The Other Streets Of Love — Part III: Military Road
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After I broke up with Mario, some things in my life started to run. One of them was the admission for a Master’s degree in Dublin. It was in the middle of the pandemic, that I received a lot of support from some people from work to study and attend the interviews and the tests, and I was celebrated when I passed. (Sarah, Donal and Peter, thank you so much for it.)
That week was an amazing one. I was slowly recovering, ignoring the workmates who were still making a deal out of the break-up and so on. The summer was about to start and I had just got an allowance from the immigration to stay and work in the country until college started. At the very end of it, I received a message from Dionysus. Not the god, just a cover name for the third lover.
I met Dion when I was in my second year as an English student. We exchanged glances between the classes but never spoke to each other. Followed each other on social media but never spoke to each other. Coincidently, when Mario was living with a friend before moving to my house, I used to visit this building on Bolton Street quite regularly. One of the days, leaving there for work, I ran into Dion and we chatted for a while. Nothing like flirting but just two people catching up. However, the glances were there still.
After around two years, Dion and I have been texting each other, catching up with the news since we left the English school. I tell him I have just broken up and, coincidently, he has done the same. Then, I told him I had just been admitted to college. He is just about to start college. We decided to celebrate with beers at Phoenix Park. We stayed there a whole afternoon until the sun was sending us away to our home with the guards helping it. We talked about everything like we were quite intimate already.
The second time, I invited him to go biking in Phoenix Park after my work. We stopped in a kind of reserved place where we could watch the trees and the sky around the park. We sat there for a few minutes talking until that awkward silence came over like the chat was over and there was nothing else we could talk about. I look at him to say something and he comes over kissing me. I give it back and when we see we are almost lying down on the grass with our hands under our t-shirts. We decided to move before it got too heated and we went to the front of the Wellington Monument with other people. We stayed there even through the evening. I remember getting home around 10/11 PM that night.
From that moment, we were almost seeing each other every day after my work. Non-stop. There was breakfast in the courtyard of my building, he would visit me at work, we made brunch at home for him to meet my friends, and we would watch a movie (or try to) in the afternoon. We would spend our afternoons in parks, drinking wine too, and making plans to know each other’s cities and camp together that summer with his friends.
There was that day we were in the Croppies Acre Memorial Park. After a bottle of wine, I went to drop him at his building. From a window in Capel Street, his cousin screamed his name. There was a birthday party for her. He screams that I am his boyfriend to her. She invited me to the birthday party too. We say we go together. After, I asked him about the boyfriend thing on the way to his place. He tells me to shut up and forget it. The next thing I know is that he is not going to the birthday party anymore so I shouldn’t go as well. Ten minutes later, he shared on his social media that he was celebrating the birthday of his cousin at her party.
The next situation was him asking if I had a camping tent by any chance. Two or three weeks later, without any notice, he shared that he was going to spend the weekend camping with his friend that summer. A picture of him all ready to go and he texts me saying that he needs that time alone.
Our story ends simply like this. At that moment.
We met each other almost two years after at a birthday party. One where he apologises for everything he has done. The only answer I can give is:
I have forgiven you a long time ago. What you did was wrong but there was nothing I could do. Now, it’s time for you to forgive yourself. Again, there is nothing I can do about it.
