Page 1 of Filthy Boss

Chapter 1Milly

"Just tell me if I'm crazy."

"You're not crazy," Dez pauses for just a beat too long. "Just mixed up."

"Do you ever zone out, or take a nap during these sessions?" I ask her and resist the urge to contort myself to look at her. She sits in a chair and has me lay on a couch. I can't see her, I talk to the ceiling or the window mostly and she's a floating voice. She's like my conscience, not a person. She must have picked it up from Freud, but before I can totally derail our session and ask, she answers.

"Sometimes."

Without the face I can't tell if she's joking. She might be bored or might be suppressing a grin- her voice gives nothing away. But I picture her fighting back a smile.

Dez is my psychiatrist and swears I'm not crazy, but she did prescribeme crazy pills- a white one for anxiety, a red one for insomnia, and these green ones that I don't what they're for, but they make me not care about anything, like when my alarm clock wakes me on a Sunday and I just unplug it and wrap the blankets tighter and fall back asleep.

She's sending me mixed messages on the crazy.

I'm seeing her once a week and paying $150 per session- not per hour because the hour is only 50 minutes- because I can't tell if I have the greatest job in the world or the worst: I get paid to do nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

And it’s driving me crazy.

I do Sudoku, and the crossword, sometimes the jumble, but I hate when I can't solve one word and have to wait a whole day to get the answer, so I avoid the jumble unless I get to the end of the internet or YouTube bores me or I don't ride the elevator with Mr. Lavender Shaving Cream and fantasize about him all day.

It feels strange to see him here in this office. He’s never been a problem. He’s the green pill. Or his dimples are the green pill. He was probably an unhealthy fantasy that I should bring up here, but I don’t want to.

He disturbed me in a way that I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad- but it was something.

When I stood silently in the elevator next to Ty Dalton, he was always polite and maybe not friendly, but not unapproachable either. He had an air of authority, a calm self-assurance. He was a big man, broad- shouldered, tall, his body fit and powerful. His eyes made me shiver a little when they weren't smiling. Charming or not, he was drop-dead gorgeous with just that spice of menace to his look that made him intriguing. Like you wanted to write a book about him and uncover the curiosity, maybe bottle it, sell it and get rich.

I hadn’t seen him for days, but his coal black hair and bold green eyes and sullen sensuality of a mouth floated up before me. His body was like a sleek Arabian race horse, the sort people like him pay millions for and never race, just put him out to stud. Big and powerfully muscled, and thank God for his tailor and the snug fit of his suits. Especially the great care it must take in the pants which outlined one of the dozens of reasons for his confidence, and maybe it was indecent of me to stare so much, but someone had to appreciate that wonderful tailor’s hard work.

It usually took every ounce of my willpower to not appreciate his tailor too much. It felt like at any moment I might lose whatever sanity I had left and do something that would rightfully get me arrested. That was his disturbance and most days it was the best thing that happened to me.

I passed our moments in the elevator with my body in a slow simmer, a currentracing along every nerve, settling into an odd, tingling heat in the pit of my belly.I wanted to slide my fingers under his stiff colorful shirts, trace the muscles of his shoulders and feel his heart beat under my fingers. Kiss that hard mouth and soft dimples senseless.

But of course I never did.

Aside from exciting elevator days, my biggest problem is usually whether to take the green pill or one of the others, or instead bring one of my toysto work- the bullet or lavender Lou, or the magic wand.

Pills and toys don't mix.

Ordinarily I 'just say no,' and spend my time following the endless black hole of cat videos on YouTube or the newspapers' crossword and Sudoku, or sometimes some soft-core porn and lavender Lou.

Other times the anxiety is through the roof and I swear I'll be found out. I imagine the police will show up and accuse me of stealing, embezzling, misappropriation, fraud, crimes of moral turpitude that will follow me around for the rest of my life and disqualify me from being a bank teller, a cashier at the grocery store, maybe even a waitress- any job that handles money.

And it never goes away.

The internet taught me all ofthis. Apparently if you have the time and a tendency towards being neurotic, any problem you have is exactlylike having a headache and going to WebMD. Your head doesn't hurt because you're tired or you didn't drink enough water or you're suddenly addicted to caffeine.

It's always a brain tumor.

When I start readingWikipedia and legal cases and statutes and think about the sort of jobyou have totake if you can’t get hired as waitress or a cashier- that's when I take the green pill.

"I should just find another job, but I'm trapped."

"No, you just feel trapped," Dez corrects me.

"And I just feel like my bank account won't last for two months without this job. If I start feeling like there’s another 0 at the end of my balance will the bank feel like I’m right and not close my account?"Never mind send a quarter of the check home every month. No wonder I’m nuts- I’m 23 and support a family.

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