“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.”)

Which was why when Adam forced Malcolm to throw out tons of data and redo half his study, it made for a very, very miserable few months. In retrospect, that might have been when Malcolm started wishing a plague on the Carlsen house (he had been rehearsing for Romeo and Juliet at the time).

“Malcolm, can we please talk about this?”

“We’re talking.”

“No, you are cooking and I am just standing here, trying to get you to acknowledge that you are mad because Adam—”

Malcolm turned away from his casserole, wagging his finger in Olive’s direction. “Do not say it.”

“Do not say what?”

“You know what.”

“Adam Carl—?”

“Do not say his name.”

She threw her hands up. “This is crazy. It’s fake, Malcolm.”

He went back to chopping the asparagus. “Pass the salt.”

“Are you even listening? It’s not real.”

“And the pepper, and the—”

“The relationship, it’s fake. We’re not really dating. We’re pretending so people will think that we’re dating.”

Malcolm’s hands stopped mid-chop. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Is it a . . . friends-with-benefits arrangement? Because—”

“No. It’s the opposite. There are no benefits. Zero benefits. Zero sex. Zero friends, too.”

He stared at her, narrow-eyed. “To be clear, oral and butt stuff totally counts as sex—”

“Malcolm.”

He took a step closer, grabbing a dishrag to wipe his hands, nostrils flaring. “I’m scared to ask.”

“I know it sounds ridiculous. He’s helping me out by pretending we’re together because I lied to Anh, and I need her to feel okay about dating Jeremy. It’s all fake. Adam and I have talked exactly”—she decided on the spot to omit any information pertinent to The Night—“three times, and I know nothing about him. Except that he’s willing to help me handle this situation, and I jumped at the chance.”

Malcolm was making that face, the one he reserved for people who wore sandals paired with white socks. He could be a little scary, she had to admit.

“This is . . . wow.” There was a vein pulsating on his forehead. “Ol, this is breathtakingly stupid.”

“Maybe.” Yes. Yes, it was. “But it is what it is. And you have to support me in my idiocy, because you and Anh are my best friends.”

“Isn’t Carlsen your best friend now?”

“Come on, Malcolm. He’s an ass. But he’s actually been pretty nice to me, and—”

“I’m not even—” He grimaced. “I’m not going to address this.”

She sighed. “Okay. Don’t address this. You don’t have to. But can you just not hate me? Please? I know he’s been a nightmare to half the grads in the program, you included. But he’s helping me out. You and Anh are the only ones I care about knowing the truth. But I can’t tell Anh—”

“—for obvious reasons.”

“—for obvious reasons,” she finished at the same time, and smiled. He just shook his head disapprovingly, but his expression had softened.

“Ol. You’re amazing. And kind, way too kind. You should find someone better than Carlsen. Someone to date for real.”

“Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes. “Because it went so well with Jeremy. Who, by the way, I only agreed to date following your advice! ‘Give the boy a chance,’ you said. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ you said.”