## **“Between Monday and Sunday”**

Katarzyna had always considered her life average. She worked at the city hall, was thirty-nine years old, divorced, and had a child at university. Days differed mainly by the seasons. On Mondays, she drank too-strong coffee, and on Fridays, she allowed herself silence.

At the same time, three streets away, Tomasz was learning to live again. After twenty years of marriage, he was alone in an apartment that suddenly felt too big. He pushed his mug of tea across the table to block out the echo. Evenings were the hardest, because then there was no one to ask if he had locked the door.

Their paths crossed in the most ordinary way—in the line at the bakery. They had run out of whole-wheat bread. Kasia sighed, Tomasz joked. That was enough to make them take a second look.

They started passing each other more often. Then they started meeting for coffee. They talked about nothing and everything. About children who grow up faster than we allow. About people who leave, not always because they stopped loving.

At Katarzyna's work, no one knew she had begun to smile differently. Tomasz hadn't told his friends he was no longer afraid of silence.

Meanwhile, life went on. Kasia's mother fell ill. The diagnosis was quick, the treatment grueling. Katarzyna learned to sleep in a chair in the hospital and count the drops in her IV drip. Tomasz came with thermoses and newspapers. He didn't promise that everything would be alright. He simply was.

When her mother died, Kasia didn't cry immediately. She cried a week later, on the bus. Tomasz sat next to her, not touching her hand until she offered it.

It wasn't all easy. They argued over small things. About Tomasz being too quiet, about Kasia wanting too much control. Once, they didn't even speak for a month.

Around that time, Katarzyna's son called to say he wanted to leave college. Tomasz had lost his job. The world hadn't collapsed—it had just cracked in a few places.

Over time, they learned that life doesn't offer grand finales. Instead, it offers Tuesdays you have to get up on. Sundays that can be empty. And people who stay, even if they don't know exactly why.

After two years, they weren't married. They didn't buy a house. They simply lived together. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes in laughter. Sometimes in exhaustion.

Katarzyna still considered her life average. Only now she knew that average could be a form of happiness.

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