I met Aoife on a wet Thursday evening outside Trinity College, both of us sheltering under the same useless strip of stone while Dublin did what Dublin does best: rain sideways and pretend it’s charming. She was laughing into her phone, a bright, unguarded laugh, and I remember thinking it sounded like someone opening a window in a room I hadn’t realised was stuffy.
She was there for a mutual friend’s birthday in Temple Bar. I was only going because I felt guilty for cancelling the year before. Inside the pub, over the noise and the smell of spilled stout, she sat beside me and asked why I looked like a man attending his own disciplinary hearing. I told her I hated crowds. She said, “Same,” while somehow knowing half the room by name.
We talked all night. Not in a dramatic, film-like way. We talked about buses that never come, about the particular loneliness of Sunday evenings, about her job in a primary school and my habit of leaving books unfinished because I didn’t like endings. Then, just as I was beginning to imagine seeing her again, her boyfriend arrived.
His name was Mark. He was kind, tall, and irritatingly decent. He put his arm around her gently, not possessively, and kissed her temple. She introduced me with warmth, and I smiled like it hadn’t knocked the air out of me.
For two years, she became the girl I couldn’t have.
Not in a tortured, heroic way. I didn’t wait outside her flat or write sad poems on napkins in Grafton Street cafés. I lived my life. I dated. I worked. I went for long walks along the Grand Canal when my head felt too loud. But Aoife stayed in the edges of things. At birthdays, weddings, Christmas drinks. Always there, always kind, always just beyond the line I would not cross.
We became friends, carefully. I learned the safe distance between us. I learned not to text her first too often. I learned to leave early if the conversation became too easy. There is a strange kind of love that teaches you restraint before it teaches you anything else. I never told her. I never hinted. I liked Mark too much, and I liked myself enough not to become the villain in someone else’s life.
Then one November, I ran into her near St Stephen’s Green. She was sitting on a bench with a coffee gone cold in her hand. I nearly walked past because she looked like she was trying not to be seen. But she looked up and said my name in a voice so small I stopped immediately.
She and Mark had ended it three months earlier. No scandal, no betrayal, just the slow sadness of two people growing in different directions and trying not to blame each other for it. She said it had been lonely, even though everyone told her it was for the best. I sat beside her until the light began to leave the park. For the first time, there was no line between us except the one made by timing and grief.
I didn’t ask her out then. I’m proud of that. Wanting someone doesn’t give you the right to arrive at the door the minute it opens. So I stayed her friend. I brought soup when she had the flu. She sent me photos of dogs wearing coats. We went for walks by the sea in Dún Laoghaire and talked about everything except the one thing we both knew was beginning to stand between us.
It happened the following spring in a small restaurant in Ranelagh. Nothing fancy. A wobbly table, bad lighting, very good pasta. She asked me why I had never said anything back then. I stared at my glass of water like it might offer legal advice. Then I told her the truth: that I had cared for her, but she had a life, and I didn’t want my feelings to become a burden she hadn’t asked to carry.
She cried, not dramatically, just one tear she wiped away quickly, annoyed at herself. Then she said, “I think I was waiting for you to say something now.”
Our first kiss was outside the restaurant, under a street
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
