“Won’t they know?”

She looked up from the grainy, shady-looking picture of the place. “Mm?”

“Won’t Anh know that you’re not staying with me?”

Oh. “Where are you staying?”

“The conference hotel.”

Of course. “Well.” She scratched her nose. “I wouldn’t tell her. I don’t think she’ll pay too much attention.”

“But she’ll notice if you’re staying one hour away.”

“I . . .” Yes. They would notice, and ask questions, and Olive would have to come up with a bunch of excuses and even more half-truths to deal with it. Add a few blocks to this Jenga tower of lies she’d been building for weeks. “I’ll figure it out.”

He nodded slowly. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s not your fault.”

“One could argue that it is, in fact, my fault.”

“Not at all.”

“I would offer to pay for your hotel room, but I doubt there’s anything left in a ten-mile radius.”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head emphatically. “And I wouldn’t accept it. It’s not a cup of coffee. And a scone. And a cookie. And a pumpkin Frappuccino.” She batted her eyes at him and leaned forward, trying to change the topic. “Which, by the way, is new on the menu. You could totally buy it for me, and that would make my day.”

“Sure.” He looked slightly nauseous.

“Awesome.” She grinned. “I think it’s cheaper today, some kind of Tuesday sale, so—”

“But you could room with me.”

The way he put it forward, calm and sensible, almost made it sound like it was no big deal. And Olive almost fell for it, until her ears and brain seemed to finally connect with each other and she was able to process the meaning of what he’d just said.

That she.

Could room.

With him.

Olive knew full well what sharing quarters with someone entailed, even for a very short period. Sleeping in the same room meant seeing embarrassing pajamas, taking turns to use the bathroom, hearing the swish of someone trying to find a comfortable position under the sheets loud and clear in the dark. Sleeping in the same room meant— No. Nope. It was a terrible idea. And Olive was starting to think that maybe she had maxed those out for a while. So she cleared her throat.

“I could not, actually.”

He nodded calmly. But then, then he asked equally calmly, “Why?” and she wanted to bang her head against the table.

“I couldn’t.”

“The room is a double, of course,” he offered, as if that piece of information could have possibly changed her mind.

“It’s not a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Because people will think that we . . .” She noticed Adam’s look and immediately hushed. “Okay, fine. They already think that. But.”

“But?”

“Adam.” She rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “There will be only one bed.”

He frowned. “No, as I said it’s a double—”

“It’s not. It won’t be. There will be only one bed, for sure.”

He gave her a puzzled look. “I got the booking confirmation the other day. I can forward it to you if you want; it says that—”

“It doesn’t matter what it says. It’s always one bed.”

He stared at her, perplexed, and she sighed and leaned helplessly against the back of her chair. He’d clearly never seen a rom-com or read a romance novel in his life. “Nothing. Ignore me.”

“My symposium is part of a satellite workshop the day before the conference starts, and then I’ll be speaking on the first day of the actual conference. I have the room for the entire conference, but I’ll probably need to leave for some meetings after night two, so you’d be by yourself from night three. We’d only overlap for one night.”

She listened to the logical, methodical way he listed sensible reasons why she should just accept his offer and felt a wave of panic sweep over her. “It seems like a bad idea.”

“That’s fine. I just don’t understand why.”

“Because.” Because I don’t want to. Because I have it bad. Because I’d probably have it even worse, after that. Because it’s going to be the week of September twenty-ninth, and I’ve been trying hard not to think about it.

“Are you afraid that I’ll try to kiss you without your consent? To sit on your lap, or fondle you under the pretext of applying sunscreen? Because I would never—”

Olive chucked her phone at him. He caught it in his left hand, studied its glitter amino-acid case with a pleased expression, and then carefully set it next to her laptop.

“I hate you,” She told him, sullen. She might have been pouting. And smiling at the same time.

His mouth twitched. “I know.”

“Am I ever going to live that stuff down?”

“Unlikely. And if you do, I’m sure something else will come up.”

She huffed, crossing her arms over her chest, and they exchanged a small smile.

“I can ask Holden or Tom if I can stay with them, and leave you my room,” he suggested. “But they know that I already have one, so I’d have to come up with excuses—”

“No, I’m not going to kick you out of your room.” She ran a hand through her hair and exhaled. “You’d hate it.”

He tilted his head. “What?”

“Rooming with me.”

“I would?”

“Yeah. You seem like a person who . . .” You seem like you like to keep others at arm’s length, uncompromising and ever so hard to know. You seem like you care very little about what people think of you. You seem like you know what you’re doing. You seem equally horrible and awesome, and just the thought that there’s someone you’d like to open up to, someone who’s not me, makes me feel like I can’t sit at this table any longer. “Like you’d want your own space.”

He held her gaze. “Olive. I think I’ll be fine.”

“But if you end up not being fine, then you’d be stuck with me.”

“It’s one night.” His jaw clenched and relaxed, and he added, “We are friends, no?”

Her own words, thrown back at her. I don’t want to be your friend, she was tempted to say. Thing was, she also didn’t want to not be his friend. What she wanted was completely outside of her ability to obtain, and she needed to forget it. Scrap it from her brain.

“Yes. We are.”

“Then, as a friend, don’t force me to worry about you using public transportation late at night in a city you’re not familiar with. Biking on roads without bike lanes is bad enough,” he muttered, and she immediately felt a weight sink into her stomach. He was trying to be a good friend. He cared for her, and instead of being satisfied with what she currently had, she had to ruin it all and—and want more.

She took a deep breath. “Are you sure? That it wouldn’t bother you?”

He nodded, silent.

“Okay, then. Okay.” She forced herself to smile. “Do you snore?”

He huffed out a laugh. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on. How can you not know?”

He shrugged. “I just don’t.”

“Well, that probably means you don’t. Otherwise, someone would have told you.”

“Someone?”

“A roommate.” It occurred to her that Adam was thirty-four and likely hadn’t had a roommate in about a decade. “Or a girlfriend.”

He smiled faintly and lowered his gaze. “I guess my ‘girlfriend’ will tell me after SBD, then.” He said it in a quiet, unassuming tone, clearly trying to make a joke, but Olive’s cheeks warmed, and she couldn’t quite bear to look at him anymore. Instead she picked at a thread on the sleeve of her cardigan, and searched for something to say.

“My stupid abstract.” She cleared her throat. “It was accepted as a talk.”

He met her eyes. “Faculty panel?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not happy?”

“No.” She winced.

“Is it the public-speaking thing?”

He’d remembered. Of course he had. “Yeah. It will be awful.”

Adam stared at her and said nothing. Not that it would be fine, not that the talk would go smoothly, not that she was overreacting and underselling a fantastic opportunity. His calm acceptance of her anxiety had the exact opposite effect of Dr. Aslan’s enthusiasm: it relaxed her.