I dialed the number automatically. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hit the right buttons. And he was there, behind the glass window of the café… holding her. The brunette in the red dress. Holding her the way he hadn’t held me in… how long? A year? Two?
“Where are you?”
“What do you mean, where? At the office, of course,” he said, his voice calm, casual. “I’m buried in this project. I’ll probably be here until eleven.”
Behind him, she was laughing. She threw her head back, and her hair spilled over her shoulders. And he looked at her… Oh, the way he looked at her.
“I see,” I said, and ended the call.
The waitress brought them wine. Red wine. He doesn’t drink red wine. He can’t stand it. He always said it gave him a headache. But now he was raising his glass and smiling.
I stood outside. Watching. And for the first time in ten years of marriage, I didn’t know what to do. Go in there? Make a scene? Smash that damned glass against his smug face? Or…
Or just walk away?
It started raining.
I got home at half past eight. Soaked, frozen. I sat down in the kitchen and turned on the kettle. Then I turned it off. I poured myself some of his whiskey. Drank it in one gulp and started coughing.
Only one thought kept spinning in my head: how long? How many times had he lied to me, talking about the office, projects, meetings? How many times had I cooked dinner, waited, believed those damned messages: “I’ll be late. Don’t wait up.”
And I had even gotten used to it. I went to sleep in an empty bed, woke up alone, made coffee… for myself. Because he had already left. Early. For another important meeting, of course…
I was so tired of believing.
The whiskey burned my throat, but I poured another glass. I looked at my phone again. Maybe I should write to him? Tell him I knew? That I had seen him? No.
Closer to morning, he came home. I hadn’t slept. I was sitting in the living room, looking out the window at the sunrise.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” he asked. He looked guilty. Rumpled. He smelled of another woman’s perfume.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I said without even turning around. “Want coffee?”
“No, I’d rather sleep for a couple of hours.”
He walked past me. Didn’t even come over. Before, he always kissed the top of my head. Even when he was angry or tired, he still kissed me.
Now he just walked past. Like I was furniture.
I finished my tea and thought: when did I become furniture in this house? A sofa that was convenient to sit on? A refrigerator that always had food inside? A washing machine that would take care of everything by itself? When?!
For the next three days, I played my role. The perfect wife who knew nothing. I made breakfasts. Smiled. Asked how things were at work.
And he told me. About projects, meetings, a new client from Saint Petersburg… He lied easily. Without hesitation. As if he had been practicing for ten years.
And I understood: he was no longer with me. He hadn’t been with me for a long time. Physically, yes, there he was, sleeping beside me. But truly?
He was gone.
On Thursday evening, I opened his laptop. I knew the password — our wedding date. Ironic, isn’t it?
The messages with her were… There were promises. Plans for the future. “I’ll sort everything out soon.” “Just be patient a little longer.” “I’ll definitely tell her.”
He would definitely tell her.
Me.
His wife.
That he was leaving.
I closed the laptop. And… I didn’t cry. No. Not at all. The tears had simply run out. Or frozen somewhere inside me.
Instead, clarity came.
Cold. Sharp. Like the first ice on puddles.
“We need to talk,” I said on Friday over dinner.
He looked up from his plate. Wary. Like a deer that had sensed a hunter.
“About what?”
“About us.”
A pause. A long one.
“Listen, if this is about me rarely being home…”
“It’s not about that.”
“Then what is it about?”
I looked at him. At this stranger with a familiar face. And I thought: say it! Tell him you saw him! That you know! Demand an explanation! Make a scandal!
But instead, I said:
“I want a divorce.”
He froze. His fork stopped halfway to his mouth.
“What?”
“A divorce. I want a divorce.”
“You… you’re serious?”
I nodded. And then something happened that I hadn’t expected at all. He didn’t deny anything. He didn’t ask “why” or “what happened.” He didn’t try to stop me. He simply exhaled.
With relief.
“All right,” he said quietly. “Maybe that’s for the best.”
For whom? For him? For her? Certainly not for me. But I smiled. Because I understood: the game was over. Curtain down. Applause.
And I could finally leave the stage.
He moved out a week later. Took his things while I wasn’t home. Left a note on the refrigerator:
“The keys are on the shelf. We’ll call each other about the documents.”
That was it.
Ten years of marriage fit into one line on a piece of paper.
I stood in the empty apartment and listened to the silence. Real silence. Without his footsteps, his voice, his lies.
My friend called every day.
“How are you? Holding up? Maybe I should come over?”
“I’m fine. Really.”
“You’re lying. Nobody feels fine after something like this.”
But I wasn’t lying. I really felt… no pain. Strange, right? It should have hurt, shouldn’t it? Something inside should have been tearing apart. But there was only emptiness.
As if someone had taken my heart out of my chest and forgotten to put it back.
But space appeared. Space for something new. For life.
A month passed.
I renovated the bedroom — painted the walls blue. He hated blue. Said it was a cold color.
But I like it.
And one Saturday, while I was sitting in a café, she wrote to me. The brunette in the red dress. She must have gotten my number from him.
“I’m sorry, I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
I stared at the message for a long time. Delete it? Block her?
Then I replied:
“All right. Where and when?”
Because suddenly I was curious. What did she want to say? What had he told her about me? And most importantly…
Did she know she had already lost? Because he had betrayed me. And people who betray once…
We met in that very same café. The one where I had seen them that day, in the rain. Fate’s irony or its mockery — I don’t know.
She arrived earlier. She was sitting by the window, nervously twisting a napkin in her hands. When I walked in, she flinched. She recognized me immediately. Up close, she turned out to be younger. Three or four years younger. Maybe five. With neat makeup and an expensive handbag. Beautiful. But… ordinary. Just like thousands of others.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, her voice trembling.
I sat down across from her. Silently. The waitress brought the menu, but I shook my head. This wasn’t the kind of conversation you have over a cup of cappuccino.
“I didn’t know that you… that he was married,” she said quickly, stumbling over her words. “I swear. He told me he was divorced. That he had been living separately for several months. That all that was left was signing the papers.”
Of course he did. A classic script. He hadn’t even bothered to come up with anything new.
“And you believed him?” I smiled. Coldly.
She clenched the napkin in her fist.
“I… yes. I believed him. And then…” She fell silent. “Then I found out the truth. By accident. He left his phone at my place, and his mother texted him. About your wedding anniversary. She was congratulating him.”
Our anniversary. Ten years. He forgot. He hadn’t even remembered that day.
But I remembered. I sat at home alone, looking at the bouquet I had bought for myself. And waited for a call.
A call that never came.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked quietly. “Do you want me to pity you? Forgive you?”
“No!” She raised her eyes. They were red, inflamed. “I want… I had to say… I just have no one to share this with. He…”
She faltered. I could see how hard the words were for her.
“He’s seeing someone else too. At the same time as me.”
Silence.
I wasn’t surprised. Not at all. I just nodded, as if she had told me it was raining outside.
“How do you know?”
“At first, I accidentally overheard him arranging a meeting on the phone… And then I followed him… I saw them. Yesterday. They were in a restaurant. And he… he was holding her exactly the same way he held me.”
She started crying. Silently. Tears ran down her cheeks, smearing her mascara. And I looked at her and felt… nothing. No anger. No pity. No satisfaction.
Only emptiness.
“Do you think he’ll come back to you, or stay with that other woman now?” she asked through her tears. “Now that I’m leaving him?”
I gave a short laugh.
“No. He already tried.”
It had happened two weeks earlier. He showed up at night. Drunk. Rang the doorbell, knocked, shouted something about a mistake, about how everything could still be fixed.
I didn’t open the door. I stood behind it and listened as he slid down the wall, sobbing, begging.
And then there was silence.
By morning, he was gone.
“And what did you do?” she asked, looking at me with hope. As if she expected me to say something right. To show her a way out.
“Nothing,” I answered, rising from the table. “Absolutely nothing. Because he is no longer my problem. And apparently he is no longer yours either. If you’re smart enough, of course.”
I headed toward the exit.
“Wait!” She jumped up. “But how… how do you live after all this?”
I turned around. Looked at that girl in the red dress who believed in fairy tales and promises. Who thought love conquered everything.
The way I once had.
“You’ll learn,” I said. “Or you’ll break. There’s no third option.”
That same evening, he wrote to me. A long message. About how sorry he was. How he wanted to start over. How he had realized that I was the only one.
I read it and thought: how many messages like this had he sent to her? And to that third woman? And how many more would he send? Because the problem wasn’t the women.
The problem was him.
The emptiness inside him, which he tried to fill with other people’s feelings, bodies, lives.
And that emptiness was insatiable.
It would devour everyone.
One by one.
I deleted the message. I didn’t reply.
Another two months passed.
Finally, all the divorce papers were completed. That was it. Officially free.
My friend threw me a party. “A celebration of liberation,” as she called it. She invited some mutual acquaintances. Champagne, music, laughter.
And I stood on the balcony, looking at the city. Lights in the windows. Thousands of lives. Other people’s stories. Someone out there was falling in love right now. Someone was saying goodbye. Someone was crying. Someone was laughing. Life. It goes on. With you or without you.
“Well, free woman,” my friend said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “How does it feel?”
“Strange,” I admitted. “As if I’m… as if I’m not myself. Or as if I’ve been born again. Both at the same time.”
“That’s normal. It will pass.”
But it didn’t pass. That strangeness stayed. Settled somewhere inside me. Like a shard of glass.
I woke up at night and listened to the silence. The empty apartment. The empty bed.
And I understood: I had learned to live alone. But I had forgotten how to live with someone.
One day, I saw him in a supermarket. He was standing in the baby food aisle. With some blonde woman. Pregnant. They were laughing about something. He was holding her hand. I stood in the next aisle, behind the shelves with pasta, and watched.
I simply thought: there she is. The next one. The one who will believe. Who will wait. Cook dinners. Believe messages about being held up at work.
And then one day she will see him in a café. With someone else…
And the circle will close.
I put a pack of spaghetti in my basket and left. Without looking back.
Now a year has passed.
I live alone. In my blue bedroom. I go swimming on Tuesdays.
I don’t have a man.
My friend says it will pass. That I need time. That I’ll meet someone worthy.
But I’m not looking. Because I’ve understood something: I don’t know how to love properly. I don’t know how to build a relationship. I no longer know how to trust.
He broke something important inside me. Some mechanism. The one responsible for closeness. For faith in another person.
And now there is only emptiness there.
Sometimes men write to me. Colleagues. Friends of friends. They invite me for coffee, to the movies, to the park. I refuse. Politely. Because I’m afraid. Afraid to believe again. To open up again. To become vulnerable again.
Afraid the story will repeat itself. And next time, I won’t survive it.
Recently, I accidentally came across his social media profile.
He had a son.
Photos of a happy family. Him with a stroller. Her — that same blonde woman. Smiles. Happiness. Love. Thousands of likes. Comments: “What a beautiful couple!” “Congratulations!” “You were made for each other!”
I closed the page. And thought: does she know? That new woman? Does she know what he is capable of? Or does she also believe in the fairy tale?
She probably does.
And then…
Then we become like me.
Lonely.
Cold.
Distrustful.
With an emptiness inside that nothing can fill anymore.
But I have learned to live with this emptiness.
Because it is better than being deceived again.
And losing everything again.
