rise by Laurel Krown

Harlan woke before the sun, the room dim and cold, the kind of cold that stung a little before your body adjusted. Sundays meant fishing with his dad. He liked thinking of it as a father and son tradition, something consistent and grounding. His dad treated it more like an escape from everything and everyone, a chance to sit in quiet without having to talk or feel or answer to anyone.

He packed in silence, moving through the familiar motions, cooler first, then bait, rods, chairs, and the tackle box. He added a six pack of beer. His dad always drank while they fished, and he let Harlan drink with him too. Maybe it made him feel like he was raising a man. Maybe it made the silence easier. Harlan never asked.

He slung his jacket over his shoulder and stepped outside, the cold morning air hitting him in a way that loosened something in his chest. That was when the memory surfaced. Sharp. Sudden. Uninvited.

The afterparty.

He had not thought about it once until this moment. Not on Saturday morning during soccer drills. Not Saturday night when he studied. Not until the cold air, the fishing gear, and the thought of being stuck with his dad for an entire day cracked something open inside him.

Memory worked like that, quiet until a trigger set it loose.

He had not mentioned the afterparty to Jack or Damian. Shame made silence easier, even though he was not ashamed of the moment itself. It was the reaction afterward that twisted it inside him.

Jack would have noticed something was off and pushed gently, because he understood people in a way Harlan sometimes wished he did. Jack talked to his father about everything. School. Soccer. Girls. Doubts. Mistakes. His dad listened without judgment and guided him without force. Their relationship was solid in a way Harlan envied, though he would never admit it out loud.

Damian never had a father who stayed. He learned everything the long way around. To him, mistakes were just mistakes, not reflections of character. He would have tried to make the whole thing funny or survivable.

Neither of them grew up in a house like Harlan’s.

The Crestwell family looked perfect from the outside. Polished. Stable. A couple who seemed lucky and in love. But inside, cracks spread like spiderwebs. His parents fought whether the kids could hear or not. His father never hit his mother, but his voice could still land like a blow. The blame, the raised tone, the cold silences, those were wounds no one outside the house would understand.

So Harlan learned early that image mattered. Silence mattered. Control mattered.

And he learned never to talk about the things that threatened that image.

The afterparty had been simple. Stupid. Forgettable. Boys from the team brought alcohol. Someone suggested Pass the Card. One shot turned into three. Two laughs turned into ten. The room blurred. The card slipped. A boy’s mouth brushed his.

Barely anything. Barely a second. But enough to stay lodged in his memory.

His dad had been blowing up his phone that night. Harlan ignored every call.

His father knew his schedule. He knew Harlan had early practice. He knew Harlan should have been in the dorm.

So when Harlan wouldn’t answer, his dad opened the phone tracker.

And when he saw his son across town at a house he didn’t approve of, he grabbed his keys and drove over. It wasn’t worry. It was control disguised as concern. A father who didn’t tolerate deviation. A reminder that discipline mattered more than anything, even if it meant barging into a garage full of students.

He walked in at the exact wrong time. Saw the exact wrong angle. Made the exact wrong conclusion.

And Harlan experienced, once again, how fragile his father’s pride really was.

He shook the memory away and headed to the truck where his dad was waiting. They did not greet each other. They rarely did. His father climbed into the passenger seat and opened his work email. Harlan drove. The silence pressed in on both of them, familiar and suffocating.

By the time they reached the Nehalem River, fog hovered above the water and the air smelled like wet pine. They unloaded the truck with practiced efficiency. Chairs here. Cooler between them. Rods baited. Lines cast.

His father cracked open a beer before the ripples even settled. Harlan followed, though he did not want the taste. The bitterness felt like something he was supposed to swallow.

They sat in silence for several minutes, the river moving without urgency.

Harlan finally spoke. “Dad.”

His father did not turn. “Yeah.”

“About the other night.”

His father’s jaw tightened. “What about it.”

“It was an accident,” Harlan said quietly. “The card slipped.”

“I do not care what slipped,” his father said. “It should not have happened.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

His father looked over, eyes sharp. “You are supposed to be smarter.”

Harlan absorbed the words. “I know.”

His father took another drink. “Men do not put themselves in situations like that.”

The words landed heavier than the cans between them.

Harlan looked at the river. “Would it matter if it was a girl.”

His father stiffened. “I do not want to talk about this.”

“I’m asking.”

“I said drop it.”

And that was the end of it.

The conversation shut tight like a door slammed in a storm.

Harlan reeled in his line, cast again, and tried to make his mind go still. But nothing inside him cooperated. He felt like a piece of metal caught between two magnets. On one side, guilt he never asked for. On the other, confusion he refused to examine.

He leaned back, letting his eyes drift over the water. Thinking. Always thinking. Always quietly. Always alone.

He wondered when his father became this version of himself. Why disappointment lived so easily in the man’s eyes. What it would feel like to talk openly without fear.

And then he thought of her.

Not by name, he still didn’t know it. Just the girl from the mixer, the one who stood in the corner like she saw everything without needing to be seen. The same girl who walked into the diner on Saturday wearing earphones, moving with a kind of ease that suggested she lived inside her own world. The owner had called her “sweetheart” with a warmth that hinted she came there often.

Her laugh had caught his attention before he realized he was listening. Soft and warm, the kind of sound that didn’t demand space but filled it anyway. Something about her presence unsettled him in a way he couldn’t name. She didn’t try to impress anyone. She didn’t try to perform. She just existed, fully, comfortably, and that alone drew his attention.

He could still picture the way she looked at him at the mixer, steady, curious, like she saw something he kept hidden. He had talked to countless girls, brushed them off without thinking twice. None of them stayed in his head.

But she did.

She lingered now, quiet and insistent, threading itself through spaces he normally kept empty.

He didn’t know why she appeared beside the memory of the afterparty, but both pressed against him, pulling him into questions he did not want to ask.

One reminded him of who he had been taught to be.
The other reminded him of something softer, something without a name.

He finished his beer and cast his line again.

His father didn’t look at him again.
And Harlan didn’t speak again.

They sat, two silhouettes against the river, bound by silence because it was the only language they both understood.

The drive back from the Nehalem River stretched longer than the drive out, though nothing about the road had changed. Same curves. Same trees. Same hum of the truck. But the silence felt different now, heavier, like a bruise forming beneath the skin. His father drifted in and out of sleep in the passenger seat, the faint scent of beer lingering between them, every soft snore another reminder of the conversation that never opened.

Harlan kept both hands on the wheel, jaw tense. The quiet usually soothed him. Today it sharpened everything he couldn’t push away.

He pulled into his father’s driveway as the light faded. His dad woke with a grunt.

“Good day,” his father said. Not a question. Not honesty. Just something to say.

“Yeah,” Harlan replied.

His dad stepped out, paused only long enough for a short nod. “See you next week.”

“Yeah.”

His father shut the door and walked inside without looking back. The porch light flicked on. Harlan backed out of the driveway. The air inside the truck felt heavier once he was alone.

The farther he drove, the tighter his chest became.

By the time he reached the university parking lot, night had settled in. Students walked in clusters, laughing, weightless in ways he couldn’t imagine. Harlan stepped out, locked the truck, and wondered briefly what it would feel like to move through life like that.

He reached his dorm, nodded at guys who passed, and climbed the stairs. Inside, the stillness swallowed him whole.

He tossed his keys onto the desk and sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, letting the silence settle. Usually, he liked this. But tonight it felt distorted, amplifying everything he wanted to bury.

His father’s voice echoed in him. Be smarter. Act like a man.

What did that even mean anymore? Obedience? Silence? Pretending things didn’t touch you?

He leaned back, staring at the ceiling. Dark spots formed constellations he couldn’t name.

He opened the mini fridge, stared at the leftover beers, and shut it again. He didn’t want numbness. Not the way his father wore it like armor.

He sat on the floor, back against the bed frame, the way he did as a kid whenever he felt overwhelmed.

Why did the kissing incident bother his dad so much? Why did something so harmless shake the foundation between them? What did it touch in his father that sparked anger instead of understanding?

And why did it matter so much to him that his father forgive him for something he never meant to do?

The questions tangled together.

But beneath them all was something gentler.

Her.

It annoyed him. It confused him. It scared him more than he wanted to admit.

Because she represented something he didn’t understand. Possibility. Softness. Something his father would never approve of, not because of who she was, but because of what she could make him feel.

He opened his eyes, breath unsteady.

He had goals. Plans. A future mapped out like a blueprint. Law school. Money. Stability. A life built step by step so he never repeated his parents’ chaos. Feelings didn’t fit that plan. Curiosity didn’t fit that plan. Girls like her didn’t fit that plan.

He placed his palms flat on the carpet. He had always been good at pushing things down. At choosing focus over feeling. At becoming exactly who he was expected to be. But tonight, the quiet refused to settle.

His father’s disappointment pressed on one side of him, cold and sharp. Her laugh pressed on the other, warm and disruptive.

And Harlan sat there, somewhere in the middle, torn between the man he had been raised to be and the man he might become.