Pavel broke the silence. “So. Thirty-five.”

Tonda, ever the joker, raised his glass. “To thirty-five. The age when your back hurts for no reason, and your exes start getting remarried.”

They gathered at the old cabin by the bend in the river. The same cabin. Same crooked table. Same hammock that had finally rotted through.

“Then don’t,” he said. “Let’s just be broken together.”

“This time I mean it.”

: Many couples at 35 choose to live together without formalizing their union, a trend increasingly accepted in modern Czech society. Starting a Family at 35