Praise for The Love Hypothesis
“Contemporary romance’s unicorn: the elusive marriage of deeply brainy
and delightfully escapist. . . . The Love Hypothesis has wild commercial
appeal, but the quieter secret is that there is a specific audience, made up of
all of the Olives in the world, who have deeply, ardently waited for this
exact book.”
—New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren
“Funny, sexy, and smart. Ali Hazelwood did a terrific job with The Love
Hypothesis.”
—New York Times bestselling author Mariana Zapata
“This tackles one of my favorite tropes—Grumpy meets Sunshine—in a fun
and utterly endearing way. . . . I loved the nods toward fandom and romance
novels, and I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended!”
—New York Times bestselling author Jessica Clare
“A beautifully written romantic comedy with a heroine you will instantly
fall in love with, The Love Hypothesis is destined to earn a place on your
keeper shelf.”
—Elizabeth Everett, author of A Lady’s Formula for Love
A JOVE BOOK
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2021 by Ali Hazelwood
Excerpt from Love on the Brain copyright © 2021 by Ali Hazelwood
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices,
promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of
this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any
part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random
House to continue to publish books for every reader.
A JOVE BOOK, BERKLEY, and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin
Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hazelwood, Ali, author.
Title: The love hypothesis / Ali Hazelwood.
Description: First edition. | New York: Jove, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020057346 (print) | LCCN 2020057347 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593336823 (trade
paperback) | ISBN 9780593336830 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3608.A98845 L68 2021 (print) | LCC PS3608.A98845 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6
—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057346
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057347
First Edition: September 2021
Cover illustration by lilithsaur
Book design by Tiffany Estreicher, adapted for ebook by Estelle Malmed
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_5.8.0_c0_r0
To my women in STEM: Kate, Caitie, Hatun, and Mar. Per aspera
ad aspera.
Contents
Cover
Praise for The Love Hypothesis
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from LOVE ON THE BRAIN
About the Author
hy·poth·e·sis (noun)
A supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence,
as a starting point for further investigation.
Example: “Based on the available information and the data hitherto collected,
my hypothesis is that the farther away I stay from love, the better off I will be.”
Prologue
Frankly, Olive was a bit on the fence about this whole grad school thing.
Not because she didn’t like science. (She did. She loved science. Science
was her thing.) And not because of the truckload of obvious red flags. She
was well aware that committing to years of unappreciated, underpaid
eighty-hour workweeks might not be good for her mental health. That
nights spent toiling away in front of a Bunsen burner to uncover a trivial
slice of knowledge might not be the key to happiness. That devoting her
mind and body to academic pursuits with only infrequent breaks to steal
unattended bagels might not be a wise choice.
She was well aware, and yet none of it worried her. Or maybe it did, a
tiny bit, but she could deal. It was something else that held her back from
surrendering herself to the most notorious and soul-sucking circle of hell
(i.e., a Ph.D. program). Held her back, that is, until she was invited to
interview for a spot in Stanford’s biology department, and came across The
Guy.
The Guy whose name she never really got.
The Guy she met after stumbling blindly into the first bathroom she
could find.
The Guy who asked her, “Out of curiosity, is there a specific reason
you’re crying in my restroom?”
Olive squeaked. She tried to open her eyes through the tears and only
barely managed to. Her entire field of view was blurry. All she could see
was a watery outline—someone tall, dark haired, dressed in black, and . . .
yeah. That was it.
“I . . . is this the ladies’ restroom?” she stammered.
A pause. Silence. And then: “Nope.” His voice was deep. So deep.
Really deep. Dreamy deep.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Fairly, since this is my lab’s bathroom.”
Well. He had her there. “I’m so sorry. Do you need to . . .” She gestured
toward the stall, or where she thought the stalls were. Her eyes stung, even
closed, and she had to scrunch them shut to dull the burn. She tried to dry
her cheeks with her sleeve, but the material of her wrap dress was cheap
and flimsy, not half as absorbent as real cotton. Ah, the joys of being
impoverished.
“I just need to pour this reagent down the drain,” he said, but she didn’t
hear him move. Maybe because she was blocking the sink. Or maybe
because he thought Olive was a weirdo and was contemplating siccing the
campus police on her. That would put a brutally quick end to her Ph.D.
dreams, wouldn’t it? “We don’t use this as a restroom, just to dispose of
waste and wash equipment.”
“Oh, sorry. I thought . . .” Poorly. She’d thought poorly, as was her habit
and curse.
“Are you okay?” He must be really tall. His voice sounded like it came
from ten feet above her.
“Sure. Why do you ask?”
“Because you are crying. In my bathroom.”
“Oh, I’m not crying. Well, I sort of am, but it’s just tears, you know?”
“I do not.”
She sighed, slumping against the tiled wall. “It’s my contacts. They
expired some time ago, and they were never that great to begin with. They
messed up my eyes. I’ve taken them off, but . . .” She shrugged. Hopefully
in his direction. “It takes a while, before they get better.”
“You put in expired contacts?” He sounded personally offended.
“Just a little expired.”
“What’s ‘a little’?”
“I don’t know. A few years?”
“What?” His consonants were sharp and precise. Crisp. Pleasant.
“Only just a couple, I think.”
“Just a couple of years?”
“It’s okay. Expiration dates are for the weak.”
A sharp sound—some kind of snort. “Expiration dates are so I don’t find
you weeping in the corner of my bathroom.”
Unless this dude was Mr. Stanford himself, he really needed to stop
calling this his bathroom.
“It’s fine.” She waved a hand. She’d have rolled her eyes, if they hadn’t
been on fire. “The burning usually lasts only a few minutes.”
“You mean you’ve done this before?”
She frowned. “Done what?”
“Put in expired contacts.”
“Of course. Contacts are not cheap.”
“Neither are eyes.”
Humph. Good point. “Hey, have we met? Maybe last night, at the
recruitment dinner with prospective Ph.D. students?”
“No.”
“You weren’t there?”
“Not really my scene.”
“But the free food?”
“Not worth the small talk.”
Maybe he was on a diet, because what kind of Ph.D. student said that?
And Olive was sure that he was a Ph.D. student—the haughty,
condescending tone was a dead giveaway. All Ph.D. students were like that:
thinking they were better than everyone else just because they had the
dubious privilege of slaughtering fruit flies in the name of science for
ninety cents an hour. In the grim, dark hellscape of academia, graduate
students were the lowliest of creatures and therefore had to convince
themselves that they were the best. Olive was no clinical psychologist, but
it seemed like a pretty textbook defense mechanism.
“Are you interviewing for a spot in the program?” he asked.
“Yup. For next year’s biology cohort.” God, her eyes were burning.
“What about you?” she asked, pressing her palms into them.
“Me?”
“How long have you been here?”
“Here?” A pause. “Six years. Give or take.”
“Oh. Are you graduating soon, then?”
“I . . .”
She picked up on his hesitation and instantly felt guilty. “Wait, you don’t
have to tell me. First rule of grad school—don’t ask about other grads’
dissertation timeline.”
A beat. And then another. “Right.”
“Sorry.” She wished she could see him. Social interactions were hard
enough to begin with; the last thing she needed was fewer cues to go by. “I
didn’t mean to channel your parents at Thanksgiving.”
He laughed softly. “You could never.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “Annoying parents?”
“And even worse Thanksgivings.”
“That’s what you Americans get for leaving the Commonwealth.” She
held out her hand in what she hoped was his general direction. “I’m Olive,
by the way. Like the tree.” She was starting to wonder whether she’d just
introduced herself to the drain disposal when she heard him step closer. The
hand that closed around hers was dry, and warm, and so large it could have
enveloped her whole fist. Everything about him must be huge. Height,
fingers, voice.
It was not entirely unpleasant.
“You’re not American?” he asked.
“Canadian. Listen, if you happen to talk with anyone who’s on the
admissions committee, would you mind not mentioning my contacts
mishap? It might make me seem like a less-than-stellar applicant.”
“You think so?” he deadpanned.
She would have glared at him if she could. Though maybe she was
doing a decent job of it anyway, because he laughed—just a huff, but Olive
could tell. And she kind of liked it.
He let go of her, and she realized that she’d been gripping his hand.
Oops.
“Are you planning to enroll?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I might not get an offer.” But she and the professor she’d
interviewed with, Dr. Aslan, had really hit it off. Olive had stuttered and
mumbled much less than usual. Plus, her GRE scores and GPA were almost
perfect. Not having a life came in handy, sometimes.
“Are you planning to enroll if you get an offer, then?”
She’d be stupid not to. This was Stanford, after all—one of the best
biology programs. Or at least, that was what Olive had been telling herself
to cover the petrifying truth.
Which was that, frankly, she was a bit on the fence about this whole grad
school thing.
“I . . . maybe. I must say, the line between excellent career choice and
critical life screwup is getting a bit blurry.”
“Seems like you’re leaning toward screwup.” He sounded like he was
smiling.
“No. Well . . . I just . . .”
“You just?”
She bit her lip. “What if I’m not good enough?” she blurted out, and
why, God, why was she baring the deepest fears of her secret little heart to
this random bathroom guy? And what was the point, anyway? Every time
she aired out her doubts to friends and acquaintances, they all automatically
offered the same trite, meaningless encouragements. You’ll be fine. You can
do it. I believe in you. This guy was surely going to do the same.
Coming up.
Any moment now.
Any second—
“Why do you want to do it?”
Uh? “Do . . . what?”
“Get a Ph.D. What’s your reason?”
Olive cleared her throat. “I’ve always had an inquisitive mind, and
graduate school is the ideal environment to foster that. It’ll give me
important transferable skills—”
He snorted.
She frowned. “What?”
“Not the line you found in an interview prep book. Why do you want a
Ph.D.?”
“It’s true,” she insisted, a bit weakly. “I want to sharpen my research
abilities—”
“Is it because you don’t know what else to do?”
“No.”
“Because you didn’t get an industry position?”
“No—I didn’t even apply for industry.”
“Ah.” He moved, a large, blurry figure stepping next to her to pour
something down the sink. Olive could smell a whiff of eugenol, and laundry
detergent, and clean, male skin. An oddly nice combination.
“I need more freedom than industry can offer.”
“You won’t have much freedom in academia.” His voice was closer, like
he hadn’t stepped back yet. “You’ll have to fund your work through
ludicrously competitive research grants. You’d make better money in a
nine-to-five job that actually allows you to entertain the concept of
weekends.”
Olive scowled. “Are you trying to get me to decline my offer? Is this
some kind of anti–expired-contacts-wearers campaign?”
“Nah.”
She could hear his smile.
“I’ll go ahead and trust that it was just a misstep.”
“I wear them all the time, and they almost never—”
“In a long line of missteps, clearly.” He sighed. “Here’s the deal: I have
no idea if you’re good enough, but that’s not what you should be asking
yourself. Academia’s a lot of bucks for very little bang. What matters is
whether your reason to be in academia is good enough. So, why the Ph.D.,
Olive?”
She thought about it, and thought, and thought even more. And then she
spoke carefully. “I have a question. A specific research question. Something
that I want to find out.” There. Done. This was the answer. “Something I’m
afraid no one else will discover if I don’t.”
“A question?”
She felt the air shift and realized that he was now leaning against the
sink.
“Yes.” Her mouth felt dry. “Something that’s important to me. And—I
don’t trust anyone else to do it. Because they haven’t so far. Because . . .”
Because something bad happened. Because I want to do my part so that it
won’t happen again.
Heavy thoughts to have in the presence of a stranger, in the darkness of
her closed eyelids. So she cracked them open; her vision was still blurry,
but the burning was mostly gone. The Guy was looking at her. Fuzzy
around the edges, perhaps, but so very there, waiting patiently for her to
continue.
“It’s important to me,” she repeated. “The research that I want to do.”
Olive was twenty-three and alone in the world. She didn’t want weekends,
or a decent salary. She wanted to go back in time. She wanted to be less
lonely. But since that was impossible, she’d settle for fixing what she could.
He nodded but said nothing as he straightened and took a few steps
toward the door. Clearly leaving.
“Is mine a good enough reason to go to grad school?” she called after
him, hating how eager for approval she sounded. It was possible that she
was in the midst of some sort of existential crisis.
He paused and looked back at her. “It’s the best one.”
He was smiling, she thought. Or something like it.
“Good luck on your interview, Olive.”
“Thanks.”
He was almost out the door already.
“Maybe I’ll see you next year,” she babbled, flushing a little. “If I get in.
And if you haven’t graduated.”
“Maybe,” she heard him say.
With that, The Guy was gone. And Olive never got his name. But a few
weeks later, when the Stanford biology department extended her an offer,
she accepted it. Without hesitating.
Chapter One
HYPOTHESIS: When given a choice between A (a slightly inconveniencing
situation) and B (a colossal sh*tshow with devastating consequences), I will
inevitably end up selecting B.
Two years, eleven months later
In Olive’s defense, the man didn’t seem to mind the kiss too much.
It did take him a moment to adjust—perfectly understandable, given the
sudden circ*mstances. It was an awkward, uncomfortable, somewhat
painful minute, in which Olive was simultaneously smashing her lips
against his and pushing herself as high as her toes would extend to keep her
mouth at the same level as his face. Did he have to be so tall? The kiss must
have looked like some clumsy headbutt, and she grew anxious that she was
not going to be able to pull the whole thing off. Her friend Anh, whom
Olive had spotted coming her way a few seconds ago, was going to take one
look at this and know at once that Olive and Kiss Dude couldn’t possibly be
two people in the middle of a date.
Then that agonizingly slow moment went by, and the kiss became . . .
different. The man inhaled sharply and inclined his head a tiny bit, making
Olive feel less like a squirrel monkey climbing a baobab tree, and his hands
—which were large and pleasantly warm in the AC of the hallway—closed
around her waist. They slid up a few inches, coming to wrap around Olive’s
rib cage and holding her to himself. Not too close, and not too far.
Just so.
It was more of a prolonged peck than anything, but it was quite nice, and
for the life span of a few seconds Olive forgot a large number of things,
including the fact that she was pressed against a random, unknown dude.
That she’d barely had the time to whisper “Can I please kiss you?” before
locking lips with him. That what had originally driven her to put on this
entire show was the hope of fooling Anh, her best friend in the whole
world.
But a good kiss will do that: make a girl forget herself for a while. Olive
found herself melting into a broad, solid chest that showed absolutely no
give. Her hands traveled from a defined jaw into surprisingly thick and soft
hair, and then—then she heard herself sigh, as if already out of breath, and
that’s when it hit her like a brick on the head, the realization that— No. No.
Nope, nope, no.
She should not be enjoying this. Random dude, and all that.
Olive gasped and pushed herself away from him, frantically looking for
Anh. In the 11:00 p.m. bluish glow of the biology labs’ hallway, her friend
was nowhere to be seen. Weird. Olive was sure she had spotted her a few
seconds earlier.
Kiss Dude, on the other hand, was standing right in front of her, lips
parted, chest rising and a weird light flickering in his eyes, which was
exactly when it dawned on her, the enormity of what she had just done. Of
who she had just—
f*ck her life.
f*ck. Her. Life.
Because Dr. Adam Carlsen was a known ass.
This fact was not remarkable in and of itself, as in academia every
position above the graduate student level (Olive’s level, sadly) required
some degree of assness in order to be held for any length of time, with
tenured faculty at the very peak of the ass pyramid. Dr. Carlsen, though—he
was exceptional. At least if the rumors were anything to go by.
He was the reason Olive’s roommate, Malcolm, had to completely scrap
two research projects and would likely end up graduating a year late; the
one who had made Jeremy throw up from anxiety before his qualifying
exams; the sole culprit for half the students in the department being forced
to postpone their thesis defenses. Joe, who used to be in Olive’s cohort and
would take her to watch out-of-focus European movies with microscopic
subtitles every Thursday night, had been a research assistant in Carlsen’s
lab, but he’d decided to drop out six months into it for “reasons.” It was
probably for the best, since most of Carlsen’s remaining graduate assistants
had perennially shaky hands and often looked like they hadn’t slept in a
year.
Dr. Carlsen might have been a young academic rock star and biology’s
wunderkind, but he was also mean and hypercritical, and it was obvious in
the way he spoke, in the way he carried himself, that he thought himself the
only person doing decent science within the Stanford biology department.
Within the entire world, probably. He was a notoriously moody, obnoxious,
terrifying dick.
And Olive had just kissed him.
She wasn’t sure how long the silence lasted—only that he was the one to
break it. He stood in front of Olive, ridiculously intimidating with dark eyes
and even darker hair, staring down from who knows how many inches
above six feet—he must have been over half a foot taller than she was. He
scowled, an expression that she recognized from seeing him attend the
departmental seminar, a look that usually preceded him raising his hand to
point out some perceived fatal flaw in the speaker’s work.
Adam Carlsen. Destroyer of research careers, Olive had once overheard
her adviser say.
It’s okay. It’s fine. Totally fine. She was just going to pretend nothing had
happened, nod at him politely, and tiptoe her way out of here. Yes, solid
plan.
“Did you . . . Did you just kiss me?” He sounded puzzled, and maybe a
little out of breath. His lips were full and plump and . . . God. Kissed. There
was simply no way Olive could get away with denying what she had just
done.
Still, it was worth a try.
“Nope.”
Surprisingly, it seemed to work.
“Ah. Okay, then.” Carlsen nodded and turned around, looking vaguely
disoriented. He took a couple of steps down the hallway, reached the water
fountain—maybe where he’d been headed in the first place.
Olive was starting to believe that she might actually be off the hook
when he halted and turned back with a skeptical expression.
“Are you sure?”
Dammit.
“I—” She buried her face in her hands. “It’s not the way it looks.”
“Okay. I . . . Okay,” he repeated slowly. His voice was deep and low and
sounded a lot like he was on his way to getting mad. Like maybe he was
already mad. “What’s going on here?”
There was simply no way to explain this. Any normal person would
have found Olive’s situation odd, but Adam Carlsen, who obviously
considered empathy a bug and not a feature of humanity, could never
understand. She let her hands fall to her sides and took a deep breath.
“I . . . listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but this is really none of your
business.”
He stared at her for a moment, and then he nodded. “Yes. Of course.” He
must be getting back into his usual groove, because his tone had lost some
of its surprise and was back to normal—dry. Laconic. “I’ll just go back to
my office and begin to work on my Title IX complaint.”
Olive exhaled in relief. “Yeah. That would be great, since— Wait. Your
what?”
He co*cked his head. “Title IX is a federal law that protects against
sexual misconduct within academic settings—”
“I know what Title IX is.”
“I see. So you willfully chose to disregard it.”
“I— What? No. No, I didn’t!”
He shrugged. “I must be mistaken, then. Someone else must have
assaulted me.”
“Assault—I didn’t ‘assault’ you.”
“You did kiss me.”
“But not really.”
“Without first securing my consent.”
“I asked if I could kiss you!”
“And then did so without waiting for my response.”
“What? You said yes.”
“Excuse me?”
She frowned. “I asked if I could kiss you, and you said yes.”
“Incorrect. You asked if you could kiss me and I snorted.”
“I’m pretty sure I heard you said yes.”
He lifted one eyebrow, and for a minute Olive let herself daydream of
drowning someone. Dr. Carlsen. Herself. Both sounded like great options.
“Listen, I’m really sorry. It was a weird situation. Can we just forget that
this happened?”
He studied her for a long moment, his angular face serious and
something else, something that she couldn’t quite decipher because she was
too busy noticing all over again how damn towering and broad he was. Just
massive. Olive had always been slight, just this side of too slender, but girls
who are five eight rarely felt diminutive. At least until they found
themselves standing next to Adam Carlsen. She’d known that he was tall, of
course, from seeing him around the department or walking across campus,
from sharing the elevator with him, but they’d never interacted. Never been
this close.
Except for a second ago, Olive. When you almost put your tongue in his
—
“Is there something wrong?” He sounded almost concerned.
“What? No. No, there isn’t.”
“Because,” he continued calmly, “kissing a stranger at midnight in a
science lab might be a sign that there is.”
“There isn’t.”
Carlsen nodded, thoughtful. “Very well. Expect mail in the next few
days, then.” He began to walk past her, and she turned to yell after him.
“You didn’t even ask my name!”
“I’m sure anyone could figure it out, since you must have swiped your
badge to get in the labs area after hours. Have a good night.”
“Wait!” She leaned forward and stopped him with a hand on his wrist.
He paused immediately, even though it was obvious that it would take him
no effort to free himself, and stared pointedly at the spot where her fingers
had wrapped around his skin—right below a wristwatch that probably cost
half her yearly graduate salary. Or all of it.
She let go of him at once and took one step back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean
to—”
“The kiss. Explain.”
Olive bit into her lower lip. She had truly screwed herself over. She had
to tell him, now. “Anh Pham.” She looked around to make sure Anh was
really gone. “The girl who was passing by. She’s a graduate student in the
biology department.”
Carlsen gave no indication of knowing who Anh was.
“Anh has . . .” Olive pushed a strand of brown hair behind her ear. This
was where the story became embarrassing. Complicated, and a little
juvenile sounding. “I was seeing this guy in the department. Jeremy
Langley, he has red hair and works with Dr. . . . Anyway, we went out just a
couple of times, and then I brought him to Anh’s birthday party, and they
just sort of hit it off and—”
Olive shut her eyes. Which was probably a bad idea, because now she
could see it painted on her lids, how her best friend and her date had
bantered in that bowling alley, as if they’d known each other their whole
lives; the never-exhausted topics of conversation, the laughter, and then, at
the end of the night, Jeremy following Anh’s every move with his gaze. It
had been painfully clear who he was interested in. Olive waved a hand and
tried for a smile.
“Long story short, after Jeremy and I ended things he asked Anh out.
She said no because of . . . girl code and all that, but I can tell that she really
likes him. She’s afraid to hurt my feelings, and no matter how many times I
told her it was fine she wouldn’t believe me.”
Not to mention that the other day I overheard her confess to our friend
Malcolm that she thought Jeremy was awesome, but she could never betray
me by going out with him, and she sounded so dejected. Disappointed and
insecure, not at all like the spunky, larger-than-life Anh I am used to.
“So I just lied and told her that I was already dating someone else.
Because she’s one of my closest friends and I’d never seen her like a guy
this much and I want her to have the good things she deserves and I’m
positive that she would do the same for me and—” Olive realized that she
was rambling and that Carlsen couldn’t have cared less. She stopped and
swallowed, even though her mouth felt dry. “Tonight. I told her I’d be on a
date tonight.”
“Ah.” His expression was unreadable.
“But I’m not. So I decided to come in to work on an experiment, but
Anh showed up, too. She wasn’t supposed to be here. But she was. Coming
this way. And I panicked—well.” Olive wiped a hand down her face. “I
didn’t really think.”
Carlsen didn’t say anything, but it was there in his eyes that he was
thinking, Obviously.
“I just needed her to believe that I was on a date.”
He nodded. “So you kissed the first person you saw in the hallway.
Perfectly logical.”
Olive winced. “When you put it like that, perhaps it wasn’t my best
moment.”
“Perhaps.”
“But it wasn’t my worst, either! I’m pretty sure Anh saw us. Now she’ll
think that I was on a date with you and she’ll hopefully feel free to go out
with Jeremy and—” She shook her head. “Listen. I’m so, so sorry about the
kiss.”
“Are you?”
“Please, don’t report me. I really thought I heard you say yes. I promise
I didn’t mean to . . .”
Suddenly, the enormity of what she had just done fully dawned on her.
She had just kissed a random guy, a guy who happened to be the most
notoriously unpleasant faculty member in the biology department. She’d
misunderstood a snort for consent, she’d basically attacked him in the
hallway, and now he was staring at her in that odd, pensive way, so large
and focused and close to her, and . . .
sh*t.
Maybe it was the late night. Maybe it was that her last coffee had been
sixteen hours ago. Maybe it was Adam Carlsen looking down at her, like
that. All of a sudden, this entire situation was just too much.
“Actually, you’re absolutely right. And I am so sorry. If you felt in any
way harassed by me, you really should report me, because it’s only fair. It
was a horrible thing to do, though I really didn’t want to . . . Not that my
intentions matter; it’s more like your perception of . . .”
Crap, crap, crap.
“I’m going to leave now, okay? Thank you, and . . . I am so, so, so
sorry.” Olive spun around on her heels and ran away down the hallway.
“Olive,” she heard him call after her. “Olive, wait—”
She didn’t stop. She sprinted down the stairs to the first floor and then
out the building and across the pathways of the sparsely lit Stanford
campus, running past a girl walking her dog and a group of students
laughing in front of the library. She continued until she was standing in
front of her apartment’s door, stopping only to unlock it, making a beeline
for her room in the hope of avoiding her roommate and whoever he might
have brought home tonight.
It wasn’t until she slumped on her bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark
stars glued to her ceiling, that she realized she had neglected to check on
her lab mice. She had also left her laptop on her bench and her sweatshirt
somewhere in the lab, and she had completely forgotten to stop at the store
and buy the coffee she’d promised Malcolm she’d get for tomorrow
morning.
sh*t. What a disaster of a day.
It never occurred to Olive that Dr. Adam Carlsen—known ass—had
called her by her name.
Chapter Two
HYPOTHESIS: Any rumor regarding my love life will spread with a speed
that is directly proportional to my desire to keep said rumor a secret.
Olive Smith was a rising third-year Ph.D. student in one of the best biology
departments in the country, one that housed more than one hundred grads
and what often felt like several million majoring undergrads. She had no
idea what the exact number of faculty was, but judging from the mailboxes
in the copy room she’d say that a safe guess was: too many. Therefore, she
reasoned that if she’d never had the misfortune of interacting with Adam
Carlsen in the two years before The Night (it had been only a handful of
days since the kissing incident, but Olive already knew that she’d think of
last Friday as The Night for the rest of her life), it was entirely possible that
she might be able to finish grad school without crossing paths with him ever
again. In fact, she was fairly sure that not only did Adam Carlsen have no
idea who she was, but he also had no desire to learn—and had probably
already forgotten all about what happened.
Unless, of course, she was catastrophically wrong and he did end up
filing a Title IX lawsuit. In which case she supposed that she would see him
again, when she pleaded guilty in federal court.
Olive figured that she could waste her time fretting about legal fees, or
she could focus on what were more pressing issues. Like the approximately
five hundred slides she had to prepare for the neurobiology class that she
was slated to TA in the fall semester, which was starting in less than two
weeks. Or the note Malcolm had left this morning, telling her he’d seen a
co*ckroach scurry under the credenza even though their apartment was
already full of traps. Or the most crucial one: the fact that her research
project had reached a critical point and she desperately needed to find a
bigger, significantly richer lab to carry out her experiment. Otherwise, what
could very well become a groundbreaking, clinically relevant study might
end up languishing on a handful of petri dishes stacked in the crisper drawer
of her fridge.
Olive opened her laptop with half a mind to google “Organs one can live
without” and “How much cash for them” but got sidetracked by the twenty
new emails she’d received while busy with her lab animals. They were
almost exclusively from predatory journals, Nigerian prince wannabes, and
one glitter company whose newsletter she’d signed up for six years ago to
get a free tube of lipstick. Olive quickly marked them as read, eager to go
back to her experiments, and then noticed that one message was actually a
reply to something she had sent. A reply from . . . Holy crap. Holy crap.
She clicked on it so hard she almost sprained her pointer finger.
Today, 3:15 p.m.
FROM: [emailprotected]
TO: [emailprotected]
SUBJECT: Re: Pancreatic Cancer Screening Project
Olive,
Your project sounds good. I’ll be visiting Stanford in about
two weeks. Why don’t we chat then?
Cheers,
TB
Tom Benton, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Biological Sciences, Harvard University
Her heart skipped a beat. Then it started galloping. Then it slowed down
to a crawl. And then she felt her blood pulsate in her eyelids, which
couldn’t be healthy, but— Yes. Yes! She had a taker. Almost. Probably?
Maybe. Definitely maybe. Tom Benton had said “good.” He had said that it
sounded “good.” It had to be a “good” sign, right?
She frowned, scrolling down to reread the email she’d sent him several
weeks earlier.
July 7, 8:19 a.m.
FROM: [emailprotected]
TO: [emailprotected]
SUBJECT: Pancreatic Cancer Screening Project
Dr. Benton,
My name is Olive Smith, and I am a Ph.D. student in the
biology department of Stanford University. My research
focuses on pancreatic cancer, in particular on finding
noninvasive, affordable detection tools that could lead to
early treatment and increase survival rates. I have been
working on blood biomarkers, with promising results. (You
can read about my preliminary work in the peer-reviewed
paper I have attached. I have also submitted more recent,
unpublished findings to this year’s Society for Biological
Discovery conference; acceptance is pending but see the
attached abstract.) The next step would be to carry out
additional studies to determine the feasibility of my test kit.
Unfortunately my current lab (Dr. Aysegul Aslan’s, who is
retiring in two years) does not have the funding or the
equipment to allow me to proceed. She is encouraging me
to find a larger cancer research lab where I could spend the
next academic year to collect the data I need. Then I would
return to Stanford to analyze and write up the data. I am a
huge fan of the work you have published on pancreatic
cancer, and I was wondering whether there might be a
possibility to carry out my work in your lab at Harvard.
I am happy to talk more in detail about my project if you
are interested.
Sincerely,
Olive
Olive Smith
Ph.D. Candidate
Biology Department, Stanford University
If Tom Benton, cancer researcher extraordinaire, came to Stanford and
gave Olive ten minutes of his time, she could convince him to help her out
with her research predicament!
Well . . . maybe.
Olive was much better at actually doing research than at selling its
importance to others. Science communication and public speaking of any
sort were definitely her big weaknesses. But she had a chance to show
Benton how promising her results were. She could list the clinical benefits
of her work, and she could explain how little she required to turn her project
into a huge success. All she needed was a quiet bench in a corner of his lab,
a couple hundred of his lab mice, and unlimited access to his twenty-
million-dollar electron microscope. Benton wouldn’t even notice her.
Olive headed for the break room, mentally writing an impassioned
speech on how she was willing to use his facilities only at night and limit
her oxygen consumption to less than five breaths per minute. She poured
herself a cup of stale coffee and turned around to find someone scowling
right behind her.
She startled so hard that she almost burned herself.
“Jesus!” She clutched her chest, took a deep breath, and held tighter
onto her Scooby-Doo mug. “Anh. You scared the sh*t out of me.”
“Olive.”
It was a bad sign. Anh never called her Olive—never, unless she was
reprimanding her for biting her nails to the quick or for having vitamin
gummies for dinner.
“Hey! How was your—”
“The other night.”
Dammit. “—weekend?”
“Dr. Carlsen.”
Dammit, dammit, dammit. “What about him?”
“I saw the two of you together.”
“Oh. Really?” Olive’s surprise sounded painfully playacted, even to her
own ears. Maybe she should have signed up for drama club in high school
instead of playing every single sport available.
“Yes. Here, in the department.”
“Oh. Cool. Um, I didn’t see you, or I’d have said hi.”
Anh frowned. “Ol. I saw you. I saw you with Carlsen. You know that I
saw you, and I know that you know that I saw you, because you’ve been
avoiding me.”
“I have not.”
Anh gave her one of her formidable no-bullsh*t looks. It was probably
the one she used as president of the student senate, as head of the Stanford
Women in Science Association, as director of outreach for the Organization
of BIPOC Scientists. There was no fight Anh couldn’t win. She was
fearsome and indomitable, and Olive loved this about her—but not right
now.
“You haven’t answered any of my messages for the past two days. We
usually text every hour.”
They did. Multiple times. Olive switched the mug to her left hand, for
no reason other than to buy some time. “I’ve been . . . busy?”
“Busy?” Anh’s eyebrow shot up. “Busy kissing Carlsen?”
“Oh. Oh, that. That was just . . .”
Anh nodded, as if to encourage her to finish the sentence. When it
became obvious that Olive couldn’t, Anh continued for her.
“That was—no offense, Ol—but that was the most bizarre kiss I have
ever seen.”
Calm. Stay calm. She doesn’t know. She cannot know. “I doubt that,”
Olive retorted weakly. “Take that upside-down Spider-Man kiss. That was
way more bizarre than—”
“Ol, you said you were on a date that night. You’re not dating Carlsen,
are you?” She twisted her face in a grimace.
It would have been so easy to confess the truth. Since starting grad
school Anh and Olive had done heaps of moronic things, together and
separately; the time Olive panicked and kissed none other than Adam
Carlsen could become one of them, one they laughed about during their
weekly beer-and-s’mores nights.
Or not. There was a chance that if Olive admitted to lying now, Anh
might never trust her again. Or that she’d never go out with Jeremy. And as
much as the idea of her best friend dating her ex had Olive wanting to puke
just a bit, the thought of said best friend being anything but happy had her
wanting to puke a lot more.
The situation was depressingly simple: Olive was alone in the world.
She had been for a long time, ever since high school. She had trained
herself not to make a big deal out of it—she was sure many people were
alone in the world and found themselves having to write down made-up
names and phone numbers on their emergency contact forms. During
college and her master’s, focusing on science and research had been her
way of coping, and she had been perfectly ready to spend the rest of her life
holed up in a lab with little more than a beaker and a handful of pipettes as
her faithful companions—until . . . Anh.
In a way, it had been love at first sight. First day of grad school. Biology
cohort orientation. Olive entered the conference room, looked around, and
sat in the first free seat she could find, petrified. She was the only woman in
the room, virtually alone in a sea of white men who were already talking
about boats, and whatever sportsball was on TV the night before, and the
best routes to drive places. I have made a terrible mistake, she thought. The
Guy in the bathroom was wrong. I should never have come here. I am never
going to fit in.
And then a girl with curly dark hair and a pretty, round face plopped in
the chair next to hers and muttered, “So much for the STEM programs’
commitment to inclusivity, am I right?” That was the moment everything
changed.
They could have just been allies. As the only two non-cis-white-male
students in their year, they could have found solace together when some
bitching was needed and ignored each other otherwise. Olive had lots of
friends like that—all of them, actually, circ*mstantial acquaintances whom
she thought of fondly but not very often. Anh, though, had been different
from the start. Maybe because they’d soon found out that they loved
spending their Saturday nights eating junk food and falling asleep to rom-
coms. Maybe it was the way she’d insisted on dragging Olive to every
single “women in STEM” support group on campus and had wowed
everyone with her bull’s-eye comments. Maybe it was that she’d opened up
to Olive and explained how hard it had been for her to get where she was
today. The way her older brothers had made fun of her and called her a nerd
for loving math so much growing up—at an age when being a nerd was not
quite considered cool. That time a physics professor asked her if she was in
the wrong class on the first day of the semester. The fact that despite her
grades and research experience, even her academic adviser had seemed
skeptical when she’d decided to pursue STEM higher education.
Olive, whose path to grad school had been rough but not nearly as
rough, was befuddled. Then enraged. And then in absolute awe when she
understood the self-doubt that Anh had been able to harness into sheer
fierceness.
And for some unimaginable reason, Anh seemed to like Olive just as
much. When Olive’s stipend hadn’t quite stretched to the end of the month,
Anh had shared her instant ramen. When Olive’s computer had crashed
without backups, Anh had stayed up all night to help her rewrite her
crystallography paper. When Olive had nowhere to go over the holidays,
Anh would bring her friend home to Michigan and let her large family ply
Olive with delicious food while rapid Vietnamese flowed around her. When
Olive had felt too stupid for the program and had considered dropping out,
Anh had talked her out of it.
The day Olive met Anh’s rolling eyes, a life-changing friendship was
born. Slowly, they’d begun to include Malcolm and become a bit of a trio,
but Anh . . . Anh was her person. Family. Olive hadn’t even thought that
was possible for someone like her.
Anh rarely asked anything for herself, and even though they’d been
friends for more than two years, Olive had never seen her show interest in
dating anyone—until Jeremy. Pretending that she’d been on a date with
Carlsen was the least Olive could do to ensure her friend’s happiness.
So she bucked up, smiled, and tried to keep her tone reasonably even
while asking, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that we talk every minute of every day, and you never
mentioned Carlsen before. My closest friend is supposedly seeing the
superstar professor of the department, and somehow I’ve never heard of it?
You know his reputation, right? Is it some kind of joke? Do you have a
brain tumor? Do I have a brain tumor?”
This was what happened whenever Olive lied: she ended up having to
tell even more lies to cover her first, and she was horrible at it, which meant
that each lie got worse and less convincing than the previous. There was no
way she could fool Anh. There was no way she could fool anybody. Anh
was going to get mad, then Jeremy was going to get mad, then Malcolm,
too, and then Olive was going to find herself utterly alone. The heartbreak
was going to make her flunk out of grad school. She was going to lose her
visa and her only source of income and move back to Canada, where it
snowed all the time and people ate moose heart and—
“Hey.”
The voice, deep and even, came from somewhere behind Olive, but she
didn’t need to turn to know that it was Carlsen’s. Just like she didn’t need to
turn to know that the large, warm weight suddenly steadying her, a firm but
barely there pressure applied to the center of her lower back, was Carlsen’s
hand. About two inches above her ass.
Holy crap.
Olive twisted her neck and looked up. And up. And up. And a bit more
up. She was not a short woman, but he was just big. “Oh. Um, hey.”
“Is everything okay?” He said it looking into her eyes, in a low, intimate
tone. Like they were alone. Like Anh was not there. He said it in a way that
should have made Olive uncomfortable but didn’t. For some inexplicable
reason his presence in the room soothed her, even though until a second ago
she had been freaking out. Perhaps two different types of unease neutralized
each other? It sounded like a fascinating research topic. Worth pursuing.
Maybe Olive should abandon biology and switch to psychology. Maybe she
should excuse herself and go run a literature search. Maybe she should
expire on the spot to avoid facing this crapfest of a situation she’d put
herself in.
“Yes. Yes. Everything is great. Anh and I were just . . . chatting. About
our weekends.”
Carlsen looked at Anh, as though realizing for the first time that she was
in the room. He acknowledged her existence with one of those brief nods
dudes used to greet others. His hand slid lower on Olive’s spine just as
Anh’s eyes widened.
“Nice to meet you, Anh. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Carlsen said, and
he was good at this, Olive had to admit. Because she was sure that from
Anh’s angle it looked like he was groping her, but in fact he was . . . not.
Olive could barely feel his hand on her.
Just a little, maybe. The warmth, and the slight pressure, and—
“Nice to meet you, too.” Anh looked thunderstruck. Like she might pass
out. “Um, I was just about to leave. Ol, I’m going to text you when . . .
yeah.”
She was out of the room before Olive could answer. Which was good,
because Olive didn’t need to come up with more lies. But also slightly less
good, because now it was just her and Carlsen. Standing way too close.
Olive would have paid good money to say that she was the one to put some
distance between them, but the embarrassing truth was that it was Carlsen
who stepped away first. Enough to give her the space she needed, and then
some.
“Is everything okay?” he asked again. His tone was still soft. Not
something she would have expected from him.
“Yes. Yes, I just . . .” Olive waved her hand. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Did you hear what she said? About Friday and . . .”
“I did. That’s why I . . .” He looked at her, and then at his hand—the one
that had been warming her back a few seconds ago—and Olive immediately
understood.
“Thank you,” she repeated. Because Adam Carlsen might have been a
known ass, but Olive was feeling pretty damn grateful right at the moment.
“Also, uh, I couldn’t help noticing that no agents from the Federal Bureau
of Investigation have knocked on my door to arrest me in the past seventy-
two hours.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Minimally. “Is that so?”
Olive nodded. “Which makes me think that maybe you haven’t filed that
complaint. Even though it would have been totally within your rights. So,
thank you. For that. And . . . and for stepping in, right now. You saved me a
lot of trouble.”
Carlsen stared at her for a long moment, looking suddenly like he did
during seminar, when people mixed up theory and hypothesis or admitted to
using listwise deletion instead of imputation. “You shouldn’t need someone
to step in.”
Olive stiffened. Right. Known ass. “Well, it’s not as if I asked you to do
anything. I was going to handle it by myse—”
“And you shouldn’t have to lie about your relationship status,” he
continued. “Especially not so that your friend and your boyfriend can get
together guilt-free. That’s not how friendship works, last I checked.”
Oh. So he’d actually been listening when Olive vomited her life story at
him. “It’s not like that.” He lifted an eyebrow, and Olive raised a hand in
defense. “Jeremy wasn’t really my boyfriend. And Anh didn’t ask me for
anything. I’m not some sort of victim, I just . . . want my friend to be
happy.”
“By lying to her,” he added drily.
“Well, yeah, but . . . She thinks we’re dating, you and I,” Olive blurted
out. God, the implications were too ridiculous to bear.
“Wasn’t that the point?”
“Yeah.” She nodded and then remembered the coffee in her hand and
took a sip from her mug. It was still warm. The conversation with Anh
couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes. “Yeah. I guess it was. By the
way—I’m Olive Smith. In case you’re still interested in filing that
complaint. I’m a Ph.D. student in Dr. Aslan’s lab—”
“I know who you are.”
“Oh.” Maybe he had looked her up, then. Olive tried to imagine him
combing through the Current Ph.D. Students’ section on the department
website. Olive’s picture had been taken by the program secretary on her
third day of grad school, well before she had become fully aware of what
she was in for. She had made an effort to look good: tamed her wavy brown
hair, put on mascara to pop the green of her eyes, even attempted to hide her
freckles with some borrowed foundation. It had been before she’d realized
how ruthless, how cutthroat academia could be. Before the sense of
inadequacy, before the constant fear that even if she was good at research,
she might never be able to truly make it as an academic. She had been
smiling. A real, actual smile.
“Okay.”
“I’m Adam. Carlsen. I’m faculty in—”
She burst out laughing in his face. And then regretted it immediately as
she noticed his confused expression, as though he’d seriously thought Olive
might not know who he was. As though he was unaware of being one of the
most prominent scholars in the field. The modesty was not at all like Adam
Carlsen. Olive cleared her throat.
“Right. Um, I know who you are, too, Dr. Carlsen.”
“You should probably call me Adam.”
“Oh. Oh, no.” That would be way too . . . No. The department was not
like that. Grads didn’t call faculty by their first names. “I could never—”
“If Anh happens to be around.”
“Oh. Yeah.” It made sense. “Thank you. I hadn’t thought of that.” Or of
anything else, really. Clearly, her brain had stopped working three days ago,
when she’d decided that kissing him to save her own ass was a good idea.
“If that’s o-okay with you. I’m going to go home, because this whole thing
was kind of stressful and . . .” I was going to run an experiment, but I really
need to sit on the couch and watch American Ninja Warrior for forty-five
minutes while eating Cool Ranch Doritos, which taste surprisingly better
than you’d give them credit for.
He nodded. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
“I’m not that distraught.”
“In case Anh’s still around.”
“Oh.” It was, Olive had to admit, a kind offer. Surprisingly so.
Especially because it came from Adam “I’m Too Good for This
Department” Carlsen. Olive knew that he was a dick, so she couldn’t quite
understand why today he . . . didn’t seem to be one. Maybe she should just
blame her own appalling behavior, which would make anyone look good by
comparison. “Thanks. But no need.”
She could tell that he didn’t want to insist but couldn’t help himself. “I’d
feel better if you let me walk you to your car.”
“I don’t have a car.” I’m a grad student living in Stanford, California. I
make less than thirty thousand dollars a year. My rent takes up two-thirds of
my salary. I’ve been wearing the same pair of contacts since May, and I go
to every seminar that provides refreshments to save on meals, she didn’t
bother adding. She had no idea how old Carlsen was, but it couldn’t have
been that long ago that he was a grad student.
“Do you take the bus?”
“I bike. And my bike is right at the entrance of the building.”
He opened his mouth, and then closed it. And then opened it again.
You kissed that mouth, Olive. And it was a good kiss.
“There are no bike lanes around here.”
She shrugged. “I like to live dangerously.” Cheaply, she meant. “And I
have a helmet.” She turned to set her mug on the first surface she could
find. She’d retrieve it later. Or not, if someone stole it. Who cared? She’d
gotten it from a postdoc who’d left academia to become a DJ, anyway. For
the second time in less than a week, Carlsen had saved her ass. For the
second time, she couldn’t stand being with him a minute longer.
“I’ll see you around, okay?”
His chest rose as he inhaled deeply. “Yeah. Okay.”
Olive got out of the room as fast as she could.
—
“IS IT A prank? It must be a prank. Am I on national TV? Where are the
hidden cameras? How do I look?”
“It’s not a prank. There are no cameras.” Olive adjusted the strap of her
backpack on her shoulder and stepped to the side to avoid being run over by
an undergrad on an electric scooter. “But now that you mention it—you
look great. Especially for seven thirty in the morning.”
Anh didn’t blush, but it was a close thing. “Last night I did one of those
face masks that you and Malcolm got me for my birthday. The one that
looks like a panda? And I got a new sunscreen that’s supposed to give you a
bit of a glow. And I put on mascara,” she added hastily under her breath.
Olive could ask her why she’d gone the extra mile to look nice on a run-
of-the-mill Tuesday morning, but she already knew the answer: Jeremy’s
and Anh’s labs were on the same floor, and while the biology department
was large, chance encounters were very much a possibility.
She hid a smile. As weird as the idea of a best friend dating an ex might
sound, she was glad that Anh was starting to allow herself to consider
Jeremy romantically. Mostly, it was nice to know that the indignity Olive
had put herself through with Carlsen on The Night was paying off. That,
together with Tom Benton’s very promising email about her research
project, had Olive thinking that things might be finally looking up.
“Okay.” Anh chewed on her lower lip, deep in concentration. “So it’s
not a prank. Which means that there must be another explanation. Let me
find it.”
“There is no explanation to be found. We just—”
“Oh my God, are you trying to get citizenship? Are they deporting you
back to Canada because we’ve been sharing Malcolm’s Netflix password?
Tell them we didn’t know it was a federal crime. No, wait, don’t tell them
anything until we get you a lawyer. And, Ol, I will marry you. I’ll get you a
green card and you won’t have to—”
“Anh.” Olive squeezed her friend’s hand tighter to get her to shut up for
a second. “I promise you, I’m not getting deported. I just went on a single
date with Carlsen.”
Anh scrunched her face and dragged Olive to a bench on the side of the
path, forcing her to sit down. Olive complied, telling herself that were their
positions inverted, had she caught Anh kissing Adam Carlsen, she’d
probably have the same reaction. Hell, she’d probably be busy booking a
full-blown psychiatric evaluation for Anh.
“Listen,” Anh started, “do you remember last spring, when I held your
hair back while you projectile vomited the five pounds of spoiled shrimp
co*cktail you ate at Dr. Park’s retirement party?”
“Oh, yes. I do.” Olive co*cked her head, pensive. “You ate more than me
and never got sick.”
“Because I’m made of sterner stuff, but never mind that. The point is: I
am here for you, and always will be, no matter what. No matter how many
pounds of spoiled shrimp co*cktail you projectile vomit, you can trust me.
We’re a team, you and I. And Malcolm, when he’s not busy screwing his
way through the Stanford population. So if Carlsen is secretly an
extraterrestrial life-form planning a takeover of Earth that will ultimately
result in humanity being enslaved by evil overlords who look like cicadas,
and the only way to stop him is dating him, you can tell me and I’ll inform
NASA—”
“For God’s sake”—Olive had to laugh—“it was just a date!”
Anh looked pained. “I just don’t understand.”
Because it doesn’t make sense. “I know, but there is nothing to
understand. It’s just . . . We went on a date.”
“But . . . why? Ol, you’re beautiful and smart and funny and have
excellent taste in knee socks, why would you go out with Adam Carlsen?”
Olive scratched her nose. “Because he is . . .” It cost her, to say the
word. Oh, it cost her. But she had to. “Nice.”
“Nice?” Anh’s eyebrows shot up so high they almost merged with her
hairline.
She does look extra cute today, Olive reflected, pleased.
“Adam ‘Ass’ Carlsen?”
“Well, yeah. He is . . .” Olive looked around, as if help could come from
the oak trees, or the undergrads rushing to their summer classes. When it
didn’t seem forthcoming, she just finished, lamely, “He is a nice asshole, I
guess.”
Anh’s expression went straight up disbelieving. “Okay, so you went
from dating someone as cool as Jeremy to going out with Adam Carlsen.”
Perfect. This was exactly the opening Olive had wanted. “I did. And
happily, because I never cared that much about Jeremy.” Finally some truth
in this conversation. “It wasn’t that hard to move on, honestly. Which is
why— Please, Anh, put that boy out of his misery. He deserves it, and
above all, you deserve it. I bet he’s on campus today. You should ask him to
accompany you to that horror movie festival so I don’t have to come with
you and sleep with the lights on for the next six months.”
This time Anh blushed outright. She looked down at her hands, picked
at her fingernails, and then she began to fiddle with the hem of her shorts
before saying, “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, if you really think that—”
The sound of an alarm went off from Anh’s pocket, and she straightened
to pull out her phone. “Crap, I’ve got a Diversity in STEM mentoring
meeting and then I have to run two assays.” She stood, picking up her
backpack. “Want to get together for lunch?”
“Can’t. Have a TA meeting.” Olive smiled. “Maybe Jeremy’s free,
though.”
Anh rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth were curving up. It
made Olive more than a little happy. So happy that she didn’t even flip her
off when Anh turned around from the path and asked, “Is he blackmailing
you?”
“Huh?”
“Carlsen. Is he blackmailing you? Did he find out that you’re an
aberration and pee in the shower?”
“First of all, it’s time efficient.” Olive glared. “Second, I find it oddly
flattering that you’d think Carlsen would go to these ridiculous lengths to
get me to date him.”
“Anyone would, Ol. Because you’re awesome.” Anh grimaced before
adding, “Except when you’re peeing in the shower.”
—
JEREMY WAS ACTING weird. Which didn’t mean much, since Jeremy had
always been a bit awkward, and having recently split from Olive to date her
best friend was not going to make him any less so—but today he seemed
even weirder than usual. He came into the campus coffee shop, a few hours
after Olive’s conversation with Anh, and proceeded to stare at her for two
good minutes. Then three. Then five. It was more attention than he’d ever
paid to Olive—yes, including their dates.
When it got borderline ridiculous, she lifted her eyes from her laptop
and waved at him. Jeremy flushed, grabbed his latte from the counter, and
found a table for himself. Olive went back to rereading her two-line email
for the seventieth time.
Today, 10:12 a.m.
FROM: [emailprotected]
TO: [emailprotected]
SUBJECT: Re: Pancreatic Cancer Screening Project
Dr. Benton,
Thank you for your response. Chatting in person would be
fantastic. What day will you be at Stanford? Let me know
when it’s most convenient for you to meet.
Sincerely,
Olive
Not twenty minutes later, a fourth-year who worked with Dr. Holden
Rodrigues over in pharmacology came in and took a seat next to Jeremy.
They immediately started whispering to each other and pointing at Olive.
Any other day she would have been concerned and a little upset, but Dr.
Benton had already answered her email, which took priority over . . .
anything else, really.
Today, 10:26 a.m.
FROM: [emailprotected]
TO: [emailprotected]
SUBJECT: Re: Pancreatic Cancer Screening Project
Olive,
I’m on sabbatical from Harvard this semester, so I’ll be
staying for several days. A Stanford collaborator and I were
just awarded a large grant, and we’ll be meeting to talk
about setup, etc. Okay if we play it by ear once I’m there?
Cheers,
TB
Sent from my iPhone
Yes! She had several days to convince him to take on her project, which
was much better than the ten minutes she’d originally anticipated. Olive
fist-pumped—which led to Jeremy and his friend staring at her even more
weirdly. What was up with them, anyway? Did she have toothpaste on her
face or something? Who cared? She was going to meet Tom Benton and
convince him to take her on. Pancreatic cancer, I’m coming for you.
She was in an excellent mood until two hours later, when she entered the
biology TA meeting and a sudden silence dropped in the room. About
fifteen pairs of eyes fixed on her—not a reaction she was accustomed to
receiving.
“Uh—hi?”
A couple of people said hi back. Most averted their gazes. Olive told
herself that she was just imagining things. Must be low blood sugar. Or
high. One of the two.
“Hey, Olive.” A seventh-year who had never before acknowledged her
existence moved his backpack and freed the seat next to his. “How are
you?”
“Good.” She sat down gingerly, trying to keep the suspicion from her
tone. “Um, you?”
“Great.”
There was something about his smile. Something salacious and fake.
Olive was considering asking about it when the head TA managed to get the
projector to work and called everyone’s attention to the meeting.
After that, things became even weirder. Dr. Aslan stopped by the lab just
to ask Olive if there was anything she’d like to talk about; Chase, a grad in
her lab, let her use the PCR machine first, even though he usually hoarded it
like a third grader with his last piece of Halloween candy; the lab manager
winked at Olive as he handed her a stack of blank paper for the printer. And
then she met Malcolm in the all-gender restroom, completely by chance,
and suddenly everything made sense.
“You sneaky monster,” he hissed. His black eyes were almost comically
narrow. “I’ve been texting you all day.”
“Oh.” Olive patted the back pocket of her jeans, and then the front one,
trying to remember the last time she had seen her phone. “I think I might
have left my phone at home.”
“I cannot believe it.”
“Believe what?”
“I cannot believe you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“We are.”
“Good friends.”
“We are. You and Anh are my best friends. What—”
“Clearly not, if I had to hear it from Stella, who heard it from Jess, who
heard it from Jeremy, who heard it from Anh—”
“Hear what?”
“—who heard it from I don’t even know who. And I thought we were
friends.”
Something icy crawled its way up Olive’s back. Could it be . . . No. No,
it couldn’t be. “Hear what?”
“I’m done. I’m letting the co*ckroaches eat you. And I’m changing my
Netflix password.”
Oh no. “Malcolm. Hear what?”
“That you are dating Adam Carlsen.”
—
OLIVE HAD NEVER been in Carlsen’s lab, but she knew where to find it. It was
the biggest, most functional research space in the whole department,
coveted by all and a never-ending source of resentment toward Carlsen. She
had to swipe her badge once and then once more to access it (she rolled her
eyes both times). The second door opened directly onto the lab space, and
maybe it was because he was as tall as Mount Everest and his shoulders
were just as large, but Carlsen was the very first thing she noticed. He was
peering at a Southern blot next to Alex, a grad who was one year ahead of
Olive, but he turned toward the entrance the moment she came in.
Olive smiled weakly at him—mainly out of relief at having found him.
It was going to be all right. She was going to explain to him what
Malcolm had told her, and without a doubt he was going to find the
situation categorically unacceptable and fix it for the both of them, because
Olive could not spend her next three years surrounded by people who
thought that she was dating Adam freaking Carlsen.
The problem was, Carlsen wasn’t the only one to notice Olive. There
were over a dozen benches in the lab, and at least ten people working at
them. Most of them—all of them—were staring at Olive. Probably because
most of them—all of them—had heard that Olive was dating their boss.
f*ck her life.
“Can I talk to you for a minute, Dr. Carlsen?” Rationally, Olive knew
that the lab was not furnished in a way that made echoing possible. Still,
she felt as though her words bounced off the walls and repeated about four
times.
Carlsen nodded, nonplussed, and handed the Southern blot to Alex
before heading in her direction. He appeared either unaware or uncaring
that approximately two-thirds of his lab members were gaping at him. The
remaining ones seemed to be on the verge of a hemorrhagic stroke.
He led Olive to a meeting room just outside the main lab space, and she
followed him silently, trying not to dwell on the fact that a lab full of people
who thought that she and Carlsen were dating had just seen them enter a
private room. Alone.
This was the worst. The absolute worst.
“Everyone knows,” she blurted out as soon as the door closed behind
her.
He studied her for a moment, looking puzzled. “Are you okay?”
“Everyone knows. About us.”
He co*cked his head, crossing his arms over his chest. It had been barely
a day since they’d last talked, but apparently long enough for Olive to have
forgotten his . . . his presence. Or whatever it was that made her feel like
she was small and delicate whenever he was around. “Us?”
“Us.”
He seemed confused, so Olive elaborated.
“Us, dating—not that we’re dating, but Anh clearly thought so, and she
told . . .” She realized that the words were tumbling out and forced herself
to slow down. “Jeremy. And he told everyone, and now everyone knows.
Or they think they know, even though there’s absolutely nothing to know.
As you and I know.”
He took it in for a moment and then nodded slowly. “And when you say
everyone . . . ?”
“I mean everyone.” She pointed in the direction of his lab. “Those
people? They know. The other grads? They know. Cherie, the department
secretary? She totally knows. Gossip in this department is the worst. And
they all think that I am dating a professor.”
“I see,” he said, seeming strangely unbothered by this clusterf*ck. It
should have calmed Olive down, but it only had the effect of driving her
panic up a notch.
“I am sorry this happened. So sorry. This is all my fault.” She wiped a
hand down her face. “But I didn’t think that . . . I understand why Anh
would tell Jeremy—I mean, getting those two together was the whole point
of this charade—but . . . Why would Jeremy tell anyone?”
Carlsen shrugged. “Why wouldn’t he?”
She looked up. “What do you mean?”
“A grad student dating a faculty member seems like an interesting piece
of information to share.”
Olive shook her head. “It’s not that interesting. Why would people be
interested?”
He lifted one eyebrow. “Someone once told me that ‘Gossip in this
department is the wor—’ ”
“Okay, okay. Point taken.” She took a deep breath and started pacing,
trying to ignore the way Carlsen was studying her, how relaxed he looked,
arms across his chest while leaning against the conference table. He was not
supposed to be calm. He was supposed to be incensed. He was a known
dick with a reputation for arrogance—the idea of people thinking that he
was dating a nobody should be mortifying to him. The burden of freaking
out should not be falling on Olive alone.
“This is— We need to do something, of course. We need to tell people
that this is not true and that we made it all up. Except that they’ll think that
I’m crazy, and maybe that you are, too, so we have to come up with some
other story. Yes, okay, we need to tell people we’re not together anymore
—”
“And what will Anh and what’s-his-face do?”
Olive stopped pacing. “Uh?”
“Won’t your friends feel bad about dating if they think we’re not
together? Or that you lied to them?”
She hadn’t thought of that. “I— Maybe. Maybe, but—”
It was true that Anh had seemed happy. Maybe she had already invited
Jeremy to accompany her to that movie festival—possibly right after telling
him about Olive and Carlsen, damn her. But this was exactly what Olive
had wanted.
“Are you going to tell her the truth?”
She let out a panicked sound. “I can’t. Not now.” God, why did Olive
ever agree to date Jeremy? She wasn’t even into him. Yes, the Irish accent
and the ginger hair were cute, but not worth any of this. “Maybe we can tell
people that I broke up with you?”
“That’s very flattering,” Dr. Carlsen deadpanned. She couldn’t quite
figure out if he was joking.
“Fine. We can say that you broke up with me.”
“Because that sounds credible,” he said drily, almost below his breath.
She was not sure she’d heard him correctly and had no idea what he might
mean, but she was starting to feel very upset. Fine, she had been the one to
kiss him first—God, she’d kissed Adam Carlsen; this was her life; these
were her choices—but his actions in the break room the day before surely
hadn’t helped matters. He could at least display some concern. There was
no way he was okay with everyone believing that he was attracted to some
random girl with one point five publications—yes, that paper she had
revised and resubmitted three weeks ago counted as half.
“What if we tell people that it was a mutual breakup?”
He nodded. “Sounds good.”
Olive perked up. “Really? Great, then! We’ll—”
“We could ask Cherie to add it to the departmental newsletter.”
“What?”
“Or do you think a public announcement before seminar would be
better?”
“No. No, it’s—”
“Maybe we should ask IT to put it on the Stanford home page. That way
people would know—”
“Okay, okay, fine! I get it.”
He looked at her evenly for a moment, and when he spoke, his tone was
reasonable in a way she would never have expected of Adam “Ass”
Carlsen. “If what bothers you is that people are talking about you dating a
professor, the damage is done, I’m afraid. Telling everyone that we broke
up is not going to undo the fact that they think we dated.”
Olive’s shoulders slumped. She hated that he was right. “Okay, then. If
you have any ideas on how to fix this mess, by all means I am open to—”
“You could let them go on thinking it.”
For a moment, she thought she hadn’t heard him correctly. “W-What?”
“You can let people go on thinking that we’re dating. It solves your
problem with your friend and what’s-his-face, and you don’t have much to
lose, since it sounds like from a . . . reputation standpoint”—he said the
word “reputation” rolling his eyes a little, as if the concept of caring about
what others thought were the dumbest thing since homeopathic antibiotics
—“things cannot get any worse for you.”
This was . . . Out of everything . . . In her life, Olive had never, she had
never . . .
“What?” she asked again, feebly.
He shrugged. “Seems like a win-win to me.”
It so did not, to Olive. It seemed like a lose-lose, and then lose again,
and then lose some more, type of situation. It seemed insane.
“You mean . . . forever?” She thought her voice came out whiny, but it
was possible that it was just an effect of the blood pounding in her head.
“That sounds excessive. Maybe until your friends are not dating
anymore? Or until they’re more settled? I don’t know. Whatever works
best, I guess.” He was serious about this. He was not joking.
“Are you not . . .” Olive had no idea how to even ask it. “Married, or
something?” He must have been in his early thirties. He had a fantastic job;
he was tall with thick, wavy black hair, clearly smart, even attractive
looking; he was built. Yeah, he was a moody dick, but some women
wouldn’t mind it. Some women might even like it.
He shrugged. “My wife and the twins won’t mind.”
Oh, sh*t.
Olive felt a wave of heat wash over her. She blushed crimson and then
almost died of shame, because— God, she had forced a married man, a
father, to kiss her. Now people thought that he was having an affair. His
wife was probably crying into her pillow. His kids would grow up with
horrible daddy issues and become serial killers.
“I . . . Oh my God, I didn’t— I am so sorry—”
“Just kidding.”
“I really had no idea that you—”
“Olive. I was joking. I’m not married. No kids.”
A wave of relief crashed into her. Followed by just as much anger. “Dr.
Carlsen, this is not something you should joke—”
“You really need to start calling me Adam. Since we’ve reportedly been
dating for a while.”
Olive exhaled slowly, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Why would you
even— What would you even get out of this?”
“Out of what?”
“Pretending to date me. Why do you care? What’s in it for you?”
Dr. Carlsen—Adam—opened his mouth, and for a moment Olive had
the impression that he was going to say something important. But then he
averted his gaze, and all that came out was “It would help you out.” He
hesitated for a moment. “And I have my own reasons.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What reasons?”
“Reasons.”
“If it’s criminal, I’d rather not be involved.”
He smiled a bit. “It’s not.”
“If you don’t tell me, I have no choice but to assume that it entails
kidnapping. Or arson. Or embezzlement.”
He seemed preoccupied for a moment, fingertips drumming against a
large biceps. It considerably strained his shirt. “If I tell you, it cannot leave
this room.”
“I think we can both agree that nothing that has happened in this room
should ever leave it.”
“Good point,” he conceded. He paused. Sighed. Chewed on the inside of
his cheek for a second. Sighed again.
“Okay,” he finally said, sounding like a man who knew that he was
going to regret speaking the second he opened his mouth. “I’m considered a
flight risk.”
“Flight risk?” God, he was a felon on parole. A jury of his peers had
convicted him for crimes against grad students. He’d probably whacked
someone on the head with a microscope for mislabeling peptide samples.
“So it is something criminal.”
“What? No. The department suspects that I’m making plans to leave
Stanford and move to another institution. Normally it wouldn’t bother me,
but Stanford has decided to freeze my research funds.”
“Oh.” Not what she’d thought. Not at all. “Can they?”
“Yes. Well, up to one-third of them. The reasoning is that they don’t
want to fund the research and further the career of someone who—they
believe—is going to leave anyway.”
“But if it’s only one-third—”
“It’s millions of dollars,” he said levelly. “That I had earmarked for
projects that I planned to finish within the next year. Here, at Stanford.
Which means that I need those funds soon.”
“Oh.” Come to think of it, Olive had been hearing scuttlebutt about
Carlsen being recruited by other universities since her first year. A few
months earlier there had even been a rumor that he might go work for
NASA. “Why do they think that? And why now?”
“A number of reasons. The most relevant is that a few weeks ago I was
awarded a grant—a very large grant—with a scientist at another institution.
That institution had tried to recruit me in the past, and Stanford sees the
collaboration as an indication that I am planning to accept.” He hesitated
before continuing. “More generally, I have been made aware that the . . .
