I met Aoife outside Croke Park on a wet August Sunday, the sort of Dublin rain that doesn’t fall so much as hover, making everyone shine under the grey sky. I was twenty-four, pretending I had my life in order because I had a job in an office near Grand Canal Dock and a clean shirt on. She was trying to keep a paper cup of tea from collapsing in her hands while arguing with a steward about which gate led to the Cusack Stand.
I knew the gate. I told her I did. That was the first little lie, because I had to check the ticket twice and follow the crowd like everyone else. She laughed when she noticed. Not cruelly. The kind of laugh that makes you want to be found out again. She had a blue scarf wrapped twice around her neck, damp curls stuck to her forehead, and a confidence I mistook for certainty. By the time we found our seats, we were talking like people who had skipped the awkward beginning.
It was a Dublin match, and the place was alive in that way only Croker can be, a full-body sound, boots on grass, strangers roaring together, the smell of chips and raincoats and old concrete. I don’t remember the score. I remember Aoife’s shoulder touching mine every time everyone stood up. I remember her shouting at the referee with more passion than seemed reasonable. I remember thinking, very foolishly, that if a person could feel this familiar after two hours, then maybe the world was kinder than I had given it credit for.
After the match we walked towards Dorset Street with the crowd, neither of us saying goodbye. She lived in Phibsborough, I lived in a shared house in Drumcondra, so there was no sensible reason to keep walking together except that we both wanted to. We ended up in a pub with steamed-up windows and old men discussing every kick as if it were a court case. She told me she was a primary school teacher, that she hated coriander, that she still missed her father most during matches because he had taught her how to curse in Irish from the Hogan Stand. I told her things I usually saved for later, safer nights.
For three months, she became the map of my Dublin. We had coffee near Stoneybatter, cheap pasta on Capel Street, long walks along the canal when neither of us had money. She took me to the Botanic Gardens and corrected me when I called every flower “one of the purple ones.” I brought her to Howth on a windy Saturday and watched her stand at the edge of the pier with her hair blowing across her face, looking like someone waiting for a ship that had no intention of arriving.
I should have noticed the sadness in her earlier. Not because I could have fixed it, but because love is not only noticing when someone shines. It is noticing when they are tired of shining. Aoife could be present with a warmth that filled a room, then disappear into herself for days. She would answer messages hours later with jokes, never explanations. When I asked if she was all right, she always said she was grand, and I accepted it because I wanted grand to be true.
In October, she got us tickets for another match at Croke Park. She said it would be our place, which embarrassed me because I liked hearing it too much. I bought a new Dublin jersey even though I couldn’t afford it and met her outside the stadium under the same dull sky as the day we met. But she wasn’t wearing her blue scarf. She was wearing a black coat, buttoned to her throat, and she looked as if she
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