropping the restraining order.

PEOPLE reached out to a rep for Leviss for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

She Claims She Saw Eddie Cibrian Receive a Call from LeAnn Rimes While They Were Snowboarding in Mammoth a Month Before The Now-Married Couple’s Affair Went Public

Near the end of 2008, Shay had agreed to start seeing Cibrian again. According to the reality star, the pair went on a snowboarding trip to Mammoth in February 2009.

At the time, she claims that while they were sitting in the hot tub, she saw Cibrian receive a call from Rimes, who he allegedly noted had just starred in the movie Northern Lights with him. But roughly a month later, she was allegedly supposed to meet up with Cibrian when she received a call from his best friend who said he couldn’t come and that Cibrian’s affair with Rimes was slated to be on the cover of Us Weekly.

At that point, Shay allegedly wanted “revenge,” she writes, so a friend tipped off a tabloid claiming Cibrian had been at Shay’s apartment the night after his affair with Rimes came out. “Even though that detail wasn’t true, I didn’t care. I wanted him to burn,” Shay writes.

However, later, she allegedly was contacted by Cibrian and his friend and asked if she could “go on the record saying he’d never cheated on LeAnn with me.” According to her, she ended up signing a different document stating they had never “had relations” once his relationship with Rimes went public.

In retrospect, when asked if Shay believes Cibrian was technically cheating on her with Rimes, she tells PEOPLE, “I mean, I guess so, if you put it that way.”

A rep for Cibrian declined to comment to PEOPLE.

PEOPLE reached out to reps for Rimes for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

She Claims a Producer Confirmed that Lisa Vanderpump Knew About Her Affair with Eddie Cibrian — and Used It to Launch Vanderpump Rules

In her memoir, Shay recalls the beginning of filming Vanderpump Rules when she was asked by Lisa Vanderpump to serve Brandi Glanville — Cibrian’s ex-wife. As she recalls it, the restaurateur acted “shocked” when she explained her affair with Cibrian and how she knew Glanville, 52. However, Shay claims everyone at Villa Blanca, including Vanderpump’s daughter Pandora, knew about the situation. Ultimately, she suspected that the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star “wanted to keep her hands clean.”

Later in the book, Shay claims that a “polished producer” had recently confirmed that Vanderpump, 64, knew about her affair with Cibrian. According to Shay, the producer told her, “Lisa was worried that the Disney girl who had a connection to Eddie wasn’t going to participate.”

Shay writes that they were talking about her to her face. “In other words, outing Lisa and gifting me the one thing I’d always suspected—that Lisa knew about my affair with Eddie all along,” she writes. “And she used it to launch VPR.”