Author's Note: Yet again, I'm not sure if everyone got a notification for the last chapter, since I know there are sometimes glitches with scheduled chapters.

***

"Would you try to date again? At some point?" Edwin asks. He doesn't check how Ellen reacts to that, but flips through one of the cookbooks they have for inspiration. Ellen's cookbooks now, since they are at her house for Saturday dinner. He pauses at a recipe for moussaka. They should have all the ingredients for that, and they have a glass oven dish that's plenty big for a moussaka that can feed five people, since Luis is joining them today. It could almost be a mirror of the Saturday last year in March, except Ellen will hear his news only a few hours in advance.

"I don't know. I think so," Ellen answers carefully. "Tanya asked me the same thing this week. I want to, but it seems so much effort. I don't know if it's worth it when I'm perfectly fine being my own person right now."

Edwin turns to look at her and holds up the recipe he's found. She nods and opens the pantry to grab a few dozen potatoes. Edwin goes through the fridge for the vegetables and minced meat. "You're not lonely sometimes, in this house?" He hands Ellen a kitchen knife and they both start peeling potatoes. In the first months of the divorce, he hated that nothing familiar was left, that he lost his home, but now he's glad to not live in this place imbued with memories and empty space.

Ellen peels the potato in her hand in slow strokes. Edwin studies her for a few seconds, but goes back to peeling when she doesn't look up. "Sometimes, sure," she replies eventually. "I think that's normal. For anyone, but especially when I've lived with you for so long. I don't think it's a bad thing. My life isn't lonely." She stops peeling. "I have you still, and the girls, my friends, my colleagues. And after a whole day with teenagers who don't understand the concept of whispering, I can rather look forward to silence and solitude." She smiles crookedly.

Edwin chuckles. "So really, you're happy to be rid of us."

"I wouldn't go that far. But I'm fine, you worrywart. I have been filling the girls' rooms with books and spending a lot of time with friends. Going to theatre rehearsals, dinner, book club, performances, the whole lot."

"That's good," Edwin says. "So no time for dating? Not worth the time?"

Ellen shrugs. "Where would I even start? I'm 56; most of the men our age aren't single and if they are, you can't see that on their face. And I don't particularly care for those dating apps you have now. What am I supposed to do, text a complete stranger out of nowhere? No, thanks."

Edwin nods. After all the dick pictures he got on Grindr, he wants to text a stranger even less. It's so much harder to tell who's genuine online. "There are so many people on there who just want sex."

Ellen drops her peeler. "You tried a dating app? I thought you were infatuated with your make-up guy. How is he doing?"

"Uh." Faced with Ellen's open expression, Edwin can't recall the explanation he had prepared to break the news. He had wanted to work up to it, see how she was doing. Somehow it was easier to talk about Vincent before their first kiss. He told her about the concert just fine, about the charity meal, the nail polish. But the intimate memory of Vincent's kiss, Vincent's body, has paralysed his tongue, as if he is ashamed. As if he has betrayed Ellen and fears the moment of confession. "We got together, a few weeks ago."

"You did? Congratulations, Ed! I'm very happy for you." Ellen dumps her potato on the table and walks around the table to hug him. Edwin rests his cheek against her hair. The smell of her perfume carries the memories of other hugs, of the perfume he bought her one year for her birthday.

"You don't think it's too soon?"

"Too soon after what? His apology?"

"After us."

"Oh." Ellen looks up at him and Edwin stares down at the lines in her forehead, the wrinkles around her eyes. She smiles. "I don't think it's too soon if you are ready. I can't tell you what's too soon for you."

"And for you? Are you ... okay with it?"

"Of course." Ellen lowers her eyes and glances at the table. "Rationally, yes. I want you to be happy, to have the relationship you want with a man. I don't want you to wait until I'm dating someone else. But it's also ..." Her voice trails off into a rasp. "We've been officially divorced for months and we've been living in different places, but somehow this ... Knowing this — it feels more real. More ... You're no longer my husband. My guy." Her breath hitches. "You've done nothing wrong, okay? But I'm — Sorry."

Edwin wraps her in a another hug, the shape of a sob rising up in his throat but not coming out. This is the end for them, the moment of no return. Ellen is never going to be his wife again, the person at his side or across the room. Someone else will be his partner. Someone else will fill that place in his life.

No. No, that's not true. Why should it be true? Can't they be different? Ellen is still his friend. His partner in life. They didn't divorce because they stopped loving each other, but because they loved each other and wanted to give the freedom to find more love. Not less. He won't — lose who Ellen is to him. He can date Vincent, he can date other people, but nobody can replace who Ellen is to him. "You're always going to be the most important person in my life," he says into her hair. "I promise."

"You don't need to say that for the sake of it," Ellen protests. She sniffles and steps back to blow her nose.

"I mean it. I still don't know anybody else like you. I still love you. You're still the other parent of our daughters. You still understand me better than anybody else. I still want to be your best friend."

"You say that now, but you've only dated Vincent for a few weeks. You're still getting to know him."

"I will explain it to him. You are more important to me." If Vincent can't accept that Ellen and his daughters remain his priority ... If Vincent can't be okay with that, he will break up with him.

Ellen smiles at him and kisses his cheek. "Thank you. You are equally important to me, you know. Whatever happens."

"I know." Edwin moves in for a hug again. Ellen is in his arms and they breathe together, in silence. It's achingly familiar and he swallows down the melancholy longing in his throat.

When they go back to cooking, he's reluctant to let her go and he switches to her side of the table, so he can feel her next to him, closer than if they worked on opposite sides of the table.

"Is it going well with Vincent? Does he still make you anxious?" Ellen asks.

Edwin pulls up a shoulder, staring down at the potatoes and the aubergine. "It's going fine. We went on two dates; we had fun. I'm just ... I keep waiting for him to break it off."

"That's not a good attitude to start a relationship."

"I know." Edwin focuses on chopping the onion on the cutting board, the sound of the knife hitting the board and the tears itching in his eyes. "He didn't think I would want a serious relationship, at first. He's willing to try, he says, and I don't think he would lie to spare my feelings, but he doesn't even believe we will succeed. Not really. So it's a matter of time until I mess up."

"You will mess up. Eventually. That's just bound to happen. We messed up and we're still here."

"I know."

"Do you?" Ellen puts down her knife and the last of the potatoes and turns him towards her. "Edwin. It's good to care, to try your best, but not to the point of paralysis, of constant fear. You need to relax. Stop being so obsessed with messing up or it's going to ruin what you have."

"You need to stop giving me good advice." A corner of Edwin's mouth curls up. "It was so much easier with you."

"Maybe because you weren't so deadly afraid to mess up, hey? If a relationship breaks at the first little push, it wasn't worth much to begin with. It's on him if he doesn't see your worth."

"Maybe." Edwin washes his hands and grabs a pan to fry the minced lamb. While it sizzles, he leans back against the counter and studies Ellen, still cutting vegetables in neat piles. "Do you think it's strange that I'm attracted to someone feminine, when I'm gay? Someone who was born as a girl?"

"But he's a man. You see him as a man."

"Yeah." Even now that he has had sex with Vincent and seen his body up close. Maybe even more so because when Vincent is naked, it strips away some of his femininity, leaves only the make-up. The petnames, the teasing. But those are flamboyant, not feminine. He has touched Vincent now, felt his muscles, his chest, his strength. Vincent's body is not exactly like Edwin's body, even after transition, but it's a masculine body. And Edwin has felt desire unlike anything he knew. He didn't know sex could be like that, that he could want someone, want sex that much. He'd always thought he had a low libido, but now he's greedy for it. They've had sex on each of their dates. They had sex last Sunday, while Vincent still wore the heels. Edwin had taken off the pink boots as soon as he could, but seeing Vincent in those boots and nothing else had hit a spot he had never imagined before. It had been intense. Every time has been intense, overwhelming.

"It confuses me, sometimes. That my brain somehow knows Vincent is a man and doesn't mind he's a feminine man. And it feels different than how I felt for you, so I know it's real, but I don't understand why." Would he have been attracted to Ellen if she was a man, even if she looked exactly the same? Would he have been attracted to Vincent if he hadn't had hormones and surgeries to change his body? He would still have been a man, but he would have looked less like one. Would he have been attracted to Vincent if Vincent wasn't feminine at all?

"Maybe it's not black and white," Ellen says after Edwin has stirred the meat and added the onions and garlic. "Maybe it's not that you're either attracted to someone or you're not. Maybe there's something in-between."

Edwin considers that. Attraction is complex, Vincent had said. Leo had said his transgender friend hadn't had any surgeries, but she has a lesbian girlfriend. Leo, who doesn't know if he likes only men, or also masculine women. Women he might mistake for a man. Would a gay man be attracted to Marc, who is not a man but looks like one? "I think you're right," he concedes. He shouldn't be ashamed that he loved Ellen so much he built a life with her. Maybe Ellen can be the most important person in his life, while he's attracted to men.

Maybe there are many types of attraction, and it's okay if he's a little confused.

***

Edwin tells his daughters about Vincent during dinner. He's served a plate of moussaka to everyone and when there's a lull in the conversation, Ellen nudges him with her gaze. He'd asked her if he should wait until after dinner, like his coming-out, but that'd make it a big deal and he doesn't want that. Nothing changes for them, not really. He and Ellen are already divorced, and their daughters are grown adults, not children who will get a new parent.

Still, he's relieved when Sandra exclaims: "You have a boyfriend? Since when? What's his name?" And after that: "How did you meet? What's Vincent like?" She's delighted when he mentions Vincent prompted the question about make-up all the way back in September. "You should let him do full make-up on you! Oh, I would love to see that. Or has he already done it once?"

Edwin looks helplessly at Ellen when the questions keep coming, but she hides her grin behind her hand. Luis touches Sandra's elbow and she slows down, takes a bite of her food.

"This is great news," Luis says.

Tamara adds: "I'm happy for you." Her quiet smile soothes the worries inside Edwin. They're not angry or disappointed, his daughters; they don't think he moved on too soon. That he didn't, doesn't love Ellen, now.

"When can we meet him?" Sandra asks. "You're bringing him over soon, right?"

"Uh." He hadn't prepared for that. "I can ask." In his head, Vincent whispers, I'd love to meet your family, darling. And Vincent would. He would talk about make-up with Sandra and about comics with Tamara and about theatre with Ellen. They would talk about Edwin. Vincent wouldn't make jokes at Edwin's expense. They would be soft jokes, the kind his daughters make.

Or maybe Ellen would hate it. Would prefer Vincent to stay an abstract figure. Maybe she will judge Vincent for his jokes, his abrasiveness, for Edwin's anxiety and meekness. Maybe his family will judge him for picking a man that makes him feel like that, even though it's not Vincent's fault. If Edwin could stop caring so much, there wouldn't be a problem.

Edwin is not sure he can handle either of those reactions. He's not ready to put himself, his relationship out there. He has barely found his own footing and if there are people watching, the people he holds dearest in the whole world, he might stumble. Vincent might see his soft underbelly. But maybe Vincent already knows. He will definitely know if Edwin explains that Ellen will always come first.

"We'll play nice," Tamara says. "No cross examinations or trying to get all the juicy gossip out of him."

Edwin huffs. "You'd better not." Vincent could verbally obliterate them if they tried to exert dominance over him. But he would have no qualms about gossiping, and Edwin would let him, would go along with it if it meant his family would approve of their relationship.

They switch to Sandra and Luis' wedding, the balcony garden Tamara is trying to grow, politics. Safe topics. Luis and Tamara load the dishwasher and they pile onto the couches and play yahtzee. After two rounds, Tamara stretches.

"I should take the next bus, if I want to be home at a reasonable hour."

"When do you want to be home?" Edwin asks. "I can take you."

They stay for another round and then they pile into Edwin's car, each with their box of leftovers and Tamara with a book that Ellen loaned her, dumped in a bag in the trunk. The radio turns on when Edwin starts the engine and Tamara lowers the volume. If Tamara was younger, it could have been any evening when she had volleyball training or — when she was a teen — a game that was too far to bike or take the bus.

"Does it feel different, with Vincent than with mum?" Tamara asks when they're out of their street.

"Does what feel different?"

"You know, the relationship. Attraction. Is it what you wanted it to be?"

Edwin glances at her when he stops at an intersection, but she's looking out the window. "It's different," he says. "It's not like when I met your mum." He searches for words to describe it, to explain how it's different. There's the sexual attraction, of course, but he was never ... unhappy with his and Ellen's sex life. But now, now that he knows ... It's hard to imagine he ever could have thought that was how other men felt about sex, when he finally understands how consuming that desire for sex can be, how it can be a need. But even beyond that, the relationship ... "It's — intense. Unstable," he attempts. "I didn't even like him for months."

"But now you do. He makes you happy."

Edwin recalls their runs, their movie nights, their dates. The jokes, the teasing, the heels. How Vincent is like sunlight, life-giving and burning. How he will pull Edwin into conversations, push him, smile at him. Is that happiness, the good and the bad? He was happy with Ellen. Comfortable. He settles on: "We have fun together."

"And that's what you want?"

"Yes." For now, he's happy with what they have. Maybe he can do fun, maybe he doesn't need serious. Maybe the difference is irrelevant.

"Is it different than being friends?" Tamara asks. "You were friends first, right? You must have had fun together then, too. How did you know that's not what you wanted?"

Edwin's hands clench on the steering wheel. That's true. They could even have had sex and stayed friends, if not for his hang-ups about sex and relationships. He's been attracted to friends before, even if he didn't realise at the time, and he never wanted a relationship with them. Yet he knew there was a hunger in him to call Vincent something other than his friend, to have Vincent's affection, to be something other than a friend to him. "I don't know. It hit me," he says. Like it hit him he was gay, or he wanted to have sex with Vincent. "I think there are different ways you can want to be close to people." He thinks back to that concert in December, how — why — it struck him. "If you're friends, you're not so ... greedy. You don't want to be special, to be the only one who gets everything. The things they don't show to other people."

"And that's the difference? Between friends and ... romance?"

"That's how I realised. I don't know about other people." He glances at Tamara again, from the corner of his eyes, but she stares straight ahead. Maybe this is not about him. "It's not easy to figure out what you feel sometimes," he offers. "Or what you want. Look at me — I thought I was in love with your mum for 36 years, when in hindsight, it was clearly friendship. Even with Vincent, I didn't realise I could want a man who is so feminine. Sometimes one feeling seems a lot like another."

"Pity there are no checklists," Tamara jokes.

Edwin huffs. "I could have used one of those. Maybe there are checklists now, on the Internet. Or words. They have words for everything."

"That's a good thing, isn't it?"

"Maybe," Edwin concedes. "I don't know if it's necessary. Sometimes I think people just want a word of their own because they don't want to be like everybody else. Nobody wants to fit in, these days, and if you do, they say you're no better than the homophobes."

"That's stupid," Tamara parries immediately. "Even if you fit in, you still know you're different. Maybe other people don't treat you as different, but you know they would if they knew you were different."

Edwin laughs softly. "You've just described most of my life. I didn't even know I was gay and I still knew I didn't fit in, that I was playing a role."

"I think you always know, somehow. That something is different about you. Even if you don't know what. Even if you never tell anybody."

Edwin doesn't know what to reply and the silence drags on. Finally, he says: "Tamara? Is that ... something you have felt?"

Tamara is silent for several seconds before she says: "I don't know. I'm figuring that out. I'll tell you later, okay?"

"Of course. Take your time. You don't need to tell me if you don't want to." Hell, if she's a lesbian, she could come home with a girlfriend without ever telling him or Ellen. Nobody should have to come out. They should be able to all just exist, without hiding.

"Thanks, dad." His eyes flit to her and she smiles. "It's not that I don't want to tell you. I don't even know if there's anything, but you've made me think. So now I'm thinking."

"I've made you think?"

"Yeah. You know, that sometimes the assumptions we have about ourselves might be wrong."

Edwin huffs. "That has certainly been true for me. At least you're a little earlier than me to question your assumptions."

"Because it's easier now. You don't need to hide it if you know. And you and mum have never made us feel that we had to be a certain way."

"That's good. The only thing we want is for you to be happy. No matter what." Even if Tamara tells them she's some weird new gender or she wants to dye her hair electric blue. He'll adapt.

"I know. Never doubted that," Tamara comments in a light tone, almost amused.

"Good," Edwin repeats stiffly.

It's started raining and the swish of the windshield wipers joins the sound of the radio. Tamara taps along to the beat of the song that's playing. "Do you resent grandma and grandpa? For not being more accepting?"

"Resent?" Edwin pictures his parents, and the image is bittersweet. He loves them, as much as he has always loved them, but he wishes, too. Of course he wishes they weren't homophobes. But in their own, twisted way, they also want the best for him. He can't resent them for thinking that included being straight, being a good Christian with a wife and children. That's what they learned. "I wish they were willing to learn now," he says. "That they could see I'm still the same man and I just want to live an honest life. I'm not trying to make it my whole personality, or a political statement."

"No," Tamara says thoughtfully, "but isn't the fact that gay people exist political for some people? Like, they will debate your rights and whether you should be treated the same as everyone else."

"We have those rights now, here."

"Yeah, but I mean ... If there's a gay character in a movie, they think you're influencing kids or dragging politics into entertainment. So for them, even mentioning you're gay or that you have a boyfriend is political. Even if you're not an activist who wears rainbows."

That sounds like something Vincent would say. Which means Tamara is probably right. For people like his parents, his sexuality will never just be his sexuality, something that only changes the gender of his partner and nothing else. He's not allowed to just exist. Why are his only options hiding or making a statement? Either he doesn't come out and people treat him as normal, or he comes out and is a target. Or he comes out and people ignore it so aggressively that he doesn't mention it again.

"It feels like I don't have a choice," he says. "I don't want to be an activist. But if you're gay, you apparently need to be one just to live your life."

"It's unfair," Tamara agrees.

"I don't even have it so bad. People don't look at me and immediately see that I'm gay." He can walk on the street and nobody will yell slurs at him. It hasn't happened yet while he was with Vincent, but Vincent mentioned it once, so casually as if it was common.

"No, but if they take away gay marriage or they insult gay people while you can hear it, that will still affect you."

"But not as much."

"Maybe. But that's not your fault. You're not less gay because you're not out or you fit in and homophobes think you're just like them. It's a privilege, but it's also an illusion because as soon as you mess up and they know, they will treat you just as badly. That's what we were saying earlier: you always know that people could react badly, that you need to be careful, that maybe you should hide this part of yourself." Tamara's voice has grown louder and her hands cut through the air to emphasise her words. Edwin parks the car at the side of the street in front of Tamara's apartment building. Her mouth is a straight line and there's a deep frown in her forehead.

"You're very passionate," he says, instead of addressing her words. They swirl through his head and he feels raw and open, as if they cut him. "How did you learn all that?"

"I did research. After you came out."

"For me?"

"Of course." Her face is open and determined and the raw feeling in Edwin's chest swells. He is so lucky with his daughters, with Ellen. He loves them so much. For a second, he hesitates and then he clicks his seatbelt loose and leans over to draw Tamara into a hug.

He is so, so lucky.