Lottie has been your girlfriend of a good year and a half. A new year’s party had been your not-so-meet-cute when she spilled an entire glass of champagne over your pretty outfit. She’d spent the better part of her evening making you laugh and getting you drinks to make up for the incident.

And the next thing you knew, you were moving in with her. Sharing her apartment, her bathroom, her bed, her kitchen, her food. Your toothbrush has a place her in her cabinet and your sweater made a home in her drawer.

Lottie knows how to make your morning coffee and you know what to look for when the weekly grocery shopping trip rolls around.

It was comfortable. You were happy. Lottie had a solid job as a journalist, you worked as a petsitter and groomer.

Christmas was around the corner now, and you weren’t a fan of the holiday. It’s not like you went full jim-carrey-2000s-grinch on anyone, but you just…weren’t into Christmas. But Lottie was. Oh, Lottie was.

She was planning on going down to visit her family for the holidays, and after a bit of egging on (not much, since you caved immediately, much to her surprise,) you agreed to come with her. Meet her parents.

You were under the impression that she had already come out to her parents last summer; that they knew she was gay, dating you—you’d been together for over a year, you lived together!

Apparently, that was very incorrect.

“Listen, so…” Lottie begins on the drive to her parent’s estate, already halfway there. “Remember when I told you last summer, that my parents know I’m gay?”

You turn to face her, sweater sleeves tugged over your hands to help with the subtle winter chill from outside. “Yeah. Why?”

“Well that wasn’t…entirely true.” The taller brunette cringes with her own confession.

“What?”

So here you are, listening to her weak explanation, parked on the side of the road, more than halfway near her parents household, and having just discovered that they thought you were Lottie’s roommate.

Right. This was a recipe for absolute disaster.