“Mom’s already picked out the tile, Zhenya. Don’t be upset,” Sergey called out casually from the other room while I stood in the hallway wrestling with the stuck zipper on my boot.
“I transferred your bonus to her. It was just enough for the Czech tile. It’s not like you’ll go broke.”
The zipper on my left boot gave a sharp little crunch and dug into the fold of leather. I froze there in that ridiculous half-bent pose, feeling the blood rush to my face.
My phone chirped inside my bag. I pulled it out.
On the screen was a notification:
Deposit: Bonus. Amount: 34,200 rubles.
And right after that—another message.
The money had already been withdrawn.
Gone.
Thirty-four thousand two hundred. Exactly what two weeks without a single day off had cost me. Exactly what that sand-colored coat I’d been eyeing would have cost. I had already pictured myself in it.
But no.
Tile. Czech tile. For his mother.
“Zhenya, are you stuck in there or what?” Sergey’s voice came again, thick and lazy.
“The borscht’s boiling over, and you’re still standing by the door.”
I straightened up. The zipper finally gave way with a pitiful little scrape. The boots were four years old. Good boots—but everything has its limit.
The beet stain on the plate
The pot of borscht was simmering on the stove. I ladled Sergey a bowl. He shuffled into the kitchen, holding up his sweatpants because the elastic had long since given up. He sat down without taking his eyes off his phone. Something was exploding there again.
“Sergey, I’d been looking at that coat for three months,” I said as I sat down across from him.
“Do you even understand what you did? You literally reached into my wallet.”
He kept eating, spoon after spoon.
“That coat is just a rag, Zhenya,” he muttered without even looking at me.
“But my mother’s bathroom is falling apart. Everything’s crumbling. She was crying yesterday. As her son, what was I supposed to do? You’re strong. You’ll earn more. She needs it more.”
He finished eating, pushed away the plate with its streak of beet-red along the porcelain, and went back to the other room. A chair creaked. Another digital cannon blasted from his game.
I stared at that pinkish stain on the plate. Then at the cracked refrigerator handle I had wrapped in electrical tape a year ago because Sergey “didn’t have time” to fix it.
And then it hit me.
I had trained him to live like this.
I had made life easy for him—convenient, dependable, unlimited.
Like a phone plan with no spending cap.
Until the plan finally ran out of patience.
Three clicks
I locked myself in the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, my feet touching the cold linoleum.
Silence.
I took out my phone. In this house, I was the accountant, the sponsor, and the tech support. The entire family mobile plan was tied to my bank card.
I opened the account settings and found Sergey’s number.
Remove this number from the shared plan?
“Yes,” I answered.
First click. Second click—confirm.
Auto-pay for his stupid war games? Deleted.
Subscription to the streaming service? Gone too.
Home router? Into the settings… change the password.
Three clicks.
Untick Shared Package.
Confirm deletion of husband’s number.
Then: Change Wi-Fi password.
The phone warmed in my hand as if to confirm it: the operation to save my life had been successfully completed.
I felt like a bomb technician.
Cutting the wires through which my life had been draining for years.
Balance: zero, Sergey.
In every possible sense.
Out in the open
“Zhenya!” he yelled five minutes later.
“Zhenya, do you hear me? My signal’s gone! Check the router—maybe it needs rebooting!”
I didn’t answer. I pulled a paper catalog out of the bedside drawer. On the last page was the sand-colored coat.
“Zhenya, my tank’s frozen in the middle of a field! I’m about to get blown up! Are you asleep or what?”
He appeared in the bedroom doorway—hair wild, face flushed red. His phone was clenched in his hand, the loading wheel spinning helplessly on the screen.
“What happened to the internet?” he barked.
“I’m the one paying for that, by the way!”
“No, Sergey,” I said, pushing up my glasses.
“With this finger.”
The middle one.
“I pay for it. Or rather, I did. Up until now.”
He stopped short. His mouth fell open slightly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly that. I shut everything off. Your phone is on its own now. Your games are on their own too. And the Wi-Fi in this apartment has a new password.”
“I’ve lost my mind, have I? You need to call someone? Then pay for service. With your own money. The same money you supposedly keep ‘for gas’—or for your mother.”
The numbers no longer added up
Sergey started shouting.
About duty.
About how petty I was.
About how I was destroying a marriage over “some clothes.”
“You hate my mother, don’t you?” he shouted.
“I’ll leave tomorrow! I’ll go stay with her! Let’s see how you manage by yourself then!”
“Go,” I said simply.
“You already picked out her tile. You’ve called the workers. You can help her with that too. And while you’re at it, you can pay for her internet.”
He fell silent.
Then he tried a different tactic—stepping closer, trying to wrap an arm around me.
“Come on, Zhenya… don’t be like this. I got carried away. Seriously, Mom’s bathroom is a mess. Just turn the internet back on. I need to answer the guys in the group chat. I’ll pay you back when I get my salary, I swear.”
“The balance is zero, Sergey. And so is my trust. Tomorrow I’m going to buy that coat. And you can find out for yourself how much internet costs. Time to get used to it.”
He stood there in the hallway—big, awkward, ridiculous in his sagging sweatpants.
In his hand was a useless slab of plastic that, without my money behind it, had become nothing more than a toy.
Resource
That night was quiet.
For the first time in years, I didn’t hear the pounding chaos of his games behind the wall.
Sergey tossed and turned on the couch half the night. I could hear him sighing, hear the click of the computer power button. No miracle came.
The digital world is fair that way.
No payment—no service.
In the morning, he tried again.
“Zhenya… there’s only three hundred rubles left on my card. It’s not enough for the plan. Maybe you could…”
“Ask your mother, Sergey. I’m sure she can give you some advice on budgeting, since her tile mattered more.”
I put on my boots. This time the zipper slid up without catching.
I looked at him.
“I’m going to buy my coat. I’ll be back late. There’s soup in the fridge—heat it yourself.”
Forty square meters of freedom
I stepped out of the building. The air was damp, heavy with the smell of melting snow.
I walked to the store and tried on the coat.
It fit perfectly.
The color was elegant and calm—camel wool.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from my mother-in-law’s number:
I’m at Mom’s. I’ll be late.
Tomorrow he would start blowing up my phone. He would swear, beg, blame his mother, blame me, blame the world.
But I had already set aside money for a new pair of boots—ones with a zipper that never sticks.
Nothing in my life is going to jam anymore.
In this home, I make the decisions again.
And that is the best balance sheet I have ever closed.
If this story touched something inside you, let me know. It matters to me to feel someone standing beside me.