It had happened a couple of nights before I left on the trip, when Josh got into bed and told me he thought it would be a good idea for us to get married. I wasn’t prepared because the two of us had both started out four years earlier firmly believing that marriage was too confining an institution, even though I’d harbored a desire for a permanent relationship, having lived a life that was constantly in flux. Unbeknownst to me, Josh had grown to want that too. Because his proposal was so casual, no bended knee or a ring I wouldn’t wear because I was too afraid to lose expensive jewelry, I didn’t even register that night as a momentous life event until I said it out loud and saw the flitter of sadness on Ralph’s face as his eyes closed for more than a blink.

“I’m happy for you,” Ralph said when he opened his eyes again.

Someone observing us wouldn’t find anything amiss, just two old friends catching up, but I could tell from the lingering pauses in the rest of our conversation that part of Ralph’s mind was thinking of what I had just said. Maybe there were questions he wanted to ask, and maybe he too could tell I wasn’t the same, because I also had questions I wanted answered. Like whether my transition mattered as much as he thought it would. Like whether he still saw Marc as dead, the person before him fundamentally different from the man he loved. Like whether he still thought of his love for me as something in the past. But those questions guaranteed answers I didn’t want to hear, so I kept them to myself, brought them on the plane to the city where we fell in love, and kept them intact in this subway car, where I hoped they would dissipate when I got home and saw Josh’s face.

As the train pulled out of the station, I suddenly remembered the question I asked myself one fall day riding down those same tracks nearly twenty years ago: Could you be any happier? Back then, an impossible answer occurred to me: You might be happier as a woman.