HYPOTHESIS: There is no moment in life that cannot be improved by food delivered by conveyor belt.
Everyone saw them.
People whom Olive had never met before, people whom she recognized from blog posts and science Twitter, people from her department who’d been her teachers in previous years. People who smiled at Adam, who addressed him by his first name or as Dr. Carlsen, who told him “Great talk” or “See you around.” People who completely ignored Olive, and people who studied her curiously—her, and Adam, and the place where their hands were joined.
Adam mostly nodded back, only stopping to chat with Holden.
“You guys skipping the boring shit?” he asked with a knowing smile.
“Yep.”
“I’ll make sure to drink your booze, then. And to extend your apologies.”
“No need.”
“I’ll just say you had a family emergency.” Holden winked. “Perhaps future-family emergency, how does that sound?”
Adam rolled his eyes and pulled Olive outside. She had to hurry to keep up with him, not because he was walking particularly fast, but because his legs were so long, one of his strides was worth about three of hers.
“Um . . . I’m wearing heels, here.”
He turned to her, his eyes traveling down her legs and then rapidly moving away. “I know. You’re less vertically challenged than usual.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Hey, I’m five-eight. That’s actually pretty tall.”
“Hm.” Adam’s expression was noncommittal.
“What’s that face?”
“What face?”
“Your face.”
“Just my regular face?”
“No, that’s your ‘you’re not tall’ face.”
He smiled, just a smidge. “Are the shoes okay for walking? Should we go back?”
“They’re fine, but can we slow down?”
He feigned a sigh, but he did. His hand let go of hers and pushed against her lower back to steer her to the right. She had to hide a small shiver.
“So . . .” She stuffed her fists in the pockets of her coat, trying to ignore how the tips of her fingers were still tingling. “Those free drinks you mentioned? Do they come with food?”
“I’ll get you dinner.” Adam’s lips curved a little more. “You’re not a cheap date, though.”
She leaned into his side and bumped her shoulder against his biceps. It was hard not to notice that there was no give. “I really am not. I fully plan to eat and drink my feelings.”
His smile was more uneven than ever. “Where do you want to go, smart-ass?”
“Let’s see . . . What do you like? Aside from tap water and hard-boiled spinach?”
He gave her a dirty side-look. “How about burgers?”
“Meh.” She shrugged. “I guess. If there’s nothing else.”
“What’s wrong with burgers?”
“I don’t know. They taste like foot.”
“They what?”
“What about Mexican? Do you like Mexican?”
“Burgers don’t taste like—”
“Or Italian? Pizza would be great. And maybe there’s something celery-based that you could order.”
“Burgers it is.”
Olive laughed. “What about Chinese?”
“Had it for lunch.”
“Well, people in China have Chinese food multiple times a day, so you shouldn’t let that stop you from— Oh.”
It took Adam two whole steps to realize that Olive had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He whirled around to look at her. “What?”
“There.” She pointed to the red-and-white sign across the road.
Adam’s gaze followed, and for a long moment he simply stared, blinking several times. And then: “No.”
“There,” she repeated, feeling her cheeks widen into a grin.
“Olive.” There was a deep vertical line between his eyebrows. “No. There are way better restaurants we can—”
“But I want to go to that one.”
“Why? There’s—”
She moved closer to him and grasped the sleeve of his blazer. “Please. Please?”
Adam pinched his nose, sighed, and pursed his lips. But not five seconds later he put his hand between her shoulder blades to guide her across the street.
THE PROBLEM, HE explained in hushed tones as they waited to be seated, was not the sushi train, but the all-you-can-eat for twenty dollars.
“It’s never a good sign,” he told her, but his voice sounded more resigned than combative, and when the server ushered them inside, he followed her meekly to the booth. Olive marveled at the plates traveling on the conveyor belt weaving across the restaurant, unable to stop her openmouthed grin. When she remembered Adam’s presence and turned her attention back to him, he was staring at her with an expression halfway between exasperated and indulgent.
“You know,” he told her, eyeing a seaweed salad passing by his shoulder, “we could go to a real Japanese restaurant. I am very happy to pay for however much sushi you want to eat.”
“But will it move around me?”
He shook his head. “I take it back: you are a disturbingly cheap date.”
She ignored him and lifted the glass door, grabbing a roll and a chocolate doughnut. Adam muttered something that sounded a lot like “very authentic,” and when the waitress stopped by he ordered them both a beer.
“What do you think this is?” Olive dipped a piece of sushi in her soy sauce. “Tuna or salmon?”
“Probably spider meat.”
She popped it into her mouth. “Delicious.”
“Really.” He looked skeptical.
It wasn’t, in all truth. But it was okay. And this, well, this was so much fun. Exactly what she needed to empty her mind of . . . everything. Everything but here and now. With Adam.
“Yep.” She pushed the remaining piece toward him, silently daring him to try it.
He broke apart his chopsticks with a long-suffering expression and picked it up, chewing for a long time.
“It tastes like foot.”
“No way. Here.” She grabbed a bowl of edamame from the belt. “You can have this. It’s basically broccoli.”
He brought one to his mouth, managing to look like he didn’t hate it. “We don’t have to talk, by the way.”
Olive tilted her head.
“You said you didn’t want to talk to anyone back at the hotel. So we don’t have to, if you’d rather eat this”—he glanced at the plates she had accumulated with obvious distrust—“food in silence.”
You’re not just anyone, seemed like a dangerous thing to say, so she smiled. “I bet you’re great at silences.”
“Is that a dare?”
She shook her head. “I want to talk. Just, can we not talk about the conference? Or science? Or the fact that the world is full of assholes?” And that some of them are your close friends and collaborators?
His hand closed into a fist on the table, jaw clenched tight as he nodded.
“Awesome. We could chat about how nice this place is—”
“It’s appalling.”
“—or the taste of the sushi—”
“Foot.”
“—or the best movie in the Fast and Furious franchise—”
“Fast Five. Though I have a feeling you’re going to say—”
“Tokyo Drift.”
“Right.” He sighed, and they exchanged a small smile. And then, then the smile faded and they just stared at each other, something thick and sweet coloring the air between them, magnetic and just the right side of bearable. Olive had to rip her gaze from his, because—no. No.
She turned away, and her eyes fell on a couple at a table a few feet to their right. They were the mirror image of Adam and Olive, sitting on each side of their booth, all warm glances and tentative smiles. “Do you think they’re on a fake date?” she asked, leaning back against her seat.
Adam followed her gaze to the couple. “I thought those mostly involved coffee shops and sunscreen applications?”
“Nah. Only the best ones.”
He laughed silently. “Well.” He focused on the table, and on angling his chopsticks so that they were parallel to each other. “I can definitely recommend it.”
Olive dipped her chin to hide a smile and then leaned forward to steal one edamame.
IN THE ELEVATOR she held on to his biceps and took off her heels, failing disastrously at being graceful as he studied her and shook his head. “I thought you said they didn’t hurt?” He sounded curious. Amused? Fond?
“That was ages ago.” Olive picked them up and let them dangle from her fingers. When she straightened, Adam was again impossibly tall. “Now I am very ready to chop off my feet.”
The elevator pinged, and the doors opened. “That seems counterproductive.”
“Oh, you have no idea— Hey, what are you—?”
Her heart skipped what felt like a dozen beats when Adam swept her up into a full bridal carry. She yelped, and he carried her to their room, all because she had a blister on her pinkie toe. Without much of a choice, she closed her arms around his neck and sank against him, trying to make sure she’d survive if he decided to drop her. His hands were warm around her back and knee, forearms tight and strong.
He smelled amazing. He felt even better.
“You know, the room’s only twenty meters away—”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Adam.”
“We Americans think in feet, Canada.”
“I’m too heavy.”
“You really are.” The ease with which he shifted her in his arms to slide the key card belied his words. “You should cut pumpkin-flavored drinks from your diet.”
She pulled his hair and smiled into his shoulder. “Never.”
Their name tags were still on the TV table, exactly where they’d left them, and there was a conference program half-open on Adam’s bed, not to mention tote bags and a mountain of useless flyers. Olive noticed them immediately, and it was like having a thousand little splinters pressed deep into a fresh wound. It brought back every single word Tom had said to her, all his lies and his truths and his mocking insults, and . . .
Adam must have known. As soon as he put her down, he gathered everything that was conference related and stuck it on a chair facing the windows, where it was hidden from their sight, and Olive . . . She could have hugged him. She wasn’t going to—she already had, twice today—but she really could have. Instead she resolutely pushed all those little splinters out of her mind, plopped herself down on her bed belly up, and stared at the ceiling.
She’d thought it would be awkward, being with him in such a small space for a whole night. And it was a little bit, or at least it had been when she’d first arrived earlier today, but now she felt calm and safe. Like her world, constantly hectic and messy and demanding, was slowing down. Easing up, just a bit.
The bedcover rustled under her head when she turned to look at Adam. He seemed relaxed, too, as he draped his jacket against the back of a chair, then took off his watch and set it neatly on the desk. The casual domesticity of it—the thought that his day and hers would end in the same place, at the same time—soothed her like a slow caress down her spine.
“Thank you. For buying me food.”
He glanced at her, crinkling his nose. “I don’t know that there was any food involved.”
She smiled, rolling to her side. “You’re not going out again?”
“Out?”
“Yeah. To meet other very important science people? Eat another seven pounds of edamame?”
“I think I’ve had enough networking and edamame for this decade.” He took off his shoes and socks, and set them neatly by the bed.
“You’re staying in, then?”
He paused and looked at her. “Unless you’d rather be alone?”
No, I would not. She propped herself up on her elbow. “Let’s watch a movie.”
Adam blinked at her. “Sure.” He sounded surprised but not displeased. “But if your taste in movies is anything like your taste in restaurants, it’ll probably—”
He didn’t see the pillow coming at him. It bounced off his face and then fell to the floor, making Olive giggle and spring off the bed. “You mind if I shower, before?”
“You smart-ass.”
She started rummaging through her suitcase. “You can pick the movie! I don’t care which one, as long as there are no scenes in which horses are killed, because it— Crap.”
“What?”
“I forgot my pajamas.” She looked for her phone in the pockets of her coat. It wasn’t there, and she realized that she hadn’t brought it with her to the restaurant. “Have you seen my— Oh, there it is.”
The battery was almost dead, probably because she had forgotten to turn off the recording after her talk. She hadn’t checked her messages in a few hours, and found several unread texts—mostly from Anh and Malcolm, asking her where she was and if she still planned to come to the social, telling her to get her ass there ASAP because “the booze is flowing like a river,” and then, finally, just informing her that they were all going downtown to a bar. Anh must have been well on her way to wasted by that point, because her last message read: Clallif u want tp join ♥ us, Olvie
“I forgot my pajamas and wanted to see if I could borrow something from my friends, but I don’t think they’ll be back for hours. Though maybe Jess didn’t go with them, let me text and see if—”
“Here.” Adam set something black and neatly folded on her bed. “You can use this if you want.”
She studied it skeptically. “What is it?”
“A T-shirt. I slept in it yesterday, but it’s probably better than the dress you’re wearing. To sleep in, I mean,” he added, a faint flush on his cheeks.
“Oh.” She picked it up, and the T-shirt unfolded. She immediately noticed three things: it was large, so large that it would hit her mid-thigh or even lower; it smelled heavenly, a mix of Adam’s skin and laundry detergent that had her wanting to bury her face in it and inhale for weeks; and on the front, it said in big, white letters . . .
“ ‘Biology Ninja’?”
Adam scratched the back of his neck. “I didn’t buy it.”
“Did you . . . steal it?”
“It was a present.”
“Well.” She grinned. “This is one hell of a present. Doctor ninja.”
He stared at her flatly. “If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”
She chuckled. “Are you sure it’s okay? What will you wear?”
“Nothing.”
She must have been gaping at him a little too much, because he gave her an amused look and shook his head.
“I’m kidding. I have a tee under my shirt.”
She nodded and hurried into the bathroom, making a point not to meet his eyes.
Alone under the hot jet of the shower it was much harder to concentrate on stale sushi and Adam’s uneven smile, and to forget why he’d ended up allowing her to cling to him for three whole hours. What Tom had done to her today was despicable, and she was going to have to report him. She was going to have to tell Adam. She was going to have to do something. But every time she tried to think about it rationally, she could hear his voice in her head—mediocre and nice legs and useless and derivative and little sob story—so loud that she was afraid her skull would shatter into pieces.
So she kept her shower as quick as possible, distracting herself by reading the labels of Adam’s shampoo and body wash (something hypoallergenic and pH-balanced that had her rolling her eyes) and drying herself as fast as humanly possible. She took out her contacts, then stole a bit of his toothpaste. Her gaze fell on his toothbrush; it was charcoal black, down to the bristles, and she couldn’t help but giggle.
When she stepped out of the bathroom, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing plaid pajama pants and a white T-shirt. He was holding the TV remote in one hand and his phone in the other, looking between the two screens with a frown.
“You would.”
“Would what?” he asked absentmindedly.
“Have a black toothbrush.”
His mouth twitched. “You will be shocked to hear that there is no Netflix category for movies in which horses don’t die.”
“An obscenity, isn’t it? It’s much needed.” She crumpled her too-short dress into a ball and stuffed it inside her bag, fantasizing that she was stuffing Tom’s throat. “If I were American, I’d totally run for Congress on that platform.”
“Should we fake-marry, so you can get citizenship?”
Her heart stumbled. “Oh, yes. I think it’s time we fake-move-to-the-next-level.”
“So”—he tapped at his phone—“I’m just googling ‘dead horse,’ plus the title of whatever movie sounds good.”
“That’s what I usually do.” She padded across the room until she was standing next to him. “What do you have?”
“This one’s about a linguistics professor who’s asked to help decipher an alien—”
He glanced up from his phone, and immediately fell silent. His mouth opened and then shut, and his eyes skittered to her thighs, her feet, her unicorn knee socks, and quickly back to her face. No, not her face: some point above her shoulder. He cleared his throat before saying, “Glad it . . . fits.” He was looking at his phone again. His grip on the remote had tightened.
It was a long beat before she realized that he was referring to his T-shirt. “Oh, yeah.” She grinned. “Exactly my size, right?” It was so large that it covered pretty much the same amount of skin her dress had, but was soft and comfortable like an old shoe. “Maybe I won’t give it back.”
“It’s all yours.”
She rocked on her heels, and wondered if it would be okay if she sat next to him now. It was only convenient, since they had to choose a movie together. “Can I really sleep in it this week?”
“Of course. I’ll be gone tomorrow, anyway.”
“Oh.” She knew that, of course. She’d known the first time he’d told her, a couple of weeks ago; she’d known this morning when she’d boarded the plane in San Francisco, and she’d known mere hours ago, when she’d used that precise piece of information to comfort herself that no matter how awkward and stressful, her stay with Adam would at least be short-lived. Except that it wasn’t awkward now. And it wasn’t stressful. Not nearly as much as the idea of being apart from him for several days. Of being here, of all places, without him. “How big is your suitcase?”
“Hm?”
“Can I come with you?”
He looked up at her, still smiling, but he must’ve noticed something in her eyes, behind the joke and the attempt at humor. Something vulnerable and imploring that she’d failed to adequately bury within herself.
“Olive.” He dropped his phone and the remote on the bed. “Don’t let them.”
She just tilted her head. She was not going to cry again. There was no point in it. And she was not like this—this fragile, defenseless creature who second-guessed herself at every turn. At least, she didn’t use to be. God, she hated Tom Benton.
“Let them?”
“Don’t let them ruin this conference for you. Or science. Or make you feel any less proud of your accomplishments.”
She looked down, studying the yellow of her socks as she buried her toes in the soft carpet. And then up to him again.
“You know what’s really sad about this?”
He shook his head, and Olive continued.
“For a moment there, during the talk . . . I really enjoyed myself. I was panicky. Close to puking, for sure. But while I was talking to this huge group of people about my work and my hypotheses and my ideas, and explaining my reasoning and the trials and errors and why what I research is so important, I . . . I felt confident. I felt good at it. It all felt right and fun. Like science is supposed to be when you share it.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Like maybe I could be an academic, down the road. A real one. And maybe make a difference.”
He nodded as though he knew exactly what she meant. “I wish I had been there, Olive.”
She could tell he really did. That he regretted not being with her. But even Adam—indomitable, decisive, ever-competent Adam—couldn’t be in two places at once, and the fact remained that he had not seen her talk.
I have no idea if you’re good enough, but that’s not what you should be asking yourself. What matters is whether your reason to be in academia is good enough. That’s what he’d told her years ago in the bathroom. What she’d been repeating to herself for years whenever she’d hit a wall. But what if he’d been wrong all along? What if there was such a thing as good enough? What if that was what mattered the most?
“What if it’s true? What if I really am mediocre?”
He didn’t reply for a long moment. He just stared, a hint of frustration in his expression, a thoughtful line to his lips. And then, low and even, he said, “When I was in my second year of grad school, my adviser told me that I was a failure who would never amount to anything.”
“What?” Whatever she’d expected, that wasn’t it. “Why?”
“Because of an incorrect primer design. But it wasn’t the first time, nor the last. And it wasn’t the most trivial reason he used to berate me. Sometimes he’d publicly humiliate his grads for no reason. But that specific time stuck with me, because I remember thinking . . .” He swallowed, and his throat worked. “I remember being sure that he was right. That I would never amount to anything.”
“But you . . .” Have published articles in the Lancet. Have tenure and millions of dollars in research grants. Were keynote speaker at a major conference. Olive wasn’t even sure what to bring up, so she settled for, “You were a MacArthur Fellow.”
“I was.” He exhaled a laugh. “And five years before the MacArthur grant, in the second year of my Ph.D., I spent an entire week preparing law school applications because I was sure that I’d never become a scientist.”
“Wait—so what Holden said was true?” She couldn’t quite believe it. “Why law school?”
He shrugged. “My parents would have loved it. And if I couldn’t be a scientist, I didn’t care what I’d become.”
“What stopped you, then?”
He sighed. “Holden. And Tom.”
“Tom,” she repeated. Her stomach twisted, leaden.
“I would have dropped out of my Ph.D. program if it hadn’t been for them. Our adviser was well-known in the field for being a sadist. Like I am, I suppose.” His mouth curled into a bitter smile. “I was aware of his reputation before starting my Ph.D. Thing is, he was also brilliant. The very best. And I thought . . . I thought that I could take it, whatever he’d dish out at me, and that it would be worth it. I thought it would be a matter of sacrifice and discipline and hard work.” There was a strain to Adam’s voice, as though the topic was not one he was used to discussing.
Olive tried to be gentle when she asked, “And it wasn’t?”
He shook his head. “The opposite, in a way.”
“The opposite of discipline and hard work?”
“We worked hard, all right. But discipline . . . discipline would presume specifically laid-out expectations. Ideal codes of behavior are defined, and a failure to adhere to them is addressed in a productive way. That’s what I thought, at least. What I still think. You said that I’m brutal with my grads, and maybe you’re right—”
“Adam, I—”
“But what I try to do is set goals for them and help them achieve them. If I realize that they’re not doing what we have mutually agreed needs to be done, I tell them what’s wrong and what they must change. I don’t baby them, I don’t hide criticism in praises, I don’t believe in that Oreo cookie feedback crap, and if they find me terrifying or antagonizing because of it, so be it.” He took a deep breath. “But I also don’t ever make it about them. It’s always about the work. Sometimes it’s well done, other times it’s not, and if it’s not . . . work can be redone. It can improve. I don’t want them to tie their self-worth to what they produce.” He paused, and he looked—no, he felt faraway. Like these were things he gave a great deal of thought to, like he wanted this for his students. “I hate how self-important this all sounds, but science is serious business, and . . . it’s my duty as a scientist, I believe.”
“I . . .” All of a sudden, the air in the hotel room was cold. I’m the one who told him, she thought, feeling her stomach flip. I’m the one who told him repeatedly that he’s terrifying and antagonizing, and that all his students hate him. “And your adviser didn’t?”
“I never quite understood what he thought. What I do know now, years later, is that he was abusive. A lot of terrible things happened under his watch—scientists were not given credit for their ideas or authorship of papers they deserved. People were publicly belittled for making mistakes that would be normal for experienced researchers—let alone trainees. Expectations were stellar, but never fully defined. Impossible deadlines were set arbitrarily, out of the blue, and grads were punished for not meeting them. Ph.D. students were constantly assigned to the same tasks, then pitted against each other and asked to compete, for my adviser’s amusement. Once he put Holden and me on the same research project and told us that whoever obtained publishable results first would receive funding for the following semester.”
She tried to imagine how it would feel, if Dr. Aslan openly promoted a competitive environment between Olive and her cohorts. But no—Adam and Holden had been close friends their whole lives, so the situation wasn’t comparable. It would have been like being told that to receive a salary next semester, Olive would need to outscience Anh. “What did you do?”
He ran a hand through his hair, and a strand fell on his forehead. “We paired up. We figured that we had complementary skills—a pharmacology expert can achieve more with the help of a computational biologist, and vice versa. And we were right. We ran a really good study. It was exhausting, but also elating, staying up all hours to figure out how to fix our protocols. Knowing that we were the first to discover something.” For a moment, he seemed to enjoy the memory. But then he pressed his lips together, rolling his jaw. “And at the end of the semester, when we presented our findings to our adviser, he told us that we’d both be without funding, because by collaborating we hadn’t followed his guidelines. We spent the following spring teaching six sections of Introduction to Biology per week—on top of lab work. Holden and I were living together. I swear that I once heard him mumble ‘mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell’ in his sleep.”
“But . . . you gave your adviser what he wanted.”
Adam shook his head. “He wanted a power play. And in the end he got it: he punished us for not dancing to his tune and published the findings we brought to him without acknowledging our role in obtaining them.”
“I . . .” Her fingers fisted in the loose fabric of her borrowed T-shirt. “Adam, I’m so sorry I ever compared you to him. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay.” He smiled at her, tight but reassuring.
It was not okay. Yes, Adam could be direct, painfully so. Stubborn and blunt and uncompromising. Not always kind, but never devious, or malicious. Quite the opposite: he was honest to a fault, and required from others the same discipline he clearly imposed on himself. As much as his grads complained about his harsh feedback or the long hours of work they were asked to put in the lab, they all recognized that he was a hands-on mentor without being a micromanager. Most of them graduated with several publications and moved on to excellent academic jobs.
“You didn’t know.”
“Still, I . . .” She bit her lip, feeling guilty. Feeling defeated. Feeling angry at Adam’s adviser and at Tom for treating academia like their own personal playground. At herself, for not knowing what to do about it. “Why did no one report him?”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Because he was short-listed for a Nobel Prize. Twice. Because he had powerful friends in high places, and we thought no one would believe us. Because he could make or break careers. Because we felt that there was no real system in place to ask for help.” There was a sour set to his jaw, and he was not looking at her anymore. It was so surreal, the idea of Adam Carlsen feeling powerless. And yet, his eyes told another story. “We were terrified, and probably somewhere deep down we were convinced that we’d signed up for it and we deserved it. That we were failures who would never amount to anything.”
Her heart hurt for him. For herself. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He shook his head again, and his expression somewhat cleared. “When he told me that I was a failure, I thought he was right. I was ready to give up on the one thing I cared about because of it. And Tom and Holden—they had their own issues with our adviser, of course. Everyone did. But they helped me. For some reason my adviser always seemed to know when something wrong was happening with my studies, but Tom mediated a lot between us. He took lots of crap so I wouldn’t have to. He was a favorite of my adviser’s and interceded to make the lab less like a battle zone.”
Adam talking about Tom as though he were a hero made her nauseous, but she remained silent. This wasn’t about her.
“And Holden . . . Holden stole my law school applications and made paper planes out of them. He was removed enough from what was happening to me that he could help me see things objectively. Just like I am removed from what happened to you today.” His eyes were on her, now. There was a light in them that she didn’t understand. “You are not mediocre, Olive. You were not invited to speak because people think that you are my girlfriend—there is no such thing, since SBD’s abstracts go through a blind review process. I would know, because I’ve been roped into reviewing them in the past. And the work you presented is important, rigorous, and brilliant.” He took a deep breath. His shoulders rose and fell in time with the thudding of her heart. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”
Maybe it was the words, or maybe the tone. Maybe it was the way he’d just told her something about himself, or how he’d taken her hand earlier and saved her from her misery. Her knight in black armor. Maybe it was none of it, maybe it was all of it, maybe it was always going to happen. Still—it didn’t matter. Suddenly, it just didn’t matter, the why of it, the how. The after. All Olive cared about was that she wanted to, right now, and that seemed enough to make it all right.
It was all so slow: the step forward she took to come to stand between his knees, the rise of her hand to his face, the way her fingers cupped his jaw. Slow enough that he could have stopped her, he could have pulled out of reach, he could have said something—and he did not. He simply looked up at her, his eyes a clear, liquid brown, and Olive’s heart at once jumped and quieted when he tilted his head and leaned into her palm.
It didn’t surprise her, how soft his skin was beneath the night stubble, how much warmer than hers. And when she bent, for once taller than him, the shape of his lips under hers was like an old song, familiar and easy. It wasn’t their first kiss, after all. Though, it was different. Calm and tentative and precious, Adam’s hand light on her waist as he tilted his chin up to her, eager and pressing, like this was something he’d thought of—like he’d been wanting it, too. It wasn’t their first kiss, but it was the first kiss that was theirs, and Olive savored it for long moments. The texture, the smell, the closeness. The slight hitch in Adam’s breath, the odd pauses, the way their lips had to work a little before finding the right angles and some form of coordination.
See? She wanted to say, triumphant. To whom, she wasn’t sure. See? It was always going to be like this. Olive grinned into his lips. And Adam—
Adam was already shaking his head when she pulled back, like a no had been waiting in his mouth all along, even as he returned her kiss. His fingers closed tight around her wrist, drawing her hand away from his face. “This is not a good idea.”
Her smile faded. He was right. He was completely right. He was also wrong. “Why?”
“Olive.” He shook his head again. Then his hand left her waist and came up to his lips, as if to touch the kiss they’d just shared, make sure it had really happened. “This is . . . no.”
He really was right. But . . . “Why?” she repeated.
Adam’s fingers pressed into his eyes. His left hand was still holding her wrist, and she wondered distractedly if he was even aware of it. If he knew that his thumb was swiping back and forth across her pulse. “This is not what we’re here for.”
She could feel her nostrils flare. “That doesn’t mean that—”
“You’re not thinking clearly.” He swallowed visibly. “You’re upset and drunk, and—”
“I had two beers. Hours ago.”
“You’re a grad student, currently depending on me for a place to stay, and even if not, the power I have over you could easily turn this into a coercive dynamic that—”
“I’m—” Olive laughed. “I’m not feeling coerced, I—”
“You’re in love with someone else!”
She almost recoiled. The way he spit out the words was that heated. It should have put her off, driven her away, once and for all drilled into her head how ridiculous this was, how disastrous an idea. It didn’t, though. By now the moody, ill-tempered ass Adam meshed so well with her Adam, the one who bought her cookies and checked her slides and let her cry into his neck. There might have been a time when she couldn’t quite reconcile the two, but they were all so clear now, the many faces of him. She wouldn’t want to leave behind any of them. Not one.
“Olive.” He sighed heavily, closing his eyes. The idea that he might be thinking of the woman who Holden mentioned flashed into her mind and slipped away, too painful to entertain.
She should just tell him. She should be honest with him, admit that she didn’t care about Jeremy, that there was no one else. Never had been. But she was terrified, paralyzed with fear, and after the day she’d had, her heart felt so easy to break. So fragile. Adam could shatter it in a thousand pieces, and still be none the wiser.
“Olive, this is how you’re feeling now. A month from now, a week, tomorrow, I don’t want you to regret—”
“What about what I want?” She leaned forward, letting her words soak the silence for drawn-out seconds. “What about the fact that I want this? Though maybe you don’t care.” She squared her shoulders, blinking quickly against the prickling sensation in her eyes. “Because you don’t want it, right? Maybe I’m just not attractive to you and you don’t want this—”
It nearly made her lose her balance, the way he tugged at her wrist and pulled her hand to himself, pressing her palm flush to his groin to show her that . . . Oh.
Oh.
Yeah.
His jaw rolled as he held her gaze. “You have no fucking idea what I want.”
It took her breath away, all of it. The low, guttural tone of his voice, the thick ridge under her fingers, the enraged, hungry note in his eyes. He pushed her hand away almost immediately, but it already felt too late.
It wasn’t that Olive hadn’t . . . the kisses they’d exchanged, they were always physical, but now it was as if something had been switched on. For a long time she’d thought Adam handsome and attractive. She’d touched him, sat on his lap, considered the vague possibility of being intimate with him. She’d thought about him, about sex, about him and sex, but it had always been abstract. Hazy and undefined. Like line art in black and white: just the base for a drawing that was suddenly coloring on the inside.
It was clear now, in the damp ache pooling between her thighs, in his eyes that were all pupil, how it would be between them. Heady and sweaty and slick. Challenging. They would do things for each other, demand things of each other. They would be incredibly close. And Olive—now that she could see it, she really, really wanted it.
She stepped close, even closer. “Well, then.” Her voice was low, but she knew he could hear her.
He shut his eyes tight. “This is not why I asked you to room with me.”
“I know.” Olive pushed a black strand of hair away from his forehead. “It’s also not why I accepted.”
His lips were parted, and he was staring down at her hand, the one that was almost wrapped around his erection a moment ago. “You said no sex.”
She had said that. She remembered thinking about her rules, listing them in his office, and she remembered being certain that she would never, ever be interested in seeing Adam Carlsen for longer than ten minutes a week. “I also said it was going to be an on-campus thing. And we just went out for dinner. So.” He might know what was best, but what he wanted was different. She could almost see the debris of his control, feel it slowly erode.
“I don’t . . .” He straightened, infinitesimally. The line of his shoulders, his jaw—he was so tense, still avoiding her eyes. “I don’t have anything.”
It was a little embarrassing, the amount of time it took for her to parse the meaning of it. “Oh. It doesn’t matter. I’m on birth control. And clean.” She bit into her lip. “But we could also do . . . other things.”
Adam swallowed, twice, and then nodded. He wasn’t breathing normally. And Olive doubted he could say no at this point. That he would even want to. He did put up a good effort, though. “What if you hate me for this, after? What if we go back and you change your mind—”
“I won’t. I . . .” She stepped—God, even closer. She wouldn’t think about after. Couldn’t, didn’t want to. “I’ve never been surer of anything. Except maybe cell theory.” She smiled, hoping he’d smile back.
Adam’s mouth remained straight and serious, but it scarcely mattered: the next time Olive felt his touch it was on the slope of her hip bone, under the cotton of the T-shirt he’d given her.
