Other People’s Problems
The café smelled of coffee, vanilla, and wet coats. Outside, October rain drummed a slow, melancholy rhythm against the pavement.
Every Saturday, Katerina came here for the same reason—an hour of quiet, a warm cup of cappuccino with cinnamon, and blessed detachment from everything she no longer wished to remember.
But the past had a habit of showing up uninvited.
The door flung open, letting in a gust of cold air—and him.
Sergei.
He scanned the room, found her instantly, and walked over in his damp sweater, hair dripping, wearing an expression that used to look like heartbreak. Now it looked like bad acting.
“Katya,” he said, his voice creaking like a rusted hinge.
She didn’t offer him a seat. He took one anyway.
“We need to talk,” he said, folding his red, chilled fingers together. “It’s urgent.”
“We have no urgent matters, Sergei,” she replied calmly. “We have no matters at all.”
“Don’t pretend we’re strangers! It’s about the apartment. The one on Tverskaya. The developer went bankrupt. The construction’s frozen. My money—our money—is hanging in the air.”
She set her cup down. The soft click sounded like a trap closing.
“First,” she said, meeting his eyes at last, “those were your money. You were very clear about that. ‘Don’t stick your nose into men’s business,’ remember?”
He flinched.
“Not now, Katya… it’s serious!”
“So serious that you suddenly remembered we’re a ‘we’?”
Her tone sharpened.
“We stopped being ‘we’ four months and seventeen days ago. Court stamp and all.”
He stared as if hearing this for the first time. As if his betrayal, his mistress, and her slow recovery were details he’d forgotten.
“But the apartment—”
“The apartment you bought to live in with your girlfriend?” she finished.
“That apartment is your problem. Yours and hers. You wanted a shared future—well, share it. Deal with the lawsuits, the losses, the consequences.”
He went pale.
“I could lose everything,” he whispered. “I might have nothing to live on!”
Katerina leaned back, studying the man she once spent eleven years beside—and felt nothing but tiredness.
“And what,” she asked simply, “does that have to do with me?”
He looked like a bewildered schoolboy.
“But you won’t leave me in trouble… We were family.”
That word almost made her laugh.
“Family?”
Her voice was cool and precise.
“Families don’t leave each other for younger secretaries. Families don’t belittle, don’t mock, don’t call your work ‘a hobby.’ We were never a family, Sergei. Only an illusion. One you shattered yourself.”
She placed money on the table for her coffee and stood.
“So no,” she said quietly. “I won’t leave you in trouble. Because your trouble is no longer mine. We’re divorced. Your problems are your girlfriend’s now, not mine.”
The words hit him like nails. His shoulders caved in.
Katerina put on her coat and walked out without a glance back.
Outside, the rain felt sharp and clean, as if washing the last traces of him off her skin. She walked with lightness she hadn’t felt in years. His debts, his drama, his endless demands—they all stayed behind in that café.
She stepped into her own life—difficult, lonely, but hers.
And in that life, there was no room for other people’s problems.
