"Don't go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to." - TLC (1994)

"Happy birthday, Beautiful," echoed her voice from the door.

Sweet and light like honey and rain, Mom's voice was a building symphony whenever she woke me up, but especially on this day. 

My eyes had yet to open. My blinds had yet to open. My legs had yet to close, but that didn't stop my mother from stepping her way into my room, feet as light as Dad's snoring,  to disrupt my sleep. "It's time to get up and begin a brand new day."

I grunted and threw a pillow over my head. "Is it that time of the year already?" I asked, muffled under the pillow, the sheets, my crushed dreams and goals. Even my mother's delicate tone could not drag me out of the slump that this day brought with it, like mayonnaise on a sandwich. 

"It is," Mom said. "A whole 365 days. Open your eyes and let's see which one it is this year." 

I didn't move. I could hear her tiny feet moving closer, like a car in the driveway or a ship toward an iceberg. The pillow was moved out of my face. "Let's go, Ashley," she said, singing my name in a broken tone. 

"Can you stop calling me Ashley," I barked. I sat up, eyes still squeezed shut, dry palms still covering them like lids on bottles, darkness engulfing everything around me. "It's embarrassing enough that I got teased about it in high school."

"That's your great-grandma name boy," Momma grunted and moved my hands from my eyes slowly. "Open them," she said. "You can't walk around with them shut all day." 

I sighed. Why haven't they invented virtual reality goggles yet? Like, they've got those stupid watches, but glasses that could make me see the world like how i want to? Come on, earth. 

"Open them, or you're going to work hungry," she said.

I groaned. Her cooking was ace and my cooking wasn't cooking, not by the broadest definition of the word.

So, I slowly fluttered my eyes to an open. The first thing I saw was a blurry face, a smile and a whole lot of nothing else. "Well?" Mom asked. 

I looked around my room for something familiar. Maybe something would click. But nothing. 

"Which is it," she asked. "red or blue?"

"Ummm," I mumbled, scanning the room, like I had lost my phone or buried treasure,  for anything that would tell me.

Red or blue? Blue or red? Roja o Azul? Azul o Roja?

Blacks and grays and shades of white met me, greeted me like old high school classmates that picked on me, but the reds and the blues in my room were shy, wall flowers, it seemed. In their hiding places, avoiding attention. 

Until I spotted the teddy bear. 

The frown on my face could sink ships, burn down cities, end lives.  "Blue," I said. I almost wanted to cry this time. 

Mom sighed and patted the middle of my hair like she did every year. Only this year, it didn't help at all. . "I know blue was your favorite color," she said. "Ever since Richie  gave you that teddy bear when you were nine." She ran her hands over my hair. "It'll be okay, Beautiful."

Every year since I was two years of age, I have been losing the ability to differentiate colors. Slowly, they all have faded into mixtures of blacks, grays and whites. And it happens every year on my birthday.

So, while other twenty-somethings get drunk or high on their birthdays, I stare at different objects in my room, waiting for one of them to fade away and be gone forever.  Only this time, just the though of losing blue had me asleep before 8:pm.

 I can no longer see orange or brown, I don't even remember how teal or maroon look anymore and now I've lost my favorite color. My Dad's favorite color. Blue. 

The doctor's have no idea what's causing it, and even if they did, surgery to correct it would be six figures, if not 7. So, I was doomed to a life of black and white.

"I've only got one damn color left," I said. I took the covers off of me and threw then near the hamper that sat next to my closet door. 

Mom stepped backwards and picked it up, folding it. "You don't wash no damn sheets around here," she said, her voice hardening.  She picked it up and placed it between her hands, cocking her hip to the side and pursing her lips, while her eyes go from narrowing to bulging, ad infintum. 

She has transitioned into the most fearsome creature on earth: The Black Mother. 

But a squeaky sorry has her melting again and she smiled, folded the sheet and threw it back at me. "Breakfast is downstairs, Beautiful." 

"Thanks," I sighed. 

"You've almost got enough saved to go to that fancy school you wan to," Mom said, trying her best, like she does every year to make me feel less like a piece of crap. (Like a plastic bag, floating in the wind, wanting to start again).

"I've got about enough for two years," I said. 

"Will it?" I asked her. "In exactly one year, I will lose the final color that I've got and my world will be filled with with grays and blacks," I moaned. "I can think of nothing worse."

"Why yo ass naked, boy?" Kenzie, big brother, professional asshole, semi-professional womanizer and amateur life-liver, said. "Ain't no one wanna see all that gay skin around here."

I rolled my eyes, pulled one of his braids, laughed when he yelped and snorted into my seat cross from him, diving into my plate. "Good morning to you, too," I sung.

"Whatever, you sissy," he mumbled. He looked at me. "You ain't seen a pair of white panties hanging around nowhere right?" he asked. He lifted up his hands and stretched them a bit apart. "They this big," he said, stretching from one side of his cheek to the other. "They white and have pink hearts on 'em."

"No," I said. I blinked. "So....you wear panties how often?" And I was gay?

"Shut up, loser," he chided, barking. "They belong to Vanessa from down the block."

"Who?" I asked. "Isn't your girlfriend's name Robin?"

He stopped chewing. "What's your point?"

I shrugged at him, shaking my head. If my brother was anything (besides an idiot and a moron) he was dense. "That's called cheating."

"Cheating is just another word that women made up to constrict us men from living our lives," he said. He pointed the fork at me, chewing, choking. "You gay as a rainbow, so you don't know it."

"That's idiotic," I snorted. "Even for you."

"Shit, ain't you a feminist or some shit?" he asked. "Aren't you supposed to be, like, celebrating me for my diversification of the women I love? I like em all. Brown skin, dark skin, white, yellow, green, aquamarine." he smiled. "Once the cookie right."

"That's the sexualization of women and it's offensive," I said.

"Pansy," He said. He stood up and carried his empty plate to the washer. "What color was it this time, anyway?" he asked, swallowing what was left of his grits and tuna.

I frowned. He wasn't facing me, but I knew he knew I was frowning. "Blue."

He nodded slowly. "Well, it had to happen sooner or later," he said. He spun around and sat on the counter. "You can pick a new favorite color or something."

"I've only got red left," I said.

"Well, then red is your new favorite color. Unless you like grey and black." Then he smirked. "I see how you be looking at my boy, so maybe your gay ass do like black."

I don't think my face could have burnt any hotter. "I don't know what Dennis told you, but I'm not interested in him."

Kenzie snorted. "Your lightskint ass is a horrible liar," he said. "You know Dee gave you the D, so stop acting like you ain't enjoy it."

The doorbell rang and saved me from any other future embarrassment. It rang again and again and again and it became obvious who it was.

Kenzie rolled his eyes. "Crazy chick," he mumbled and headed toward the front door.

A few yelling noises later and an intense spree of what sounded like kissing, followed by more arguing and maybe glass shattering, Vanessa walked in in her work clothes - Accountant - and propped herself up on the table. "Your brother is a certified, Wiz Khalifa looking fool," she said. "I don't know why anyone would date him."

I stared. "You are?"

She glared. Her makeup looked bright from how high the grays were on her face. "I'm only in it to see how long I'll go before I cut his neck off with a butcher knife."

I smiled. "Can I watch?"

She laughed, snorting. "I don't see why not."

Reece's POV

"Look, I'm sorry your mom has cancer, or whatever, but this job doesn't care about anything of that," I said. She was using up all my Kleenex for God's sake. "My people will be in contact."

"I have mouths to feed," she cried. "How will my children eat? I said I was sorry."

I blinked. "That...sorta seems like a you problem." I faked a smile and pulled away the Kleenex box. "Um, have a good day...or life or..whatever."

Then she cried some more and went on about her child Tessa, or Denise or something and I had security help her out of the room.

I sighed. Firing people was hard work. Like, they cried everywhere and I could never stand the wailing of the less fortunate.

I'm on food stamps. My kids need to eat. Affordable healthcare! Affordable healthcare!

Like Jesus, get a better paying job or something.

The door to my office creaked open and Lola stuck her head in, glasses hanging from her neck. "So?"

I shrugged, biting on the one of the legs of my Ray Bans. "So what?"

Lola  opened the door and stepped in, papers tucked into her right hand and her left hand glued to her waist. "Did you let her go?"

"Yes," I grumbled. "I did my duty as the new CEO of RED Corp." 

She nodded and clacked her way to my desk, resting those papers on it. "You do realize you're going to have to hire a new head of Investigative Journalism for the inner city."

"I know," I groaned. This was hard work. No wonder my dad went crazy. "Can't one of the people already here do it?"

"No," she said, rolling her eyes. "No one here is qualified, and after the fiasco with the lady you just fired, who called a black man Chris Brown and then accused him of Bill Cosbying his way into some white girl's underwear, I don't think it should be any one here?"

I raised a brow. "Why not?" I asked.

Lola, my assistant, sat on the edge of my desk, because to her, that office was as much hers as it was mine. "Do you know how many employees you have?" she asked. I shrugged my shoulder. "450 employees. Do you know how many of those employees are white people?"

"Half?"

"442. Three of them are support staff. Three more are unpaid interns and the last one is staring you in your white ass face," she chided.

"I rebuke that," I said. "Are you accusing my firm of being whitewashed?"

"No, I'm accusing your firm of being as white as special blend bread," she barked. "It might as well be early 40's Germany in here." She got off of the desk and picked up the Time magazine with me on it as the cover. She rolled her eyes and threw it at me. But I caught it. She rolled them again. " And your dad made the mistake of hiring a white woman to report on black people issues."

I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't see the problem."

Lola blinked.  "That's like asking Taylor Swift to write an essay about the complexities of gangsta rap."

I snorted. "We're a conservative news station," I reminded her. "What do you expect, really?"

"For you to at least pretend you care?" she said. "It's about PR. This is 2016, Reece, everything offends everyone and if those bloggers get a whiff of the fact that you hired a white woman or GOD FORBID, a man, replaces ole Paula Dean-Lite, then you are in for a public relations disaster equivalent to Pearl Harbor."

I ughed. "Look, find me some people," I said. "Call around. I'll interview them and choose one of them."

Lola folded her arms over her chest. "This isn't a game, Reece," she said. "You have to begin to bridge the divide your father built between you and us," she told me. "

"Yeah, yeah," I grumbled. "Now get on with it please?"

Kenzie put on enough clothes to drop me to work this morning while talking my head off about how good Vanessa's spit shine game was. As if I was even semi-interested in the excellency of some girl's oral game would be.

I'm gay. Not interested. It's like asking a vegan if he wanted ham. Like, I don't know, maybe. Bad example. Ham's the deal.

I work for Urban Life & Times, which was a mid-sized news organisation that catered to the black community basically. I was the right-hand of our editor-in-chief as well as the advice columnist.

Which sounded fancy at the time I took the job, but after a while, I figured out the most of the people who wrote in weren't exactly looking for the kind of advice I could really give. Or wanted to give. Like, girl, ask your gynecologist about that rash, not some gay twenty year old in Brooklyn.

The office was drumming this particular morning. Last night, a man was robbed at gun-point and killed over in Alabama. He was a black visitor and we were sure it would be getting front news coverage. 

It was the kind of stuff I wanted to cover, be at on location but didn't have the chance to since I was stuck in advice Hell. 

The office, physically, was like a newsroom.People walking up and down. While a lot were black, we weren't exclusively so. We accepted anyone who wanted to help us get our news out there. 

Just as I got to my desk, in the middle of the room, Niko poured out the letters he had tucked in his hand so into my desk, and I watched as they poured out, like a drunken waterfall. 

Niko was head of human resource. Hair locked in golden (so he says) braids and a body fit more for modeling than office work. "You've got to answer all of these, so we can review them," he said. "You ever feel like this isn't going anywhere?" he asked.

"What isn't?" I asked, sitting down and picking up the only letter I could make out. The red one, adorned with hearts that were in another color I could no longer make out. Probably pink or something. 

"This entire thing," he said. "We've been a mid-sized news site for three years. When are we gonna move up or something?"

"It takes time," I said. "Rome wasn't built in a day."

"Shit, neither was Brooklyn, what's your point?" he grumbled. He sat down next to me. His eyes trailed the letter, and then his hands trailed it. "You lost blue today."

I nodded. "Yeah. Red's left, though."

"You hate the color red," he said. "Bright, annoying. Means love and passion."

"It also means wrath, which is what I need to answer these letters," I answered. " Wrath and a lot of red wine. I tore the seal and took out the thing.

I stared at the letter. "Am I really expected to answer these without laughing?" I asked. 

"Yup," Niko said. "But before you start this, we're having a meeting in the conference room." 

I groaned. "What did I do this time?"

He shrugged. "It's your birthday isn't' it?" he said. "Maybe there's a big cake in there waiting for you."

I doubted it.

I got up from my seat and followed Niko to the door. 

ERIKA BRIDGEWATER, written in caps and bold letters sat at the upper most center of it with the words 'Editor-In-Chief- in the center. 

I huffed as he opened it. The chatter inside immediately came to a squash when I walked in and Erika stood. 

Erika, the short and dark skinned girl with the short hair stood at the helm of the ship, head on the table, while the others sat. She smiled when she saw me. "Ashley," she greeted, "Glad for you to join us. Take a seat."

I did and Niko sat beside me. It was Erika, Niko, Susan and Pete in here now; her executive team. The ones who were here from the start three years ago when disaster engulfed our neighborhood. 

"First of all, happy birthday," she sang and the others chimed in afterwards in a conglomeration of tones and sounds that either felt rushed or just plain insincere. Not that they didn't care, but they knew I hated this day and also, I would assume more important matters sat in front of us. 

"We think we're about to make a breakthrough," Erika announced. "You are aware that RED Cor got a new CEO last weekend aren't you?"

I nodded. "That kid with the sexual appetite of a rabbit?" I snorted. "What of him?"

"Well," Pete said, the only white guy in the room, with his nerdy glasses and brown slacks, "yesterday night, Jasmine Applebees was caught on camera saying some pretty heinous things at a Hands For Hunger event in Upper State New York."

I shrugged. "I don't see how one thing relates to the other."

"Jasmine was in charge of The Minority Report, a show that RED created to seem more diverse in their programming," Susan, our senior most writer, said. She placed her phone on the table. "Here is Jasmine,last night at a banquet talking about black people," she said and pressed play on her phone. 

'THOSE PEOPLE WOULDN'T KNOW A JOB IF IT [EXPLETIVE] THEM ON THEIR [EXPLETIVE] HEADS. THEY ARE [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] AND THEIR MOTHERS ARE [EXPLETIVES] [EXPLETIVE] COW PEOPLE FROM THE STATE OF [EXPLETIVE] AND IF YOU ASK ME THEY SHOULD BE [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] THROUGH BEYONCE AND HER [EXPLETIVE] DISNEY CHANNEL [EXPLETIVE] AND FURTHER MORE [EXPLETIVE] THAT'S SO RAVEN [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] MORGAN FREEMAN [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] KFC [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] EXPLETIVE] OSTRICHES!'

I blinked.

"I got a call from my sister that works at RED Corp," Erika said. "This new CEO, Reece Red's, first real act as the leader of that company is to hire a new journalist for the company to replace Jasmine."

"We'd like you to apply," Pete said. "You've got the skill,you've got the drive."

I stared at each of them individually. Susan's smile, Pete's red cheeks, Erika's eyes. "Why would I want to be a part of that conservative, probably racist place?"

"To bring them down," Erika said. "if we can find even a shred of racism there, we report on it. We collect enough data there to do a full scale story and unleash it on the internet."

"I," I mumbled. "This...is a lot to consider." I looked at Pete. "Pete's white as fuck, why aren't we sending him?"

"Because for the first time in the history of the earth, being white actually is a problem for a straight man," Susan said. "RED won't hire a white person for this job. It's bad PR. They need someone black and since we can only fight one battle at a time, we need a black man to go in, as a black woman would probably not get the job."

"Yeah," Erika mumbled, sighing. "Fighting the racism, ignoring the sexism."

"One battle at a time," Niko said. 

"My sister has already worked her magic and you're the sole interviewee," Erika said. "All you've got to do is go down there, swoon him and you're in and we're in."

I swallowed. "You make this sound it's easy."

Erika snickered. "It will be."

"You know what this is really about, dont you?" she asked. 

My face tensed. "Yes."

"Is there anything you need?" Lola asked. "Before you meet your candidate who should be here any minute now?"

I've no clue how she got that candidate here so fast. No wonder why Dad kept her around. "A ton of weed and maybe a Margarita would be nice," I said.

She rolled her eyes. "How about some water." 

"Ugh," I groaned flailing in my seat. "Fine."

She nodded. "By the way, an Anna is here to see you."

I'm sure my eyes lit up. "Send her in," I said, laughing.

I looked at myself in one of the four mirrors on my desk, quaffing my hair and licking my lips.

The door reopened and Anna, my model sorta-but-not-really-girlfriend walked in. Shirt so short that it left so little to the imagination. God. 

"Baby," she cooed as she walked in, sauntering on the side of my desk and hopping onto it in front of me. "I haven't seen you all day."

"I know, babe," I said. "But duty calls."

She nodded and smiled. "Very nice office."

I shrugged."it's missing a few things."

"Like what?" she asked.

"Your portrait for one," I said. Buttering her u.

She instead, rolled her eyes. "You know lines like that don't work on me." She moved her flowing blonde hair out of her face and tied it back. "What have I told you about insulting my intelligence because I'm a spokesperson."

"You mean model?"

She smacked me on my forehead. "if I meant model, I would have said model." 

Anna was hellbent on proving model's weren't dense. She joined every feminist clique she could and always tried to better herself. She's enrolling in Harvard Law this coming Fall. 

"I've got to choose a new Minority Journalist," I told her.

Her face lit up."Really?" she asked. 

"Yeah," I said.I raised a brow. "You have any suggestions?" 

"Yes," she said and pointed toward herself. "I can." I snickered, but she wasn't. I stopped. "I've been interested in the plight of minorities since my  friend Sara's boyfriend got shot."

"Sara's boyfriend was black?" I asked.

"No, but...he had a few black friends, you know?" she said. "I've been to numerous equal rights protests and volunteered work wherever I could. I'd love to help here if I could."

I hmmmed. It could work. Anna was passionate about everything she did. She never really had any devious plots when she did anything. And working with my girlfriend also meant I could get some of that when i wanted to. 

"Let me just interview this kid and then decide," I said. 

She nodded just as the door opened and Lola came in with this amazingly cute kid with ludicrous hair. 

I always hated going into elevators . The lights were always too dull and it always went too dark for me. Especially when there wasn't any color to counter it.

If there were greens or yellows, the grays and whites would be a bit brighter. But when those whites and grays were just that, it always seemed darker than it probably was. 

Of course this guy was on the to floor. Going up on this elevator felt like it would take forever.

I drowned out the lazy elevator music with the Aaliyah songs I had recently synced onto my phone from Dee's laptop. 

When I got to the top floor, Lola was waiting on me in her white pantsuit and her hair swept to the side. Red lips and hazel eyes.  "He's waiting on you."

"I doubt that," I said. "He's not waiting on anyone." He's the spoiled rich kid that owned a big company, one f the biggest in America. He didn't have to hire me if he didn't want to. 

Lola opened the door and from the grays and whites, the burning red suit that I saw caught me off guard. 

There was a girl sitting with him. She was just fading into the background, but he - he stood out. It was as if he was on fire. So much so, that even his eyes gloved. For a split second, I thought all my colors had returned to me. But he looked that good. 

"Your 12 o clock," Lola said. 

I stepped in. The girl sitting with him caught up and rolled her eyes at me. Enemies? Already? Were white girls that eager to start a war? Did Taylor Swift and Katy Perry start something they can't stop?

She pushed passed me as she left, and the door closed. 

The boy looked up from her ass as she left long enough to turn back to me. "I'm Reece Red."

"Is that why you're wearing a red suit?" I asked. 

"No," he answered, snickering. "It's because I look damn good in it."

I fought rolling my eyes and sat down in front of him. The chair was uncomfortable, but that was always a trick these people used. To see how you'd adjust to it. 

"Where did you graduate from?" he asked, biting on the end of a pen and swinging lightly in his seat, eyes boring into mine with a coy smile. 

"I haven't attended any colleges as yet," I said, truthfully. Most people lie about those sort of things and I would have too, but God knows that this place is too big to that. I'm sure they had a room full of people just tracking every single employee's moves. 

"You're here for this position and you don't even have a degree?" he asked, sorting.

"Do you?" I asked. 

He blinked. "Do I have a degree?"

"Yes," I asked, polite on the outside, the rage of ten thousand suns on the inside. "There is no degree for blackness in college," I told him, I barked at hi with restrained fury. Already. God, did I really wanna do this? 

"But there is a degree for numerous social sciences," he said. "What makes me want to hire you over anyone else?"

"Did the last woman who held this position hold a degree in social science?" I asked, I inquired, I rebutted. "That didn't seem to stop her."

He dropped the pen, and the coy grin. "Work history?"

"School paper, currently Urban Life & Times."

"Is that..." he shrugged, "name supposed to mean something?"

"No, you asked me for my job experience and I'm giving it to you." I rolled my eyes this tie. "Look, I'm here because I have a passion for his thing. Because I know I'm capable of it and because you need me to do it."

He rolled his eyes too. "That's the same thing a contestant on American Idol would tell Simon, even if he just destroyed that Whitney Houston song." 

"That's offensive," I said and stood. "You're nothing but a spoilt, rich kid and you're seriously attacking me?" I huffed. "You've got to kidding me."

"And you're nothing but some theatre kid who thinks he can play in the big leagues. I'd hire you just to fire you!"

I spun around, threw over my chair and marched out the office. Lola stood up when she saw me. "So, how did it go?"

"He's dense, he's rude, he's arrogant and I hope his car slides off a snowy road two days before Christmas," I barked and left the floor, left the lobby and left that ignorant fool for good.