“Eh, Anya, you’re rushing into marriage for nothing! You couldn’t wait for me… And you yourself once promised: when I grow up—we’ll get married. Fine then, I don’t wish you anything good! I even hope nothing works out for you—you’ll split up as soon as possible! Better yet—let him just die, and Anya will be a widow!” These words, hurled into the hall over the microphone, were so harsh and unexpected that the guests froze in speechless shock. Fifteen-year-old Timur, barely finished, flung the microphone and ran out of the banquet hall.
“Timur! Son, how could you?! Come back this instant, apologize and give a proper toast!” Marina sprang up and rushed after him, leaving the guests in awkward silence.
“Leave me alone! I’m not going back! What am I supposed to do in there? Watch you lot parade Anya around like a fairground prize? Watch your fake smiles, your ‘joy’ at her fate? I saw it all! I saw your showy envy!”
“Timur, that’s enough! Anya is an adult; she has the right to decide for herself who to build a life with,” his mother tried to calm him, but she had never seen him this furious.
“Mom, she’s only twenty! She’s five years older than me! And him? Forty? Fifty? You think that’s normal? Imagine it’s me sitting there at the wedding table, and next to me is your boss. You know, the one whose face is all implants and whose plastic surgeon doesn’t even remember what she used to look like. Well? Would you be okay with that?”
“No, of course not, but you mustn’t judge like that. Anya’s situation is complicated… Besides, her husband is only forty-two. Yes, he’s older, but he looks young for his age. They’ll be fine. And you… you’re still too young to understand these things.”
Anechka came into her parents’ lives when they were nearly forty. Her father was an orphan, and her mother came from a village where her parents still lived. Sadly, the happiness of having her parents didn’t last long—they died when Anya was only three.
Her maternal grandparents barely managed to secure guardianship. Their granddaughter became a light in their grief, the only comfort after the loss of their daughter. When Anya was finishing school, her grandfather fell seriously ill. The girl enrolled in a part-time (correspondence) program and left to work in the nearby city where she had lived with her parents. She moved in with a former neighbor—Marina.
Marina and her husband lived in a spacious, beautiful apartment. They took the large room; their twelve-year-old son Timur had the small one; and for Anya they allotted a tiny cubby that looked more like a closet.
Anya did everything she could not to be a burden. She helped around the house, since she couldn’t pay for lodging—and Marina never asked for money. The girl tried to eat separately, so as not to “impoverish” the family that, as she believed, had so generously taken her in.
She had already turned twenty when one day on the street she suddenly felt weak and nearly collapsed.
“Miss, are you all right?”
A deep, gentle male voice brought her back—warm as velvet and at the same time stirring her heart.
But the owner of that voice was nothing like she expected to see. Before her stood a balding, slightly stout man in his forties, dressed in an expensive suit beside a high-end car. He was the one who caught her and drove her to the hospital, insisting on a full check-up. When the doctor said Anya was simply exhausted, he took her to a café.
“Oh, no, please, thank you! I’ll rest and go to work. I’m fine.”
Andrei wouldn’t listen to her refusals. He seated her at a table and began to ask questions—at first gently, then more insistently. Confiding her difficulties to a stranger, Anya felt relief for the first time in a long while. After feeding her, Andrei said:
“Listen, Anna, I can’t just let you go like this. I run a small business. I’m offering you a job and housing—your own apartment. It’s been empty for a while, but it’s in perfect order.”
“And what do you want in return?” she asked warily.
“Sorry? I don’t follow…”
“Well, what do you expect? My attention? Access to the apartment? The chance to ‘drop by’? No, thank you. Here’s my number—send me the bill for lunch. I don’t have the money now, but in a couple of days I’ll pay you back.”
Andrei looked at the girl in astonishment: a minute ago she’d been pale and weak, and now her cheeks were burning with anger, her eyes flashing. And suddenly he realized he admired her.
“Anna, you misunderstood me. I have no hidden motives. I simply have a daughter your age, and she has no thought of being independent. If you’re doubtful—change the locks. I won’t object.” He smiled, and there was such sincerity in that smile that, after thinking it over, Anya agreed.
“Marina, I found a job! And even an apartment!” Anya burst into the flat, radiant with joy.
“Wow, where do they offer terms like that—tell me, I want in too!” Marina’s husband joked, giving their “lodger” a good-natured wink.
“I’ll tell you everything right now!”
She excitedly described meeting Andrei. Marina and her husband grew wary—the generous offer from a barely acquainted man seemed suspicious.
“Anechka, don’t agree. It’s strange,” Marina frowned.
“We’re not kicking you out; you can stay,” her husband added.
Anya listened, but a month later she moved out anyway, convinced that Andrei was truly honest and had no ulterior motives. However, despite his promises, he couldn’t restrain his feelings and soon began courting her. Anya came to Marina several times for advice: should she start a relationship with a man twice her age? She had no idea that Timur—Marina’s son, now older and long in love with her—heard every one of those conversations. He said nothing, but inside he seethed with hurt and jealousy, because to him Anya wasn’t just an older sister figure—she was his first love.
Six months after they met, Andrei proposed. A few weeks earlier he had paid for her grandfather’s expensive surgery and had a full renovation done on their old house—and the girl simply didn’t have the strength to refuse.
“Anyut, maybe think it over? You’re twenty, and he’s forty-two. That’s a huge difference!” Marina could feel Anya wavering, feel how hard the decision was for her.
“So what? He looks younger than his years. And me? I look older than I am—after all I’ve been through, all the work I’ve done. By feel, we’re almost the same age. I’m not making a mistake. And besides, I owe him!”
“You don’t owe anyone anything. You didn’t ask for any of this. He did it voluntarily.”
“It’s settled. I’ll be happy, I’m sure of it. He did the impossible—got Granddad treated, repaired the house. How could I say no after that? I’d look like an ungrateful fool.”
Out in the hall, leaning against the wall, stood Timur, listening to every word. He wanted to punch the wall, to break down and cry out—out of pain, offense, helplessness. He loved Anya with the full force of a youthful, pure, unrequited love, and now he saw her going into this marriage not out of passion but out of a sense of obligation to a man who could simply afford to be generous.
At the wedding he couldn’t hold back. In a rush of emotion, holding the microphone, he said he himself would like to be the groom. The guests were first taken aback, then laughed it off as a childish joke. Andrei only smiled indulgently—he understood the real feeling behind those words. And Anya… Anya was shaken. She had never imagined that her kindness, care, help with homework, and forged parent signatures in the school grade book could be taken as anything other than friendly. She saw Timur as a little brother, while he saw in her his first love.
To avoid seeing her every day, to stop torturing himself, Timur withdrew his papers after ninth grade and left to enroll in a technical college in another city. He left with a promise to himself: I’ll come back only when thinking of her no longer hurts.
Ten years passed.
Timur stood on a familiar street and didn’t recognize the town. The houses seemed to have shrunk, the trees to have withered. Or had he grown taller, stronger, older? He hadn’t been here for a full decade—the promise he’d made to himself was sacred. Only when his heart stopped clenching at the thought of Anya would he return.
He learned that she was free. Two years after the wedding Andrei had died—a rival had staged an “accident.” After his death, everything he had amassed went to his adult daughter, to whom he had transferred the business and property in advance. He thought he had secured his family’s future, but he didn’t manage to provide for his young wife and newborn daughter.
All Anya received was the apartment and a small nest egg—enough to survive the first hard years. She raised the girl alone, constantly looking over her shoulder—in case her husband’s older daughter decided to take even that away. Her life was full of anxiety, fear, and endless exhaustion.
When Timur returned, Anya was thirty. But she looked all of forty-five. Years of hard living, cares, loneliness, and worry had left deep marks. He, by then, had become a man—twenty-five, confident, strong, with a steady gaze and resolve in his eyes.
He continued to see his mother, and one day he saw Anya—with her daughter, with a tired but kind face. That evening, walking her home, he couldn’t hold back:
“You haven’t changed at all! You’ve even gotten better!”
“Oh, stop, Timur! I’ve aged. I feel fifty. But you… you’ve become a real man. You’ve grown up. Handsome! I bet every girl’s crazy about you now.”
“Well, since you admit I’m no longer a boy… will you marry me?”
She looked at him closely—and suddenly laughed, as if she’d heard a joke.
“Quit it! Be serious. I’m too old for you. You need someone young, fresh, someone you’ll truly fall in love with. As for us… it’s absurd. Remember how you yourself shouted at my wedding that it was wrong for me to marry Andrei? He was twenty-two years older than me! And now you’re suggesting the same thing? Where’s your logic?”
“He was twice your age. And I’m only five years younger. His daughter was younger than you. And I’m not a stranger to you. I’ve known you since childhood. I’ve loved you since then. This isn’t a game. It isn’t revenge. It’s fate.”
“That can’t be. I have a child. Your life is in another city. And I can’t leave. My roots are here, my parents’ graves… And… I wouldn’t be able to look your mother in the eye.”
“I’m not the little boy you used to pat on the head and call ‘kid.’ I’m a man. And I won’t back down.”
“Good night, Timur,” she said softly, and closed the entryway door.
“You’ll be mine anyway,” he whispered, but for the first time there was uncertainty in his voice.
Months of courtship led nowhere. Anya held her ground: “You deserve better. Let it go.” But then came her trembling, frightened call:
“Timur… help me. My daughter is missing. The police say to wait three days. But she’s only eight…”
He dropped everything. He roused acquaintances and friends, checked cameras, canvassed the yards. Twelve hours later the girl was found—she had simply gotten caught up playing in another courtyard, and her phone had died.
From that day, something changed. Anya stopped resisting. She no longer saw in Timur the boy she used to lead by the hand. In front of her stood a strong, reliable man who had saved her child—and saved her.
She feared condemnation, feared that Marina would object. But Timur’s mother only smiled:
“I’ve known for a long time. He’s never loved anyone the way he loves her.”
A year and a half after his return, Timur led Anya to the altar. This time—without shouting, without tears, without doubts. Only quiet, certainty, and a love that had passed through years, pain, and trials.