A/N: I recommend you listen to the following songs while reading this chapter.
-These Dreams by Heart
-Love Club by Lorde
-Atréve-Te-Te by Calle 13
-Angels by Chance the Rapper ft. Saba
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"So did you hear back from Topanga's law firm?" Maya's grandmother, Elizabeth, asked.
Maya nodded. "Yeah, I start my internship next week." she replied.
Elizabeth nodded. "Good. See? If you were under my guardianship, you would be guided in the right direction more instead of being with your mother in that horrid—"
"Grandma, stop." Maya cut off with a sigh. "That's my home and your daughter and my mother you're talking about."
Elizabeth shrugged. "So? You really expect me to believe that place you live in is any good? There are gangs and violence and crime and it's poor. How do you expect yourself to get ahead in that Hispanic neighborhood?"
Maya shook her head. "It's taught me a lot and I love it. It's my home and the people there are incredible. I'm glad my mother raised me there." She defended.
Elizabeth chuckled. "Katherine could have been living in an apartment in the Loop with a high-paying career." She began the same rant Maya heard every time Maya would visit her grandmother. Maya took out a pen and began doodling on the backs of her hands, barely listening to her grandmother speak. "But no, she had to run off with your good-for-nothing father. All he did was get her pregnant and then bail when he was done with being a father." Elizabeth shook her head. "Now she works in a hotel as a cleaning lady—embarrassing!" Elizabeth scoffed. "My daughter...a Clutterbucket...a cleaning lady."
Maya only hummed, finishing up her doodle of a dragonfly as Elizabeth took a sip of her tea before running a hand through her graying, ginger hair. "Maya, will you stop writing on your hands!" she exclaimed, snatching the pen away from Maya. "I told you to stop with that art foolishness. If you plan to be anything in life, then you need to begin training to be a lawyer. Art will only deter that and I will not make the same mistake I made with your mother with you."
Maya sighed. "I was just doodling. I told you I'm not doing art anymore." She mumbled.
"Don't mumble. You know I can't stand that." Elizabeth said as she reached for her checkbook and began to fill it out.
Maya nodded. "Sorry." She said clearly, crossing her arms as her grandma continued to speak to her and Maya half-listened.
Now it could be inferred that Elizabeth Clutterbucket was a horrible woman, but she wasn't—not completely. At least Maya liked to think so since her grandmother gave them monthly checks to help pay the bills and for Maya to save some money for college.
Elizabeth simply had different dreams for Maya's mother, Katherine. A different life. A better one. However, life had a way of changing a person's plans. And Elizabeth was not content with the change of plans Katherine had when she dropped out of college to run off with Maya's father.
Katherine was in love.
And that love was fleeting, temporary, and then gone. Love interfered with the life Katherine could have had which is why Maya did not want to have anything to do with love.
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Like the Back of My Hands (Rilaya)
Fanfiction"There are dreamers and there are realists in this world. You'd think the dreamers would find the dreamers, and the realists would find the realists, but more often than not, the opposite is true. See, the dreamers need the realists to keep them fr...
