I met her in the kind of rain that makes Dublin look like it has been painted in watercolour. It was outside Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street, where I had stopped under the awning to pretend I was checking my phone, though really I was just avoiding the downpour. She stood beside me with a paper bag of books pressed to her chest and said, “If this keeps up, we’ll have to start a new life here.”
That was how it began. Not dramatically, not with music or lights, but with a joke shared between two strangers who were both too shy to walk into the rain first. Her name was Mara. She was from Galway, living in Rathmines, working in a café while finishing a master’s. I was an apprentice electrician from Clondalkin, temporarily doing jobs around town and permanently feeling like everyone else had read a handbook on adulthood that I had missed.
We walked together as far as St Stephen’s Green that day, not touching, not even swapping numbers until the very end. She was easy to talk to in a way that made silence feel like part of the conversation. I remember she laughed with her whole face, then looked away as if embarrassed by her own happiness.
For three months, we became something without naming it. We met after work in small, ordinary places: coffee near George’s Street Arcade, chips by the canal in Portobello, one pint in Kehoe’s that turned into three hours of talking about childhood pets, bad teachers, and the songs we would never admit we loved. We never kissed. We never called it dating. We were careful, both of us, like people carrying hot tea through a crowded room.
There were reasons. There are always reasons when two people are afraid. She had just ended something long and messy. I was saving to move to Manchester, where my older brother had found me steady work. Every time the conversation leaned towards what we were doing, one of us would step around it. We were brilliant at talking about everything except the thing sitting between us.
Then she told me she was leaving. Not forever, she said, but for a year at least. She had been offered a research placement in Lisbon. She said it quickly, while we were crossing O’Connell Bridge, as if speed could make the words hurt less. I said it was great news because it was. I meant it too. That was the strange cruelty of it. I was proud of her and heartbroken at the same time.
Our last evening was in late October. The city had gone cold around the edges. We met at the Ha’penny Bridge and walked with no plan, over to Temple Bar, then away from the noise, down along the quays where the Liffey carried all the lights in broken lines. She wore a green scarf I had once teased her about because it was too long and kept catching on things. I can still see it lifting in the wind like it was trying to leave before she did.
We spoke about practical things first. Her flight. My new job. Rent. Suitcases. The boring furniture people build around grief so they do not have to look directly at it. After a while, we stopped near the Samuel Beckett Bridge. The white cables shone against the dark sky. She said, “I wish we’d been braver.”
I wanted to say I loved her, but it felt too late and too selfish. I wanted to ask her to stay, but I knew that would make me smaller in her eyes and in my own. So I said, “Me too.”
We kept walking to Grand Canal Dock. She was beside me, close enough that our sleeves touched. Then, without ceremony, she slipped her hand into mine. No big pause. No question. Just her fingers finding mine as if they had always known the way. I had imagined holding her hand so many times that when it finally happened, it felt less like a beginning than a memory
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
