Chapter 10: The Bench
Friday arrived cloaked in a nervous energy that was entirely foreign to Liam's usually regimented world. His 8 a.m. Structural Dynamics lecture was a blur of equations that failed to penetrate the low-grade hum of anxiety in his mind. He found himself checking the clock on the wall every few minutes, the hands seeming to stick in place. His usual post-lecture paper trading session was conducted with a cautious, almost timid precision, as if a loud noise or a sudden, impulsive decision might shatter his fragile resolve. He took one trade, a conservative setup on the GBP/USD that offered a meager but reliable risk-to-reward ratio. He set his stop-loss with the solemnity of a vow, executed the order, and then physically walked away from the screen, going to the communal kitchen to make a cup of tea he didn't really want. When he returned twenty minutes later, the trade had hit its profit target. A gain of 0.8%. It was enough. It was solid. It was a step taken without stumbling.
The victory felt different today. It wasn't the cold, clinical satisfaction of a correct hypothesis. It was quieter, a simple acknowledgment of a task completed, a box ticked so he could move on to the next thing with a clear conscience. The next thing being the bench.
At 3:55 p.m., he stood in front of the small, tarnished mirror in his dorm room, a ridiculous internal debate raging. *Is this a bench, or is it a date?* The question felt both juvenile and profoundly important. His usual uniform of a faded university hoodie and jeans suddenly felt like a deliberate statement of unkempt isolation. Was that the message he wanted to send? That he was so consumed by his grind that he couldn't be bothered? But changing into something else—a button-down shirt, a clean sweater—felt like an admission of something more, a level of intention that terrified him. It would be a deviation from the plan, an acknowledgment that this moment held weight. He settled on a compromise: a clean, dark grey sweatshirt, free of logos or stains, and a pair of dark jeans. It was deliberate but unassuming, a uniform for a neutral zone.
The walk across campus felt longer than usual. The cheerful chatter of students heading out for the weekend, the distant thump of music from an open dorm window—it all felt like scenes from a movie about a life he wasn't living. He felt like an imposter, a ghost visiting the world of the living. His heart thumped a nervous rhythm against his ribs, a sensation he usually only associated with a trade moving rapidly against him.
And then he saw it. The bench, a simple slatted wooden thing, painted a chipped forest green, nestled in the dappled shade of the sprawling, ancient oak tree. And he saw her. Valentina was already there, a heavy art history text open on her lap, a pen tucked behind her ear. She wasn't scanning the paths for him; she was simply *there*, her posture relaxed, one leg tucked under her, completely immersed in her work. The sight was an immediate balm to his frayed nerves. This wasn't a staged meeting. It was just a place she was, and he was joining her.
He approached, the crunch of gravel under his worn sneakers announcing his arrival. She looked up from her book, and the smile she gave him was neither triumphant nor hesitant. It didn't say, *I knew you'd come,* or, *Are you sure about this?* It was just… warm. Real. It reached her eyes, crinkling the corners slightly.
"You made it," she said, marking her page with a stray leaf and closing the tome.
"The brain was sufficiently switched off," he said, managing a small smile of his own as he sat on the other end of the bench. He left a respectful, bench-appropriate distance between them, close enough to talk easily, far enough to maintain the platonic fiction he was desperately trying to believe in.
They sat for a few moments in a silence that was, for the first time, entirely comfortable. It wasn't the weary silence of the library, heavy with unspoken exhaustion, or the tense silence that had followed him after their argument in the hallway. This was different. This was the quiet of two people sharing a patch of sunlight on a cool autumn afternoon, with no agenda other than to be still. He could hear the rustle of the oak leaves above them, the far-off shout of a Frisbee game, the steady rhythm of his own breathing.
"How was the climb today?" she asked after a while, leaning her head back against the wooden slats and closing her eyes against the filtered sun.
"Steady," he replied, his gaze fixed on the way the light played through the canopy. "No falls. Took a small step up." He didn't elaborate on the 0.8% profit, on the mechanics of the trade. Those details belonged to his other world, the world of the climb. Here, on the bench, the result was all that mattered.
"Good." She let out a soft, contented sigh. "Mine was all uphill. Fourteenth-century Italian frescoes. A seemingly endless analysis of Cimabue's compositional rigidity versus Giotto's move toward naturalism. It's visually stunning, but my eyes are crossing from squinting at digital reproductions all day."
He watched her, the way she seemed to absorb the simple peace of the moment, storing it away like a squirrel with a nut. He realized, with a sudden clarity, that this was her version of a disciplined paper trade—a deliberate, necessary pause in her own demanding ascent, a conscious step back to ensure she didn't burn out before the summit. She was an artist, but she was also a strategist.
"Thank you," he said, the words quiet but clear in the still air.
She opened one eye and looked at him, a playful glint in its hazel depth. "For what?"
"For the bench."
Her smile returned, softer this time, more intimate. "Any time, Liam. Seriously. Any time."
They didn't talk about Fibonacci retracements or the political patronage of the Scrovegni Chapel. They talked about the annoying, persistent hum the library's aging computers made, and they debated the best place on campus to get a halfway decent bagel that wasn't stale by 10 a.m. They talked about the peculiar, comforting smell of the old books in the archive section—a scent of dust, slow decay, and preserved knowledge. Mundane, simple things. The mortar between the bricks of daily life, the filler that gave the grand structures of their ambitions context and meaning.
After a while, a comfortable half-hour that felt both fleeting and eternal, she stretched, arching her back like a cat. "Right. I have to go decipher more Latin annotations before my brain fully solidifies."
"And I have to go… stare at some more lines," he said, the analogy feeling strangely perfect.
They stood, and there was a brief moment of social uncertainty that hung between them. A hug felt like too much, a boundary crossed. A handshake was absurdly formal. He settled for a nod, a meeting of their eyes that felt like its own kind of compact.
"See you in class, Liam."
"See you, Val."
He watched her walk away, her paint-splattered bag slung over her shoulder, until she disappeared around the corner of the humanities building. Then he turned and began his own walk back to his dorm. The afternoon sun was lower now, casting long, distorted shadows that stretched across the quad. The boulder was still there, a massive, immovable presence in his mind. The mountain hadn't shrunk an inch. But as he walked, he felt a newfound strength in his legs, a resilience in his lungs that hadn't been there before. The climb itself hadn't gotten any easier. The path was just as steep, the air just as thin. But he felt, for the first time, properly equipped. He had found a bench. And he knew, with a certainty that settled deep in his bones, that it would always be there when he needed to rest, a small, solid piece of solid ground on the precipitous mountainside.