I was buying a bunch of tulips outside Dublin city centre on a wet Thursday when I heard my name spoken the way it used to be, like it had two extra letters in it. I turned around expecting a mistake, but there he was, older around the eyes, carrying a paper bag from a bakery and wearing the same awkward smile that once made me forget entire sentences.
His name was Cian, and he had been my first love. We were nineteen when we met, two broke students taking shelter from rain under the arch near Trinity, pretending we were deep and complicated because we read poetry and drank terrible coffee. We spent that summer on buses we could barely afford, walking by the Grand Canal, sharing chips on cold benches, and making enormous promises with the confidence of people who had never paid a gas bill.
Then life did what life does. His mother got sick in Galway. My father lost his job. We were both young enough to think pain had to be handled privately. He stopped calling as often. I answered with pride instead of honesty. One night outside Whelan’s, after a gig neither of us enjoyed, we had the kind of argument that sounds dramatic at twenty and foolish at thirty-five. He said he had to go home for a while. I said, “Then go.” He did.
For years I told the story as if I had been left. It made me easier to understand at parties. “My first love vanished,” I’d say, and people would nod sympathetically. But the truth was less tidy. He wrote three letters. I opened only one. I was frightened that if I read the others, I would forgive him, or worse, admit that I had been cruel too.
So when I saw him again, fifteen years later, outside a flower stall near St Stephen’s Green, the city seemed to pause. Buses hissed at the kerb. A cyclist cursed at a taxi. Rain gathered on the tulip wrappers. He said, “Niamh,” and I said, “You’re real,” which was not the elegant line I would have chosen if I had known I was about to meet a ghost from my own life.
We laughed because there was nothing else safe to do. He asked if I had time for tea. I almost said no. I had emails waiting, laundry in the machine, and a life carefully built around not looking backwards. But there was something in his face, not hope exactly, more like courage, and I heard myself say yes.
We went to a small café off South William Street, the kind of place where the tables are too close and everyone pretends not to listen. At first we spoke in facts. He had moved back to Dublin after years in Galway and London. He was separated, no children. I had never married, though I had come close once with a man who was kind but always felt like a coat that belonged to someone else. We spoke about jobs, rents, knees that hurt after running, parents ageing. Ordinary things, but underneath them was the loud, bright question of what had happened to us.
Finally, he put his cup down and said, “I’m sorry I disappeared.”
I had waited fifteen years to hear that sentence, and when it arrived it did not make me triumphant. It made me sad for the boy he had been, for the girl I had been, for all the versions of ourselves who did not know how to say, “I’m scared. Please stay.” I told him about the letters. He looked down at his hands and said the second one had explained everything, his mother’s illness, the money
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
