I passed the NIGHT with a stranger I met during my seaside getaway. Upon heading back to the office, I STIFFENED in shock upon spotting at work….

Olivia married late. All her friends had tied the knot long ago, some more than once. Many had older kids already in school.

She wasn’t lacking in male attention. Beautiful, slim, well-groomed. But those who liked her, as often happens, didn’t appeal to her.

She desperately wanted to marry for otherworldly mutual love. «Wait, don’t rush, don’t make a mistake. Happiness will come,» her mom would say when Olivia started freaking out about her unsettled personal life.

«Mom’s right, of course. But waiting is tiring.» She wanted everything at once.

What if that one special person never appeared in her life? What if someone else had already snatched him up and tied him down securely? She so wanted to slip on a wedding ring soon, so all relatives and acquaintances would stop pestering her with questions about when Olivia would finally get married. The clock was ticking, time was slipping away. She fell in love, got married.

The rose-colored glasses shattered right after the wedding march. She convinced herself that they’d adjust, everything would work out. But time passed, and it only got worse.

With the birth of her son, problems snowballed. She filed for divorce and moved back in with her mom. Fatigue, dissatisfaction, resentments, humiliation, lack of money.

All this made Olivia unsmiling and irritable. «Listen, go on vacation down south, relax. I’ll stay with Nicky,» her mom said one day.

«No, how will you manage him? And I couldn’t be without you two,» Olivia resisted. «I’ll manage, don’t worry. You need to rest.

Get a tan, live a week for yourself,» her mom insisted. Olivia took time off and headed to Miami in the off-season. From the autumn slush, it was like diving into the gentle warm sea.

She missed her son, called several times a day. Worried about how her mom was handling the active and spirited three-year-old boy. One day on the way back from the beach, she bought a watermelon.

All the way to the hotel, she imagined crunching through the thick rind, inhaling the fresh aroma, sinking her teeth into the juicy sweet flesh. She carried the heavy torpedo in front of her, pressed to her belly. A noisy group of young people came toward her…