I met Ciarán when we were both nineteen and pretending to be harder than we were. It was outside a house party in Phibsborough, raining sideways, and he gave me the dry half of his cigarette even though I had never smoked in my life. I coughed until I cried, and he laughed so much he had to sit on the garden wall. That was the beginning of ten years of friendship: bad coffee, late buses, failed relationships, shared hangovers, long walks along the Grand Canal, and the kind of loyalty that makes you forget it is still possible to hurt each other.
People always assumed there was something between us. My mother called him “your not-boyfriend.” His friends would wink when I turned up at birthdays. We had our answers ready. “She’s like my sister,” he would say. “He’s family,” I would say. And I meant it, mostly. We had slept in the same beds after nights out, shared chips on the kerb outside Dice Bar, cried in front of each other without embarrassment. He knew the exact tone of voice I used when I was trying not to fall apart. I knew when he was lying about being grand.
The trouble was, feelings don’t always announce themselves honestly. Sometimes they disguise themselves as worry, irritation, jealousy, or being the person who always notices when someone has cut their hair. I only understood mine properly when he started seeing a woman called Aoife. She was kind, clever, and impossible to dislike. That made it worse. I wanted to hate her for taking up space I had never admitted I wanted, but she brought me a birthday candle stuck into a lemon tart because she knew I didn’t like cake. You can’t hate someone like that without becoming the villain in your own story.
For nearly a year, I behaved well. I listened to him talk about her. I helped him choose a present in town. I told him he was lucky. Then, one Friday in November, he rang me after midnight and asked if I was awake. I was in bed in my flat in Stoneybatter, scrolling through nothing. He said he was near Smithfield and couldn’t go home yet. I heard something in his voice, so I put on my coat over my pyjamas and met him outside the Luas stop.
He had been fighting with Aoife. Not shouting, he said, just one of those calm, devastating conversations where both people suddenly see the end before they say it. We walked without deciding where, past the empty square, past a couple arguing softly beside a taxi, towards the river. Dublin was shiny with rain. He kept rubbing his hands together like he was trying to warm himself from the inside.
We ended up on the Ha’penny Bridge. It sounds too neat, I know, like a place chosen by someone writing a scene, but in real life you arrive at symbolic places by accident. He leaned against the railing and said, “I think I’m losing her.”
I should have said, “I’m sorry.” I should have said, “Go home and talk to her tomorrow.” Instead I said nothing. He looked at me, and there was something open in his face, something tired and frightened. For ten years, I had been the safe place. That night, I mistook being needed for being wanted.
He kissed me first. I need to say that because for a long time I tried to carry all the blame, as if that would make the story cleaner. But I kissed him back. I kissed him like I had been waiting ten years and also like I knew I was destroying ten years. It lasted maybe five seconds. It was not romantic in the way films promise. It was wet from the rain, clumsy, desperate, and full of all the words we had avoided.
When we pulled apart, he looked horrified. Not disgusted, exactly. Worse. Awake. “I’m sorry,” he said.
I laughed, because my body didn’t know what else to do. Then I started crying, which was humiliating because people were passing us on both sides, heading towards Temple Bar, laughing under umbrellas. He tried to touch my arm, and I stepped back. That was the first real ending.
We didn’t speak for six days. On the seventh, he texted asking to meet. We sat in a quiet corner of a café near Capel Street, the kind with fogged windows and tables too small for bad news. He had told Aoife. She had ended things. He said he didn’t know what the kiss meant, only that he knew he had used me in a moment
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
