“What happens now? We’ll get married! You promised. You said that once I finish my practice…”
He answers with a short, dry chuckle, more like a cough.
“Marry? Svetlana, you’re still very much a child.”
And again he turns away to the window. His shoulders harden with tension. The room that a second ago seemed like our cozy world suddenly becomes cramped like a cage.
“I can’t marry you,” he says toward the glass, never looking at me.
It’s as if the air is knocked out of my chest. I can’t breathe, everything blurs in front of my eyes, my body is shaking.
“You can’t?.. Why? What do you mean, ‘can’t’?”
He slowly turns around, and in his gaze I finally understand what he had been hiding for so long. This truth shatters everything: my love, my hopes, my tomorrow.
He lets out a heavy sigh and says:
“Because I’m married, Svetlana.”