I saw him first in the reflection of the café window, not directly. I was sitting inside Bewley’s on Grafton Street, watching rain slide down the glass in crooked little rivers, when his shape appeared behind me. Tall coat, one shoulder slightly higher than the other, the same way he used to stand when he was nervous. For a second I thought Dublin was playing a trick on me, the way it does when you pass a stranger near the Ha’penny Bridge and swear you know their walk from another life.
It had been four years since Cian left. Not left Dublin, exactly. He left me. He took a job in Berlin after his mother died, and in the weeks before he went, he became polite in a way that frightened me. He answered messages late. He stopped making plans beyond Friday. On his last night, we stood outside The Cobblestone in Smithfield after hearing a trad session that had made me cry into my pint. I thought he might ask me to come with him. Instead, he hugged me like I was a cousin at a funeral and said, “You’ll be grand, Maeve.”
I was not grand. I was twenty-nine and too proud to beg a man to love me properly, but not proud enough to stop hoping he would realise it himself. For months, I carried my phone around like a small church. Every buzz felt holy until it wasn’t him. Then the months became years. I moved flats twice, cut my hair, took a job managing a bookshop near St Stephen’s Green, and learned how to speak about him in the past tense. People said, “You’ll meet someone.” I did. Kind men, funny men, men who texted back. But there was a room inside me with his name still on the door, and no matter how often I painted over it, the letters showed through.
That morning in Bewley’s, I had gone in because my shoes were soaked and because I was trying not to cry over something ridiculous. My younger sister had just called to say she was engaged. I was happy for her, truly. But after we hung up, I stood in the rain on Grafton Street feeling like life had formed a queue and forgotten to call my number.
Then there he was.
He didn’t rush over. He stood outside for a moment, looking in, as if asking permission from the glass. His hair was shorter, threaded with grey at the sides. He looked older, but not in a bad way. More finished. More wounded. When he finally came in, the bell above the door gave a bright, ordinary ring, which felt almost cruel.
“Maeve,” he said.
I had imagined this moment many times. In some versions I was elegant and cold. In others I slapped him, though I’ve never slapped anyone in my life. In the real version, I said, “Your coat is dripping on the floor.”
He looked down and laughed once, softly. “Still practical.”
“Still leaving puddles.”
He asked if he could sit. I wanted to say no. I wanted to protect the woman I had become, the woman who paid her own rent and made Sunday dinner for herself and no longer checked flight prices to Germany after two glasses of wine. But the old room inside me opened before I could stop it.
We spoke first like strangers. Work. Weather. His father’s health. My sister’s engagement. He told me he had moved back to Dublin three weeks earlier and was staying near Portobello. I stirred my coffee until it went cold.
Finally I said, “Why are you here, Cian?”</p
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
