The message came on Saturday morning. Katya was just brewing coffee when the phone buzzed on the table. Pavel was still asleep — on weekends he liked to lie in longer. She took the phone with one hand while stirring sugar in the cup with the other.
“I’m in town. Just… missed you. How are you?”
The spoon fell from her hand, clinking against the cup’s edge. Katya sat down on a chair. Oleg. Two years had passed, but her hands still trembled.
“Katya, what’s all that noise?” Pavel’s sleepy voice came from the bedroom.
“Just dropped the spoon!” she shouted back, quickly deleting the message.
But she couldn’t erase it from her mind. She went through the whole day feeling like in a dream. Pavel suggested going to IKEA for new curtains — they had been meaning to do it for a while. Katya nodded, picked out some fabrics, but her thoughts were far away.
“You’re acting strange today,” Pavel noticed at dinner. “Did something happen?”
“No, just tired. The translation I was working on was difficult.”
He covered her hand with his warm palm:
“Maybe we should go to the dacha tomorrow? You’ll relax, we’ll make some shashlik.”
Katya looked at him — those kind brown eyes, the wrinkles at the corners from his constant smile. A good man. Reliable. Loving. So why was there such emptiness inside her?
On Monday, she texted Oleg. Simply: “Let’s meet.” He replied in a minute, as if waiting. They agreed on Wednesday, after work.
All those days Katya wavered. Sometimes deciding not to go, then convincing herself they would just talk, close that chapter, as her friend Marina liked to say. Pavel noticed nothing — or pretended not to. He cooked dinners, talked about work, planned vacations.
“Shall we go to Greece?” he asked. “Or maybe Italy? You’ve long wanted to visit Florence.”
“Let’s decide later,” Katya answered without looking him in the eyes.
On Wednesday she said she’d be late — urgent translation. Pavel nodded, kissed her forehead:
“Don’t stay too late. I’ll make your favorite soup.”
Oleg chose the café — small, in an alley. Katya arrived first, sat by the window. Ordered an Americano but couldn’t drink it — her stomach twisted from nervousness.
He showed up ten minutes later. The same — sharp cheekbones, gray eyes, that eternal three-day stubble. Only now with some gray at the temples.
“Hi,” he said simply, sitting opposite.
“Hi.”
They were silent. Katya fiddled with her phone; he drummed his fingers on the table — an old habit.
“You look good,” Oleg finally said.
“So do you.”
“Liar. I know I look bad. Been drinking for the last six months.”
“Why did you come?”
He shrugged:
“Business. And… wanted to see you.”
“Two years you didn’t want, and now suddenly you do?”
“Katya, let’s not do this. I didn’t come for a scandal.”
She wanted to get up and leave. She should have gotten up and left. But she stayed seated, watching as he ordered whiskey. At three in the afternoon.
“Tell me how you’re living,” he asked.
“Living fine. Working, translating. Living with Pavel.”
“Pavel’s the programmer?”
“Yes.”
“Good guy?”
“Very.”
“Do you love him?”
Katya was silent. Oleg smirked — crooked, painfully familiar.
“So you don’t love him.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It is. Everything about you is my business.”
“You destroyed it all yourself! With your own hands!”
“I know.”
That simple “I know” knocked the ground out from under her. She expected excuses, accusations — anything but that calm admission.
Then they talked about everything and nothing. About his work in St. Petersburg, her translations, the weather. But beneath the words flowed something else — that very river one cannot step into twice but desperately wants to.
“I have to go,” Katya said when it got dark.
“I’ll walk you out.”
“No need.”
But he walked beside her anyway. They stopped at the metro.
“Katya…” he started.
“No. Whatever you want to say — no.”
Oleg nodded. But then stepped closer, hugged her — tightly, desperately. And she didn’t push him away. She stood there, burying her face in his shoulder, inhaling a forgotten scent. Home was five minutes away by foot, but Katya took the metro, going in the other direction. She rode for an hour, coming back to herself. Pavel waited in the kitchen. Borscht was on the stove, covered with a lid.
“Want to eat?” he asked.
“No appetite. I’m very tired.”
“Katya…”
She looked up. Pavel looked at her like he understood everything.
“Did you meet with him?”
She could have lied. Should have lied. But Katya nodded.
Pavel sat down, rubbed his face with his hands.
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. Pash, I really don’t know. I thought it was over. That I hate him. But when I saw him — and…”
“And what? Remembered how he humiliated you? How he cheated? How you cried at night?”
“I remember everything. But…”
“But you love him.”
It wasn’t a question. Katya sat opposite him, took his hands in hers.
“You’re better than him in every way. You’re kind, honest, reliable. With you it’s calm, warm. But…”
“But I love him,” Pavel repeated. “You know he’ll hurt you again, and you’ll still go back to him.”
“I don’t want to go! Do you understand? I don’t! But I can’t not want.”
Pavel got up, paced the kitchen.
“What do you want from me? For me to say ‘Forget it, let’s live on’?”
“I don’t expect anything. Just… forgive me.”
“For what? For meeting him? Or for going to him?”
Katya was silent. Pavel sighed:
“I won’t hold you back. Won’t make scenes. You’re an adult, you decide. But I won’t wait for him to leave you again, and you’ll come running to me to lick your wounds.”
The next day Katya wrote to Oleg. They met at the same café. Then went to his place — he rented an apartment near Chistye Prudy. Everything happened fast, greedily, painfully. Then they lay there, silent.
“I’m breaking up with Pavel,” Katya said to the ceiling.
“Because of me?”
“Because of myself. It’s not fair to live like this.”
Oleg pulled her to him:
“Move in with me.”
“But you live in St. Petersburg.”
“I’ll stay here. With you.”
She knew she was lying. Knew but believed — as she always did.
At home Pavel drank tea in the living room. Saw her — disheveled, with smeared mascara — and understood everything.
“I’ll pack tomorrow,” he said quietly.
“Pash…”
“Don’t, Katya. Just don’t. I could forgive cheating. Could understand weakness. But you chose pain, knowing how it would end. It’s your choice. Mine is to leave.”
He left the next day. Quietly, without a scandal. Left keys on the table, took only clothes and laptop. Katya sat in the bedroom, listened to the door slam.
Oleg moved in a week later. The first days were like fire — passion, fights, reconciliations. He was jealous of every word she said about Pavel, angry when she was sad. Drank — first in the evenings, then during the day too.
“Do you regret it?” he asked aggressively. “Want to go back to your programmer?”
“Oleg, stop.”
“I didn’t come to you! You called me!”
A month later Katya woke up to a crash — Oleg drunkenly smashed a vase. He stood amid the shards, swaying.
“Where were you?” he shouted, seeing her.
“I was sleeping. Three a.m.”
“Lying! You were with someone!”
Katya looked at him — drunk, angry, pathetic — and suddenly realized: that’s it. Enough.
“I was wrong,” she said calmly. “You were like fire — bright, burning. But I need a home. Warmth. Peace.”
“You knew what I was like! You came yourself!”
“I knew. And I came. And now I’m leaving.”
She packed in an hour. Oleg yelled, begged, yelled again. She didn’t listen. Called a taxi, went downstairs.
It was cold outside — November, first snow. Katya looked up — the third-floor window was lit. Where Pavel used to live. New tenants, probably. Or he was with someone now. With someone who knows how to choose warmth, not fire.
The taxi arrived. Katya got in, gave the address of her friend — Marina promised shelter for a while.
“Cold today,” said the driver.
“Yes,” Katya agreed. “Very cold.”
Lights of the night city passed outside the window. Somewhere there was Oleg with his pain and anger. Somewhere Pavel lived his new life. And she was going nowhere, hugging her bag of things.
The phone vibrated — Oleg. Katya declined the call, blocked the number. Enough. Enough of burning herself for someone else’s warmth. Time to learn to warm herself.
The snow fell thicker and thicker, covering the city with a white blanket. New snow. New winter. Maybe a new life — someday.