An ordinary Sunday
Eight months in, the remarkable thing is how unremarkable it has become.
Sunday starts late. Your partner is already up, reading on the sofa with their feet in your spot, which they do on purpose so that you have to lift them to sit down.
Your mother calls at eleven, the way she does. She gets your name right now, most of the time, and when she does not, she corrects herself before you have to. You put her on speaker. She asks after your partner, using the right pronoun on the first try, and your partner gives you a thumbs up from the sofa like a football referee.
After the call you lie on the floor for a while, the way you do after family calls, even good ones. Your partner does not ask what is wrong, because nothing is wrong. They lie down next to you, and you both look at the crack in the ceiling that the landlord keeps promising to fix.
'Do you remember,' they say, 'the first month, when you thought you had to explain every single thing?'
You do. You had a speech ready for the first night they stayed over. About your body, about your old name, about what not to say. You never gave it. They had one ready too, and you both laughed about it three weeks later, over a takeaway, and threw both speeches away.
The afternoon is groceries, a long walk, an argument about whether a film counts as a comedy. In the evening you both sit at the kitchen table doing the boring admin of lives: a form, a renewal, an email to a landlord.
Nothing about the day would make a story. That is what you would tell anyone who asked what t4t dating is like, if anyone asked. It is not always easier. It is just, very often, quiet.