I met him on a wet Tuesday outside the Arts Block in Trinity, both of us pretending the rain wasn’t getting through our coats. He was holding two coffees and a paper bag from a bakery on Nassau Street, and when the bag split, croissants fell onto the pavement like little golden birds. I laughed before I could stop myself. He looked at me, drenched and embarrassed, and said, “Well, at least one of us is enjoying the disaster.” That was the first time I loved him, though I didn’t have the sense to call it that yet.
We became friends in the ordinary Dublin way, slowly and by accident. A pint after lectures near Temple Bar, long walks through St Stephen’s Green, shared umbrellas, shared secrets, shared silence on the last Luas home. He told me about girls he liked. I told him which texts to send them. He had a habit of tilting his head when he listened, as if your words were music he didn’t want to miss. For seven years, I mistook that kindness for hope.
I kept my love tidy. I folded it small and put it away before meeting him. I brought it out only on buses, in queues, in the quiet after midnight. I loved him through his first heartbreak, through his father’s illness, through the year he moved to London and came back thinner and more careful with his laughter. I loved him while I dated other people, kind people, people who deserved all of me and got only the parts that weren’t waiting for him.
There were moments when I nearly said it. Once, on the Ha’penny Bridge, when the city lights were shaking in the Liffey and he said, “You’re the only person who really knows me.” Once in Whelan’s, after a terrible gig, when he held my hand to pull me through the crowd and forgot to let go. Once at 3 a.m. outside a chipper in Rathmines, when he looked so tired and beautiful that the words rose right up into my mouth. But fear always got there first. I was afraid of losing the friendship, but if I’m honest, I was also afraid of being known. Loving him in silence let me imagine a perfect answer.
The end came in a café near Grand Canal Dock, on a Saturday in February. He had asked me to meet because he had news. I knew before he said it. There was a brightness around him that didn’t belong to friendship. He sat down opposite me, cheeks pink from the cold, and told me he was moving to Cork with a woman named Aoife. They had been seeing each other for nearly a year. “I wanted to tell you properly,” he said. “You’re my person.”
My person. It was such a small sentence to break on. I smiled because I loved him, and because I had trained myself for seven years to be useful instead of honest. I asked about Cork, her work, whether they had found a flat. I even made a joke about him not surviving without decent coffee. He laughed. Then he reached across the table and touched my wrist, and something in me simply gave up pretending.
I said, “I need to tell you something, and I’m not telling you because I want anything to change.” My voice sounded calm, like it belonged to a woman in a film, not me. “I’ve loved you for a long time. Years. I should have said it before now, but I didn’t. I’m happy you’re happy. I just can’t carry it quietly anymore.”
He didn’t pull away. That was almost worse. His face changed slowly, with sadness and tenderness and guilt all arriving together. He said my name once. Then he said,
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
