Chapter 4: Day By Day
The late afternoon sun was a weak, watery gold, bleeding into the concrete sprawl of the university plaza. Briv leaned against a bike rack, the chill of the metal seeping through his thin jacket. Around him, the usual post-lecture murmur bubbled up from his friends.
“So then he said the dataset was ‘inherently virtuous’,” Silviu was saying, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Inherently virtuous! What does that even mean?”
Alin snorted, kicking a pebble. “It means he’s full of shit and hasn’t graded the papers yet.”
Carmen, perched on the low wall, scrolled through her phone. “Oh my god, look at Dora’s story. Who takes their Pomeranian to a Michelin-starred restaurant? The clown shoes on that man, I swear.”
Nicola stood a little apart, silent, her blonde hair a curtain against the side of her face as she watched the stream of students flowing from the main doors. Briv caught himself looking at the line of her neck, remembering the haunting echo of her voice on stage at the Garnet Vault. It had been a week, and the memory still sent a jolt through him. She’d saved him. Then she’d vanished back into her polite, distant shell.
Radu, buzzing with an unspent, agitated energy, elbowed Briv. “You see her? Nicola. Looking like a fucking sculpture. It’s painful, bro. Like watching a Ferrari you can’t drive.”
Briv shrugged him off, a flare of irritation heating his chest. “Shut up, Radu.”
“What? It’s true! You had your moment, singer boy. Should’ve capitalized.” Radu’s laugh was a sharp, mean bark.
Briv was about to retort when he saw her. Cami emerged from the shadow of the archway, a worn leather satchel slung across her body, her short brown hair ruffled by the breeze. She looked purposeful, head down, until her eyes lifted and scanned the crowd. They found Briv. A small, tentative smile touched her lips.
She walked over, the rhythm of her boots on the pavement steady and definite. The group’s dynamic shifted, perceptibly cooling. Silviu gave a polite nod. Alin’s expression went carefully neutral. Carmen’s scrolling slowed, her eyes flicking up to assess, her smirk widening into something performatively sweet.
“Hey,” Cami said, stopping beside Briv. Her voice was softer here, away from the echo of lecture halls.
“Hey,” Briv replied, feeling a stupid grin spread on his face. “Survived Professor Ionescu?”
“Barely. His voice is a natural sedative. I started sketching anarchic stick figures in my margin just to stay conscious.” She pulled a small, leather-bound notebook from her bag, flipping it open to show Briv a page of whimsical, angry-looking little figures storming a castle drawn in meticulous detail.
Briv laughed. “That’s the castle of academic rigor, right?”
“Under siege by the hordes of creative thought,” she said, her brown eyes meeting his, alight.
Radu let out a loud, exaggerated sigh. “Alright, well, this is where I get off. Art talk. My brain’s allergic.” He clapped Alin on the back. “Coming? I need a beer to wash out the intellectualism.”
Alin shrugged. “Yeah. Catch you guys.” He didn’t look at Cami.
Silviu adjusted his bag. “I’ve got to get across town. Later.”
Carmen slid off the wall, still smiling that plastic smile. “Nicola, walk with me. I need to hear about that thing.” Nicola, who had been quietly observing the exchange, simply nodded. She offered Briv a slight, almost imperceptible lift of her chin—a silent acknowledgment—before turning to leave with Carmen.
In moments, the group dissolved, leaving Briv and Cami alone in the emptying plaza. The silence felt huge, filled only by the distant traffic and the rustle of litter in the wind. Cami’s smile had faded into something more thoughtful, more guarded.
“They don’t really like me, do they?” she said, not looking at him, instead watching a pigeon peck at a discarded food wrapper.
The directness of it winded him. “What? No, it’s not—”
“It’s fine, Briv,” she interrupted, closing her notebook with a snap. “I’m used to it. I don’t really fit their… vibe. Too intense, probably. Or not intense in the right way.” She started walking, not towards the bus stop most of the group used, but in the direction of the metro. It was his route. He fell into step beside her.
“You’re not too intense,” he said, the words feeling clumsy.
She glanced at him, a real smile returning, tinged with sadness. “You’re a bad liar. It’s kind of sweet.” They walked in silence for a block, the sound of their footsteps syncopated. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, she launched in. “I was listening to that album you mentioned last week. ‘The Suburbs’. There’s a track, ‘Sprawl II’. It’s this… frantic, beautiful, synth-driven ache. It sounds like neon lights reflected in puddles of petrol. Like the desperate need to run somewhere when there’s nowhere left to run.”
Her passion was a physical force, pushing against the grey afternoon. Briv felt his own nerves recede, replaced by a rising warmth. “Yes,” he said, his voice stronger. “Exactly. It’s danceable despair. I tried to cover it once, but my keyboard sounds cheap and tinny compared to that wall of sound.”
“You should do it acoustically,” she said immediately, turning to him as they descended the grimy steps into the metro station. The air grew damp and thick with the smell of damp concrete and humanity. “Strip it right back. Just your voice and a simple guitar line. Make it a different kind of lonely.”
They talked about music, then about painters—she adored the chaotic, violent beauty of Bacon, while he gravitated towards the serene melancholy of Hopper. They argued good-naturedly about film scores versus albums, about whether lyrics were poetry or just vehicles for melody. The fluorescent lights of the station platform hummed overhead, painting everything in a sickly greenish-white. Briv was barely aware of the other waiting passengers, the rumble of distant trains, the tinny announcement. She was brilliant. She saw the skeleton of things, the art in the cracks of the mundane world.
As another train arrived and departed, not theirs, the platform cleared slightly. They stood near a pillar adorned with peeling band stickers. The moment stretched, charged. He could feel the question, the invitation, burning a hole in his tongue. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. He’d never done this, not really. Not with someone who made him feel simultaneously so seen and so utterly out of his depth.
“Cami,” he started, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat. “That exhibit at the Modernist Gallery. The one you mentioned, with the light sculptures. Would you… I mean, if you’re not busy… would you want to go? This weekend?”
He watched her face. Her expression, which had been open and animated, closed down. She looked down at her boots, then out at the dark tunnel. A muscle in her jaw tightened. The silence yawned, filled now by the growing, grinding roar of an approaching train. The wind from the tunnel whipped her hair.
It was his train.
She looked back at him, and her eyes were conflicted, almost pained. “I don’t know, Briv,” she said, the words barely audible over the screech of brakes.
The doors slid open with a hydraulic hiss. People brushed past them.
“You don’t know?” he repeated, the bottom dropping out of his stomach.
She shifted her weight, clutching her satchel strap. “It’s not… I just…” She shook her head, a sharp, frustrated motion. “I’ve got to go.” And then she was moving, stepping backwards, turning away from him and towards the open doors of a different carriage than his own.
“Cami—”
“I’ll text you!” she called over her shoulder, the words lost in the station’s noise as she slipped inside. The doors hissed shut. Through the grimy glass, he saw her find a seat, her face turned resolutely away from the platform.
His own train’s doors beeped a final warning. He stumbled inside just as they closed, the compartment lurching into motion. He stood, holding a cold metal pole, staring at his own pale reflection in the dark window. The art, the music, the connection—it had felt so real. And then, nothing. A flat, devastating ‘I don’t know.’
The city blurred past, a streak of indifferent light. He replayed every word, every glance. Had he imagined it all? The gutted, hollow feeling spread from his chest, cold and heavy. He had finally asked. And the universe, in the form of a beautiful, complicated girl on a metro platform, had shrugged.
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