“First time?” she asked, not unkindly.

“First time I’ve been out in public like this,” Leo admitted, gesturing to his binder, his short-cropped hair, the men’s boots he’d bought from a thrift store. “I feel like a fraud.”

Leo looked around the room. He saw James, the old mechanic, laughing with a young lesbian couple. He saw his ex-wife sharing a blanket with a drag queen who was knitting a scarf. He saw Alex, fierce and glittering, arguing passionately about pronoun etiquette with a gay man in his seventies.