Clinking crystal glasses rang through the spacious living room, where friends and relatives had gathered for the traditional summer celebration. Anna, as always, bustled around the table, arranging appetizers and checking whether everyone had enough napkins. Her slender fingers, adorned with a simple wedding band, fluttered over the table like birds.
“Anya, sit down already!” exclaimed Marina, her longtime friend. “Everything’s perfect!”
“Just a second,” Anna waved it off out of habit, tucking a loose strand of chestnut hair behind her ear.
Igor, her husband, sat at the head of the table, loudly telling yet another story from his youth. His cheeks were already flushed from the wine, and his voice kept getting louder. Anna knew that dangerous gleam in his eyes—the sign he might say too much.
“And my dear wife…” he suddenly pivoted to her, and Anna’s heart skipped a beat. “Do you know what stunt she pulled recently?”
“Igor, maybe don’t,” she said quietly, but her husband seemed not to hear.
“Imagine—she decided to start her own business!” He threw up his hands theatrically. “She, who can’t even handle the household budget! Saved up for some courses for three months and then—bam!—all the money down the drain!”
An awkward silence settled over the room. Someone coughed nervously; someone else pretended to be absorbed in their plate.
“No, just think about it!” Igor went on, oblivious to the way his wife’s face had gone rigid. “A housewife decided to become a businesswoman! She can’t even give a proper presentation—she stammers, she blushes… Remember how she embarrassed herself at the last office party?”
Anna felt the ground slip from under her feet. Every word of her husband’s struck home, exposing her most painful insecurities and fears. She glanced at her reflection in the polished serving tray—a pale face, trembling lips, and in her eyes… In her eyes was a pain so deep it frightened her.
“And remember how last year she…” Igor didn’t get to finish.
“That’s enough.” Anna’s voice sounded uncharacteristically firm. She slowly set down the napkin she had been crumpling in her hands and rose from the table.
“Oh, come on! I’m only teasing you because I love you!” Igor tried to grab her hand, but she drew away.
“Thank you all for the evening,” Anna said, looking somewhere over the guests’ heads. “Please excuse me.”
She left the room calmly, back straight, like a ballerina on stage. Only in the hallway, feeling for her car keys in her purse, did she allow herself a ragged breath. Everything blurred before her eyes, but she stubbornly blinked back the unwanted tears.
The next morning Igor woke up on the couch with a headache and a vague sense that he had done something irreparable. Anna had already left for work, leaving an untouched breakfast in the kitchen—for the first time in their fifteen years of marriage.
“Anna, let’s talk,” he texted her.
“Not now,” came the short reply an hour later.
That evening she came home late, ate in silence, and went to the guest bedroom, locking the door. Igor paced around the house like a caged animal.
“How long are you going to sulk?” he shouted through the door. “So I made a bad joke, big deal!”
“A bad joke?” Her voice sounded muffled. “You humiliated me in front of everyone, you mocked my dreams and fears. And you call that a bad joke?”
There was such bitterness in her words that Igor involuntarily stepped back from the door. Something in her tone reminded him of another voice, from long ago…
“You betrayed me, Igor. I can never trust you again,” echoed in his memory the words of his best friend, spoken twenty years earlier. Back then, he had also “joked,” blurting out his friend’s most private secret in front of everyone. His friend walked away, and they hadn’t seen each other since.
On the second day the silence in the house became unbearable. Every creak of the floorboards, every sound echoed in his ears like a gunshot. Anna methodically packed things into a gym bag.
“Where are you going?” Igor asked anxiously, watching her from the doorway.
“To my sister’s,” she answered shortly, folding a sweater. “I need time to think.”
“What is there to think about?” he exploded. “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill!”
Anna froze, slowly straightened, and gave her husband a long look.
“You know what’s the scariest part, Igor? Not what you said there in front of everyone. It’s that you still don’t understand what you did.”
She zipped the bag and headed for the door. She stopped on the threshold.
“For fifteen years I tried to be the perfect wife. I supported you, smoothed over rough edges, laughed at your jokes even when they were hurtful. I thought that’s how a loving wife should behave. And now I realize—I simply allowed you not to respect me.”
The door closed gently behind her. Igor was left alone in the empty apartment, where every object reminded him of Anna: the half-read book on the nightstand, the cup with a sip of tea left in it, her favorite throw on the armchair…
That evening he opened an old photo album. In the yellowed picture—he and Sergey, his former best friend, arms slung over each other after graduation. “Friends forever,” the inscription on the back read.
Igor gave a bitter smile. Back then, twenty years ago, he had also thought he’d made a clever joke when he told everyone about his friend’s secret crush on the literature teacher. And Sergey… Sergey simply vanished from his life, stopped answering calls, transferred to another school.
On the third day Igor couldn’t take it anymore.
He dialed Sergey’s number—kept all these years, never dared to call.
“Hello?” A voice from the past, so familiar and yet strange.
“Seryoga… it’s me, Igor.”
Silence on the line stretched into an eternity.
“What do you want?” Sergey said at last.
“I’m sorry,” Igor breathed. “For what happened back then, for my stupidity. I’ve only now truly understood what I did.”
“Twenty years have passed,” Sergey said with a wry note.
“Yes. And you know, I… I did the same thing to my wife. I mocked her, humiliated her in front of everyone. Just like I did to you.”
Silence again, but a different kind now—thoughtful.
“Do you remember what you told me then?” Sergey asked. “‘Oh, come on, it was just a joke!’ You know what I felt? Like my soul had been turned inside out. Like everything important and personal to me had been turned into a laughingstock.”
“I remember,” Igor answered quietly. “And now I did the same to Anna…”
“Do you know why I could never forgive you?” Sergey went on. “Not because of the joke itself. Because you never understood how deeply you hurt me. You kept acting like I was exaggerating.”
Igor gripped the phone until his knuckles whitened.
“Serge, I… I get it now. Too late, but I do.”
That same evening Igor gathered all their friends in the very same house. Anna arrived last, surprised by the sudden invitation from a friend.
“What is—” she began, but froze on the threshold.
Igor stood in the middle of the room, pale and resolute.
“I’ve brought everyone together because I have something to say.”
He turned to his wife.
“Anna, three days ago in this room I made a terrible mistake. I mocked your dreams, your fears, your efforts to grow. I did it in front of everyone, thinking it was funny. But it was base and cruel.”
The room grew so quiet you could hear the clock ticking.
“Twenty years ago I betrayed my best friend the same way. I made a joke of his feelings and lost him forever. Today I spoke to him for the first time in all these years,” Igor’s voice wavered. “And you know what? I don’t want to make the same mistake again. I don’t want to lose you.”
Anna stood motionless; only her fingers worried the strap of her handbag.
“I’m not asking for immediate forgiveness. I know I betrayed your trust. But I swear that I will never…” He took a deep breath. “Never again allow myself to humiliate you. Not in private, not in public. And if you give me a chance, I’ll prove it.”
“If it happens even once more…” Anna began softly.
“You’ll leave,” he finished for her. “And you’ll be right.”
She walked up to him slowly.
“I need time to learn to trust you again.”
“I know,” he nodded. “And I’m ready to wait as long as it takes.”
Anna looked into his eyes—for the first time in three days. In his gaze she saw what she had never seen before: genuine remorse and the fear of losing her.
“All right,” she said simply. “Let’s try to start over.”
Igor took her hand carefully, and she didn’t pull away. In that moment they both understood: this wasn’t just a reconciliation. It was the beginning of a new relationship—one with respect, with boundaries, where words carry weight.
And somewhere in another city, Sergey looked at the phone he had used an hour earlier to talk to his former friend, and for the first time in twenty years felt the old resentment begin to loosen its grip. People can change—so long as they realize their mistakes before it’s too late.
