The Love Hypothesis: Chapter 9

Olive’s heart beat faster—whether at the idea of being in Adam’s home or at the thought of getting her answer from Tom, she wasn’t sure. She immediately texted Adam.

Olive: Tom just invited me to your place to talk about the report I sent him. Would it be okay if I came over?

Adam: Of course. When?

Olive: Tomorrow at 9 a.m. Will you be home?

Adam: Probably. There are no bike lanes to my house. Do you need a ride? I can pick you up.

She thought about it for a few moments and decided that she liked the idea a little too much.

Olive: My roommate can drive me, but thanks for offering.

—

MALCOLM DROPPED HER off in front of a beautiful Spanish colonial house with stucco walls and arched windows and refused to back out of the driveway until Olive agreed to slide a can of pepper spray in her backpack. She walked over the brick-tile path and up to the entrance, marveling at the green of the yard and at the cozy atmosphere of the porch. She was about to ring the doorbell when she heard her name.

Adam was behind her, bathed in sweat and clearly just back from his morning run. He was wearing sunglasses, shorts, and a Princeton Undergrad Mathletes T-shirt that stuck to his chest. Out of the ensemble, the only nonblack items were the AirPods in his ears, peeking through the damp waves of his hair. She felt her cheeks curve into a smile, trying to imagine what he was listening to. Probably Coil, or Kraftwerk. The Velvet Underground. A TED Talk on water-efficient landscaping. Whale noises.

She would have given a huge chunk of her salary in exchange for five minutes alone with his phone, just to mess with his playlist. Add Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, maybe some Ariana. Broaden his horizons. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark lenses, but she didn’t need to. His mouth had curved as soon as he’d noticed her, his smile slight but definitely there.

“You okay?” he asked.

Olive realized that she’d been staring. “Um, yeah. Sorry. You?”

He nodded. “Did you find the house all right?”

“Yes. I was just about to knock.”

“No need.” He passed her and opened the door for her, waiting until she’d stepped inside to close it after them. She caught a whiff of his scent—sweat and soap and something dark and good—and wondered anew at how familiar it had become to her. “Tom’s probably this way.”

Adam’s place was light, spacious, and simply furnished. “No taxidermied animals?” she asked under her breath.

He was clearly about to flip her off when they found Tom in the kitchen, typing on his laptop. He looked up at her and grinned—which, she hoped, was a good sign.

“Thanks for coming, Olive. I wasn’t sure I’d have time to go to campus before leaving. Sit down, please.” Adam disappeared from the room, probably to go shower, and Olive felt her heart pick up. Tom had made his decision. Her destiny was going to be defined by the next few minutes.

“Can you clarify a couple of things for me?” he asked, turning his laptop toward her and pointing at one of the figures she’d sent. “To make sure I understand your protocols correctly.”

When Adam came back twenty minutes later, hair damp and wearing one of his ten million black Henleys that were all a tiny bit different and yet still managed to fit him in the most irritatingly perfect way, she was just wrapping up an explanation of her RNA analyses. Tom was taking notes on his laptop.

“Whenever you guys are done, I can give you a ride back to campus, Olive,” Adam offered. “I need to drive in, anyway.”

“We’re done,” Tom said, still typing. “She’s all yours.”

Oh. Olive nodded and gingerly stood up. Tom hadn’t given her an answer yet. He’d asked lots of interesting, smart questions about her project, but he hadn’t told her whether he wanted to work with her next year. Did it mean that the answer was a no, but he’d rather not communicate it to Olive in her “boyfriend’s” home? What if he’d never really thought that her work was worth funding? What if he’d just been faking it because Adam was his friend? Adam had said that Tom wasn’t like that, but what if he’d been wrong and now—

“You ready to go?” Adam asked. She grabbed her backpack, trying to collect herself. She was fine. This was fine. She could cry about this later.

“Sure.” She rocked once on her heels, giving Tom one last look. Sadly, he seemed taken with his laptop. “Bye, Tom. It was nice to meet you. Have a safe trip home.”

“Likewise,” he said, not even glancing at her. “I had lots of interesting conversations.”

“Yeah.” It must have been the section on genome-based prognostics, she thought, following Adam out of the room. She’d suspected it was too weak, but she’d been stupid and she’d sent the report anyway. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She should have beefed it up. The most important thing now was to avoid crying until she was—

“And, Olive,” Tom added.

She paused under the doorframe and looked back at him. “Yes?”

“I’ll see you next year at Harvard, right?” His gaze finally slid up to meet hers. “I have the perfect bench set aside for you.”

Her heart detonated. It absolutely exploded with joy in her chest, and Olive felt a violent wave of happiness, pride, and relief all wash over her. It could have easily knocked her to the floor, but by some miracle of biology she managed to stay upright and smile at Tom.

“I can’t wait,” she said, voice thick with happy tears. “Thank you so much.”

He gave her a wink and one last smile, kind and encouraging. Olive barely managed to wait until she was outside to fist-pump, then jump around a few times, then fist-pump again.

“You all done?” Adam asked.

She turned around, remembering that she wasn’t alone. His arms were folded on his chest, fingers drumming against his biceps. There was an indulgent expression in his eyes, and—she should have been embarrassed, but she just couldn’t help it. Olive threw herself at him and hugged his torso as tight as she could. She closed her eyes when, after a few seconds of hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her.

“Congratulations,” he whispered softly against her hair. Just like that Olive was on the verge of tears all over again.

Once they were in Adam’s car—a Prius, to exactly no one’s surprise—and driving to campus, she felt so happy she couldn’t possibly be quiet.

“He’ll take me. He said he’ll take me.”

“He’d be an idiot not to.” Adam was smiling softly. “I knew he would.”

“Had he told you?” Her eyes widened. “You knew, and you didn’t even tell me—”

“He hadn’t. We haven’t discussed you.”

“Oh?” She tilted her head, turning around in the car seat to better look at him. “Why?”

“Unspoken agreement. It might be a conflict of interest.”

“Right.” Sure. It made sense. Close friend and girlfriend. Fake girlfriend, actually.

“Can I ask you something?”

She nodded.

“There are lots of cancer labs in the US. Why did you choose Tom’s?”

“Well, I sort of didn’t. I emailed several people—two of whom are at UCSF, which is much closer than Boston. But Tom was the only one who answered.” She leaned her head against the seat. It occurred to her for the first time that she was going to have to leave her life for an entire year. Her apartment with Malcolm, her nights spent with Anh. Adam, even. She immediately pushed the thought away, not ready to entertain it. “Why do professors never answer students’ emails, by the way?”

“Because we get approximately two hundred a day, and most of them are iterations of ‘why do I have a C minus?’ ” He was quiet for a moment. “My advice for the future is to have your adviser reach out, instead of doing it yourself.”

She nodded and stored away the information. “I’m glad Harvard worked out, though. It’s going to be amazing. Tom is such a big name, and the amount of work I can do in his lab is limitless. I’ll be running studies twenty-four seven, and if the results are what I think they’ll be, I’ll be able to publish in high-impact journals and probably get a clinical trial started in just a few years.” She felt high on the prospect. “Hey, you and I now have a collaborator in common, on top of being excellent fake-dating partners!” A thought occurred to her. “What is your and Tom’s big grant about, anyway?”

“Cell-based models.”

“Off-lattice?”

He nodded.

“Wow. That’s cool stuff.”

“It’s the most interesting project I’m working on, for sure. Got the grant at the right moment, too.”

“What do you mean?”

He was silent for a beat while he switched lanes. “It’s different from my other grants—mostly genetic stuff. Which is interesting, don’t get me wrong, but after ten years researching the same exact thing, I was in a rut.”

“You mean . . . bored?”

“To death. I briefly considered going into industry.”

Olive gasped. Switching from academia to industry was considered the ultimate betrayal.

“Don’t worry.” Adam smiled. “Tom saved the day. When I told him I wasn’t enjoying research anymore, we brainstormed some new directions, found something we were both enthusiastic about, and wrote the grant.”

Olive felt a sudden surge of gratitude toward Tom. Not only was he going to rescue her project, but he was the reason Adam was still around. The reason she’d gotten the opportunity to know him. “It must be nice to be excited about work again.”

“It is. Academia takes a lot from you and gives back very little. It’s hard to stick around without a good reason to do so.”

She nodded absentmindedly, thinking that the words sounded familiar. Not just the content, but the delivery, too. Not surprising, though: it was exactly what The Guy in the bathroom had told her all those years ago. Academia’s a lot of bucks for very little bang. What matters is whether your reason to be in academia is good enough.

Suddenly, something clicked in her brain.

The deep voice. The blurry dark hair. The crisp, precise way of talking. Could The Guy in the bathroom and Adam be . . .

No. Impossible. The Guy was a student—though, had he explicitly said so? No. No, what he’d said was This is my lab’s bathroom and that he’d been there for six years, and he hadn’t answered when she’d asked about his dissertation timeline, and—

Impossible. Improbable. Inconceivable.

Just like everything else about Adam and Olive.

Oh God. What if they’d really met years ago? He probably didn’t remember, anyway. Surely. Olive had been no one. Still was no one. She thought about asking him, but why? He had no idea that a five-minute conversation with him had been the exact push Olive needed. That she’d thought about him for years.

Olive remembered her last words to him—Maybe I’ll see you next year—and oh, if only she’d known. She felt a surge of something warm and soft in the squishy part of herself that she guarded most carefully. She looked at Adam, and it swelled even larger, even stronger, even hotter.

You, she thought. You. You are just the most—

The worst—

The best—

Olive laughed, shaking her head.

“What?” he asked, puzzled.

“Nothing.” She grinned at him. “Nothing. Hey, you know what? You and I should go get coffee. To celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

“Everything! Your grant. My year at Harvard. How great our fake dating is going.”

It was probably unfair of her to ask, since they were not due for fake-dating coffee until tomorrow. But the previous Wednesday had lasted just a few short minutes, and since Friday night, there had been about thirty times when Olive had to forcibly remove her phone from her hands to avoid texting him things he couldn’t possibly care about. He didn’t need to know that he was right and the problem with her Western blot had been the antibody. There was no way he’d have answered her if on Saturday at 10:00 p.m., when she’d been dying to know if he was in his office, she had sent that Hey, what are you up to? message that she’d written and deleted twice. And she was glad she’d ended up chickening out of forwarding him that Onion article on sun-safety tips.

It was probably unfair of her to ask, and yet today was a momentous day, and she found herself wanting to celebrate. With him.

He bit the inside of his cheek, looking pensive. “Would it be actual coffee, or chamomile tea?”

“Depends. Will you go all moody on me?”

“I will if you get pumpkin stuff.”

She rolled her eyes. “You have no taste.” Her phone pinged with a reminder. “Oh, we should go to Fluchella, too. Before coffee.”

A vertical line appeared between his brows. “I’m afraid to ask what that is.”

“Fluchella,” Olive repeated, though it was clearly not helpful, judging from how the line bisecting his forehead deepened. “Mass flu vaccination for faculty, staff, and students. At no charge.”

Adam made a face. “It’s called Fluchella?”

“Yep, like the festival. Coachella?”

Adam was clearly not familiar.

“Don’t you get university emails about this stuff? There’ve been at least five.”

“I have a great spam filter.”

Olive frowned. “Does it block Stanford emails, too? Because it shouldn’t. It might end up filtering out important messages from admin and students and—”

Adam arched one eyebrow.

“Oh. Right.”

Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. He doesn’t need to know how much he makes you laugh.

“Well, we should go get our flu shots.”

“I’m good.”

“You got one already?”

“No.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s mandatory for everyone.”

The set of Adam’s shoulders clearly broadcasted that he was, in fact, not everyone. “I never get sick.”

“I doubt it.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Hey, the flu is more serious than you might think.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“It is, especially for people like you.”

“Like me?”

“You know . . . people of a certain age.”

His mouth twitched as he turned into the campus parking lot. “You smart-ass.”

“Come on.” She leaned forward, poking his biceps with her index finger. They had touched so much at this point. In public, and alone, and a mixture of the two. It didn’t feel weird. It felt good and natural, like when Olive was with Anh, or Malcolm. “Let’s go together.”

He didn’t budge, parallel parking in a spot that would have taken Olive about two hours of maneuvering to fit into. “I don’t have time.”

“You just agreed to go get coffee. You must have some time.”

He finished parking in less than a minute and pressed his lips together. Not answering her.

“Why don’t you want to get the shot?” She studied him suspiciously. “Are you some kind of anti-vaxxer?”

Oh, if looks could kill.

“Okay.” She furrowed her brow. “Then why?”

“It’s not worth the hassle.” Was he fidgeting a little? Was he biting the inside of his lip?

“It literally takes ten minutes.” She reached for him, tugging at the sleeve of his shirt. “You get there, they scan your university badge. They give you the shot.” She felt his muscles tense under her fingertips as she said the last word. “Easy peasy, and the best part is, you don’t get the flu for a whole year. Totally— Oh.” Olive covered her mouth with her hand.

“What?”

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“Are you— Oh, Adam.”

“What?”

“Are you afraid of needles?”

He went still. Completely immobile. He wasn’t breathing anymore. “I’m not afraid of needles.”

“It’s okay,” she said, making her tone as reassuring as possible.

“I know, since I’m not—”

“This is a safe space for you and your fear of needles.”

“There is no fear of—”

“I get it, needles are scary.”

“It’s not—”

“You are allowed to be scared.”

“I am not,” he told her, a little too forcefully, and then turned away, clearing his throat and scratching the side of his neck.

Olive pressed her lips together, and then said, “Well, I used to be scared.”

He looked at her, curious, so she continued.

“As a child. My . . .” She had to clear her throat. “My mother would have to hold me in a bear hug every time I needed a shot, or I’d thrash around too much. And she had to bribe me with ice cream, but the problem was that I wanted it immediately after my shot.” She laughed. “So she’d buy an ice cream sandwich before the doctor’s appointment, and by the time I was ready to eat, it’d be all melted in her purse and make a huge mess and . . .”

Dammit. She was weepy, again. In front of Adam, again.

“She sounds lovely,” Adam said.

“She was.”

“And to be clear, I’m not afraid of needles,” he repeated. This time, his tone was warm and kind. “They just feel . . . disgusting.”

She sniffled and looked up at him. The temptation to hug him was almost irresistible. But she’d already done that today, so she made do with patting him on the arm. “Aww.”

He pinned her with a withering look. “Don’t aww me.”

Adorable. He was adorable. “No, really, they are gross. Stuff pokes at you, and then you bleed. The feeling of it—yikes.”

She got out of the car and waited for him to do the same. When he joined her, she smiled at him reassuringly.

“I get it.”

“You do?” He didn’t seem convinced.

“Yep. They’re horrible.”

He was still a little distrustful. “They are.”

“And scary.” She wrapped her hand around his elbow and began to pull him in the direction of the Fluchella tent. “Still, you need to get over it. For science. I’m taking you to get a flu shot.”

“I—”

“This is nonnegotiable. I’ll hold your hand, during.”

“I don’t need you to hold my hand. Since I’m not going.” Except that he was going. He could have planted his feet and stood his ground, and he would have turned into an immovable object; Olive would have had no way of dragging him anywhere. And yet.

She let her hand slide down to his wrist and looked up at him. “You so are.”

“Please.” He looked pained. “Don’t make me.”

He was so adorable. “It’s for your own good. And for the good of the elderly people who might come in any proximity to you. Even more elderly than you, that is.”

He sighed, defeated. “Olive.”

“Come on. Maybe we’re lucky and the chair will spot us. And I’ll buy you an ice cream sandwich afterward.”

“Will I be paying for this ice cream sandwich?” He sounded resigned now.

“Likely. Actually, scratch that, you probably don’t like ice cream anyway, because you don’t enjoy anything that’s good in life.” She kept on walking, pensively chewing on her lower lip. “Maybe the cafeteria has some raw broccoli?”

“I don’t deserve this verbal abuse on top of the flu shot.”

She beamed. “You’re such a trooper. Even though the big bad needle is out to get you.”

“You are a smart-ass.” And yet, he didn’t resist when she continued to pull him behind her.

It was ten on an early-September morning, the sun already shining too bright and too hot through the cotton of Olive’s shirt, the sweetgum leaves still a deep green and showing no sign of turning. It felt different from the past few years, this summer that didn’t seem to want to end, that was stretched full and ripe past the beginning of the semester. Undergrads must have been either dozing off in their midmorning classes or still asleep in bed, because for once that harried air of chaos that always coated the Stanford campus was missing. And Olive—Olive had a lab for next year. Everything she’d worked toward since fifteen, it was finally going to happen.

Life didn’t get much better than this.

She smiled, smelling the flower beds and humming a tune under her breath as she and Adam walked quietly, side by side. As they made their way across the quad, her fingers slid down from his wrist and closed around his palm.