I first saw her on the upper deck of the 46A, somewhere between Stillorgan and Dublin city centre, on a wet Tuesday morning when the windows were fogged and everyone looked half-asleep. She was sitting three rows ahead of me, wearing a green scarf and reading a battered copy of a book I recognised but had never finished. Every few minutes she would look out at the rain as if she had remembered something important and then smile to herself.
I was twenty-six then, working a job near Dawson Street that I disliked more than I admitted. My days were predictable: bus, coffee, office, pub, bed. But that morning, watching a stranger tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, something in me woke up. It was not love, not then. It was curiosity. It was the feeling that another life had passed close enough for me to hear it breathing.
She got off at St Stephen’s Green. I did too, though my stop was two later. I told myself I only needed air. She walked quickly through the rain, no umbrella, green scarf bright against the grey city. At the corner by Grafton Street, she turned back for a second, not at me exactly, but in my direction, and then she was gone into the crowd.
For weeks after, I looked for her everywhere. On the bus. In cafés. Outside bookshops. I changed my routine in small, embarrassing ways. I took earlier buses, later buses. I walked through Temple Bar at lunchtime though I had no reason to be there. I stood too long in Hodges Figgis pretending to browse novels, hoping she would appear around a shelf like a person returning to a dream.
My friends slagged me when I finally told them. “You’re in love with a scarf,” my mate Ciarán said in Grogan’s, raising his pint like he was making a toast. Maybe he was right. I knew nothing about her. Not her name, not her voice, not whether she was kind or cruel or already happy with someone else. Still, there was something about the way she smiled at the rain that stayed with me. At a time when I felt numb in my own life, she had looked fully present in hers.
Months passed. I stopped searching so obviously, but I never really stopped. Whenever a woman with dark hair boarded a bus, my heart still gave that foolish little jump. It became a private habit, this looking. Part longing, part ritual. I think I was less interested in finding her than in believing that something unexpected could still happen to me.
Then one December evening, nearly a year later, it did. I was in the Long Hall on South Great George’s Street, waiting for a colleague who had not arrived. The place was warm and golden, all mirrors and murmuring voices, rain tapping at the windows. I was about to leave when I saw the green scarf hanging from the back of a chair.
She was there, sitting alone with a glass of red wine, writing in a small notebook. My whole body went ridiculous. I stood frozen near the bar, a grown man frightened by a stranger and a piece of wool. I ordered a pint I did not want and spent ten minutes arguing with myself. Then she looked up. This time, there was no crowd to disappear into.
I walked over and said the stupidest honest thing I could say: “I think I’ve been looking for you for a year.”
She blinked, then laughed, not unkindly. I panicked and explained about the bus, the green scarf, the book, the rain. I expected her to call me mad or move tables. Instead she closed her notebook and said, “That was the morning I nearly left Dublin.”
Her name was Aoife. She had been on her way to an interview for a job in London, carrying her life in her head like a packed suitcase. She had not taken it in the end. Her mother had been sick, her relationship had ended, and Dublin, which she had been trying to escape, had quietly held her in place. “I don’t remember seeing you,” she said, “but I remember that morning. I remember deciding I’d stay.”
We talked until closing. Not in a magical, film-like way. There were awkward pauses. I spilled stout on my sleeve. She told me I had “deeply suspicious bus behaviour,” which was fair. But she also told me about the book, her mother, the job she eventually found near Merrion Square, and the strange loneliness of staying in a city everyone assumes you already know.
We saw each other
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
