Olive shrugged. “It feels like something I should know.”

“Why?”

“Because. If someone tries to figure out whether we’re really dating, it might be one of the first questions they ask. Top five, for sure.”

He studied her for a few seconds. “Does that seem like a likely scenario to you?”

“About as likely as me fake-dating you.”

He nodded, as if conceding her point. “Okay. Black, I guess.”

She snorted. “Figures.”

“What’s wrong with black?” He frowned.

“It’s not even a color. It’s no colors, technically.”

“It’s better than vomit green.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Of course it is.”

“Yeah, well. It suits your scion-of-darkness personality.”

“What does that even—”

“Good morning.” The barista smiled at them cheerfully. “What will you have today?”

Olive smiled back, gesturing at Adam to order first.

“Coffee.” He darted a glance at her before adding, sheepishly, “Black.”

She had to duck her head to hide her smile, but when she glanced at him again, the corner of his mouth was curved upward. Which, she reluctantly admitted to herself, was not a bad look for him. She ignored it and ordered the most fatty, sugary thing on the drink menu, asking for extra whipped cream. She was wondering if she should try to make up for it by buying an apple, too, or if she should just lean into it and top it off with a cookie, when Adam took a credit card out of his wallet and held it to the cashier.

“Oh, no. No, no, no. No.” Olive put her hand in front of his and lowered her voice. “You can’t pay for my stuff.”

He blinked. “I can’t?”

“That’s not the kind of fake relationship we’re having.”

He looked surprised. “It isn’t?”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “I would never fake-date a dude who thinks that he has to pay for my coffee just because he’s a dude.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I doubt a language exists in which the thing you just ordered could be referred to as ‘coffee.’ ”

“Hey—”

“And it’s not about me being a ‘dude’ ”—the word came out a touch pained—“but about you still being a grad student. And your yearly income.”

For a moment she hesitated, wondering if she should be offended. Was Adam being his well-known ass self? Was he patronizing her? Did he think she was poor? Then she remembered that she was, in fact, poor, and that he probably made five times as much as her. She shrugged, adding a chocolate chip cookie, a banana, and a pack of gum to her coffee. To his credit, Adam said nothing and paid the resulting $21.39 without batting an eye.

While they were waiting for their drinks, Olive’s mind began drifting off to her project and to whether she could convince Dr. Aslan to buy her better reagents soon. She looked distractedly around the coffee shop, finding that even though the research assistant, the postdoc, and one of the students were gone, two grads (one of whom serendipitously happened to work in Anh’s lab) were still sitting at a table by the door, glancing toward them every few minutes. Excellent.

She leaned her hip against the counter and looked up at Adam. Thank God this thing was only going to be ten minutes a week, or she’d develop a permanent crick in her neck.

“Where were you born?” she asked.

“Is this another one of your green card marriage interview questions?”

She giggled. He smiled in response, as if pleased to have made her laugh. Though it was certainly for some other reason.

“Netherlands. The Hague.”

“Oh.”

He leaned against the counter, too, directly in front of her. “Why ‘oh’?”

“I don’t know.” Olive shrugged. “I think I expected . . . New York? Or maybe Kansas?”

He shook his head. “My mother used to be a US ambassador to the Netherlands.”

“Wow.” Weird, to imagine that Adam had a mother. A family. That before being tall and scary and infamous, he’d been a kid. Maybe he spoke Dutch. Maybe he had smoked herring for breakfast on the reg. Maybe his mother had wanted him to follow in her footsteps and become a diplomat, but his shiny personality had emerged and she’d given up on that dream. Olive found herself acutely eager to know more about his upbringing, which was . . . weird. Very weird.

“Here you go.” Their drinks appeared on the counter. Olive told herself that the way the blond barista was obviously checking out Adam as he turned to retrieve a lid for his cup was none of her business. She also reminded herself that as curious as she was about his diplomat mother, how many languages he spoke, and whether he liked tulips, it was information that went well beyond their arrangement.

People had seen them together. They were going to go back to their labs and tell improbable tales of Dr. Adam Carlsen and the random, unremarkable student they’d spotted him with. Time for Olive to go back to her science.

She cleared her throat. “Well. This was fun.”

He looked up from his cup, surprised. “Is fake-dating Wednesday over?”

“Yep. Great job, team, now hit the showers. You’re free until next week.” Olive stabbed her straw into her drink and took a sip, feeling the sugar explode in her mouth. Whatever she’d ordered, it was disgustingly good. She was probably developing diabetes as she spoke. “I’ll see you—”

“Where were you born?” Adam asked before she could leave.

Oh. They were doing this, then. He was probably just trying to be polite, and Olive sighed inwardly, thinking longingly of her lab bench. “Toronto.”

“Right. You’re Canadian,” he said, like he’d already known.

“Yep.”

“When did you move here?”

“Eight years ago. For college.”

He nodded, as if storing up the information. “Why the US? Canada has excellent schools.”

“I got a full ride.” It was true. If not the whole truth.

He fidgeted with the cardboard cup holder. “Do you go back a lot?”

“Not really, no.” Olive licked some whipped cream off her straw. She was puzzled when he immediately looked away from her.

“Do you plan to move back home once you graduate?”

She tensed. “Not if I can help it.” She had lots of painful memories in Canada, and her only family, the people she wanted nearby, were Anh and Malcolm, both US citizens. Olive and Anh had even made a pact that if Olive was ever on the verge of losing her visa, Anh would marry her. In hindsight, this entire fake-dating business with Adam was going to be great practice for when Olive leveled up and started defrauding the Department of Homeland Security in earnest.

Adam nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “Favorite color?”

Olive opened her mouth to tell him her favorite color, which was so much better than his, and . . . “Dammit.”

He gave her a knowing look. “Difficult, isn’t it?”

“There are so many good ones.”

“Yup.”

“I’m going to go with blue. Light blue. No, wait!”

“Mmm.”

“Let’s say white. Okay, white.”

He clucked his tongue. “You know, I don’t think I can accept that. White’s not really a color. More like all colors put together—”

Olive pinched him on the fleshy part of his forearm.

“Ow,” he said, clearly not in pain. With a sly smile, he waved goodbye and turned away, heading for the biology building.

“Hey, Adam?” she called after him.

He paused and looked back at her.

“Thanks for buying me three days’ worth of food.”

He hesitated and then nodded, once. That thing he was doing with his mouth—he was definitely smiling down at her. A little begrudgingly, but still.

“My pleasure, Olive.”

—

Today, 2:40 p.m.

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: Re: Pancreatic Cancer Screening Project

Olive,

I’ll be flying in on Tuesday afternoon. How about we meet on Wednesday around 3:00 p.m. in Aysegul Aslan’s lab? My collaborator can point me in its direction.