He said it outside The Long Hall on a wet Thursday evening, with rain shining on the red paint of the pub and the buses hissing past like tired animals. “Give me 100,” he said, and I thought he meant euro, because that was the sort of mess we were in by then. Rent late, phones cracked, hearts worse. But he took my hand and said, “One hundred days. If I haven’t changed by then, I’ll go quietly.”
I was twenty-nine and exhausted in a way that made me feel much older. We had been together for six years, since a house party in Rathmines where he kissed me beside a washing machine that kept shaking across the kitchen floor. Back then, everything about Ciarán felt bright. He made me laugh on the Luas. He brought me coffee when I worked early shifts near Grafton Street. He knew the exact pressure to put on the back of my neck when I had migraines. He was kind before he was charming, and that was what made me love him.
But kindness can get buried under drink, under pride, under the little lies people tell when they are ashamed. For the last year, I had been living with two versions of him. One version made stew on Sundays and sang badly while chopping carrots. The other disappeared after work, came home smelling of stout and cold air, and looked through me as if I were a notice on a wall. I had stopped arguing because arguing felt like throwing stones into the Liffey and waiting for a splash big enough to matter.
That Thursday, I had packed a small bag. I was going to stay with my sister in Drumcondra. I hadn’t told him until we were already outside the pub. I chose a public place because I didn’t trust my own softness. If he cried in our kitchen, I knew I might unpack the bag. On the street, with strangers passing and taxi lights glowing, I thought I could keep my spine straight.
When he asked for 100 days, I nearly laughed. It sounded like something from a film, and we were not film people. We were two people with a damp flat, a broken kettle, and a plant on the windowsill that had survived mostly because I watered it while crying.
“I don’t have 100 days left in me,” I told him.
He nodded like he had expected that. Then he took a folded page from his coat pocket. It was not a love letter. It was a list. Counsellor appointment booked. GP appointment booked. No drinking. Move into his cousin’s spare room for three months. Pay me back the money he owed for rent. No begging, no showing up unannounced, no making me responsible for his recovery.
I remember the rain dotting the paper. I remember his hands trembling. I remember hating him for being serious only when I was already leaving.
I said yes, but not the yes he wanted. I told him I would give him 100 days of distance. No dates. No promises. One phone call every Sunday, ten minutes, and if he lied once, we were finished. He looked wounded, but he agreed. Then he stepped back and let me walk to the bus stop.
The first weeks were not romantic. There were no grand gestures, no flowers left at work, no midnight speeches under my window. There were just Sundays. At first, his voice sounded hollow. He told me about meetings in a church hall near St Stephen’s Green, about learning to sit in silence, about waking up and not knowing what to do with evenings. I told him very little
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