I used to think heartbreak had to come with a clear ending. A suitcase by the door, a final argument, a text that said we were better off apart. When my three-year relationship ended in a flat in Rathmines, it hurt, of course it did. I cried into a takeaway from Camden Street and slept badly for weeks. But at least I knew what I was grieving. We had loved each other, failed each other, and finally let go.
The pain that stayed longer came from someone I never had.
Her name was Aoife, and I met her during a wet October evening in a writing class near Dublin city centre. She arrived late, shaking rain from her coat, apologising to everyone and somehow making the whole room warmer. She had a habit of listening like you were the only person in the building. After class, we walked towards the Luas together, and by the time we reached St Stephen’s Green, I already knew I would rearrange my Thursdays around her.
Nothing dramatic happened at first. That was the problem. It was all small, believable things. Coffee after class. Messages about books. Pints in Whelan’s when neither of us wanted to go home. Walks along the Grand Canal where she told me about her mother’s illness, and I told her about my fear that I was becoming someone very ordinary. She laughed at that and said ordinary people were the ones who kept the world from falling apart.
I was with someone then, so I behaved myself, or I told myself I did. I never touched Aoife’s hand for too long. I never said what I was thinking when she looked at me across a table. I went home to my girlfriend and carried on with my life, feeling noble for not crossing a line, while crossing dozens of invisible ones in my head.
When my relationship ended, Aoife was the first person I called. She didn’t celebrate it. She just met me near Merrion Square with two coffees and let me talk until the pigeons started fighting over a crust beside us. I thought, foolishly, that life had cleared a path. I thought love was patient and would wait politely until everyone was ready.
But Aoife had been waiting too, not for me, as it turned out. A few months later she told me she had been offered a job in Galway and was thinking of taking it. We were sitting outside a pub near Dame Street, and the whole city seemed too loud for the sentence she had just said. I made some joke about Galway stealing all the decent people. She smiled, but I could see she wanted me to say something real.
I didn’t.
I was afraid of ruining the friendship. That is what cowards call it when they are afraid of being told no. So I nodded and asked when she would leave. She said, “End of the month.” Then she looked down at her glass, and I remember thinking there was a door open between us, bright and terrifying, and all I had to do was step through it.
Instead, I stayed where I was.
The last evening before she left, we walked to the sea at Sandymount. It was one of those grey Dublin evenings where the sky and water seem made from the same old cloth. She talked about the new job, the room she had found, the fear of starting again. I talked about everything except the truth. At the bus stop, she hugged me for a long time. When she pulled away, she said, “You know, I did wonder sometimes.”
I asked, “Wonder what?” even though I knew.
She shook her head and smiled sadly. “Never mind.”
That was the moment. Not a film moment, not rain pouring
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