I met Aoife on a wet Tuesday outside Connolly Station, the kind of Dublin rain that doesn’t fall so much as linger on your face. I was twenty-six, working nights in a hotel near the quays, living in a box room in Phibsborough, and pretending I was grand. She was standing under the same broken shelter, holding a paper bag of pastries against her chest like it was something precious. When the bus was late, she offered me half a croissant. That was how it began, not with music or moonlight, but with butter on my fingers and a stranger laughing because I got pastry flakes all over my coat.
We started seeing each other by accident. First at the same bus stop. Then at the coffee place near Tara Street. Then on purpose, though neither of us said it that way. She worked in a charity office and I worked wherever I could get hours. Some evenings we walked along the Grand Canal after her shift, passing people with dogs and bicycles and takeaway coffees. She had a way of noticing small things, a heron standing still in the water, a child’s glove left on a railing, the smell of chips drifting from a shop before you saw it. Around her, the city felt less like somewhere I was surviving and more like somewhere I belonged.
There was one thing, though. She had someone. His name was Mark. He lived in Galway at the time, training to be a doctor, and she spoke about him gently, not often, but enough. They had been together since college. I told myself that made everything simple. I was her friend. She was kind to me. I was lonely and had mistaken kindness for a sign. That explanation worked during the day. It failed completely at night.
The closest I came to telling her was after a gig at Whelan’s. It was November, freezing, and the whole of Wexford Street seemed to be shining with rain and taxi lights. We had gone to see a band neither of us knew because she won tickets from a radio station. Afterward, we walked towards St Stephen’s Green, sharing a bag of chips, and she tucked her arm through mine because the path was slippery. I remember thinking, this is the happiest I have been in years, and also, this is not mine to keep.
At the corner by the Green, she stopped and said, “I’m moving.”
I thought she meant flats. Everyone was always moving flats in Dublin, priced out or pushed out or simply tired of damp walls. But she meant Galway. Mark had got a position there, and she had applied for a job nearby. She said it with a smile that asked me to be happy for her. I did my best. I nodded. I said Galway was lovely. I made some joke about rain on the west coast being more committed than rain in Dublin. She laughed, but there was a sadness in it, as if she knew something had shifted between us and was trying not to look at it directly.
For the next two weeks, I behaved like a man with a deadline and no courage. We went for coffee. We had one last pint in The Cobblestone because she loved the music there. We walked across the Ha’penny Bridge at dusk, when the Liffey was the colour of old coins. Every time there was a pause, my heart rushed to fill it, but my mouth stayed shut. I could not decide whether confessing my feelings would be honesty or selfishness. She had built a life with someone else. I had built a feeling in the quiet spaces around it.
On her last day, I helped carry boxes from her flat near Rathmines to a rented van. Mark was there. He was taller than I expected, polite, tired, grateful. He shook my hand and said, “Aoife talks about you all the time.” I hated him for being decent. It would have been easier if he had been cruel, if there had been some grand reason to believe I was the better choice. But life rarely offers that kind of neatness. Sometimes the person standing between you and what you want is not a villain. Sometimes he is just the person she chose first, and keeps choosing.
When the van was packed, Aoife walked me to the corner. The afternoon had turned bright in that sudden Dublin way, sun breaking through as if it had only been hiding behind the clouds for drama. She hugged me for a long time. I felt her breathe out against my shoulder. Then she said, “You saved me a bit that year, you know.”
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
