Home The Hard Way *Single Dad! Eddie Munson X Steve Harrington Steddie Series*

Epilogue

"We're gonna be late!" Eddie called up the stairs for the third time in five minutes. "Listen, I know I'm cooler than Dad, but you don't have to be exactly like me, Lu!" 

Lucy bounded down the stairs with a smile. Her hair and makeup were done, dress on, shoes in hand. She sat on the bottom step and slid one tan sandal onto her foot, fussing with the buckle as she did her best to fasten it as quickly as possible.

"She's not exactly like you, babe," Steve said, rounding the corner to join them at the stairs. "Lucy's graduating on her first try." 

"And you're not cooler than Dad," Lucy said as she stood from the step. "I just tell you that so you'll let me borrow the car." 

"I've been doomed to live the rest of my mortal life in a family of really mean, not funny comedians."

As much as Eddie whined and complained when Lucy and Steve would gang up on him, he wouldn't trade it for anything. The past seventeen years with them had been the best of his life. Probably the best years ever, if he were to guess. 

Eddie and Steve had become official two days after Eddie kissed him in front of his uncle's house. Three months later he and Lucy moved into Steve's apartment. Then, once Lucy was old enough to need her own room, into an even bigger apartment. And finally, in 2001, they bought their forever home. It wasn't anything fancy. Two floors, three bedrooms. But it was theirs. They were even able to get themselves a dog. Not a golden retriever, to Steve's dismay. But a big, hyper German shepherd that Lucy had named Sully. Their life was perfect. 

Together they'd seen it all. Lost baby teeth and skinned knees. Lucy's first crush and school dances. Even a trip to California the year Lucy found out about "gay days" at Disneyland and absolutely insisted they all go as a family. "You guys are gay!" She said almost too excitedly, earning exhausted eyerolls from both of them. "It's like, meant for you!"  

They'd only heard from Billie twice since that November day in 1991. Once, when Lucy was six she'd tried to take Eddie to court again. But when her lawyer showed up and she didn't, the case was dismissed. And then earlier this year she'd found Lucy online and wished her a happy 18th birthday, two weeks after her 17th birthday. It had hurt Eddie to see her so upset, clinging to Sully as she asked her dads why she didn't have a mom like everyone else's. 

But through it all, their little family stayed strong. When Wayne fell at work and cracked a rib, Steve was there every morning to check on him. And when Steve's mom passed away from liver failure, Eddie had held him every night for eight months while he mourned a woman who had been out of his life by her own choice for nearly a decade. 

"Call your grandpa and tell him we're on the way," Steve said as he opened the door to usher Lucy and Eddie outside. He loved both of them more than anything, he really did, but the Munson gene of being habitually late to everything was not going to work. Not today. 

Once they arrived at the high school Lucy had just enough time to run inside and slip into her rented green robe. Eddie, Wayne, and Steve bid her goodbye and good luck, each of them giving her a hug before watching her walk through the glass doors of Hawkins High.  

The ceremony itself was exactly the same as Eddie and Steve remembered. The principal led the faculty out onto the stage, where they all sat in a line of folding chairs behind him. He gave a speech, more or less the same speech he'd given at every commencement ceremony he'd ever done. 

"And now," he said, the microphone cracking with feedback as he picked up the stack of note cards he'd been reading from. "The valedictorian of Hawkins High School class of 2008, Lucy Munson."