I met him on a wet Thursday outside Whelan’s, both of us standing under the same useless strip of shelter while the rain came down like it had a personal grudge against Dublin. He offered me half his cigarette, then remembered he didn’t smoke anymore, then laughed at himself in a way that made me forgive the awkwardness before it had even landed.
His name was Ciarán. He was from Phibsborough, worked in a coffee shop near Camden Street, and had the kind of face that looked tired even when he was happy. I was renting a box room in Rathmines with a window that wouldn’t close properly. He came back with me that night because the last bus was gone and the taxis were impossible, or that was the excuse we both agreed to use.
Nothing dramatic happened. That’s the part people don’t believe. We didn’t fall into bed like a film. We made tea. We sat on the floor because my only chair had laundry on it. He told me about his mother dying when he was twenty-one, and I told him about leaving Galway because I thought Dublin would make me into someone braver. At some point the kettle clicked again, though neither of us had turned it on. We blamed the flat’s bad wiring and laughed too loudly for two people who were nearly strangers.
He slept beside me in my small bed, fully clothed at first, both of us careful not to assume too much. In the morning, I woke up with his arm across my waist and the city making its usual grey noises outside. A bin lorry. A woman shouting into her phone. Rain tapping at the glass. It felt, for one foolish second, like life had softened.
After that, he stayed over most weekends. We never properly called it dating. That made it feel lighter, safer. We went for pints in Grogan’s, walked along the Grand Canal with takeaway coffees, and once sat in St Stephen’s Green eating chips from a paper bag while he told me he wanted to move to Berlin. He said it casually, like he was saying he might buy new shoes. I nodded, but something in me tucked the sentence away and kept touching it like a bruise.
The bed became our place. Not in the romantic way, not only. It was where he told me he was afraid he had nothing to offer anyone. It was where I admitted I checked my phone every time he left, hoping he’d message before he got home. It was where we ate toast at midnight, argued about music, watched terrible films, and slept back to back when one of us was too stubborn to apologise. That little room in Rathmines held more honesty than any proper relationship I’d had before.
But honesty isn’t the same as commitment. I learned that slowly, then all at once.
One Sunday in November, he came over with a backpack that looked too full for one night. I knew before he said it. The room seemed to shrink around us. He sat on the edge of the bed, the same spot where he always took off his boots, and told me he’d booked a flight. Berlin. Two weeks’ time. A friend had found him a sublet and a job trial. He said he wanted to tell me earlier, but every time he looked at me he became a coward.
I asked him what he wanted from me. I didn’t mean it cruelly. I genuinely didn’t know. Did he want a blessing? A fight? A promise to wait? He looked at his hands and said, “I don’t want to lose you.”
That was when I understood the unfairness of it. He wanted to keep the warmth without building a fire. He wanted the bed, the comfort, the listening, the version of himself he got to be beside me, but not the future that would ask something of him. And I had let myself become grateful for crumbs because they were offered gently.
We slept in the same bed that night, though neither of us really slept. We lay facing each other, not touching, with the blue light from the streetlamp cutting across the ceiling. Around four in the morning he whispered, “I do love you, you know.”
I believed him. That almost made it worse.
In the morning, I made coffee. He stood in my doorway with his backpack on, looking like a man waiting to be forgiven for something he hadn’t technically done wrong. I wanted to beg him to stay. I wanted to be the kind of woman who could say, “Go, be free,” and mean it. Instead, I said, “You can’t come back here before you leave.”
His face changed. Not anger. Recognition. He nodded once. We hugged in the hall, beside the peeling paint and the recycling bags, and then he went down the stairs. I listened to the front door close and felt the silence come up behind me like cold water
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
