The Space In-Between

The Space In-Between

It was a strange, grey autumn. Fog hung heavily over the Lagan, pressing against our chests like a hand held there way too long. Even breathing felt deliberate.

It was the very week local government had collapsed again. Tangled in yet another augment of who’s right and who’s wrong, a contest which no one ever seems to win. And I had no idea why I was going to a house party in South Belfast. Why this week of all weeks, when everything felt so suspended?

Of course, the news that been looping all day. It always does. Negotiations, deadlock, in-fighting. Those all-too-familiar works delivered with fresh urgency that we were tired of listening to and were somehow still hooked on, like an old pop song we claim to hate but somehow know by heart.

The city gets like that. Tight around the ribs. When everyone is watching the same headline, waiting for something, but we’re all pretending not to.

Typical.

By 10 pm I was already two vodkas down and full of liquid courage, barefoot on top of Aisling’s kitchen counter in-between a mountain of dishes in the sink, a frying pan on the counter with a questionable substance glued inside, and three industrial-sized tubs of protein powder that her boyfriend absolutely swears by.

I was rummaging behind the tower of pot noodles around for the ‘good prosecco’ as she called it. Now, in my humble experience, that meant it cost two pounds more than the “bad” one. Still, I chuckled to myself, those two quid might be the difference between a hangover tomorrow and a full-scale moral reckoning.

“Are ye searching for a pot of gold up there?” Aisling called from below in her thick country accent. “Or just redecorating my kitchen with your arse?”

“I’m conducting vital research,” I called back, “It’s practically an archeological dig up here.”

“It’s prosecco, not the Titanic,” she scoffed back, “And, anyways, if ye fall and crack your skull, I’m not explaining to our tutor that ‘Lidl’s finest’ is why we can’t turn our project in.”

“See!” I said, holding the bottle up high victoriously. “Worth the climb!”

“Dead on,” she replied, “Now get down here before Ryan comes in and starts lecturing us on macros again. I swear to the lord Jesus Christs, if I hear the word ‘protein’ one more time out of him, it’ll be the end of us.”

“Anyway, we have to get to the party. Jack said if we’re not there by eleven, they’re locking us out,” She thought for a moment, before adding, “—and I’m not climbing in through the window in this skirt.” As if that was actually a legitimate option.

***

Outside, the fog pressed heavier still. The streetlights burned a dull orange, half-swallowed by it, forgotten in the city’s endless renovation projects. Meanwhile, those red-brick terraced houses took on the look of something haunted — not by ghosts, but by memory.

Jack’s house was only a few doors down. His parents had bought it in the seventies, back when terraces like these were considered modest rather than mythical. Now it was worth a figure none of us could pronounce without flinching.

He lived there rent-free, while renting out the spare rooms to his mates — a rotating cast of students, graduates, and half-employed philosophers, not ready to brave the corporate ladder just yet.

That made it the official party house.

Especially so as Jack’s parents were off somewhere in Southeast Asia, posting filtered sunsets and tasting menus, and wouldn’t be back for months to check up on their investment.

The house was already dripping in sweat when we arrived. Heat rushed out the door, and the windows fogged over almost instantly. Damp wool. Stale beer. Someone shouting over bass that thudded through the floorboards hard enough to rearrange your organs.

On either side of Jack’s terrace, scaffolding clung to neighbouring houses like metal ribs. Renovation was constant on this street — kitchens gutted, lofts converted, brick cleaned and resealed until it forgot what it used to look like.

We were lucky. The construction meant noise was expected. Otherwise, the peelers would have been round within the hour.

I turned to shut the door behind us. The glass was already clouded with condensation.

Without thinking, I dragged my finger across it and drew a small heart, instinctive, almost ironic, something delicate against the thick air of the night. It began to fade immediately, as if it was never there.

I wiped my hand on my coat and shoved it into my bag rather than the pile by the stairs. I knew from experience that I’d be searching for it all week if I did.

Venturing forward between the bodies gathered in that all-too-small hallway, I edged my way into the living room. Heat pressed in from every side. Someone’s elbow caught my ribs. Someone else apologised without meaning it.

From the armchair in the corner, a guitar chord struck out against the noise. Not gentle. Intentional. The sound cut through the room like a decision.

“Oi! Kill that boom-boom shite for a sec.” Jack leaned by on the sofa, as if he was holding court. “Go on then, mate.”

The bass dipped reluctantly, fading to a low hum, and the buzz of conversations seemed to falter mid-sentence. All eyes were on him.

He didn’t stand. He didn’t need to. He just sat forward, guitar in hand and started to sing

as if the room belonged to him already. And, I guess, it already it.

He had kind of voice that didn’t ask for attention because it assumed it would be given.

“You call it complicated…” he sang, low and even.

The lyrics weren’t especially remarkable. But, then again, it wasn’t just about the words. It was about the certainty beneath them. The way he seemed to believe the room could be persuaded into alignment.

Somehow, I felt myself drawn it. The fairy lights glowed around the room. The overwhelming heat seemed to fade, and the bodies around me dissolved into shape and colour. For a brief moment, it was just him. The steady rhythm of his voice, and that irritating conviction threaded through every note.

There are men who perform to be admired, but this wasn’t like that. He sang like he expected resistance. Like the rebels before him, and he welcomed it.

“…a future’s what we lack,” he finished softly, letting the final chord hang in the air.

It didn’t fade. It hovered.

For a moment, no one moved. No one coughed. Even the bass seemed to hesitate, unsure whether it was allowed back in. The silence wasn’t empty. It was stretched, deliberate — as if the room were holding its breath.

“Any objections?” he asked.

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His eyes moved across the room, unhurried. He placed the guitar gently on the floor beside his chair and stood. And just like that, the vacuum broke.

Conversations rushed back in all at once. Laughter too loud. Someone restarting the music prematurely. Cups clinking. The room inhaling greedily after being held still. He moved toward the kitchen for a drink, as though he hadn’t just shifted the weight of the air.

And I was still standing in it.

Just then Aisling appeared at my side, materialising as if she’d sensed the atmospheric disturbance. She pressed a cup into my hand without explanation.

“What’s this?” I asked, still watching him move through the doorway toward the kitchen.

“Don’t ask questions,” she said with a wink. “It’s fortified.”

I glanced down at the cloudy liquid. It looked medicinal.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she added, studying my face. “Or worse. A man with opinions.”

“I’m fineeee.” The words dripped from me, as if I was begging, please leave me alone.

“Mmhmm,” she replied, unconvinced. “You’ve got that look.”

“What look?”

“The one you get before you decide something’s worth arguing with.”

I took a sip. It burned in a way that felt half way between constructive, and kind of like I’d have a date with the toilet bowl in just a few hours.

Across the room, he was leaning against the kitchen counter, head bent slightly as someone spoke to him. He wasn’t smiling. He was listening, which somehow felt more dangerous.

The bass swelled again, reclaiming territory.

“You’re not going to let THAT go, are you?” Aisling asked, but she already knew the answer.

“Nope.” I retorted, swishing down the remained of the suspicious liquid and feeling the fire rise.

“Grand, so” she replied. “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“That doesn’t leave much,” I shouted back. Loud enough for her to hear, but I was already walking towards the kitchen. Towards him.

There he was glass in one hand, listening to someone who seemed to believe they were winning an argument. He wasn’t smiling. He never smiled when he disagreed. He absorbed. That felt worse. Almost cruel. Like a lion watching its prey.

And he saw me coming.

“You’re simplifying,” I said.

He pretended not to understand. Over the years, I’d learn this was a tactic he’d use to lure unsuspecting people in. I’d see him do it a million times in his career. One that he didn’t know he’d have yet. And I was just about to fall for that trick hook, line, and sinker.

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

The music dipped again, either deliberately or because I imagined it did.

“You talk about life like it’s structural,” I continued. “Like if you reinforce the beams it’ll hold. It won’t. Some things rot from inside. You can’t paint over that.”

“And demolition fixes it?” he asked.

“It reveals it.”

A flicker. Something between challenge and approval. He was intrigued. And that didn’t happen often.

“You sound like you’ve already given up,” he said.

“You sound like you still want to believe in fairytales.”

“Maybe I do.”

“That’s brave… or stupid.”

He laughed. Not offended. But rather amused that someone dared to speak to him that way. To call Mr. Intellectual ‘stupid.’

We were standing way too closely now. Pushed together by the endless waves of bodies trying to get their next drink. The room hummed around us, but thinner, less relevant.

“You’re not neutral?” he said again, quieter this time.

“No.”

“That’s rare. Most people are. Or at least, they pretend to be”

He tilted his head toward the back door.

“Walk?”

Not romantic. Not tentative. Just the need for fresh air and conversation.

The fog waited for us. It pressed itself into the mortar between the bricks, settled into the cracks of the paving stones, softened the sharp lines of the terraces until they looked older than they were. The houses leaned toward one another in the half-light, keeping their counsel. The street did not offer comfort. It observed.

Behind us, the bass beat faintly, a pulse trapped inside walls that held more noise than confession.

“You think the world should collapse,” he said.

“I think pretending it’s stable is worse.”

“And what replaces it?”

“Whatever survives.”

He leaned back against the wall, studying me like a problem he wasn’t sure he wanted solved. And it fascinated him

“You don’t trust repair?”

“I don’t trust performance.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” I agreed. “It isn’t.”

For a moment, we were quiet. Over time I’d learn that he wasn’t quite sure what to do with agreement. That was the funny thing. We did agree, but we just saw the world a little differently.

“This isn’t finished,” he said.

“No.”

That was how it began.

After that night, he kept appearing.

Coffee on Botanic Avenue. Long arguments about votes and politics that went nowhere, but we’d put the world to rights. Messages sent at midnight with links and no explanation. Photographs of peeling paint and council minutes forwarded in retaliation.

He believed in reform. I believed in truth.

When his proposal was rejected, he called me from the pavement outside.

“They’re not listening,” he said.

“They do,” I replied. “Just not to you.” Meanwhile thinking that it’s just the money they’re listening to.

He laughed, and it felt like we’d built something invisible and indestructible.

When my uncle was admitted to hospital the following year, he didn’t offer solutions. He just sat beside me in the waiting room, making jokes to break the sorrow, and bringing endless cups of coffee.

We didn’t name it, even if we knew what it was back then.

Years later, he met someone. Someone special. Some steady. A teacher. Warm hands. Calm voice. Kind and beautiful in a way I could never be.

And I guess I did too. Someone who was patient, that didn’t demand too much. It was enough.

We attended each other’s weddings with the correct smiles, and even corrector gifts.

He stood too straight at mine. I fixed his tie at his, holding back a tear from my eye. Even if I didn’t want to show it. She was perfect, and he deserved happiness.

“You’ll behave?” he asked quietly.

“Always,” I wink.

And we meant it. Years moved, and seasons passed.

Children were born. Mortgages signed. Promotions earned. The city remained suspended in one argument or another.

We met for coffee in daylight. Always daylight. Those evening streets always seemed less forgiving, like edged blurred, too ready to soften what should be defined.

If the conversation drifted toward something softer, one of us would joke, some sarcasm, almost like a safety barrier. We did not cross lines.

We chose not to. Time and time again.

***

Years later. It was another house party. Jack wanted to get the gang back together. One last hurrah before he moved out to his new bachelor pad outside the city. This time there was no bass, no smell of musty beer.

Just red wine and quiet chatter. Aisling was there too, still smiling, lines across her face like a life well lived, and she was happy. Over the years we’d stayed close, our kids even played from time to time, when she wasn’t busy with the parent groups and mummy circles.

Even our spouses were there, somehow, they knew each other through a friend of a friend of a friend, and were disusing schools or something equally as riveting. It’s always surprised me how small this place can be. And how we fall into old habits.

He found me at the sink. The same one we sparred at all those years ago. This time with a glass of wine in my hand.

“You still painting buildings?” he asked.

“Mostly.”

“Still stripping them back to brick?”

“Now, you know I don’t trust surfaces.”

He smiled, “Do you ever think—”

“About pigeons?” I said. Afraid where this was going.

He shook his head. Staring deeper into my eyes. Tilting his head in that way that he does.

“About timing.”

The word settled between us like something fragile. Through the doorway, I could see our lives. Stable. Built. Earned.

We had chosen well. We had chosen people who were kind. We had chosen steadiness over combustion. We had chosen houses instead of storms.

He stood close enough that I could feel the warmth of him without touching.

Outside, the fog blurred the streetlights into soft halos. Without thinking, I reached out and traced a small heart in the condensation on the window. He noticed and smiled ever so gently. Almost with a hint of regret.

It began to fade almost immediately.

“We should go back in,” I said.

“Yes.”

But we didn’t move. We just stood there, fixated in the moment.

We never said it out loud to each other.

Not that night in Jack’s overheated living room. Not in hospital corridors. Not at our weddings. Not here.

But standing in that kitchen, older now, steadier and dangerously aware, we were both thinking it.

Could it be…?