I used to tell people I met my husband in the most Dublin way possible: in the rain, outside a chipper, after a kiss I could barely remember and never quite forgot. It was a Friday night in Temple Bar, the kind of night when every doorway was singing and the cobblestones shone like someone had polished them for tourists. I was twenty-seven, newly single, and pretending very hard that I was delighted about it.
My friends had dragged me into The Quays after work. I had promised myself one drink, then two, then I stopped counting when someone ordered baby Guinness shots. I remember the fiddle music, a hen party in pink cowboy hats, and the terrible confidence that comes with being sad and tipsy in a crowded room. I had spent the previous month sleeping badly, eating toast for dinner, and walking home from work along the Liffey just so I could cry without anyone asking questions.
He was at the bar trying to order water. That was the first thing I liked about him, though I pretended it was boring. He had dark hair flattened by the rain and a blue jumper that made him look warmer than he probably was. My friend Sarah knew his friend from college, which is how our two groups collided. Someone said, “This is Mark, he fixes computers and ruins parties by being sensible.” I said, “I ruin parties by over-sharing.” He laughed like he had been waiting all evening for someone to say something true.
We talked about nothing important at first: bad landlords, the Luas, the price of a pint, whether Grafton Street buskers were getting better or just louder. Then somehow we were talking about our mothers. His had died when he was nineteen. Mine had survived cancer the year before. The pub roared around us, but a little quiet pocket opened between us. I remember his face changing when he listened, not performing sympathy, just receiving what I said as if it mattered.
By closing time, the rain had turned serious. Everyone spilled onto the street laughing and shouting, half of Dublin looking for taxis that did not exist. We ended up outside Leo Burdock’s, sharing chips under the useless shelter of a shopfront. I was cold, hungry, emotional, and drunk enough to mistake courage for destiny. He had curry sauce on his sleeve. I pointed it out. He looked down. I kissed him.
It was not elegant. Our teeth clicked. Someone behind us cheered. A taxi splashed through a puddle and soaked my tights. But for one second, with salt on my fingers and rain in my hair, I felt my life tilt slightly towards the possible. Then I panicked. I pulled away, said, “Sorry, that was very irresponsible,” and walked off with my chips like a woman fleeing a crime scene.
The next morning, I woke with a headache and a memory that arrived in pieces. Blue jumper. Kind eyes. Curry sauce. Kiss. I felt embarrassed in the deep, physical way that makes you consider moving counties. Sarah had his number because of the college friend, and she spent the whole afternoon saying, “Just text him.” I refused. At about seven that evening, my phone buzzed with an unknown number.
“Hi, it’s Mark from last night. I hope your chips were worth abandoning me for.”
I stared at it for ten full minutes. Then I wrote back, “They were excellent. The kiss was a bit chaotic.”
He replied, “I’d like to try both again sober.”
Our first proper date was a walk through St Stephen’s Green the following Sunday. I was nervous enough to arrive twenty minutes early and circle the Fusiliers’ Arch twice. He brought coffee and a packet of napkins because, he said, I seemed like someone who attracted spills. I thought that was rude until I immediately knocked my cup against a railing. We laughed so hard that the awkwardness broke open.
We didn’t become a couple instantly. Real love, I learned, is not like a drunk kiss. It does not crash into you with music and applause. It arrives in quieter ways. Mark remembered that I hated coriander. He walked me to the bus stop even when it was out of his way. He never mocked my anxieties, even the dramatic ones. When my mother had a scan six months later, he sat beside me in the Mater, holding my hand without filling the silence with false comfort.
I changed too. Before him, I thought being loved meant being rescued from loneliness. With Mark, I realised it meant being witnessed properly. He saw me at my worst, not just drunk in Temple Bar, but frightened, impatient, grieving, stubborn. And instead of making me feel like too much, he made space.
Three years after that first night, he proposed near the Ha’penny Bridge. Not on the bridge itself, because he said he was
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