Black Rainbow by J.J. McAvoy

from sight.
    “Whether or not you like it Selene, I’m your legal guardian, and that sort of makes me your mom and your sister. When you turn eighteen, you can pierce whatever body part you like, but until that day, I don’t want to see another piercing or hear about it.”
    “You sound more and more like her every day.”
    That hurt.
    “That was low… even for you,” I muttered.
    She made no reply as she threw herself back unto the couch.
    “Turn of the lights when you’re done,” I told her as I walked away.
    Picking up my things, I dragged myself into my room. Falling onto my bed, I reached into my purse looking at the napkin that Levi had given me during our week together.
    One free rant.

LEVI
    “ Congrats on the win. You didn’t even need me for this one,” Tristan said as he strolled into my office and placed his feet on my desk. He was the only person who could get away with doing that shit.
    “For some reason, it almost feels like I didn’t even do anything to earn my win.” I said.
    “Well, that makes it even sweeter,” Tristan said. “Work smarter, not harder,” he reminded me.
    “I guess.”
    “Dude, seriously? You have to get her out of your system man, it’s been two weeks already and you’ve spent more time thinking about the time that you were together, than when you were actually together.”
    “I’ve tried! Don’t you think I’ve tried? It’s her damn fault, and she knows it too. She told me she was going to ruin all other women for me, and she fucking meant it! I picked three women up and I couldn’t even bring myself to leave with them.”
    “What was wrong with them?”
    “They weren’t her!” I shouted at him as though it should have been obvious. “They laughed at all the wrong times, and they couldn’t even hold a conversation.”
    “Please remember you’re comparing them to an Ivy League educated female, whose mother was a year away from being nominated to Supreme Court judge.”
    “You know?” I asked.
    I hadn’t said a word about that to anyone. I wondered who else might have known about Ms. Cunning’s family history.
    “Yeah, thanks for keeping that a secret, you prick. I nearly lost my cool when she said that I used to work for her mother.”
    She was telling people now? Well at least that was one less thing holding her back. She had a royal flush in her hands, and she wasn’t playing any of her cards. If she wanted to make it, she had to stop treating her advantages as though they were handicaps.
    “Is she anything like her mother?” I had never met The Shark, but that wasn’t for lack of trying.
    “The world cannot handle another Margaret Cunning. She was a genius… and such a cutthroat bitch, that people’s heads rolled right off their shoulders as she walked by. I don’t even know how to describe that year of my life. If you can make it six months with The Shark —”
    “You can make it anywhere,” I finished for him.
    He nodded, as he grabbed a Snickers bar out of my desk. “I don’t think she was on good terms with her mother though,” Tristan said, as he tore open the wrapper and took a bite.
    “Who?”
    “Thea. At the bar I gave her my condolences for her loss, and she told me not to, because her mother was a horrible person. I don’t know what that was all about, but most people tend to not speak ill of the dead, especially if that person is their own mother.”
    “Yeah?”
    It was all I could think to say.
    So what was her story? The more I thought about it, the less it made sense. She was living in her mother’s old house, but she didn’t have any photos of her anywhere. She never brought her up, and the one time I did, she was ready to bite my head off.
    Why did Thea hate her mother? And if she hated her so much, why was she following in her footsteps?
    No matter how many times I turned the story over in my mind, I couldn’t make sense of it. Thea Cunning was a true woman, and like a true woman, she was an enigma wrapped up