“He grows on you, after a decade or so.”

“Does he?”

“Nah. Not really.”

“Poor Holden.” She huffed out a small laugh. “You weren’t the only one who remembered, by the way.”

He glanced at her. “Remembered what?”

“Our meeting. The one in the bathroom, when I came to interview.”

Olive thought that maybe his step faltered for a split second. Or maybe it didn’t. Still, there was a tinge of uncertainty in the deep breath he took.

“Did you really?”

“Yup. It just took me a while to realize that it was you. Why didn’t you say anything?” She was so curious about what had been going on in Adam’s head in the past few days, weeks, years. She was starting to imagine quite a bit, but some things . . . some things he’d have to clear up for her.

“Because you introduced yourself like we’d never met before.” She thought maybe he was flushing a little. Maybe not. Maybe it was impossible to tell, in the starless sky and the faint yellow lights. “And I’d been . . . I’d been thinking about you. For years. And I didn’t want to . . .”

She could only imagine. They’d passed each other in the hallways, been at countless department research symposiums and seminars together. She hadn’t thought anything of it, but now . . . now she wondered what he had thought.

He’d been going on and on about this amazing girl for years, but he was concerned about being in the same department, Holden had said.

And Olive had assumed so much. She had been so wrong.

“You didn’t need to lie, you know,” she said, not accusing.

He adjusted the strap of her suitcase on his shoulder. “I didn’t.”

“You sort of did. By omission.”

“True. Are you . . .” He pressed his lips together. “Are you upset?”

“No, not really. It’s really not that bad a lie.”

“It’s not?”

She nibbled on her thumbnail for a moment. “I’ve said much worse, myself. And I didn’t bring up our meeting, either, even after I made the connection.”

“Still, if you feel—”

“I’m not upset,” she said, gentle but final. She looked up at him, willing him to understand. Trying to figure out how to tell him. How to show him. “I am . . . other things.” She smiled. “Glad, for instance. That you remembered me, from that day.”

“You . . .” A pause. “You are very memorable.”

“Ha. I’m not, really. I was no one—part of a huge incoming cohort.” She snorted and looked down to her feet. Her steps had to be much quicker than his to keep up with his longer legs. “I hated my first year. It was so stressful.”

He glanced at her, surprised. “Do you remember your first seminar talk?”

“I do. Why?”

“Your elevator pitch—you called it a turbolift pitch. You put a picture from The Next Generation on your slides.”

“Oh, yes. I did.” She let out a low laugh. “I didn’t know you were a Trekkie.”

“I had a phase. And that year’s picnic, when we got rained on. You were playing freeze tag with someone’s kids for hours. They loved you—they had to physically peel the youngest off you to get him inside the car.”

“Dr. Moss’s kids.” She looked at him curiously. A light breeze rose and ruffled his hair, but he didn’t seem to mind. “I didn’t think you liked kids. The opposite, actually.”

He lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t like twenty-five-year-olds who act like toddlers. I don’t mind them if they’re actually three.”

Olive smiled. “Adam, the fact that you knew who I was . . . Did it have anything to do with your decision to pretend to date me?”

About a dozen expressions crossed his face as he looked for an answer, and she couldn’t pick apart a single one. “I wanted to help you, Olive.”

“I know. I believe that.” She rubbed her fingers against her mouth. “But was that all?”

He pressed his lips together. Exhaled. Closed his eyes, and for a split second looked like he was having his teeth and his soul pulled out. Then he said, resigned, “No.”

“No,” she repeated, pensive. “This is my place, by the way.” She pointed at the tall brick building on the corner.

“Right.” Adam looked around, studying her street. “Should I carry your bag upstairs?”

“I . . . Maybe later. There is something I need to tell you. Before.”

“Of course.”

He stopped in front of her, and she looked up at him, at the lines of his handsome, familiar face. There was only fresh breeze between them, and whatever distance Adam had seen fit to keep. Her stubborn, mercurial fake boyfriend. Wonderfully, perfectly unique. Delightfully one of a kind. Olive felt her heart overflow.

She took a deep breath. “The thing is, Adam . . . I was stupid. And wrong.” She played nervously with a lock of her hair, then let her hand drift down to her stomach, and—okay. Okay. She was going to tell him. She would do this. Now. “It’s like—it’s like statistical hypothesis testing. Type I error. It’s scary, isn’t it?”

He frowned. She could tell he had no idea where she was going with this. “Type I error?”

“A false positive. Thinking that something is happening when it’s not.”

“I know what type I error is—”

“Yes, of course. It’s just . . . in the past few weeks, what terrified me was the idea that I could misread a situation. That I could convince myself of something that wasn’t true. See something that wasn’t there just because I wanted to see it. A scientist’s worst nightmare, right?”

“Right.” His brows furrowed. “That is why in your analyses you set a level of significance that is—”

“But the thing is, type II error is bad, too.”

Her eyes bore into his, hesitant and urgent all at once. She was frightened—so frightened by what she was about to say. But also exhilarated for him to finally know. Determined to get it out.

“Yes,” he agreed slowly, confused. “False negatives are bad, too.”

“That’s the thing with science. We’re drilled to believe that false positives are bad, but false negatives are just as terrifying.” She swallowed. “Not being able to see something, even if it’s in front of your eyes. Purposefully making yourself blind, just because you’re afraid of seeing too much.”

“Are you saying that statistics graduate education is inadequate?”

She exhaled a laugh, suddenly flushed, even in the dark cool of the night. Her eyes were starting to sting. “Maybe. But also . . . I think that I have been inadequate. And I don’t want to be, not anymore.”

“Olive.” He took one step closer, just a few inches. Not enough to crowd, but plenty for her to feel his warmth. “Are you okay?”

“There have been . . . so many things that have happened, before I even met you, and I think they messed me up a little. I’ve mostly lived in fear of being alone, and . . . I’ll tell you about them, if you want. First, I have to figure it out on my own, why shielding myself with a bunch of lies seemed like a better idea than admitting even one ounce of truth. But I think . . .”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. There was a tear, one single tear that she could feel sliding down her cheek. Adam saw it and mouthed her name.

“I think that somewhere along the way I forgot that I was something. I forgot myself.”

She was the one who stepped closer. The one who put her hand on the hem of his shirt, who tugged gently and held on to it, who started touching him and crying and smiling at the same time. “There are two things I want to tell you, Adam.”

“What can I—”

“Please. Just let me tell you.”

He wasn’t very good at it. At standing there and doing nothing while her eyes welled fuller and fuller. She could tell that he felt useless, his hands dangling in fists at his sides, and she . . . she loved him even more for it. For looking at her like she was the beginning and end of his every thought.

“The first thing is that I lied to you. And my lie was not just by omission.”

“Olive—”

“It was a real lie. A bad one. A stupid one. I let you—no, I made you think that I had feelings for someone else, when in truth . . . I didn’t. I never did.”