I met her outside Croke Park on a wet Sunday in September, the kind of Dublin rain that doesn’t fall so much as settle on you and decide to stay. I was twenty-three, wearing a blue jersey too small across the shoulders and carrying two paper cups of tea like they were something precious. She was standing under the railway bridge near Drumcondra, laughing at a man trying to sell ponchos for twice what they were worth.
She had a Kerry scarf wrapped around her neck, which should have been my first warning. I was Dublin born and bred, from Phibsborough, and I had been raised to believe that romance was difficult enough without bringing county loyalties into it. But she smiled at me and asked if I knew which way to the Hogan Stand, and I forgot every clever thing I had ever planned to say to a girl.
Her name was Maeve. She was from Tralee, studying nursing in Dublin, and she had a way of listening that made you feel like your small stories were worth telling. We walked in together with the crowd pressing around us, stewards shouting, flags snapping in the wind, and the smell of chips and wet concrete everywhere. I gave her one of the teas, even though it was meant for my brother, and she took it like I had handed her a rose.
We sat nowhere near each other, but at half-time I found her again by pure chance near the concourse. Or I told myself it was chance. I had spent twenty minutes pretending to look for ketchup. She was there with her cousin, and when she saw me, her whole face changed. That was the first time I felt the dangerous happiness of being recognised by someone you barely know.
The match itself is a blur now. People always ask me who won that day, and I have to think about it. What I remember is the roar of the Hill, the tremble under my feet when a point went over, and Maeve’s hand brushing mine when we met again after the final whistle. We left together down Clonliffe Road with thousands of people around us, everyone shouting and singing, but I only heard her.
We went for one drink in a pub near Drumcondra, which became two, then three. We argued about football, then music, then whether the best chips in Dublin came from a proper chipper or from any place that was still open when you were starving. She said I was too serious. I said she smiled like she knew a secret. She told me maybe she did.
For six months, we were something that never had a proper name but felt more important than anything named. We walked the canal after her late shifts. We ate toast in my flat at midnight. We went to Temple Bar once and hated it together, which felt like a milestone. She came with me to see my mother in the Mater, and my mother, who trusted almost nobody, squeezed her hand and said, “You’re a kind one.” I started to imagine a life with Maeve in it as naturally as I imagined the buses going down Dorset Street.
Then the next September came around, and with it another big match at Croke Park. Dublin against Kerry again. We had tickets, separate stands like the first day, and I thought it was romantic. I thought it meant something was coming full circle. I bought her tea at the same spot by the bridge, joking that this was tradition now.
She didn’t laugh. She looked tired in a way I hadn’t noticed before, or maybe had refused to notice. Her scarf was tucked into her coat. Her hands were shaking slightly around the cup.
“I got a job offer,” she said. “In Cork. In the hospital there.”
I told her that was brilliant, because it was. Then I waited for the rest of the sentence, the part where we discussed trains and weekends and making it work. But she kept looking toward the stadium, where the crowd was pouring in
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
