I used to think love was what happened in the gaps between ordinary things. His hand finding mine on the walk home from Camden Street. Two coffees balanced badly on the Luas. Sitting on the grass in St Stephen’s Green, pretending we weren’t freezing because neither of us wanted the evening to end. We were good at those parts. We were good at beginnings.
When Cian and I decided to move in together, it felt like the natural next line in a song we both knew. Dublin rent was impossible, we were both tired of sharing with strangers, and we had been together nearly two years. We found a small one-bedroom in Rathmines above a hair salon, with windows that rattled when buses passed and a kitchen so narrow we had to turn sideways to let each other through. I remember standing there on the viewing day, looking at the weak winter light on the floorboards, and thinking, this is where our real life starts.
For the first week, it did feel romantic. We bought cheap plates from a charity shop, argued playfully over where to put the books, and had toast for dinner on the floor because the table hadn’t arrived. On Friday night, we walked into town and had a drink near George’s Street Arcade, and I kept saying, “We have a home.” He smiled every time, but looking back, I think I was saying it to convince myself as much as him.
The cracks were not dramatic at first. They were tiny, almost embarrassing. He left wet towels on the bed. I moved his things without asking. He liked silence in the morning; I filled it with questions. I wanted candles and dinner together. He wanted headphones and a screen after work. None of it sounded serious enough to name, so we let it gather quietly, like dust under the sofa.
Before we lived together, I thought Cian was calm. After we lived together, I realised he was distant. Before we lived together, he thought I was affectionate. After we lived together, he called me needy. It hurt because neither of us was fully wrong. We were just seeing each other without the flattering light of distance.
One Tuesday in March, I came home late after a long shift and found the flat exactly as I had left it that morning, except worse. Dishes in the sink, clothes on the chair, unopened letters on the floor. Cian was on the couch, watching a match, shoes still on. I asked if he had remembered to pay the electricity bill. He said he’d do it later. I said he had said that three days ago. He paused the television and looked at me with this tired expression, as if my voice itself was something he had to carry.
“You make everything feel like a test,” he said.
I laughed, but not because it was funny. “And you make everything feel like I’m alone.”
That was the first sentence that told the truth.
After that, we tried to fix it in the ways people try when they are frightened. We made a cleaning rota. We planned date nights. We went for walks along the Grand Canal and promised to be kinder. We even spent one Sunday reading articles about relationships and Dublin life on Daily Digest, as if the right advice might arrive like a bus timetable. For a while, the effort looked like hope.
But effort can become another room to fight in. If he cooked, I noticed he left the pans. If I cleaned, he said I did it loudly. We stopped touching each other in passing. We started saying “your mess” and “my money” and “your friends.” The flat, which had once seemed like proof of our future, became a place where both of us felt watched.
The night it ended was raining hard enough to blur the windows. We had planned to meet friends in town, but I came home and found Cian packing a small bag. Not moving out, he said, just going to his brother’s in Clontarf for a few nights. He said he needed air. I stood in the doorway of our tiny bedroom and felt something inside me go very still.
“Do you want to come back?” I asked.
He sat on the edge of the bed. He looked younger than he had in months. “I don’t know.”
It should have been a cruel answer, but it was the kindest one he had given me in a long time. I sat beside
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