TB

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OLIVE WAS LATE for her second fake-dating Wednesday, too, but for different reasons—all Tom Benton related.

First, she’d overslept after staying up late the previous night rehearsing how she was going to sell him her project. She’d repeated her spiel so many times that Malcolm had started finishing her sentences, and then, at 1:00 a.m., he’d hurled a nectarine at her and begged her to go practice in her room. Which she had, until 3:00 a.m.

Then, in the morning, she’d realized that her usual lab outfit (leggings, ratty 5K T-shirt, and very, very messy bun) would probably not communicate “valuable future colleague” to Dr. Benton, and spent an excessive amount of time looking for something appropriate. Dress for success and all that.

Finally, it occurred to her that she had no idea what Dr. Benton—arguably the most important person in her life at the moment, and yes, she was aware of how sad that sounded but decided not to dwell on it—even looked like. She looked him up on her phone and found out that he was somewhere in his late thirties, blond with blue eyes, and had very straight, very white teeth. When she arrived at the campus Starbucks, Olive was whispering to his Harvard headshot, “Please, let me come work in your lab.” Then she noticed Adam.

It was an uncharacteristically cloudy day. Still August, but it almost felt like late fall. Olive glanced at him, and she immediately knew that he was in the nastiest of moods. That rumor of him throwing a petri dish against a wall because his experiment hadn’t worked out, or because the electron microscope needed repairs, or because something equally inconsequential had happened came to mind. She considered ducking under the table.

It’s okay, she told herself. This is worth it. Things with Anh were back to normal. Better than normal: she and Jeremy were officially dating, and last weekend Anh had showed up to beers-and-s’mores night wearing leggings and an oversize MIT sweater she’d clearly borrowed from him. When Olive had eaten lunch with the two of them the other day, it hadn’t even felt awkward. Plus, the first-, second-, and even third-year grads were too scared of Adam Carlsen’s “girlfriend” to steal Olive’s pipettes, which meant that she didn’t have to stuff them in her backpack and take them home for the weekend anymore. And she was getting some grade A free food out of this. She could take Adam Carlsen—yes, even this pitch-black-mood Adam Carlsen. For ten minutes a week, at the very least.

“Hey.” She smiled. He responded with a look that exuded moodiness and existential angst. Olive took a fortifying breath. “How are you?”

“Fine.” His tone was clipped, his expression tenser than usual. He was wearing a red plaid shirt and jeans, looking more like a wood-chopping lumberjack than a scholar pondering the mysteries of computational biology. She couldn’t help noticing the muscles and wondered again if he had his clothes custom-made. His hair was still a bit long but shorter than the previous week. It seemed a little surreal that she and Adam Carlsen were at a point where she was able to keep track of both his moods and his haircuts.

“Ready to get coffee?” she chirped.

He nodded distractedly, barely looking at her. On a table in the back, a fifth-year was glancing at them while pretending to clean the monitor of his laptop.

“Sorry if I was late. I just—”

“It’s fine.”

“Did you have a good week?”

“Fine.”

Okay. “Um . . . did you do anything fun last weekend?”

“I worked.”

They got in line to order, and it was all Olive could do to stop herself from sighing. “Weather’s been nice, right? Not too hot.”

He grunted in response.

It was starting to be a bit much. There was a limit to what Olive would do for this fake-dating relationship—even for a free mango Frappuccino. She sighed. “Is it because of the haircut?”

That got his attention. Adam looked down at her, a vertical line deep between his eyebrows. “What?”

“The mood. Is it because of the haircut?”

“What mood?”

Olive gestured broadly toward him. “This. The bad mood you’re in.”

“I’m not in a bad mood.”

She snorted—though that was probably not the right term for what she just did. It was too loud and derisive, more like a laugh. A snaugh.

“What?” He frowned, unappreciative of her snaugh.

“Come on.”

“What?”

“You ooze moodiness.”

“I do not.” He sounded indignant, which struck her as oddly endearing.

“You so do. I saw that face, and I immediately knew.”

“You did not.”

“I did. I do. But it’s fine, you’re allowed to be in a bad mood.”

It was their turn, so she took a step forward and smiled at the cashier.

“Good morning. I’ll have a pumpkin spice latte. And that cream cheese danish over there. Yep, that one, thank you. And”—she pointed at Adam with her thumb—“he’ll have chamomile tea. No sugar,” she added cheerfully. She immediately took a few steps to the side, hoping to avoid damage in case Adam decided to throw a petri dish at her. She was surprised when he calmly handed his credit card to the boy behind the counter. Really, he wasn’t as bad as they made him out to be.

“I hate tea,” he said. “And chamomile.”

Olive beamed up at him. “That is unfortunate.”

“You smart-ass.”

He stared straight ahead, but she was almost certain that he was about to crack a smile. There was a lot to be said about him but not that he didn’t have a sense of humor.

“So . . . not the haircut?”

“Mm? Ah, no. It was a weird length. Getting in my way while I was running.”

Oh. So he was a runner. Like Olive. “Okay. Great. Because it doesn’t look bad.”

It looks good. As in, really good. You were probably one of the most handsome men I’d ever talked to last week, but now you look even better. Not that I care about these things. I don’t care at all. I rarely notice guys, and I’m not sure why I’m noticing you, or your hair, or your clothes, or how tall and broad you are. I really don’t get it. I never care. Usually. Ugh.

“I . . .” He seemed flustered for a second, his lips moving without making a sound as he looked for an appropriate response. Then, out of the blue, he said, “I talked with the department chair this morning. He’s still refusing to release my research funds.”

“Oh.” She cocked her head. “I thought they weren’t due to decide until the end of September.”

“They aren’t. This was an informal meeting, but the topic came up. He said that he’s still monitoring the situation.”

“I see.” She waited for him to continue. When it became clear that he wouldn’t, she asked, “Monitoring . . . how?”

“Unclear.” He was clenching his jaw.

“I’m sorry.” She felt for him. She really did. If there was something she could empathize with, it was scientific studies coming to an abrupt halt because of a lack of resources. “Does that mean that you can’t continue your research?”

“I have other grants.”

“So . . . the problem is that you cannot start new studies?”

“I can. I had to rearrange different pots, but I should be able to afford to start new lines of research, too.”

Uh? “I see.” She cleared her throat. “So . . . let me recap. It sounds like Stanford froze your funds based on rumors, which I agree is a crappy move. But it also sounds like for now you can afford to do what you were planning, so . . . it’s not the end of the world?”

Adam gave her an affronted glare, suddenly looking even more cross.

Oh, boy. “Don’t get me wrong, I understand the principle of the matter, and I’d be mad, too. But you have, how many other grants? Actually, don’t answer that. I’m not sure I want to know.”

He probably had fifteen. He also had tenure, and dozens of publications, and there were all those honors listed on his website. Not to mention that she’d read on his CV that he had one patent. Olive, on the other hand, had cheap knockoff reagents and old pipettes that regularly got stolen. She tried not to dwell on how much further ahead than her he was in his career, but it was unforgettable, how good he was at what he did. How annoyingly good.