She needed to avert her eyes from him, now. And he needed to look elsewhere, too. Why were they staring at each other?

“Okay,” she chirped. “That, um . . . worked.”

Adam’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t reply.

“Well, then. I’m going to . . . um . . .” She gestured behind her shoulders with her thumb.

“Anh?”

“Yeah. Yeah, to Anh.”

He swallowed heavily. “Okay. Yeah.”

They had kissed. They had kissed—twice, now. Twice. Not that it mattered. No one cared. But. Twice. Plus, the lap. Earlier today. Again, not that it mattered.

“I’ll see you around, right? Next week?”

He lifted his fingers to his lips, then let his arm drop to his side. “Yes. On Wednesday.”

It was Thursday now. Which meant that they were going to see each other in six days. Which was fine. Olive was fine, no matter when or how often they met. “Yep. See you Wed— Hey, what about the picnic?”

“The— Oh.” Adam rolled his eyes, looking a little more like himself. “Right. That fu—” He stopped short. “That picnic.”

She grinned. “It’s on Monday.”

He sighed. “I know.”

“You’re still going?”

He gave her a look that clearly stated: It’s not like I have a choice, even though I’d rather have my nails extracted one by one. With pliers.

Olive laughed. “Well. I’m going, too.”

“At least there’s that.”

“Are you bringing Tom?”

“Probably. He actually likes people.”

“Okay. I can network with him a bit, and you and I can show off how steady and committed we are to the department chair. You’ll look like a wingless bird. No flight risk whatsoever.”

“Perfect. I’ll bring a counterfeit marriage license to casually drop at his feet.”

Olive laughed, waved goodbye, and then jogged up to Anh. She rubbed the side of her hand against her lips, as if trying to scrub her mind clean of the fact that she had just kissed Adam—Dr. Adam Carlsen—for the second time in her life. Which, again, was fine. It had been barely a kiss. Not important.

“Well, then,” Anh said, tucking her phone into her pocket. “You really just made out in front of the biology building with associate professor Adam MacArthur Carlsen.”

Olive rolled her eyes and started up the stairs. “I’m pretty sure that’s not his middle name. And we did not.”

“But it was clear that you wanted to.”

“Shut up. Why were you looking at us, anyway?”

“I wasn’t. I happened to glance up when he was about to jump you, and I just couldn’t look away.”

Olive snorted, plugging her headphones into her phone’s port. “Right. Of course.”

“He’s really into you. I can tell from the way he stares at—”

“I’m gonna listen to music very loudly now. To tune you out.”

“—you.”

It wasn’t until much later, after Olive had been working on Tom’s report for several hours, that she remembered what Adam had said when she’d told him she’d be at the picnic.

At least there’s that.

Olive ducked her head and smiled at her toes.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Seven

Tom’s report was about a third done and sitting tight at thirty-four pages single-spaced, Arial (11 point), no justification. It was 11:00 a.m., and Olive had been working in the lab since about five—analyzing peptide samples, writing down protocol notes, taking covert naps while the PCR machine ran—when Greg barged in, looking absolutely furious.

It was unusual, but not too unusual. Greg was a bit of a hothead to begin with, and grad school came with a lot of angry outbursts in semipublic places, usually for reasons that, Olive was fully aware, would appear ridiculous to someone who’d never stepped foot in academia. They’re making me TA Intro to Bio for the fourth time in a row; the paper I need is behind a paywall; I had a meeting with my supervisor and accidentally called her “Mom.”

Greg and Olive shared an adviser, Dr. Aslan, and while they’d always gotten along fine, they had never been particularly close. Olive had hoped, by picking a female adviser, to avoid some of the nastiness that was so often directed at women in STEM. Unfortunately she had still found herself in an all-male lab, which was . . . a less-than-ideal environment. That was why when Greg came in, slammed the door, and then threw a folder on his bench, Olive was not sure what to do. She watched him sit down and begin to sulk. Chase, another lab mate, followed him inside a moment later with an uneasy expression and started gingerly patting his back.

Olive looked longingly at her RNA samples. Then she stepped closer to Greg’s bench and asked, “What’s wrong?”

She had expected the answer to be The production of my reagent has been discontinued, or My p-value is .06, or Grad school was a mistake, but now it’s too late to back out of it because my self-worth is unbreakably tied to my academic performance, and what would even be left of me if I decided to drop out?

Instead what she got was: “Your stupid boyfriend is what’s wrong.”

By now the fake dating had been going on for over two weeks: Olive didn’t startle anymore when someone referred to Adam as her boyfriend. Still, Greg’s words were so unexpected and full of venom that she couldn’t help but answer, “Who?”

“Carlsen.” He spat the name out like a curse.

“Oh.”

“He’s on Greg’s dissertation committee,” Chase explained in a significantly milder tone, not quite meeting Olive’s eyes.

“Oh. Right.” This could be bad. Very bad. “What happened?”

“He failed my proposal.”

“Shit.” Olive bit into her lower lip. “I’m sorry, Greg.”

“This is going to set me back a lot. It’ll take me months to revise it, all because Carlsen had to go and nitpick. I didn’t even want him on my committee; Dr. Aslan forced me to add him because she’s so obsessed with his stupid computational stuff.”

Olive chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to come up with something meaningful to say and failing miserably. “I’m really sorry.”

“Olive, do you guys talk about this stuff?” Chase asked out of the blue, eyeing her suspiciously. “Did he tell you he wasn’t going to pass Greg?”

“What? No. No, I . . .” I talk to him for exactly fifteen minutes a week. And, okay, I’ve kissed him. Twice. And I sat on his lap. Once. But it’s just that, and Adam—he speaks very little. I actually wish he spoke more, since I know nothing about him, and I’d like to know at least something. “No, he doesn’t. I think it would be against regulations if he did.”

“God.” Greg slammed his palm against the edge of the bench, making her jump. “He’s such a dick. What a sadistic piece of shit.”

Olive opened her mouth to—to do what, precisely? To defend Adam? He was a dick. She had seen him be a dick. In full action. Maybe not recently, and maybe not to her, but if she’d wanted to count on her fingers the number of acquaintances who’d ended up in tears because of him, well . . . She would need both her hands, and then her toes. Maybe borrow some of Chase’s, too.

“Did he say why, at least? What you have to change?”