Hello peeps, it's me again. I haven't updated my stories in forever. Even though I promised I would finish Impossible Heartache, I have found myself to have abondoned that story... Whoops! I actually did write the new chapter, but I wrote it in different parts on different computers and I just never had the desire to put it all together in one piece and post it on here. Maybe I will if people still seem to be interested in it!
Oh well, anyways, here's a new story which was stuck in my mind for a while. This is just the first chapter, written from Santana's POV. I want to make clear that this will be a Brittana story, even though that might not be shown in the first chapter. I'm working towards it. So please read, comment, follow, review, favorite, reply, etc, etc.
Let me know what you think!
Parental Issues
Never in your life did you feel like a grown up and now suddenly, within a matter of days you're the parent of a four year old child. You don't even have time to grief.
You're dropping everything for her. Your entire life is thrown upside down by the bright blue eyes staring back at you in wonder and expectation.
You've never been so terrified in your life. Thinking back, your 24 years of life have been pretty boring and easy. You grew up without a father, but with a lively mother who could have counted for two parents. The two of you weren't always on great terms, but she was your mother and now she's gone.
And in place for her you got this four year old kid and a crazy load of money as a heritage.
It all started four years and nine months ago...
"A baby? You can't be serious mom, you're fourty years old," you laugh into the phone.
"I'm working less and I feel lonely since you moved out, Santana," your mother replies. "This is the perfect time for another baby."
"Fourty year old people who are lonely get a dog," you say incredibly. "Not a baby!"
"You can't change my mind about this mija," she says stubbornly.
"Who are you planning on getting a baby with? Do you happen to have a secret husban lying around that I don't know about?" You can't believe she's doing this. Or actually you can. It's so typically your mother. She always has the craziest impulses that you can never talk her out of.
"I'm not talking about making a baby, Santana, I'm talking about adoption!" she says happily, as if it's the best idea she's ever had.
Oh great, just great. Your mother is planning on adoption some random sad child from some far away country to make her feel good about herself.
You sigh and rub your hand against your forehead. "We're talking about a child here. You can't just get rid of it like you could with a dog when you get bored of it, mom. Please just think this through," you say in patience.
Your mom scoffs. "You think I don't know that? I raised you, Santana. I'm not doing this out of boredom. I want a baby."
You groan at her stubbornness. "Why would you even think they would let a single fourty year old woman adopt a baby?"
"They let anyone with a little money adopt a baby nowadays." You hear her cough softly into the phone before she adds, "even same sex couples."
You clench your teeth and tighten your grip on the phone. You're not going to start this argument again. Your mother never understood your sexuality, which she makes sure to remind you of with not too subtle comments every now and then.
"Would you really want a child to grow up with such an old mother?" you say sharply into the phone.
"Fourty year old women still get children all the time, mija." Her voice has that calmness and certainty over it that makes you know that she has made up her mind.
"You will be dead even before you can even have grandchildren," you grumble, yet again referring to her old age. As a matter of fact, you know that fourty isn't that old to have children in this society. You just can't agree with her adopting a baby yet.
"Well there's always you. Who knows, maybe you'll raise a kid once."
And you would. You just never thought it would all turn out this way.
You just managed to get out of your wet coat when the doorbell rings. You sigh and saunter towards the door. That better not be Quinn or Kurt deciding to come over to 'make you dinner' as an excuse to plunder your kitchen. Damn freeloaders. Or worse, Rachel coming over for a karaoke night.
But no, when you open the door, it's even worse. It's your mother with an excited grin plastered on her face. You groan and turn around, leaving her to let herself in while you slomp down on the couch.
"I have great news!" she yells and she even makes an excited little jump. When your only answer is another groan, she sits down next to you. "Hard day at work?"
"Yeah," you sigh. "Just more shit with Sam."
"I'm telling you, that boy likes you, Santana," your mother says knowingly while rubbing your leg.
"Well mom, that boy is my boss and if is interpetation of 'like' is burdening me with loads of paperwork, he can like me a little less." You ignore her silent meaning of trying to set you up with a boy once again. "So what's your news?" you ask to change the subject.
She grins again and claps her hands happily. "I met the mother!" she says and immediately jumps into her long story. "She's beautiful, Santana! She's really smart and healthy. She's the same age as you are. I'd say she would be a great mother if she wasn't so god awfully poor. It's so brave of her to do the responsible thing and give her child up for adoption. I can tell it's going to be a beautiful baby. And the father-"
"Yeah okay I get it, it all sounds great," you cut her off. "So you're actually going through with this?"
"Of course I'm going through with this, Santana. When have you ever known me to change my mind?"
Emilia Lopez, Mia for short, was born a short five months later.
Even though you might have not agreed with your mother's decision at first, your perspective on that certainly changed when you first got to meet the little girl. Before you met her, you never understood what made babies so special, but now you do.
"Do you want to hold her?" your mom asked you with a warm, serene smile on her lips.
You were excited and scared at the same time as you eyed the little bundle of blankets in your mother's arms, but didn't decline. Soon she was pressing the small person into your arms. She instructed you how to support her small head with your left arm and and hold her to your chest.
You knew nothing about babies, but it was pretty magical to hold this little, sleeping child in your arms. It was hard to believe that this tiny person would grow up to become a woman some day.
"Hey little Mia," you whispered softly as she opened and closed her mouth a few times in her sleep and moved her tiny arms a little in your direction.
"She seems to like her big sister," your mother grinned. She carefully stroked her index finger over Mia's soft cheek, who jerked a little in your arms and opened her eyes into slits, revealing bright blue eyes looking right up at you.
The same eyes that would look expectantly into yours only four years later.
"Santana Lopez?"
"Yes, that's me," you talk into the phone as you hastily scramble up your paperwork that it scattered all over your desk and organise it into a pile.
"Hello, this is Audrey Penn, Mia's teacher. Miss Lopez was supposed to pick her up from kindergarten half an hour ago, but she never came. I can't reach her on her phone, so I wondered if you could pick Mia up instead?"
You pause your work and sigh into the phone, thinking about how you're going to ask Sam to let you go early today. You're disappointed by your mother and reminded of previous times when you sat alone at school after all the other kids already left with their parents, but your mother didn't show up because she had forgotten the time.
"Of course, I'll come pick her up," you promise before you end the conversation.
You scramble up your stuff and make your way to Sam's office, hoping you can get out easily. After a few knocks you pop your head in the room, and simply say, "I'm off for the day. Family emergency."
"Santana," Sam answers, "you can't just leave during work time. You have paperwork to finish."
You sigh and open the door entirely before stepping inside.
"I'm sorry, but I really have to go. My mother didn't pick my sister up from school and-"
"I don't care what it is, your sister can wait. You have obligations here, you can't just leave," Sam tells you sternly.
You clench your fists by your sides and breathe in deeply. "Look, Sam. I promised I would pick her up. I have no other choice. My mother isn't there to pick her up, I'm the only family she has besides her."
You can see that your words are agitating him, because he straightens his tie and looks at his desk as he talks. "If you walk out of that door, don't you bother coming back."
"You're firing me?" you ask incredulously, raising an eyebrow at your boss.
"You're leaving me no other choice with this behavious of yours," he mumbles.
"Of course I'm leaving you another choice," you can't help but roll your eyes. "I promise I'll finish this paperwork, okay? I'll just do it at home. I have to go pick up my sister now." You walk towards the door and Sam doesn't stop you. "I'll see you tomorrow, " you say before you leave his office, throwing one last look at your gaping boss.
On the way to kindergarten you try to reach your mother's phone again without any success. You can't believe she's being so irresponsible.
When you park your car outside, you immediately spot the little girl with pigtails running towards you with her backpack shaking with every step. You greet her with a hug and a kiss on her cheek and she gives you a sloppy kiss back as she swings her arms around your neck and you lift her up.
"Hey babygirl, how was school today?" you ask as you open the back door of your car and set her down, safely securing her seatbelt.
"Good," she says as she throws her backpack on the seat next to her. "Why didn't mama pick me up?"
"I don't know, kid. Maybe mama is at work," you tell her, though you're almost sure she isn't. Your mom hasn't worked much since Mia was born. She doesn't need to either. She made most of her money before her thirtees by creating her own business with a friend. She earned more money in ten years time than some people do in a lifetime.
"Can we stop by Candyland?" she asks full excitement when you drive past the mall with the candy store.
You snort sarcastically and raise her eyebrows at her through the rearview mirror. "Mama would kill me if I gave you a sugar rush."
"What's a sugar rush?" she asks as she's distracted by the fogged up window and discovers it's the perfect place to draw things on with her tiny little fingers.
"It's when you have a lot of candy and you get really hyper," you explain as you carefully watch the road and occasionally watch Mia through the mirror.
"Does mama eat a lot of candy?" she asks curiously.
You chuckle at that. Your mom is always very energetic and you can see how Mia made the connection.
"I don't know. Maybe she is. She could be hiding a lot of candy for you!" you joke.
At that Mia sits up eagerly and leans forward, just able to touch your neck with her cold sticky fingers. "Do you wanna go search for candy with me?"
You drive past your mom's house and see that her car isn't parked in the lot, so you know she's not home yet. You continue driving towards your own house, a few blocks away.
"It will be Halloween soon. We can go trick or treating then," you promise her.
She looks satisfied with that answer and goes back to drawing on the window.
When your mother still hasn't let anything hear from her that evening and you ordered in a pizza for you and Mia, you're starting to feel worried. It doesn't make sense that your mother isn't picking up her phone or that she isn't here to take care of Mia.
You give Mia a piece of paper and a pen you find lying around as you walk into the kitchen to call around. You call some of your mother's friend that you know, but no one has heard anything from her. You almost want to call the police, but you remember that "it's not a missing person until the person has been missing for at least 24 hours" rule and decide against it.
Mia doesn't seem worried in the least. She occasionally asks you when your mother is going to pick her up, but you never give her a clear answer, because you don't have one.
When the clock hits 8:00 pm and Mia's eyes get droopy, you decide to change her into one of your smallest shirts that could easily pass for a nightgown and put her in your bed.
Your worry increases by the minute, but when you finally hear the doorbell ring, you jump up in relief. You can't believe she took so long and didn't even contact you. She better have a good reason for it, otherwise you are no longer going to play the 'happy daughter' part.
But when you open the door, it's not your mom like you expected it to be. Your heart sinks to your stomach when you see the people in uniform looking at you with eyes full of sorrow.
You don't know how you invite them inside and you don't hear their greetings. All you hear is when they tell you what you have been dreading this entire time.
"We're very sorry Miss Lopez, your mother was involved in a car accident earlier this afternoon. She was taken into hospital with severe injuries shortly after the incident. The Doctors tried their very best, but the head injury your mother sustained was too severe to save her."
"We're terribly sorry for your loss."
Never in your life did you feel like a grown up and now suddenly, within a matter of days you're the parent of a four year old child. You don't even have time to grief.
You're dropping everything for her. Your entire life is thrown upside down by the bright blue eyes staring back at you in wonder and expectation.
You've never been so terrified in your life. Thinking back, your 24 years of life have been pretty boring and easy. You grew up without a father, but with a lively mother who could have counted for two parents. The two of you weren't always on great terms, but she was your mother and now she's gone.
And in place for her you got this four year old kid and a crazy load of money as a heritage.
A month after the funeral, Mia living at your house still feels like a sleepover. You still feel like your mother can stop by and pick her up at any moment. You haven't had time to grief. You've been taking care of everything since the day she passed away, because there was no one else to do it.
You have no other family. It's just you and Mia now.
You take care of her the best you can, but you're no mother. At least your work experience helped you deal with all the paperwork that needed to be handled with, but the parental skills are missing.
You never expected to become the parent of a four year old kid at the age of 24.
Mia however, does seem to realize your mom is gone and won't be coming back. You went to the funeral, you held her hand as she cried, you sat with her as woke up from nightmares at night and you helped her make every drawing of your mother she wanted.
She asked you about heaven a couple of times, but you were never able to give her an answer that seemed right.
One day you picked her up from school, she took your hand and told you, "Mama is up in heaven watching over us. She's happy there and she'll be happy to see us happy, so you have to remember to smile, Santana."
And from that day on you did remember to smile. You smiled for Mia, and you smiled for your mother. You smiled because that was the thing that made everything hurt a little less.
The times when Mia accidentally slipped up and called you "mama" were the worst. You could see her eyes gloom over with sadness at the realisation that her mother was gone over and over again.
But the two of you managed. You quit your job to take care of Mia and lived off your mother's heritage, which was more than enough for the both of you. On some days, the two of you actually had fun. It was hard not to dwell, because both of your lives changed completely because of your mother's death, but it wasn't hard to have fun together.
You played games, watched movies, did each other's hair (you once ended up looking like Willow Smith) and sometimes she asked you to tell her a story about your mother.
After every story you told her, both of you seemed to accept her death a little more. It became easier. You taught her things about your mother that she hadn't been able to learn yet. Even though she was only four years old, she became your best friend.
Quinn, Kurt and Rachel came over occasionally to hang out or check on the both of you, but for the two of you, they felt like outsiders. They didn't understand the special bond that the two of you had created.
"You're starting to talk like a four year old," Quinn says to you, to which you only shrug.
"That's what you get when you spend all your time with a kid. You need grown ups around you, San. When are you coming back to work?"
"Mia will turn five in half a year. When she goes to primary school, she'll have longer days. I can come back then," you answer as you watch Kurt braiding Mia's hair. "If Sam even let's me come back, that is."
"He's been a real bitch since you left."
"Hey," you softly smack her arm, "no swearing in front of children."
"Woa," Quinn says with an amused look on her face. "She raised you well," she jokes as she gestures towards Mia.
You grin and roll your eyes before the doorbell rings.
"None of you better have invited Rachel," you warn as you stand up to open the door.
"I love Rachel!" Mia jumps up in excitement, to which Kurt immediately sits her back down before she makes him ruin her hair.
When you open the door, it's certainly not what you expected to see.
In front of you is standing a nearly exact replica of the child giggling in the other room. A blonde, tall woman about the same age as you in looking back at you with a nervous smile. You need no introduction to know who she is. You would know it just by looking at her eyes.
But what was Mia's biological mother doing on your doorstep?