"Hello to you too, Mom," I say dryly, not even trying to hide my irritation.
The words slip from my lips like an icy wind—cold, alien, almost mechanical. Everything inside me tightens: not because I'm not glad to see her, but because I know the conversation will circle back again. Old wounds and reproaches.
"Tell me, why did you even buy this apartment? Wasn't it already enough suffering for you?" Her voice sounds sharp, like a blade honed by years of accumulated discontent. In every intonation, I feel that familiar tension, that prickly, insistent manner with which she always speaks about Katrin—as if every word of hers has to erase her from my life forever.
I clench my jaw. My cheekbones tense so much it feels like they might crack. That pain is the physical reflection of what boils inside me. My chest tightens with rage, helplessness, and a grievance that cannot be voiced. My lips tremble, but I don't allow a sound. Only tension, only steel in my muscles, only anger with no outlet.
Mom has never hidden that she can't stand Katrin after she leaves. In her eyes, she simply hurts me, and that is enough to cross her out of memory. Coldly, decisively, without a shadow of doubt. No right to forgiveness, no attempt to understand. For Mom, it's simple: anyone who causes her son pain doesn't deserve a second chance.
But I… I can't. I can't cut someone out of my heart as easily as a photo from an album. Memories of Katrin live in me like a fire in the hearth—quiet, hot, inevitable. They warm me in the darkest moments and simultaneously burn from within, leaving scars. I hold onto them like the last thread connecting me to what has been real. To the time when I still believe that love is forever. When her voice sounds closer than my thoughts, and her touch feels like home.
"I already told you. Because I wanted to," I answer briefly, trying not to reveal the real reason.
My voice sounds strainedly calm, like a string about to snap. I don't want to discuss my beloved with her. Too painful. Too personal. Some feelings don't need someone else's opinion. They simply exist.
Mom rolls her eyes and immediately goes on the attack:
"Yeah, right. And you don't see that there are plenty of other apartments in the city that need a caring hand? No, you cling to this one as if it were a part of you and refuse to let go. It just doesn't suit you!" Her endless lecture starts again.
The words fall like icy rain—prickly, piercing, merciless. They break through armor, get under the skin, leaving a feeling of bleak, viscous exhaustion. Not the kind that comes in the evening, but deep, ingrained, accumulated over many years. Her voice leaves an unpleasant ringing in my ears, as if someone is scraping nails across glass—sharp, disgusting, unbearable.
Her attempts are as old as the world: to make me forget, convince me to let go, push me toward a "new life." She says I should find someone else. Start a family. Breathe fully at last. Breathe anew. What nonsense… How can one breathe when the air has long been burned from within?
My heart has long been taken. Not just infatuated, not just open to someone—it's given. Completely. Without right of return. It lives in the past, in her touches, in her gaze, in losses that never vanish, no matter how many years pass. No other woman can revive what died with her. No other can make my heart beat truly—as it did then.
"I don't want another apartment, nor another woman. And yes, I got your subtle hint," I say coldly, as if placing a full stop on this conversation.
My voice is icy, foreign. As if it doesn't come from me, but from some deep crack inside, from the part that has long stopped hoping. But inside, everything boils. Seethes with furious, blind fire. From helplessness. From pain that doesn't fade, no matter how much I hide it. From love—true, only one, that doesn't leave. That stays, despite everything. Even death.
I go to the kitchen, trying to escape, even for a moment, the stifling atmosphere of reproaches and hints. My fingers touch the cold metal of the kettle—unexpectedly icy, as if it feels my tension too. The sensation is sobering, returning me to a reality where she isn't—Katrin. Where only emptiness remains, wrapped in the mundane.
I slowly pour water, watching the thin stream hit the bottom. A simple, mechanical action, but in it is salvation from thoughts that clang too loudly in my head. I turn on the kettle. Click. Everything inside is stretched to the limit—like a string that only needs a touch to snap. Too many words, too much pain that I hide, pretending I'm in control.
But it's a lie. The storm inside grows, rage and longing tangled into a tight knot, and I barely restrain myself from snapping. Why is it so hard just to remember and love? Why does everyone need me to forget?
"Tea or coffee?" I ask, taking out two cups.
My voice sounds calmer than I feel. Inside, everything trembles like water in a glass bowl from an imperceptible vibration—tension, anger, pain. But on the outside—only an even tone, almost polite.
"I want grandchildren," Mom states demanding, as if speaking not a request, but a verdict.
No "ifs" or "maybes." Only harsh, unsolicited necessity, which she places on my shoulders without a shred of doubt.
I smirk, though there is more pain than amusement in it. My lips curve, but my eyes remain dull.
"Find me Katrin—and we'll have so many grandchildren you won't be able to count them," I say, looking her straight in the eyes. Directly, openly. Without fear. But in this directness, there is a wound, fresh, as if it all happened yesterday.
Mom frowns. A shadow of irritation flickers across her face.
"I don't want anything from her," she snaps sharply, as if Katrin were an object she once owned but now doesn't even want to see.
"You liked her before," I remind quietly, remembering how once Mom smiled warmly at Katrin. Her gaze had been full of approval.
"I changed my mind. Find another mother for your children," her voice sounds cold, uncompromising, like a judge who delivered a verdict long ago and no longer wishes to hear any defense.
I lower my eyes, pressing my lips together. Everything inside me tightens, as if someone is squeezing my heart. Slowly, but inevitably. As if an invisible hand is wringing all the warmth out of it.
"It won't work. My GPS only works in the direction of one girl. And you know who I mean," I say, staring into nowhere.
Every time I speak Katrin's name aloud, everything inside me contracts with longing, as if these words awaken a part of me I can no longer revive, yet cannot let go.
"You just didn't even try," Mom says stubbornly, brushing away my feelings like an annoying fly.
"And I don't want to. I've already said I love only one girl. My decision won't change," my voice becomes firm, like granite. This is the truth, and I have to live with it every day. Not like a burden — like a destiny that cannot be altered.
"You're impossible to talk to! Last time I brought a girl over — you ran from her like from fire!" Mom throws up her hands. Her face twists with indignation, but in her eyes — despair. The part of her that cannot understand why I don't just live "like everyone else."
"She acted like a girl of easy virtue. You could at least check before bringing someone like that to me," I can't hold back. The words burst out with disgust, with the pain I have been trying to hide. But Mom stubbornly refuses to see them. She doesn't hear my truth. She doesn't feel that I'm not just refusing — I'm protecting a memory, protecting the love that has been the only real one in my life.
I still shudder from that nightmare I go through. Everything feels unreal, like a bad dream where time drags on too long. We have dinner together — or rather, I agree only under Mom's pressure. The unbearable discomfort from the girl, as if every glance, every word of hers is aimed at making me part of her world, a world I have no desire to enter. I sit, watching her, and everything seems detached and unnatural, like in a hazy fog. She tries to be funny, spilling her silly jokes in my direction. Every movement, every laugh feels like knives cutting along my nerves. I can only sit, smiling, pretending it's fine, while a storm rages inside me. And as a well-mannered boy, I pretend everything is okay. In reality, I want to grab the wall in frustration, to scream, so exhausted I am by the artificial joy she tries to impose on me. I literally feel her emptiness filling the space around us, causing an unbearable, suffocating sensation in my chest.
But the ending hits me like a blow. It's an unbearable sight. I walk her home, hoping it will end soon, so I can finally leave, exhale, and forget the evening. But she — this girl, completely unaware of boundaries — drags me to her place. In a daze, I try to understand what is happening and cannot find an answer. And suddenly, she begins undressing. Just like that, without embarrassment. Her words:
"Take me, I'm burning up!" — hit me like an icy shower.
I freeze. My mind refuses to work. In that moment, I realize I don't know how to react. All I can do is grab a vase of water, pour it on her, and then push her away, as if trying to escape a terrible dream. I run outside, not even realizing I have just fled from a nightmare she herself created.
I stand outside, trembling from what I have endured, and realize a simple truth: it's better to be alone than with such people. Better solitude than the emptiness she tries to fill with her endless presence, her constant demand for attention. I feel the weight of the evening lift from me, as if I have shed some invisible burden that has been constricting my breathing.
And then I realize that I'm not attracted to female bodies. It even sounds strange to me, and I cannot understand why. I try to find something arousing, something that could stir even the smallest emotion in me, but I can't. I feel a void filling me, as if I'm outside this world entirely. I try watching porn to relieve the tension, but feel nothing. Emptiness. Cold. But the moment I turn off the screen and think of her — my Rebel Girl, her face, her body, her gaze, how close she is to me, how her touches fill me with living energy — I suddenly feel something warm and real awakening inside me. It isn't imagination. It is real, because she is mine. I imagine her making love with incredible passion and tenderness, and in that moment all emptiness vanishes. Everything becomes meaningful, alive, real. Only she can restore that feeling; only her love can fill me. It is so vivid, so real that I feel my soul thawing. I realize that all I need is her. And no one else.
"Why don't you listen to me and keep contradicting me?" Mom's voice sounds irritated, but despite the harshness, there is worry. She sits on the sofa in front of me, clenching her fists, as if holding herself back with all her might — from shouting or losing control.
"My ears listen, but my heart refuses — absolutely. How can't you understand this, Mom? I love her, and nothing will change that," I say, feeling a wave of rage rising inside me. My throat tightens. Air becomes scarce. My breathing falters, like a cornered animal. I boil, like water in a forgotten kettle on the stove — with a dull whistle inside.
"And what about her? Do you think she needs you?" Mom raises her eyebrows, crosses her arms over her chest, and squints. Her voice becomes harsher, colder. "No! She ran away from you and doesn't even think about you!"
Every word hits my chest like a fist. As if there isn't a single drop of doubt, a single trace of pity in her. I grit my teeth until they ache, trying to hold myself back from screaming, from the storm raging inside me.
"How would you know, Mom, what she thinks about me or not?" Pain creeps into my voice. The real kind — deep, burning from the inside.
"Then she would have shown up by now. And she didn't even send you a lousy text!" she blurts out. Desperation rings in her voice. Almost hysteria. "Understand this: she's already found someone else, and you're still suffering over her like a fool!"
I lower my gaze. My chest tightens, as if a concrete slab presses down on me. I am suffocating — not from her words, but from the truth she is trying to drive into me like a nail. But I can't… I can't betray my faith.
"She loves me. I know it. I don't know why Katrin did what she did, but… we will be together again, no matter what," I say quietly, almost resignedly. Like a whispered prayer. As if I don't fully believe it myself… but I do, nonetheless. Alone. Alone against everyone.
Mom twists her lips and throws at me a smirk with no trace of sympathy:
"Why the hell would she want you? She'll be with you only for money, at most."
"She's not the materialistic person you think she is!" I shout. My voice trembles, cracks, but remains firm. It carries the last line of defense. I am ready to protect Rebel Girl to the very end. To my last breath.
But her next strike hits like a knife under the ribs.
"Oh? Then why did she take money and leave you?"
And then Mom freezes. For a fraction of a second — seemingly by accident, but in that pause is the whole truth. Her face goes pale, her eyes dart aside. Her lips quiver. She covers her mouth with her hands, scared, as if she has just blurted out a terrible, irreversible secret.
I stand frozen. The world around me stops. My heart skips a beat. And then another. My whole body goes numb, like after an icy wave.
"What money did she take?" My voice becomes almost a whisper, but there is a threat in it. In that whisper is everything: despair, anger, fear. I don't know what else has been hidden from me. I thought I knew the truth… But now I realize: they have left me only crumbs of her.
"You know… I think I'll go home," Mom mutters, hurriedly grabs her purse, and stands up. She steps toward the door. Running from the answer, from my gaze. From her mistake.
But I step forward quickly and block her path. I stand tall, looking her in the eyes. No compromises. No way out.
"You're not leaving, Mom, until you tell me the truth. What money did she take?"