“Well, birthday girl, are you ready to shine?” Mark entered the bedroom with two glasses of sparkling wine, wearing that very smile that still made something flutter inside me, even after twenty years.
He set the glasses down on the vanity, his reflection merging with mine in the mirror for a moment. I was adjusting my silk dress the color of the night sky when his warm gaze slid over my back.
“With you—always ready,” I smiled at my reflection and at him. “Forty years, can you believe it? It feels like just yesterday we were skipping lectures to go to the movies, and today I’m… a respectable lady.”
“You’re no respectable lady, you’re a goddess,” he said, touching my shoulder lightly, and that simple gesture sent shivers across my skin.
“You don’t look it. You look even better than back then. The guests are already arriving, Lena’s here, taking charge in the kitchen like it’s her own place. She says she has some special toast prepared for you.”
Lena. My best—my only—friend. Twenty-five years of friendship, longer than my marriage. She knew everything about me, even things I was afraid to admit to myself. She was the sister I had chosen.
I took a sip of champagne, bubbles pleasantly tickling my throat. Downstairs soft music was already playing, mingled with muffled voices and laughter.
Our house came alive, filled with warmth, friends, and the anticipation of celebration. A perfect anniversary. A perfect life. I believed I had built it myself, brick by brick.
“Let’s go before they eat everything without us,” I linked my arm through Mark’s, feeling his strength and reliability.
The living room was noisy and cheerful. Lena, dazzling like a tropical bird in her scarlet dress, immediately flew over to hug me.
“Anya! Goddess!” she sang in my ear. “Happy birthday, darling! Today is your day, and only yours!”
She slipped a small shiny-wrapped package into my hands.
“Just a little something, from the heart. The real gift—later, together.”
Mark stood beside me, arm around my waist, watching us with tenderness. My husband and my best friend.
The two people closest to me in the whole world. What more could one need at forty? I felt absolutely, unshakably happy.
The evening passed in a blur—toast after toast, laughter, dancing to the music of our youth. I felt like the center of a little universe, warmed by love and friendship.
Mark never left my side, always refilling my glass, whispering compliments that made me blush like a girl.
Near midnight he asked for everyone’s attention. The music faded, and all eyes turned toward us.
“Friends,” Mark began, his voice trembling slightly with emotion. “Tonight my beloved wife celebrates her milestone birthday. Anya, you are the best thing that ever happened in my life, and I want you to know that every single day.”
He pulled a small velvet box from his jacket pocket.
“This is for you. From my heart.”
The guests hummed approvingly. Lena stood close, winking at me as if urging, Come on, open it quickly.
Her eyes sparkled with some strange, feverish excitement.
I took the box. My fingers trembled with anticipation, my heart pounding. Slowly, I lifted the lid.
On the black velvet lay earrings. White gold encrusted with tiny diamonds curling around a large, flawless sapphire. Indecently expensive. Indecently beautiful. The guests gasped in admiration.
I looked up at Mark, ready to burst into tears of joy—but a lump caught in my throat. The air grew thick and heavy.
These earrings. I had seen them before.
A couple of weeks ago, Lena had sat in my kitchen, gushing about a new admirer. Mysterious. Married. Madly in love. She had shown me a photo on her phone—these very earrings.
“Can you believe it? He wants to give them to me! Just like that!” she had chirped.
At the time I just laughed. Jewelry can look alike, after all. But now, holding them in my hands, an icy wave rose inside me.
This could not be coincidence. My mind grasped desperately at reason, but something inside had already cracked.
Beneath the velvet lining, my fingers felt a folded slip of paper. I opened it. A small note, written in Mark’s bold, familiar handwriting, on thick pink paper with embossing.
“To my beloved.”
Pink paper. Exactly the same stack I’d seen on Lena’s desk last week. “For scrapbooking, a new hobby,” she’d said, casually covering it with a magazine.
That was it. The puzzle clicked together with a sickening snap.
The earrings Lena had been expecting from her “secret admirer.” A note from my husband. On her paper. The wrong gift box, snatched in haste.
The festive noise in the living room turned into a dull roar in my ears. I lifted my head and looked at Lena.
Her face had gone chalk white, her smile frozen into a grimace of horror. She wasn’t looking at me—she was staring at the box in my hands. She knew.
Then I turned to Mark. He was still smiling, waiting for my delighted reaction.
“They’re beautiful,” my voice sounded flat, alien. I stood. “Absolutely incredible. Lena, don’t you think so?”
I held the box out toward her.
She recoiled as if I were handing her a snake.
“Anya, what are you doing? That’s your gift…”
“Mine?” I laughed bitterly. I pulled the pink note from the box and held it up to her face. “And is the paper mine too? Or from your ‘hobby’ supplies?”
Mark’s smile vanished. He stepped toward me, face stretching in alarm.
“Anya, what are you saying? What paper?”
“The very one!” My voice cracked into a scream. I hurled the box onto the table, the earrings clattering across the tablecloth. “The very paper where you write love notes! Not to me—to her!”
I jabbed a finger at Lena. The guests froze. The music stopped mid-beat.
“Anya, calm down, you’ve misunderstood—” Mark stammered, trying to grab my hand.
“I understood perfectly!” I yanked it away like from a flame. “Twenty years of marriage! Twenty-five years of friendship! Both of you! Behind my back!”
Lena burst into sobs, covering her face. Mark looked between us, eyes filled only with fear. The raw fear of a cornered betrayer.
“Out,” I whispered. Then louder, to the whole house: “Out! Both of you! I never want to see you again!”
The guests parted, forming a corridor. Lena shook with sobs, refusing to move. Mark tugged her by the hand.
“Come on,” he rasped, not looking at me.
“Mark, don’t leave me,” she whimpered, clutching his sleeve.
That was the last straw. I strode to the door, flung it wide open. My eyes held no more tears or rage—only cold, ringing emptiness.
“I said—both. Out.”
It worked better than screaming. Mark dragged Lena out and shoved her over the threshold. The door slammed shut with a deafening bang, cutting them off forever.
The room sank into heavy silence. Only the hum of the refrigerator and a guest’s awkward cough could be heard.
I turned to the others—my friends, colleagues, witnesses to my grand humiliation. I straightened my back.
“I apologize for the ruined evening,” I said evenly. “The performance is over. Thank you all for coming.”
No one argued. They left quickly, avoiding my eyes, muttering sympathy I didn’t hear. In five minutes, the house was empty.
I stood alone amid the wreckage—half-eaten salads, abandoned glasses, confetti scattered on the floor.
My perfect life, dismantled piece by piece.
I walked to the table, picked up the sapphire earrings. Heavy, cold. They were supposed to symbolize love. Instead, they symbolized lies. I clenched them so tightly their sharp edges cut into my palm.
Then I went to the open window. The night air smelled of ozone after a distant storm. Without hesitation, I opened my fingers.
Two tiny sparks glimmered in the lamplight and disappeared into the dark lawn.
I didn’t cry. There was no pain inside me—only a strange, intoxicating sense of freedom. As if I had been carrying a crushing burden for years and finally cast it off.
The burden of others’ expectations, of others’ desires. The burden of that perfect picture I had worked so hard to paint.
I looked around my living room. My house. My fortress.
Tomorrow there would be much to do—lawyers, bills, dividing property. But that would be tomorrow.
Tonight, on my fortieth birthday, I received the best gift of all. I got myself back.
Three years later.
I sat in my sunlit little flower shop, arranging a bouquet for a customer. My fingers moved swiftly, weaving peonies and eucalyptus into an airy, tender composition.
Outside, the city buzzed, but here among roses and hydrangeas, it was another world. My world.
After that birthday, I sold our big, empty house. Sold nearly all the furniture, keeping only a couple of beloved chairs and my bookshelves.
With the money, I rented this space on a quiet street and started the business I had always dreamed of but never had the courage to pursue.
Courage. A funny word. Turns out it comes not when you’re strong, but when you have no other choice.
The divorce was dirty and difficult. Mark tried to paint me as unstable, as if I’d had a breakdown.
Lena wrote long, tearful, apologetic messages, which I deleted unread.
They married six months after my forty-first birthday. I found out by accident on social media. Felt nothing. Just closed the page.
Sometimes I thought of them. Not with anger, but with the detached curiosity of an entomologist watching two insects tangled in a web.
Their betrayal wasn’t my tragedy—it was my inoculation. Painful, but necessary. A vaccine against illusions.
“Anya, someone’s here for you…” my young assistant Katya appeared in the doorway, hesitating.
I looked up—and saw her. Lena.
She stood awkwardly at the entrance, worn down, in a shapeless gray coat. The once bright, confident bird of paradise was gone.
“Hi,” she said quietly.
“Hi,” I replied evenly, snipping an extra leaf. “Do you need a bouquet?”
She flinched at my tone. Polite, but utterly foreign.
“No, I… I just wanted to talk. To ask forgiveness. Again.”
“Lena, don’t. It’s all in the past.”
“Things with Mark… they’re bad,” she blurted, eyes brimming with tears. “He keeps comparing me to you. Says I’m not as good a homemaker, not as interesting, not as—”
“I’m not interested,” I cut her off gently but firmly, placing the bouquet in a vase. “Your life with my ex-husband is none of my concern.”
She stared at me, not with repentance but with desperate envy. At my shop, my flower-dusted hands, my calm face.
She looked at a woman she had taken everything from—who, having lost it all, had somehow become happier.
“I’ll go,” she whispered, and quickly left.
I watched her go. I felt no gloating, no pity. Nothing.
The doorbell chimed as a new customer entered. I smiled at her.
“Good afternoon! How can I help you?”
That evening, instead of going home, I sat on a park bench, eating ice cream, watching the sunset.
I was turning forty-three. And I was utterly, unconditionally happy. I had received not just myself back—I had received a whole new life. And that was the best gift of all.
And a year later, I met a wonderful man and began helping him raise his son.
