This was the tricky one. The one she was afraid he’d object to. She noticed that she was wringing her hands and placed them firmly in her lap.
“For this to work we should probably . . . do things together. Every once in a while.”
“Things?”
“Things. Stuff.”
“Stuff,” he repeated dubiously.
“Yep. Stuff. What do you do for fun?” He was probably into something atrocious, like cow-tipping excursions or Japanese beetle fighting. Maybe he collected porcelain dolls. Maybe he was an avid geocacher. Maybe he frequented vaping conventions. Oh God.
“Fun?” he repeated, like he’d never heard the word before.
“Yeah. What do you do when you’re not at work?”
The length of time that passed between Olive’s question and his answer was alarming. “Sometimes I work at home, too. And I work out. And I sleep.”
She had to actively stop herself from face-palming. “Um, great. Anything else?”
“What do you do for fun?” he asked, somewhat defensively.
“Plenty of things. I . . .” Go to the movies. Though she hadn’t been since the last time Malcolm had dragged her. Play board games. But every single one of her friends was too busy lately, so not that, either. She’d participated in that volleyball tournament, but it had been over a year ago.
“Um. I work out?” She would have loved to wipe that smug expression off his face. So much. “Whatever. We should do something together on a regular basis. I don’t know, maybe get coffee? Like, once a week? Just for ten minutes, at a place where people could easily see us. I know it sounds annoying and like a waste of time, but it’ll be super short, and it would make the fake dating more credible, and—”
“Sure.”
Oh.
She’d thought it would take more convincing. A lot more. Then again, this was in his interest, too. He needed his colleagues to believe in their relationship if he was to cajole them into releasing his funding.
“Okay. Um . . .” She forced herself to stop wondering why he was being so accommodating and tried to visualize her schedule. “How about Wednesday?”
Adam angled his chair to face his computer and pulled up a calendar app. It was so full of colorful boxes that Olive felt a surge of vicarious anxiety.
“It works before eleven a.m. And after six p.m.”
“Ten?”
He turned back to her. “Ten’s good.”
“Okay.” She waited for him to type it in, but he made no move to. “Aren’t you going to add it to your calendar?”
“I’ll remember,” he told her evenly.
“Okay, then.” She made an effort to smile, and it felt relatively sincere. Way more sincere than any smile she’d ever thought she’d be able to muster in Adam Carlsen’s presence. “Great. Fake-dating Wednesday it is.”
A line appeared between his eyebrows. “Why do you keep saying that?”
“Saying what?”
“ ‘Fake dating.’ Like it’s a thing.”
“Because it is. Don’t you watch rom-coms?”
He stared at her with a puzzled expression, until she cleared her throat and looked down at her knees. “Right.” God, they had nothing in common. They’d never find anything to talk about. Their ten-minute coffee breaks were going to be the most painful, awkward parts of her already painful, awkward weeks.
But Anh was going to have her beautiful love story, and Olive wouldn’t have to wait for ages to use the electron microscope. That was all that mattered.
She stood and thrust her hand out to him, figuring that every fake-dating arrangement deserved at least a handshake. Adam studied it hesitantly for a couple of seconds. Then he stood and clasped her fingers. He stared at their joined hands before meeting her eyes, and Olive ordered herself not to notice the heat of his skin, or how broad he was, or . . . anything else about him. When he finally let go, she had to make a conscious effort not to inspect her palm.
Had he done something to her? It sure felt like it. Her flesh was tingling.
“When do you want to start?”
“How about next week?” It was Friday. Which meant that she had fewer than seven days to psychologically prepare for the experience of getting coffee with Adam Carlsen. She knew that she could do this—if she had worked her way up to a ninety-seventh percentile on the verbal portion of the GRE, she could do anything, or as good as—but it still seemed like a horrible idea.
“Sounds good.”
It was happening. Oh God. “Let’s meet at the Starbucks on campus. It’s where most of the grads get coffee—someone’s bound to spot us.” She headed for the door, pausing to glance back at Adam. “I guess I’ll see you for fake-dating Wednesday, then?”
He was still standing behind his desk, arms crossed on his chest. Looking at Olive. Looking entirely less irritated by this mess than she’d ever have expected. Looking . . . nice. “See you, Olive.”
* * *
—
“PASS THE SALT.”
Olive would have, but Malcolm looked like he was already salty enough. So she leaned her hip against the kitchen counter and folded her arms across her chest. “Malcolm.”
“And the pepper.”
“Malcolm.”
“And the oil.”
“Malcolm . . .”
“Sunflower. Not that grape-seed crap.”
“Listen. It’s not what you think—”
“Fine. I’ll get them myself.”
To be fair, Malcolm had every right to be mad. And Olive did feel for him. He was one year ahead of her, and the scion of STEM royalty. The product of generations of biologists, geologists, botanists, physicists, and who knows what other -ists mixing their DNA and spawning little science machines. His father was a dean at some state school on the East Coast. His mother had a TED Talk on Purkinje cells with several million views on YouTube. Did Malcolm want to be in a Ph.D. program, headed for an academic career? Probably no. Did he have any other choice, considering the pressure his family had put on him since he was in diapers? Also no.
Not to say that Malcolm was unhappy. His plan was to get his Ph.D., find a nice cushy industry job, and make lots of money working nine-to-five—which technically qualified as “being a scientist,” which in turn was not something his parents would be able to object to. At least, not too strenuously. In the meantime, all he wanted was to have a grad school experience that was as un-traumatizing as possible. Out of everyone in Olive’s program, he was the one who best managed to have a life outside of grad school. He did things that were unimaginable to most grads, like cooking real food! Going for hikes! Meditating! Acting in a play! Dating like it was an Olympic sport! (“It is an Olympic sport, Olive. And I am training for gold.”)