I met him on a wet Thursday in Dublin, the kind of evening when the buses sigh at the kerb and everyone looks like they have somewhere warmer to be. I was in Whelan’s with two friends from work, pretending I had come out because I was fun and spontaneous, when really I had come out because my flat in Phibsborough had become too quiet after a breakup. I was twenty-nine, newly single, and carrying myself around like a person who had misplaced something important but was too proud to ask where it had gone.
He was standing near the bar, not doing anything remarkable. That is what I remember most. He wasn’t loud, wasn’t performing, wasn’t trying to charm the room. He had a navy coat folded over one arm and was reading the list of beers with the seriousness of a man choosing a name for a child. When the barman asked what he wanted, he laughed at himself and said, “Something that doesn’t make me pretend I understand hops.” I smiled before I meant to. He saw it.
His name was Cian. He was from Raheny, worked as a sound engineer, and had hands that made every object look carefully held. My friends disappeared into the music room, and I stayed beside him at the bar for what I told myself would be five minutes. It became an hour. We talked about small things first: bad landlords, the Luas, the particular cruelty of cycling up Constitution Hill in the rain. Then, without either of us forcing it, we slipped into the bigger things. His father had died the year before. My last relationship had ended not with shouting, but with the slow silence of two people giving up at different speeds.
There was something gentle in the way he listened. He didn’t rush to fix my sadness or compete with it. He let it sit between us like a third drink on the table. At one point he said, “You seem like someone who has been brave for too long,” and I had to look away because I felt suddenly seen in a way I had not agreed to.
When Whelan’s began to empty, we walked down Camden Street together. The rain had stopped but the city was shining, every taxi light and shop window reflected on the pavement. Outside a takeaway, a group of lads were singing half of a song none of them knew properly. Cian asked if I wanted to keep walking, and I said yes too quickly. We ended up near St Stephen’s Green, where the gates were locked and the trees were dark shapes behind the railings.
I don’t know who moved first. I only remember that he turned towards me as if he had decided something, and then waited long enough for me to decide it too. The kiss was not dramatic. There were no fireworks, no music swelling from a passing car, no cinematic nonsense. It was soft, careful, and startlingly honest. His hand touched my cheek, warm despite the cold, and for a few seconds I felt as if my life had become quiet in the best possible way.
Then my phone buzzed. My friend Aoife had been trying to find me, convinced I had been murdered or worse, had gone home with someone boring. Cian laughed when I showed him the messages. He wrote his number on the back of a receipt because his phone had died, and we said goodnight at the taxi rank. Before I got into the cab, he said, “I’d like to see you again, if that wouldn’t ruin the mystery.” I told him I would text.
I did text. That was the beginning of the part I could not
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
