She relaxed her pose and clutched her hands to her chest, willing her racing heartbeat to slow down. “When did you get here?!”

“Five minutes ago?” He regarded her calmly. “I was here when you came in.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

He tilted his head. “I could ask the same.”

She covered her mouth with her hand, trying to recover from the scare. “I didn’t see you. Why are you sitting in the dark like a creep?”

“Light’s broken. As usual.” Adam lifted his drink—a bottle of Coke that hilariously read “Seraphina”—and Olive remembered Jess, one of his grads, complaining about how strict Adam was about bringing food and drinks into his lab. He grabbed something from the cushion and held it out to Olive. “Here. You can have the rest of the chips.”

Olive narrowed her eyes. “You.”

“Me?”

“You stole my chips.”

His mouth curved. “Sorry. You can have what’s left.” He peeked into the bag. “I didn’t have many, I don’t think.”

She hesitated and then made her way to the couch. She distrustfully accepted the small bag and took a seat next to him. “Thanks, I guess.”

He nodded, taking a sip of his drink. She tried not to stare at his throat as he tipped his head back, averting her eyes to her knees.

“Should you be having caffeine at”—Olive glanced at the clock—“ten twenty-seven p.m.?” Come to think of it, he shouldn’t be having caffeine at all, given his baseline shiny personality. And yet the two of them got coffee together every Wednesday. Olive was nothing but an enabler.

“I doubt I’ll be sleeping much, anyway.”

“Why?”

“I need to run a set of last-minute analyses for a grant due on Sunday night.”

“Oh.” She leaned back, finding a more comfortable position. “I thought you had minions for that.”

“As it turns out, asking your grads to pull an all-nighter for you is frowned upon by HR.”

“What a travesty.”

“Truly. What about you?”

“Tom’s report.” She sighed. “I’m supposed to send it to him tomorrow and there’s a section that I just don’t . . .” She sighed again. “I’m rerunning a few analyses, just to make sure that everything is perfect, but the equipment I’m working with is not exactly . . . ugh.”

“Have you told Aysegul?”

Aysegul, he’d said. Naturally. Because Adam was a colleague of Dr. Aslan, not her grad, and it made sense that he’d think of her as Aysegul. It wasn’t the first time he’d called her that; it wasn’t even the first time Olive had noticed. It was just hard to reconcile, when they were sitting alone and talking quietly, that Adam was faculty and Olive was very much not. Worlds apart, really.

“I did, but there’s no money to get anything better. She’s a great mentor, but . . . last year her husband got sick and she decided to retire early, and sometimes it feels like she’s stopped caring.” Olive rubbed her temple. She could feel a headache coming up and had a long night ahead of her. “Are you going to tell her I told you that?”

“Of course.”

She groaned. “Don’t.”

“Might also tell her about the kisses you’ve been extorting, and the fake-dating scheme you roped me into, and above all about the sunscreen—”

“Oh God.” Olive hid her face in her knees, arms coming up to wrap around her head. “God. The sunscreen.”

“Yeah.” His voice sounded muffled from down here. “Yeah, that was . . .”

“Awkward?” she offered, sitting back straight with a grimace. Adam was looking elsewhere. She was probably imagining it, the way he was flushing.

He cleared his throat. “Among other things.”

“Yep.” It had been other things, too. A lot of things that she was not going to mention, because her other things were sure to not be his other things. His other things were probably “terrible” and “harrowing” and “invasive.” While hers . . .

“Is the sunscreen going in the Title IX complaint?”

His mouth twitched. “Right on the first page. Nonconsensual sunblock application.”

“Oh, come on. I saved you from basal cell carcinoma.”

“Groped under SPF pretense.”

She swatted him with her Twix, and he ducked a bit to avoid her, amused. “Hey, you want half of this? Since I fully plan to eat what’s left of your chips.”

“Nah.”

“You sure?”

“Can’t stand chocolate.”

Olive stared at him, shaking her head in disbelief. “You would, wouldn’t you? Hate everything that is delicious and lovely and comforting.”

“Chocolate’s disgusting.”

“You just want to live in your dark, bitter world made of black coffee and plain bagels with plain cream cheese. And occasionally salt-and-vinegar chips.”

“They are clearly your favorite chips—”

“Not the point.”

“—and I am flattered that you’ve memorized my orders.”

“It does help that they’re always the same.”

“At least I’ve never ordered something called a unicorn Frappuccino.”

“That was so good. It tasted like the rainbow.”

“Like sugar and food coloring?”

“My two favorite things in the universe. Thank you for buying it for me, by the way.” It had made for a nice fake-dating Wednesday treat this week, even though Olive had been so busy with Tom’s report that she hadn’t been able to exchange more than a couple of words with Adam. Which, she had to admit, had been a little disappointing.

“Where’s Tom by the way, while you and I slave our Friday night away?”

“Out. On a date, I think.”

“On a date? Does his girlfriend live here?”

“Tom has lots of girlfriends. In lots of places.”

“But are any of them fake?” She beamed at him, and could tell that he was tempted to smile back. “Would you like half a dollar, then? For the chips?”

“Keep it.”

“Great. Because it’s about a third of my monthly salary.”

She actually managed to make him laugh, and—it didn’t just transform his face, it changed the entire space they were inhabiting. Olive had to convince her lungs not to stop working, to keep taking in oxygen, and her eyes not to get lost in the little lines at the corners of his eyes, the dimples in the center of his cheeks. “Glad to hear that grad students’ stipends have not increased since I was one.”

“Did you use to live on instant ramen and bananas during your Ph.D., too?”

“I don’t like bananas, but I remember having lots of apples.”

“Apples are expensive, you fiscally irresponsible splurger.” She tilted her head and wondered if it was okay to ask the one thing she’d been dying to know. She told herself that it was probably inappropriate—and then went for it anyway. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-four.”

“Oh. Wow.” She’d thought younger. Or older, maybe. She’d thought he existed in an ageless dimension. It was so weird to hear a number. To have a year of birth, almost a whole decade before hers. “I’m twenty-six.” Olive wasn’t sure why she offered up the information, since he hadn’t asked. “It’s odd to think that you used to be a student, too.”

“Is it?”

“Yep. Were you like this as an undergrad, too?”

“Like this?”

“You know.” She batted her eyes at him. “Antagonistic and unapproachable.”

He glared, but she was starting to not take that too seriously. “I might have been worse, actually.”

“I bet.” There was a brief, comfortable silence as she sat back and began to tackle her bag of chips. It was all she’d ever wanted from a vending machine snack. “So does it get better?”

“What?”

“This.” She gestured inchoately around herself. “Academia. Does it get better, after grad school? Once you have tenure?”

“No. God, no.” He looked so horrified by the assumption, she had to laugh.

“Why do you stick around, then?”

“Unclear.” There was a flash of something in his eyes that Olive couldn’t quite interpret, but—nothing surprising about that. There was a lot about Adam Carlsen she didn’t know. He was an ass, but with unexpected depths. “There’s an element of sunk-cost fallacy, probably—hard to step away, when you’ve invested so much time and energy. But the science makes it worth it. When it works, anyway.”