I met Aoife on a wet Tuesday outside the Abbey Theatre, both of us pretending we weren’t sheltering under the same narrow bit of roof. She had a paper bag of books held to her chest like a baby, and I had a broken umbrella that kept turning inside out. She laughed first. That was how it started, not with music or fate or any grand Dublin romance, but with rain running down my neck and a woman saying, “You’re losing the battle there, love.”
For two years after that, Dublin belonged to us in small pieces. We drank bad coffee near George’s Street Arcade, walked home along the quays, and split chips on the steps near Temple Bar when neither of us had money for a proper dinner. She worked in a pharmacy in Rathmines and I drove delivery vans around the city, learning every shortcut and every place a heart could wait for someone. Aoife had a habit of touching my sleeve before crossing the road, even when there was no traffic. It made me feel chosen.
She was from a family that believed in plans. Mine believed in getting through the week. Her parents were kind to me, but in the way people are kind to a stray dog they don’t intend to keep. Her mother would ask about my work with a smile that never reached the second question. Her father once told me, after two whiskeys, that love was important but stability was kinder in the long run. I laughed because I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.
The other man was Ciarán. He was not cruel, not arrogant, not even easy to dislike. That was the worst of it. He was a solicitor, a friend of her cousin’s, with polished shoes and a quiet way of making everyone feel he had already paid the bill. Aoife told me about him one evening in St Stephen’s Green, sitting on a bench while the gulls screamed like they knew something I didn’t. She said her parents had invited him to dinner. She said it meant nothing. Then she said it again, softer, and I heard the lie trying to comfort both of us.
We fought more after that, but never properly. Proper fighting needs honesty, and we were too afraid to name the thing standing in the room. She wanted a future that did not tremble every time rent was due. I wanted her to believe I would become more than I was. I started taking extra shifts. I bought a second-hand suit for interviews I never got called back for. She started wearing worry like perfume.
The last morning I saw her as mine was at Connolly Station. She was going to Cork for her aunt’s birthday, or that is what she told me. I remember the platform smell of diesel and coffee, the announcement crackling above us, the cold handle of her suitcase in my hand. She looked tired, beautiful, and far away. Just before the train doors closed, she kissed me. Not a quick kiss, not a public one, but the kind that says thank you and sorry at the same time. Then she held my face for a second and said, “Mind yourself, yeah?”
I stood there after the train pulled out, like an eejit, with my hands empty. By evening she had sent a message saying she needed time. By the end of the week she said she couldn’t see me. A month later, a mutual friend told me she was engaged to Ciarán. I found out about the wedding from a photograph online: Aoife outside a church in Ranelagh, white dress, winter sun, his hand at her back. She looked calm. That hurt more than if she had looked miserable.
I did not behave nobly at first. I drank too much in pubs where nobody knew me. I walked past her pharmacy twice and hated myself both times. I drafted messages I never sent, long speeches about loyalty and cowardice and how she had killed something decent. But grief has a way of making you dramatic, and time has a way of making you accurate. The truth was simpler and sadder. She had loved me, but not enough to live the life I was offering. I had loved her, but I had asked love to do the work of money, confidence, and direction.
On the day of her wedding, I drove deliveries through Drumcondra and cried at a red light. A cyclist knocked on my window and asked if I was alright. I said yes, because men say yes when they are clearly not
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
