weird. Very weird.

“Here you go.” Their drinks appeared on the counter. Olive told herself that the way the blond barista was obviously checking out Adam as he turned to retrieve a lid for his cup was none of her business. She also reminded herself that as curious as she was about his diplomat mother, how many languages he spoke, and whether he liked tulips, it was information that went well beyond their arrangement.

People had seen them together. They were going to go back to their labs and tell improbable tales of Dr. Adam Carlsen and the random, unremarkable student they’d spotted him with. Time for Olive to go back to her science.

She cleared her throat. “Well. This was fun.”

He looked up from his cup, surprised. “Is fake-dating Wednesday over?”

“Yep. Great job, team, now hit the showers. You’re free until next week.”

Olive stabbed her straw into her drink and took a sip, feeling the sugar explode in her mouth. Whatever she’d ordered, it was disgustingly good. She was probably developing diabetes as she spoke. “I’ll see you—” “Where were you born?” Adam asked before she could leave.

Oh. They were doing this, then. He was probably just trying to be polite, and Olive sighed inwardly, thinking longingly of her lab bench. “Toronto.”

“Right. You’re Canadian,” he said, like he’d already known.

“Yep.”

“When did you move here?”

“Eight years ago. For college.”

He nodded, as if storing up the information. “Why the US? Canada has excellent schools.”

“I got a full ride.” It was true. If not the whole truth.

He fidgeted with the cardboard cup holder. “Do you go back a lot?”

“Not really, no.” Olive licked some whipped cream off her straw. She was puzzled when he immediately looked away from her.

“Do you plan to move back home once you graduate?”

She tensed. “Not if I can help it.” She had lots of painful memories in Canada, and her only family, the people she wanted nearby, were Anh and Malcolm, both US citizens. Olive and Anh had even made a pact that if Olive was ever on the verge of losing her visa, Anh would marry her. In hindsight, this entire fake-dating business with Adam was going to be great practice for when Olive leveled up and started defrauding the Department of Homeland Security in earnest.

Adam nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “Favorite color?”

Olive opened her mouth to tell him her favorite color, which was so much better than his, and . . . “Dammit.”

He gave her a knowing look. “Difficult, isn’t it?”

“There are so many good ones.”

“Yup.”

“I’m going to go with blue. Light blue. No, wait!”

“Mmm.”

“Let’s say white. Okay, white.”

He clucked his tongue. “You know, I don’t think I can accept that.

White’s not really a color. More like all colors put together—” Olive pinched him on the fleshy part of his forearm.

“Ow,” he said, clearly not in pain. With a sly smile, he waved goodbye and turned away, heading for the biology building.

“Hey, Adam?” she called after him.

He paused and looked back at her.

“Thanks for buying me three days’ worth of food.”

He hesitated and then nodded, once. That thing he was doing with his mouth—he was definitely smiling down at her. A little begrudgingly, but still.

“My pleasure, Olive.” —

Today, 2:40 p.m.

FROM: Tom-Benton@harvard.edu

TO: Olive-Smith@stanford.edu

SUBJECT: Re: Pancreatic Cancer Screening Project

Olive,

I’ll be flying in on Tuesday afternoon. How about we meet on Wednesday around 3:00 p.m. in Aysegul Aslan’s lab? My collaborator can point me in its direction.

TB

Sent from my iPhone

—

OLIVE WAS LATE for her second fake-dating Wednesday, too, but for different reasons—all Tom Benton related.

First, she’d overslept after staying up late the previous night rehearsing how she was going to sell him her project. She’d repeated her spiel so many times that Malcolm had started finishing her sentences, and then, at 1:00 a.m., he’d hurled a nectarine at her and begged her to go practice in her room.

Which she had, until 3:00 a.m.

Then, in the morning, she’d realized that her usual lab outfit (leggings, ratty 5K T-shirt, and very, very messy bun) would probably not communicate

“valuable future colleague” to Dr. Benton, and spent an excessive amount of time looking for something appropriate. Dress for success and all that.

Finally, it occurred to her that she had no idea what Dr. Benton— arguably the most important person in her life at the moment, and yes, she was aware of how sad that sounded but decided not to dwell on it—even looked like.

She looked him up on her phone and found out that he was somewhere in his late thirties, blond with blue eyes, and had very straight, very white teeth.