Nela bought three identical cups, convinced she could remove at least one small awkwardness that way. She had lived with Adam for six years and had been seeing Saša for almost a year. Everyone knew about both relationships. There were no secret messages or invented business trips, but openness did not mean they already knew how to have every conversation. Sunday breakfast for all three was her proposal, carefully prepared and much harder than she had imagined.
Adam made eggs in the way Nela knew by heart. Saša brought pastries from his neighborhood. Everyone was polite at the table. Adam and Saša were not in love with each other, only with the same woman, and Nela increasingly felt she was asking them for a companionship that did not come naturally.
When Saša suggested a walk, Adam said they usually watched a film on Sundays. Nela felt the trap in usually. She offered a walk first, then a film, with the order reversed next week. Saša put down his cup. He said he did not want an addition to their Sunday but time that sometimes belonged only to him and her. Adam looked hurt, although he did not want a shared walk either.
Nela wanted to remind them both that they had agreed on everything. Yet their agreement did not contain the apartment's smell, old jokes, and the place for keys Saša did not have. Saša was not asking to move in. He wanted his plans not always to accommodate an existing life. Adam admitted he felt safer when everyone was together because then he did not have to imagine what he was missing.
Breakfast did not end with three satisfied people embracing. Saša went home, Adam went to wash dishes, and Nela sat on the floor beside the balcony. Later she spoke to each separately. She asked what they wanted without promising to fulfill everything. For the first time she did not try to be the person who distributed happiness correctly.
She spent some subsequent Sundays with Saša, some with Adam, and one alone. She did not count hours as though equal totals would remove jealousy. When someone was sad, they talked, sometimes painfully and without a quick answer. The three new cups stayed on the shelf, but no longer represented an obligation to sit at the same table.
One morning Saša gave her a key to his apartment. She neither displayed it to Adam as proof of progress nor concealed it guiltily. She put it on her own key ring. That evening Adam told her he had spent Sunday with a friend he had not seen for ages. She listened, grateful his good day had not needed to emerge from her perfect plan.