I met Aoife on a wet Thursday evening outside Dublin Castle, both of us pretending the rain was softer than it was. She was waiting for a taxi that kept cancelling, and I was waiting for the courage to go home after another late shift in a finance office near Dame Street. She laughed when I offered her my umbrella because it had two broken spokes and looked like it had survived a family feud. That laugh was what got me. Not her red coat, not the way she spoke, not even the fact that she made standing in the rain feel like the start of something. It was the laugh.
For the first few months, I felt chosen. We went for pints in Temple Bar, cheap noodles on Capel Street, walks along the Liffey when neither of us wanted to admit the night was over. I was never a flashy man, but I had been saving for years. My father had died young and left me with a fear of being careless. I kept money aside for a deposit, for emergencies, for the kind of future people speak about quietly because they are afraid to tempt fate. Aoife knew that. I told her too early, probably because I wanted her to know I was serious, stable, someone who could build a life.
At first, she never asked for anything. That made it easier to offer. Her rent was late one month, and I covered it. Her car needed repairs, and I paid the garage. Her sister was apparently in trouble, then her mother needed help, then there was a course that would “change everything” for her if she could just get the fee sorted. Each time, she cried before I could say no. Each time, I told myself love was not meant to be counted in euros. I grew up hearing that a good man takes care of the woman he loves. Nobody ever warned me that care can become a habit someone else spends for you.
The strangest part is that I was happy to help until I began to feel invisible. If I brought flowers, she thanked me less warmly than when I transferred money. If I suggested a quiet night in, she said I was getting boring. If I said I needed to slow down on spending, she went cold for days. I started checking my phone with dread, not excitement. Her messages became less like love notes and more like invoices wrapped in kisses. “Hey babe, sorry to ask, but…” became a sentence that could ruin my whole morning.
The incident that ended it happened in a restaurant near St Stephen’s Green. I had booked it for our anniversary, even though I was already uneasy about money. I had taken from my deposit fund twice that year. I told myself it was temporary. That night, she arrived late, wearing a dress I had paid for, though she never said so out loud. She barely touched my hand across the table. Halfway through the meal, she told me she had found an apartment she loved in Rathmines and needed help with the deposit. Not a small bit of help. Nearly four thousand euro.
I remember the waiter placing the wine down and me staring at the glass as if the answer might rise from it. I asked her if she saw us living there together. She looked surprised, almost annoyed, and said she wasn’t ready for that kind of pressure. Then she smiled and said, “But you know I’d do the same for you.”
Something in me went very still. Not angry, not dramatic. Just still. I asked her what my middle name was. She blinked. I asked her what hospital my father had died in, because I had told her that story the night we first said we loved each other. She looked away. I asked her what I was saving for before I met her. She picked up her wine and said I was embarrassing her.
That was when I understood. She didn’t love my future. She loved being included in it without ever planning to stand beside me. I paid for the dinner because I couldn’t bear a scene, then walked her to the taxi rank. She kissed my cheek like nothing had happened and said she’d send me the apartment details in the morning. I told her not to. She laughed, thinking I was joking. I said it again, and this time she heard me.
The next few weeks were ugly in a quiet way. She called me selfish, cold, obsessed with money. She said I had changed. Maybe I had. I blocked
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