“Yep.”

There was a crease between his eyes. “I—don’t know?”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“They’re colors. They’re all the same.”

“There must be one you like most.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Red?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yellow? Vomit green?”

His eyes narrowed. “Why are you asking?”

Olive shrugged. “It feels like something I should know.”

“Why?”

“Because. If someone tries to figure out whether we’re really dating, it might be one of the first questions they ask. Top five, for sure.”

He studied her for a few seconds. “Does that seem like a likely scenario to you?”

“About as likely as me fake-dating you.”

He nodded, as if conceding her point. “Okay. Black, I guess.”

She snorted. “Figures.”

“What’s wrong with black?” He frowned.

“It’s not even a color. It’s no colors, technically.”

“It’s better than vomit green.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Of course it is.”

“Yeah, well. It suits your scion-of-darkness personality.”

“What does that even—”

“Good morning.” The barista smiled at them cheerfully. “What will you have today?”

Olive smiled back, gesturing at Adam to order first.

“Coffee.” He darted a glance at her before adding, sheepishly, “Black.”

She had to duck her head to hide her smile, but when she glanced at him again, the corner of his mouth was curved upward. Which, she reluctantly admitted to herself, was not a bad look for him. She ignored it and ordered the most fatty, sugary thing on the drink menu, asking for extra whipped cream. She was wondering if she should try to make up for it by buying an apple, too, or if she should just lean into it and top it off with a cookie, when Adam took a credit card out of his wallet and held it to the cashier.

“Oh, no. No, no, no. No.” Olive put her hand in front of his and lowered her voice. “You can’t pay for my stuff.”

He blinked. “I can’t?”

“That’s not the kind of fake relationship we’re having.”

He looked surprised. “It isn’t?”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “I would never fake-date a dude who thinks that he has to pay for my coffee just because he’s a dude.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I doubt a language exists in which the thing you just ordered could be referred to as ‘coffee.’ ”

“Hey—”

“And it’s not about me being a ‘dude’ ”—the word came out a touch pained—“but about you still being a grad student. And your yearly income.”

For a moment she hesitated, wondering if she should be offended. Was Adam being his well-known ass self? Was he patronizing her? Did he think she was poor? Then she remembered that she was, in fact, poor, and that he probably made five times as much as her. She shrugged, adding a chocolate chip cookie, a banana, and a pack of gum to her coffee. To his credit, Adam said nothing and paid the resulting $21.39 without batting an eye.

While they were waiting for their drinks, Olive’s mind began drifting off to her project and to whether she could convince Dr. Aslan to buy her better reagents soon. She looked distractedly around the coffee shop, finding that even though the research assistant, the postdoc, and one of the students were gone, two grads (one of whom serendipitously happened to work in Anh’s lab) were still sitting at a table by the door, glancing toward them every few minutes. Excellent.

She leaned her hip against the counter and looked up at Adam. Thank God this thing was only going to be ten minutes a week, or she’d develop a permanent crick in her neck.

“Where were you born?” she asked.

“Is this another one of your green card marriage interview questions?”

She giggled. He smiled in response, as if pleased to have made her laugh.

Though it was certainly for some other reason.

“Netherlands. The Hague.”

“Oh.”

He leaned against the counter, too, directly in front of her. “Why ‘oh’?”

“I don’t know.” Olive shrugged. “I think I expected . . . New York? Or maybe Kansas?”

He shook his head. “My mother used to be a US ambassador to the Netherlands.”

“Wow.” Weird, to imagine that Adam had a mother. A family. That before being tall and scary and infamous, he’d been a kid. Maybe he spoke Dutch.

Maybe he had smoked herring for breakfast on the reg. Maybe his mother had wanted him to follow in her footsteps and become a diplomat, but his shiny personality had emerged and she’d given up on that dream. Olive found herself acutely eager to know more about his upbringing, which was . . .