It started because of a hotel room and a lie that was easier to keep than correct. Niamh and I had been friends since college, the kind who could sit in silence on the Luas and still know what the other was thinking. Her cousin was getting married in Dublin, and her mother had booked us a room near Dublin because, somewhere along the line, she had decided I was Niamh’s boyfriend. Niamh had tried to explain it once, she said, but her mother had waved her off with, “Ah, don’t be shy.” By the time Friday arrived, the room was paid for, the family WhatsApp had welcomed me with heart emojis, and Niamh was looking at me outside Heuston Station with a face that said, please just survive this with me.
So we did. We held hands in front of her aunties at the hotel bar. I put my arm around the back of her chair during dinner like I had done it a thousand times. She called me “love” once, by accident or performance, and I nearly dropped my fork. The strange thing was how quickly the pretend became comfortable. We had always been close, but closeness has different rooms inside it. That weekend, we walked into one we had both been standing outside for years.
On Saturday morning, before the wedding, we escaped for coffee near George’s Street Arcade. It was raining in that fine Dublin way, not dramatic enough for an umbrella but enough to soften everyone’s hair and mood. Niamh was in curlers under a hood, and I was carrying her shoes because she said she needed to “preserve the ankles for the dance floor.” We ducked into a café, and nobody there knew us, so there was no reason to act. Still, when she reached across the table to wipe foam from my lip with her thumb, we both went quiet. Outside, a cyclist shouted at a taxi. Inside, my whole life seemed to pause on that tiny ordinary touch.
The wedding was in a hotel not far from Temple Bar, all candles, cousins, and speeches that got more emotional as the glasses emptied. Her mother kept squeezing my arm and telling me I was good for Niamh. I laughed each time because what else could I do? But Niamh stopped laughing after the third time. During the first dance, she leaned close and said, “This is getting cruel, isn’t it?” I asked who it was cruel to. She didn’t answer.
Later, we ended up outside on the steps, sharing a cigarette neither of us really wanted. The city was wet and shining, and the taxis passed with their yellow lights like small moving moons. Niamh looked tired, not from dancing but from pretending to be casual about things that were not casual at all. She said, “I think I let Mam believe it because part of me liked hearing it.” I remember the exact sound of the rain hitting the awning above us. I remember looking at her and feeling, with sudden embarrassment, that I had been waiting years for permission to admit what I already knew.
I told her I liked it too. Not the lying, not the aunties, not the fake couple photos her cousins were taking every ten minutes, but the feeling of being beside her and not having to step back. She laughed then, but it came out shaky. She said, “If we ruin the friendship, I’ll kill you.” I said, “That seems fair.” It was the least romantic first kiss in history, probably. She had lipstick on her teeth, I was holding a damp cigarette, and someone’s uncle opened the door behind us and shouted, “There they are!” But it happened. Soft, quick, terrified, real.
The next day, we went to St Stephen’s Green before checkout, both of us slightly hungover and
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
