Page 22 of Heartless Boss
It’ll pass, you’re safe, you’re in the Bedford Hills neighborhood, not in his basement ...
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
I’m trying to gather my thoughts.
My mind won’t win; I won’t let it.
Keep running, switch gears, and focus on something else.
I love running like I love pussy and liquor.
I fell in love with running when I was in high school. Not to toot my own horn, but I was the best on the track team, which is how I scored a full ride to NYU.
I like the way my heart beats against my ribcage, and the way endorphins course through my veins, giving me that runner’s high.
God, I fucking love running.
I run to forget shit. Running isn’t helping me today.
I’m not about to blab my mouth to Hannah about me suffering from dissociation again. Because she’s going to dope me up on antipsychotics or antidepressants like she did when I first started therapy, and that shit had me feeling like someone took a spoon and scoop my soul out of my body.
I don’t want a repeat of that shit show.
It’s bad enough I float around like an empty vessel, but to take those drugs makes me feel alive as a vegetable.
No matter how much I fuck and drink, it doesn’t make me feel whole. It will take a shit-ton of glue to piece my soul together. So I run until my ugly-ass feet are bruised and blue, hoping to outrun my demons, hoping the rain washes away my sins.
PTSD made me its bitch five months ago, and I started relying heavily on Jack Daniel’s and tequila. I’ve always been a heavy drinker since I had my second drink of liquor when I was sixteen years old and I threw a house party when my ma went out of town for her job.
By the time I run home, the rain drowns me, and the sky’s weeping gray is depressing and sad. Whoever said that weather can affect your mood wasn’t lying.
I rush up the stone stairway of my sanctuary, made out of gray stones. I had it custom-built to look like a castle from the Victoria era. Gargoyle statues sitting on the roof, staring down at me.
Bile rises in my throat as I vomit in the expensive plants that I wasted thousands of dollars on, something Monique, my interior designer, made me buy. She thought it would make the bright colors of the plants pop on the gray landscape—whatever the fuck that shit means.
I type in the passcode on the pad above the brass knob and swing the door open. I strip my gray T-shirt and basketball shorts off and toss the wet clothes on the wooden floor.
My home is as depressing as a gravesite.
Fuck me, my feet feel like I’m walking on a thousand knives as I limp to the kitchen.
I grab the bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the top of the fridge and unscrew the lid, downing the burning liquor wincing as it hits my throat.
“He can’t hurt us anymore,” I mumble under my breath and drain the remainder of the bottle, then I toss it against the wall. It shatters into millions of pieces on the marble floor. “Fuck!” I yell.
When will it stop? The pain, the guilt of that night playing in my mind like a rerun-on TV.
I stare at the black wall as if the answer to my problem is written on it.
The buzz from my phone snaps me out of my stupor. I grab it and see a message from Gia.
Rainbow: Are you coming in today? You have a lunch meeting with Lilly Green at 12:45.
Lilly is a supervisor in the marketing department who annoys the shit out of me. She wants to ride my dick like a surfboard. No, thank you. I’m not interested in fucking my employees.
I fire off a text to Rainbow.
