“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.”
His hand came up to cup the side of her face. “What do you—”
“But that’s not very important.”
“Olive.” He pulled her closer, pressing his lips against her forehead. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is that you’re crying about, I will fix it. I will make it right. I—”
“Adam,” she interrupted him with a wet smile. “It’s not important, because the second thing, that’s what really matters.”
They were so close, now. She could smell his scent and his warmth, and his hands were cradling her face, thumbs swiping back and forth to dry her cheeks.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured. “What is the second thing?”
She was still crying, but she’d never been happier. So she said it, probably in the worst accent he’d ever heard.
“Ik hou van jou, Adam.”
Epilogue
RESULTS: Careful analyses of the data collected, accounting for potential confounds, statistical error, and experimenter’s bias, show that when I fall in love . . . things don’t actually turn out to be that bad.
