I moved into the house in Rathmines because the rent was the least terrifying number I had seen in months. The room was small enough that I could touch both walls if I stretched, and the wardrobe smelled faintly of someone else’s perfume, but there was a pear tree in the back garden and the kitchen got morning light. At the viewing, one of the housemates, Mark, offered me tea in a chipped mug and said, “It’s not much, but it’s warm.” I remember thinking that was the most honest description of a house I’d ever heard.
There were four of us in total, all strangers trying to be polite around the bins and the shower schedule. Mark worked in a bookshop near Dublin city centre and had the kind of quiet humour that arrived late in a conversation and stayed with you afterwards. He was not the person I expected to fall for. At first, he was just the man who remembered to buy milk, who left notes on the fridge saying things like “Soup in pot, rescue yourself,” and who always asked, not out of duty but real interest, how my day had gone.
I had come to Dublin after a breakup in Galway and told myself I was here to become practical. I got a job in an office near Grand Canal Dock, bought black shoes that gave me blisters, and tried to be the kind of woman who did not mistake kindness for romance. But the heart is an untidy tenant. It leaves things everywhere. A laugh in the hallway. A shoulder brushing yours while washing dishes. The sound of someone coming home and making the house feel less like a place you slept and more like a place you belonged.
We became friends slowly. On wet evenings, we would walk to Camden Street for falafel or a pint, usually with another housemate, sometimes just the two of us. Once, after a terrible week at work, I came home and found him sitting on the kitchen floor trying to fix the washing machine with a YouTube video and a butter knife. I started laughing so hard I cried, then cried for real. He didn’t ask too many questions. He just put the kettle on and sat beside me on the tiles until I could speak.
That was when I knew I was in trouble. Not because he was dramatic or charming in the usual way, but because I felt safe being unlovely around him. I could be tired, cross, frightened, or ridiculous, and he did not treat any of it as a performance. I began timing my evenings around his. I pretended to read in the sitting room when I was really waiting for the turn of his key in the door. I learned how he took his tea, how he rubbed his eyes when he was worried, how he sang badly under his breath while chopping onions.
For months I said nothing. Falling in love with a housemate is not romantic when you are the one doing it. It is panic over whose turn it is to clean the bathroom. It is wondering if you have made the air strange by caring too much. It is standing in Tesco deciding whether buying his favourite biscuits is sweet or deranged. I was afraid of ruining the house, which had become the first steady thing I’d had in years.
Everything changed one Friday in December. We had gone to see Christmas lights near Grafton Street after work, and on the way home it started raining with that particular Dublin determination, as if the sky had signed a lease too. We ducked into a pub off George’s Street and found a corner table. It was noisy and warm, windows fogged, coats steaming on chairs. Mark told me he might move to Cork for a job. He said it casually, but I felt the whole room tilt.
I tried to be normal. I asked when. I asked if it was a good opportunity. I nodded like a supportive friend, while inside something young and stubborn was banging on the door of my chest. When we left, the rain had eased. We walked home through Portobello, past the canal, neither of us saying much. At our front gate, he turned to me and said, “You’ve gone very quiet.”
I could have lied. I nearly did.
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
