We met in September, at a bus stop. I was waiting for my bus after a shift at the store, tired, with aching feet. Andrey was standing nearby, smoking, and then suddenly asked if I could tell him how to get to the factory. I explained. We started talking.
He was forty-six, tall, with gray in his hair, but still strong and fit. He had working man’s hands, strong hands. His eyes were light, mocking. He had been divorced for three years, had no children, worked as a turner, and rented a room from some old woman on the outskirts of town.
“It’s stuffy there,” he complained during our second meeting, when we were drinking coffee at a little café near my house. “The old woman is always grumbling if I come home after ten. It’s like prison.”
I was forty-nine. My daughter Katya had been living in Moscow for a long time, married, with two children. She visits rarely — once a year, for the holidays. I work as a saleswoman in a clothing store and live alone in a two-room Khrushchev-era apartment that my parents left me. In the evenings, I watch TV series and think that this is how the rest of my life will pass — alone, among empty walls.
And then Andrey appeared. Attentive, gallant. He walked me home, carried my shopping bags, gave me compliments. I bloomed like a forgotten flower in a corner that had suddenly been given water and light.
After a month, he was already coming over almost every evening. We had dinner, watched movies, talked late into the night. Another month later, I suggested it myself:
“Andrey, why should you keep paying for that room? Move in with me.”
He pretended to hesitate, as if he didn’t want to burden me. But he agreed quickly. Too quickly, as I understood later. That very weekend, we took a taxi, went to pick up his things — two large duffel bags and several boxes with fishing rods and all kinds of fishing gear.
“Fishing is my outlet,” he explained, placing the spinning rods in the corner of the hallway. “Without it, I’d simply go crazy.”
I nodded and smiled. I didn’t care. I was happy. I had someone close to me again. The apartment no longer seemed empty and dead.
The first week passed as if in a fog of happiness. We had dinner together, he told me about work, I told him about the customers at my store. He hugged me in the evenings, and I fell asleep feeling his warmth beside me.
And then something broke.
It all started with little things. I made borscht — my signature borscht, the one everyone had always praised. I put it on the table, waiting for Andrey to appreciate it.
He tried one spoonful and grimaced.
“Lyuda, did you forget what salt is for?” He pushed the plate away. “You oversalted it completely. Olga, my ex, used to make borscht so good you’d lick your fingers. But this… Sorry, but it’s impossible to eat.”
I was stunned. I sat across from him and tasted it myself — ordinary borscht, like always. Maybe a little saltier than necessary, but nothing terrible.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I must have gotten distracted.”
“Fine, I’ll eat it anyway,” he sighed martyr-like and started eating, grimacing after every spoonful.
I lost my appetite. I sat across from him and watched as he forced himself to finish my “oversalted” borscht.
The next day I cooked with special care. Chicken noodle soup — a simple dish, impossible to mess up. I salted it little by little, tasting it each time.
“What is this nonsense?” Andrey tasted it and shook his head in dissatisfaction again. “The chicken is rubbery, the noodles are overcooked. Do you even know how to cook?”
I clenched my fists under the table.
“Andrey, I’ve been cooking all my life. I fed my daughter, and she never complained.”
“Well, your daughter was a child,” he brushed it off. “Kids will gobble up anything. I’m a grown man. I need proper food.”
I fell silent. A lump rose in my throat. I finished my soup silently, without tasting anything.
With every passing day, there were more and more remarks from him. Dust on the television. Streaks on the bathroom mirror. Crumbs on the kitchen floor.
“You’re home all day when you have a day off,” he would say, scrolling through his phone while sprawled on the couch. “Is it really so hard to clean properly? Honestly, you’re a useless housekeeper.”
I started cleaning every day. I wiped the dust twice, washed the floors, scrubbed the sink until it shone. But his nitpicking did not stop. It was as if I had begun to see every flaw in my apartment, my household, myself, through a magnifying glass.
I began speaking less and less. Asking questions more quietly. I moved around the house trying not to make noise. I became quieter than water, lower than grass.
A month after he moved in, Andrey suggested combining our budgets.
We were sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea. He was scrolling through some fishing catalog on his phone.
“Lyuda, listen, let’s do this,” he began without looking up. “We’re a family now, right? Let’s put our money together. A shared budget. I pay for groceries anyway, I help with utilities. It’ll be fairer that way.”
I hesitated. I had never had a shared budget even with my ex-husband. My money was my independence, my freedom.
“I don’t know, Andrey…”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” He finally looked at me. “You don’t trust me or something? You think I’ll drink it away? I’m not an alcoholic. I’m a decent man. That’s actually insulting.”
“No, that’s not what I meant…”
“Then what’s the problem?” He took my hand and stroked it. “We’re together, Lyuda. It’s normal to share everything.”
I agreed. At the end of the month, I gave him my salary. Twenty-eight thousand rubles — not much, but it had been enough for me.
“Here,” he said, handing three thousand back to me. “For personal expenses.”
I took it and thought maybe I had worried for nothing. Maybe he really would organize everything properly.
But just a week later, I saw a new spinning rod in the hallway. Beautiful, long, clearly expensive.
“Andryusha, is that new?”
“Oh, yes,” he nodded. “A good one. Got it on sale. Only eight thousand.”
Eight thousand. Almost a third of my salary.
Two weeks later, a second spinning rod appeared. Then an expensive reel. Then a set of fishing lures in a beautiful box.
“It’s for my soul, Lyuda,” he explained. “I work like a dog at that factory. I need a release. Fishing is my meditation.”
He started going fishing every weekend. Sometimes he didn’t come home for the night. He would call late in the evening: “I’ll stay over at Seryoga’s. It’s far to drive back, I’m tired.” I waited for him alone in the empty apartment and wondered what I had done wrong.
New parts for his Moskvich started appearing in the garage he rented nearby. He would come home pleased, telling me about some rare carburetor he had found, what wheels he had managed to get.
And I went to work in an old coat with a torn-off button and worn-out boots. I gave him my entire salary every time. The three thousand he returned to me went toward transportation and lunches at work.
I became very small. Invisible. A gray shadow in my own apartment.
The turning point came unexpectedly.
I came home from work in mid-January. It had been a hard day — a scandalous customer, inventory, a picky inspection from management. My legs were buzzing, my head was splitting.
Andrey was sitting on the couch in a new sweater — imported, clearly not cheap. He was watching some fishing program.
“Hi,” I breathed out, taking off my coat.
“Mm-hmm,” he answered without turning his head.
I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. And suddenly I did not recognize myself.
A gray, sunken face. Deep lines around the mouth. Extinguished eyes with no life in them. Hunched shoulders. A cheap, washed-out sweater.
Where was that Lyudmila who, six months ago, had laughed, dreamed of new happiness, believed that life was not over yet?
I looked at my reflection and could not tear myself away. Something hot, sharp, and demanding was rising inside me.
When I came out of the bathroom, Andrey was scrolling through his phone.
“Lyud, will there be dinner?” he asked without looking up. “I’m hungry.”
And then I said:
“Pack your things. Leave.”
He raised his head. Stared at me.
“What?”
“I said pack your things and leave. Today.”
“What’s wrong with you?” He laughed, but the laugh was nervous. “Lyudka, have you gone crazy?”
“No. I am very calm. Leave.”
He jumped up from the couch. His face turned red.
“Have you completely lost your mind?!” he shouted. “Who are you to order me around?! I’ve been living here for half a year, investing, spending money on this apartment, on groceries, and you just tell me like that — leave?!”
“You live on my money,” I said quietly, surprised by my own calm. “You buy yourself spinning rods and car parts with my money.”
“Don’t lie! I work! I earn money!”
“Then show me your bank statements. Show me where your money goes.”
He fell silent. Then he took a step toward me. I stepped back to the wall.
“You ungrateful bitch,” he hissed through his teeth. “I put up with you, even though you can’t cook, even though you’re a useless housekeeper, even though you’re nothing at all. Without me, you’re a zero. An old woman nobody needs.”
Before, those words would have killed me. I would have cried.
But now I only pressed my back against the cold wall and repeated:
“Leave.”
He shouted for another twenty minutes. Called me every possible name. Threatened that I would regret it. That I would disappear without him.
I stayed silent.
Then he suddenly changed tactics. He sat down on the couch and clutched his head in his hands.
“Lyuda, forgive me,” he said pitifully. “I didn’t mean to say that. I’m just nervous, I’ve got problems at work. I’m tired. Forgive me, really. I’ll change. I’ll help around the house, I’ll be more polite. Give me a chance.”
“Leave,” I repeated.
“But I have nowhere to go!” He jumped up. “Lyudmila, you understand, I have nowhere to go! I need to rent a room, find money, time…”
“That is not my problem.”
He looked at me, and I saw something go out in his eyes. He understood that I would not back down.
Then he took out his phone and called a friend.
“Seryoga, come over. Urgently.”
He arrived an hour later. Seryoga was just like Andrey — a rough-looking man of about fifty. He glanced at me sideways but said nothing.
They started carrying things out.
First the clothes — Andrey methodically packed his shirts, jeans, and new sheepskin coat into duffel bags. Then tools. Then boxes with car parts.
I sat in the kitchen and looked out the window.
“The television is mine,” Andrey said as he passed by. “I bought it.”
“Take it.”
“And the vacuum cleaner.”
“Take it.”
They carried out the television. The vacuum cleaner. The microwave. The toaster, which I had bought before he even appeared, but he said, “I use it, so it’s mine.”
Seryoga went out for the last time with some boxes. Andrey walked through the apartment once more, checking.
He went into the bathroom. Came out with the automatic air freshener — white, with a motion sensor.
“And this is mine too,” he said, looking me in the eyes.
I said nothing.
He turned around and left. The door slammed.
I heard them going down the stairs.
I slowly walked through the apartment. Empty. No television. No vacuum cleaner. No microwave. Not even an air freshener.
But there was silence. Proper, clean silence.
I opened the fridge. Took out eggs, tomatoes, cheese. Made myself an omelet — with lots of cheese, which Andrey could not stand. I salted it the way I liked.
I sat at the table. Ate slowly, savoring every bite.
Then I brewed tea. From the bottom of the cupboard, I took out my favorite cup — the big one with bright flowers, the one Andrey called “ugly.”
I sat by the window. It was snowing outside. Slow, beautiful January snow.
I drank my tea and smiled for the first time in six months.
Six months of a mistake had ended.
Ahead was a whole life.
My own life.
And I would never let anyone steal it from me again.