“Very real.” Malcolm’s smile was smug. “We fuck like bunnies.”

“Fantastic. Well, Ol, we’ll talk about this more. A lot more. We’ll probably only talk about the greatest fake-dating event of the twenty-first century for millennia to come, but for now we should focus on Tom, and . . . it changes nothing, whether you and Adam are together. I still think he’d want to know. I’d want to know. Ol, if the situation were inverted, if you were the one who stood to lose something and Adam had been sexually harassed—”

“I haven’t.”

“Yes, Ol, you have.” Anh’s eyes were earnest, burning into hers, and it occurred to Olive then, the enormity of what had happened. Of what Tom had done.

She took a shuddering breath. “If the situation were inverted, I would want to know. But it’s different.”

“Why is it different?”

Because I’m in love with Adam. And he’s not in love with me. Olive massaged her temples, trying to think against the mounting headache. “I don’t want to take something he loves away from him. Adam respects and admires Tom, and I know Tom’s had Adam’s back in the past. Maybe he’s better off not knowing.”

“If only there were a way to find out what Adam would prefer,” Malcolm said.

Olive sniffled in response. “Yeah.”

“If only there were someone who knows Adam very well that we might ask,” Malcolm said, louder this time.

“Yeah,” Anh repeated, “that would be great. But there isn’t, so—”

“If only there were someone in this room who recently started dating Adam’s closest friend of nearly three decades,” Malcolm near-yelled, full of passive-aggressive indignity, and Anh and Olive exchanged a wide-eyed look.

“Holden!”

“You could ask Holden for advice!”

Malcolm huffed. “You two can be so smart and yet so slow.”

Olive suddenly recalled something. “Holden hates Tom.”

“Uh? Why does he hate him?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Adam wrote it off as some odd personality quirk of Holden’s, but—”

“Hey. My man’s personality is perfect.”

“Maybe there is something else?”

Anh nodded energetically. “Malcolm, where can Olive find Holden right this minute?”

“I don’t know. But”—he tapped his phone with a smug smile—“I happen to have his number right here.”

—

HOLDEN (OR HOLDEN BubbleButt, as Malcolm had saved him in his contacts) was just finishing up his talk. Olive caught the last five minutes of it—something about crystallography she neither understood nor wanted to—and was totally unsurprised by how smooth and charismatic a speaker he was. She approached him on the podium once he was done answering questions, and he smiled when he noticed her walk up the stairs, seeming genuinely happy to see her.

“Olive. My new roommate-in-law!”

“Right. Yes. Um, great talk.” She ordered herself to stop wringing her hands. “I wanted to ask you a question . . .”

“Is it about the nucleic acids in the fourth slide? Because I totally BS’d my way through them. My Ph.D. student made the figure, and she’s way smarter than me.”

“No. The question is about Adam—”

Holden’s expression brightened.

“Well, actually, it’s about Tom Benton.”

It darkened just as quickly. “What about Tom?”

Right. What about Tom, precisely? Olive wasn’t quite sure how to approach the topic. She wasn’t even sure what she meant to ask. Sure, she could have barfed up her entire life story for Holden and begged him to fix this mess for her, but somehow it didn’t seem like a good idea. She racked her brain for a moment, and then landed on: “Did you know that Adam is thinking about moving to Boston?”

“Yeah.” Holden rolled his eyes and pointed at the tall windows. There were large, ominous clouds threatening to explode with torrential rain. The wind, already chilly in September, was shaking a lonely hickory tree. “Who wouldn’t want to move here from California?” he scoffed.

Olive liked the idea of seasons, but she kept the thought to herself. “Do you think . . . Do you think he’d be happy here?”

Holden studied her intensely for a minute. “You know, you were already my favorite girlfriend of Adam’s—not that there were many; you’re the only woman who could compete with computational modeling in about a decade—but that question wins you a lifelong number-one plaque.” He pondered the matter for a minute. “I think Adam could be happy here—in his own way, of course. Broodingly, unenthusiastically happy. But yes, happy. Provided that you are here, too.”

Olive had to stop herself from snorting.

“Provided that Tom behaves.”

“Why do you say that? About Tom? I . . . I don’t mean to pry, but you told me to watch my back with him in Stanford. You . . . don’t like him?”

He sighed. “It’s not that I don’t like him—even though I don’t. It’s more that I don’t trust him.”

“Why, though? Adam told me about the things Tom did for him when your adviser was abusive.”

“See, this is where a big part of my mistrust comes in.” Holden worried at his lower lip, as if deciding whether and how to continue. “Did Tom intercede to save Adam’s ass on numerous occasions? Sure. It’s undeniable. But how did those occasions come about to begin with? Our adviser was a piece of work, but he was not a micromanager. By the time we joined his lab, he was too busy being a famous asshole to know what was going on in day-to-day lab business. Which is why he had postdocs like Tom mentor grad students like Adam and me and de facto run the lab. And yet, he knew about every single minor screwup of Adam’s. Every few weeks he’d come in, tell Adam that he was a failure of a human being for minor stuff like switching reagents or dropping a beaker, and then Tom, our adviser’s most-trusted postdoc, would publicly intervene on behalf of Adam and save the day. The pattern was eerily specific, and only for Adam—who was by far the most promising student in our program. Destined for greatness and all that. Initially, it made me a bit suspicious that Tom was purposefully sabotaging Adam. But in recent years I’ve been wondering if what he wanted was something else altogether. . . .”

“Did you tell Adam?”

“Yes. But I had no proof, and Adam . . . well, you know him. He is stubbornly, unwaveringly loyal, and he was more than a little grateful to Tom.” He shrugged. “They ended up becoming bros, and they’ve been close friends ever since.”

“Did it bother you?”

“Not per se, no. I realize I might sound jealous of their friendship, but the truth is that Adam has always been too focused and single-minded to have many friends. I’d have been happy for him, truly. But Tom . . .”

Olive nodded. Yeah. Tom. “Why would he do this? This . . . weird vendetta against Adam?”

Holden sighed. “This is why Adam dismissed my concerns. There really isn’t an obvious reason. The truth is, I don’t think Tom hates Adam. Or at least, I don’t think it’s that simple. But I do believe that Tom is smart, and very, very cunning. That there probably is some jealousy involved, some desire to take advantage of Adam, to maybe control or have power over him. Adam tends to downplay his accomplishments, but he’s one of the best scientists of our generation. Having influence over him . . . that’s a privilege, and no small feat.”

“Yeah.” She nodded again. The question, the one she’d come here to ask, was starting to take shape in her mind. “Knowing all of this. Knowing how important Tom is to Adam, if you had proof of . . . of how Tom really is, would you show Adam?”

To his credit, Holden didn’t ask what the proof was, or proof of what. He scanned Olive’s face with an intent, thoughtful expression, and when he spoke, his words were careful.

“I can’t answer that for you. I don’t think I should.” He drummed his fingers on the podium, as if deep in thought. “But I do want to tell you three things. The first you probably already know: Adam is first and foremost a scientist. So am I, and so are you. And good science only happens when we draw conclusions based on all available evidence—not just the ones that are easy, or that confirm our hypotheses. Wouldn’t you agree?”