I met him on a wet Thursday evening outside Grogan’s, the kind of rain that does not fall so much as hang in the air and slowly claim you. I was twenty-six, carrying a tote bag full of library books and the quiet panic of someone who had just left a job with no plan. He was leaning against the wall, smoking, though he later told me he hated cigarettes and only held one because he did not know what else to do with his hands. When I dropped my umbrella, he picked it up and said, “Dublin’s always trying to embarrass us into talking to strangers.” I laughed harder than the joke deserved, and that was the start of it.
We went inside for one drink, then another. By closing time, I knew he was called Daniel, that he had grown up in Raheny, that his mother still rang him every Sunday during the Angelus, and that he was leaving for Toronto in six weeks. He knew I lived in a box room near Portobello, that I loved old cinemas, and that I was trying very hard not to move back home to Galway. Outside on South William Street, the city was shining with rain and taxi lights. He asked if he could see me again before he left. I said yes, though some practical part of me whispered that leaving men should not be allowed to have kind eyes.
For six weeks, we behaved like people with years ahead of us. We walked along the canal with coffees from a tiny place I had read about on Dublin food guides, sat on the grass in St Stephen’s Green when the sun finally came out, and shared chips outside Leo Burdock after a night in Whelan’s. He kissed me first near the Ha’penny Bridge, gently, almost apologetically, as if asking permission from the whole city. I remember thinking, this is either the beginning of something or the exact shape of a heartbreak.
We never said we were in love before he left. We were too careful for that, too modern, too proud. Instead, we said things like, “This has been lovely,” and “We’ll keep in touch,” as if language could make a soft landing out of a cliff. At the airport, he hugged me for so long that people had to walk around us. When he finally let go, his face had changed. He looked younger and frightened. “If this was a different time,” he said. I nodded because I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, I would ask him to stay, and I had no right to ask that of someone whose life was already packed into two suitcases.
For the first year, we did well. Messages became calls, calls became video dinners, and once I fell asleep with my laptop open and woke to his voice saying my name from another time zone. He sent me photos of snow piled against his window. I sent him pictures of the Liffey at dusk and the ridiculous queue outside my favourite bakery. We talked about everything except the obvious thing, which was when we would be in the same place again. I told myself that love was patient. I did not understand then that patience can become a room you lock yourself inside.
He came back for Christmas the following year. By then I had a steady job near Grand Canal Dock and had learned how to be lonely in a productive way. We met in The Long Hall because it felt neutral, though nothing about us was neutral. The moment he walked in, all the careful distance I had built collapsed. He looked the same, only more tired. We spent three days together, and it was as easy as breathing. On Grafton Street, under the lights, he took my hand and said he had thought about coming home for good. I felt happiness rush through me, followed immediately by fear. I had just signed a lease. I had started a course. For the first time in years, my life felt like mine.
“Would you come to Canada?” he asked on his last night, sitting on the edge of my bed in Portobello while rain tapped the window. It was a fair question. It was also the question I had been avoiding since the day we met. I wanted to say yes because I loved him. I wanted to say no because I had spent too long becoming a person who did not abandon herself for love. In the end, I said, “I don’t think I can.” He nodded, and the silence between us was not angry. That made it worse. Anger would have given us something to fight. Instead, we only had the truth.
We tried again after that, in the half-hearted way people do when the love is real but the road has run out. The messages became less frequent. We stopped telling each other the small things first. He met someone there. I met someone here, though neither of those stories lasted. The last proper conversation we had was two years later, after his father died. He rang me from Toronto, and we cried together like no time had passed. For an hour, we were back in that small bright place we had made. Then he said, “I still think about what might have happened.” I said, “Me too.” And we both
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