Scott
The shift doesn’t happen all at once. Everything hasn’t magically stopped hurting after Harrison proposed.
My dad hasn’t had a sudden change of heart where he calls to tell me he was wrong.
And the grief of realizing the people who raised me might never fully understand who I am still catches me off guard some days.
But little by little, I’ve stopped feeling like my entire life is balanced on a fragile edge.
And a lot of that has to do with Harrison.
Because he stays.
He leaves half-drunk coffee mugs around the cottage and steals the blankets at night, and complains every single time I buy the generic version of peanut butter. Yet somehow all those tiny, ordinary things start replacing the fear I carried for most of my life.
Somewhere along the way, Harrison stops feeling like just the person I love and starts feeling like home, like every version of my future naturally begins with him in it.
By the time spring starts bleeding into summer, most of his things are already at the cottage anyway.
His records line the shelves beside mine. His boots sit by the front door. His shampoo is in my shower. Sometimes I catch myself saying our house instead of mine before I even realize it.
And every single time, it feels right.
Not perfect.
Not untouched by everything that happened with my parents.
But right.
My mom calls more often now. Our conversations are still careful, both of us circling around the topics we don’t fully know how to address yet. But they’re warmer than they used to be.
She asks about work, about the weather near the lake, and about whether I’m eating enough. Although she knows he lives here, Mom still hasn’t said Harrison’s name.
But she calls, and that matters.
Because the night I sat in my parents’ kitchen and told them I was in love with a man, I understood something instantly and painfully happened all at once.
The future they’d always imagined for their son was gone.
The version of me they thought they knew, the life they pictured me living, it shattered right there between us.
And for a while, I thought maybe that meant I had shattered too.
But I didn’t.
If anything, I finally became honest.
I still grieve parts of it sometimes. I still miss my dad in ways that are hard to explain when he’s technically still alive. Some days I think he’s angry. Other days, I think he’s mourning the son he thought he had. Maybe it’s both.
But somewhere along the way, I stopped believing love was something I had to earn by becoming easier for other people to accept.
I love Harrison.
I love the life we’re building together here by the lake. I love the future I see when I look at him. And for the first time in my life, I believe I deserve those things exactly as I am. Without reshaping myself to fit inside somebody else’s expectations.
Still, healing isn’t linear.
There are days I feel strong, and I think maybe I’m finally learning how to live with all of it. Other days, the grief catches me out of nowhere and drags me right back into that kitchen with my father refusing to look at me.
Because some wounds don’t reopen loudly, they ache quietly. Tonight, the ache feels sharper than usual.
I’m sitting on the dock with my feet hanging over the edge while the sun sinks low over the lake, the water glowing a deep gold beneath the fading light.
Harrison sits behind me, stretched out against one of the old Adirondack chairs with a beer in his hand and one leg nudging lazily against mine every few seconds like he needs the physical contact without even thinking about it.
We’ve barely spoken for the last twenty minutes. Not because anything’s wrong. Because this is what comfort looks like now.
Quiet without tension.
Behind us, the screen door creaks softly before slamming shut again. Then silence settles back over the water.
“You’re thinking too loud again,” Harrison says eventually.
I smile faintly without turning around. “Didn’t realize that was possible.”
“With you? Extremely possible.”
That earns a quiet laugh from me.
I lean back against his legs slightly, staring out across the lake again while the breeze moves cool against my skin.
“My mom asked if we picked a date yet.”
There’s a pause, then, “That sounds promising.”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
But even saying it out loud makes emotion claw its way out of the box I neatly packed it away in.
Six months ago, my mother couldn’t even say the word him without sounding like she was struggling to reconcile the man I am now with the son she thought she knew.
But she’s trying. Trying to understand the truth of who I am instead of turning away from it.
Now she’s asking about wedding dates.
Slowly.
Carefully.
But she’s trying, and that means the world to me.
Harrison sets his beer down beside the chair before leaning forward, his arms sliding loosely around my waist from behind.
“You wanna know something?” he murmurs against the side of my neck.
“What?”
“I think she loves you enough to keep trying, even when this is hard for her.” He pauses for a second before adding more quietly, “And honestly, Scott, that’s more than a lot of people get.”
The quiet certainty in his voice almost hurts. Because part of me still doesn’t trust good things to last long enough to believe in them completely.
“I know,” I admit. “I just…” I pause, trying to find the words. “I hate that it’s so hard for them.”
Harrison’s hold on me tightens slightly. “That doesn’t mean it’s hard because of you.”
I close my eyes briefly and lean back against him.
Logically, I know he’s right.
Emotionally, it’s different.
For a while, neither of us says anything. The lake moves quietly beneath the dock, soft waves brushing against the wood while the last of the sunlight turns everything gold around us.
Then Harrison exhales against the side of my neck. “My mom would’ve already started planning the wedding by now.”
I laugh quietly, the sound catching somewhere between amusement and emotion. “That sounds mildly terrifying.”
“Mildly?” he asks dryly. “Scott, she would’ve had color-coded binders.”
“That’s actually worse.”
He laughs behind me, and I feel some of the heaviness inside me ease just hearing it.
“She would’ve loved this place,” he says after a second, his voice quieter now. “The lake. The dock. She would’ve absolutely romanticized the hell out of all of this.”
“Tell me something about them I don’t know.”
A small smile pulls at his mouth after a second. “My dad cried during every movie.”
I laugh immediately. “No he didn’t.”
“He absolutely did,” Harrison says, grinning now. “Didn’t matter what it was either. Disney movie? Crying. Commercial about a dog? Crying. One time, he got emotional over a damn insurance ad.”
I laugh harder at that. Harrison’s smile widens as he watches me.
“My mom used to make fun of him for it while secretly crying too,” he adds quietly.
There’s so much affection in his voice when he talks about them that my chest aches with a deep sadness that I never get to know the people who made him who he is.
His parents should be here for this.
For the wedding planning spread across our kitchen table. The arguments over flowers neither of us understands, and the way Harrison keeps pretending he doesn’t care about the music while somehow vetoing half the playlist anyway.
They should be here to see him happy. To see him loved.
I think maybe that’s part of why it hurts so much, because I know how deeply they would’ve treasured this version of his life—the chapter where he gets everything he deserves.
“I hate that they don’t get to see this,” I admit quietly.
Harrison’s fingers tighten around mine. “Me too.”
The honesty in his voice settles heavily between us.
No pretending.
No trying to hide it or mask it as something other than it is. Just grief shared openly between us the same way everything else is now.
“We’re really doing this,” I murmur after a while.
A quiet laugh leaves him. “I’m pretty sure we’re past the point of backing out now.”
“I mean it.” I glance back at him over my shoulder. “Sometimes I still catch myself thinking this doesn’t feel real.”
His expression softens at my words. “I think that happens when you spend most of your life convinced you’re asking for too much,” he says.
The words hit harder than I expected because they’re true.
For so long, wanting this felt impossible. Not just Harrison, but all of it. Loving someone openly. Building a life together. Getting married at a lake house with string lights and too many candles because Harrison keeps insisting we need ambiance.
A future that actually feels like mine.
“I used to think I’d spend my whole life trying to make everyone else comfortable,” I admit. “Like if I just kept enough pieces of myself hidden, eventually it’d get easier.”
Harrison shifts behind me. “But it never did,” he says quietly.
“No. Because hiding doesn’t make loneliness smaller. It just makes it quieter.”
I stare down at our hands intertwined together in my lap, his thumb moving absently across my knuckles while the dock creaks softly beneath us.
“And now?” he asks after a moment.
I look back at the man sitting behind me, barefoot in a faded t-shirt, looking at me like loving me has never once felt complicated to him. And suddenly the answer comes easy.
“Now I think I wasted too much time believing love was supposed to feel harder than this.”
Something emotional flashes across Harrison’s face so quickly that it almost disappears. Then he leans forward and kisses me slowly, one hand sliding along my jaw.
The kiss feels familiar now.
Not uncertain.
Not fragile.
It’s home.
When he finally pulls back, he rests his forehead against mine and lets out a soft breath. “God, I love you.”
“I know,” I whisper. “I love you too.”
And sitting there wrapped up in Harrison while the last light disappears over the horizon, I realize something I wish I’d understood years ago.
The right kind of love doesn’t ask you to become someone else to deserve it.