“He’s not . . . he doesn’t really mean it. Not about you, at least,” Chase said while scratching his head. A nice reminder that he’d been standing there, in the room, for the entirety of this conversation. Front-row seat. It was going to take maybe fifteen minutes before everyone in the program knew about it.

“Greg needs to graduate in the spring with his wife. So that they can find postdocs together. They don’t want to live apart, you know.”

She nodded—she hadn’t known, but she could imagine. Some of her anger dissipated. “Yeah, well.” Being horrible to me isn’t going to make his thesis work go any faster, she didn’t add.

Chase sighed. “It’s not personal. But you have to understand that it’s weird for us. Because Carlsen . . . Maybe he wasn’t on any of your committees, but you must know the kind of guy he is, right?” She was unsure how to respond.

“And now you guys are dating, and . . .” Chase shrugged with a nervous smile. “It shouldn’t be a matter of taking sides, but sometimes it can feel like it, you know?”

Chase’s words lingered for the rest of the day. Olive thought about them as she ran her mice through her experimental protocols, and then later while she tried to figure out what to do with those two outliers that made her findings tricky to interpret. She mulled it over while biking home, hot wind warming her cheeks and ruffling her hair, and while eating two slices of the saddest pizza ever. Malcolm had been on a health kick for weeks now (something about cultivating his gut microbiome) and refused to admit that cauliflower crust did not taste good.

Among her friends, Malcolm and Jeremy had had unpleasant dealings with Adam in the past, but after the initial shock they didn’t seem to hold Olive’s relationship with him against her. She hadn’t concerned herself too much with the feelings of other grads. She had always been a bit of a loner, and focusing on the opinion of people she barely interacted with seemed like a wasteful use of time and energy. Still, maybe there was a glimmer of truth in what Greg had said. Adam had been anything but a jerk to Olive, but did accepting his help while he acted horribly toward her fellow grads make her a bad person?

Olive lay on her unmade bed, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars. It had been more than two years since she’d borrowed Malcolm’s stepladder and carefully stuck them on the ceiling; the glue was starting to give out, and the large comet in the corner by the window was going to fall off any day.

Without letting herself think it through too much, she rolled out of bed and rummaged inside the pockets of her discarded jeans until she found her cell phone.

She hadn’t used Adam’s number since he’d given it to her a few days ago—“If anything comes up or you need to cancel, just give me a call. It’s quicker than an email.” When she tapped the blue icon under his name a white screen popped up, a blank slate with no history of previous messages. It gave Olive an odd rush of anxiety, so much so that she typed the text with one hand while biting the thumbnail on the other.

Olive: Did you just fail Greg?

Adam was never on his phone. Never. Whenever Olive had been in his company, she’d not seen him check it even once—even though with a lab as big as his he probably got about thirty new emails every minute. Truth was, she didn’t even know that he owned a cell phone. Maybe he was a weird modern-day hippie and hated technology. Maybe he’d given her his office landline number, and that’s why he’d told her to call him. Maybe he didn’t know how to text, which meant that Olive was never going to get an answer from—

Her

palm

vibrated.

Adam: Olive?

It occurred to her that when Adam had given her his number, she’d neglected to give hers in return. Which meant that he had no way of knowing who was texting him now, and the fact that he’d guessed correctly revealed an almost preternatural intuition.

Damn him.

Olive: Yup. Me.

Olive: Did you fail Greg Cohen? I ran into him after his meeting.

He was very upset.

At me. Because of you. Because of this stupid thing we’re doing.

There was a pause of a minute or so, in which, Olive reflected, Adam might very well be cackling evilly at the idea of all the pain he’d caused Greg.

Then he answered:

Adam: I can’t discuss other grads’ dissertation meetings with you.

Olive sighed, exchanging a loaded look with the stuffed fox Malcolm had gotten her for passing her qualifying examinations.

Olive: I’m not asking you to tell me anything. Greg already told me. Not to mention that I’m the one taking the heat for it, since I’m your girlfriend.

Olive: ”Girlfriend.”

Three dots appeared at the bottom of her screen. Then they disappeared, and then they appeared again, and then, finally, Olive’s phone vibrated.

Adam: Committees don’t fail students. They fail their proposals.

She snorted, half wishing he could hear her.

Olive: Yeah, well. Tell it to Greg.

Adam: I have. I explained the weaknesses in his study. He’ll revise his proposal accordingly, and then I’ll sign off on his dissertation.

Olive: So you admit that you are the one behind the decision to fail him.

Olive: Or, whatever. To fail his proposal.

Adam: Yes. In its current state, the proposal is not going to produce findings of scientific value.

Olive bit the inside of her cheek, staring at her phone and wondering if continuing this conversation was a terrible idea. If what she wanted to say

was too much. Then she remembered the way Greg had treated her earlier, muttered, “Fuck it,” and typed:

Olive: Don’t you think that maybe you could have delivered that feedback in a nicer way?

Adam: Why?

Olive: Because if you had maybe he wouldn’t be upset now?

Adam: I still don’t see why.

Olive: Seriously?

Adam: It’s not my job to manage your friend’s emotions. He’s in a Ph.D.

program, not grade school. He’ll be inundated by feedback he doesn’t like for the rest of his life if he pursues academia. How he chooses to deal with it is his own business.

Olive: Still, maybe you could try not to look like you enjoy delaying his graduation.

Adam: This is irrational. The reason his proposal needs to be modified is that in its current state it’s setting him up for failure. Me and the rest of the committee are giving him feedback that will allow him to produce useful knowledge. He is a scientist in training: he should value guidance, not be upset by it.

Olive gritted her teeth as she typed her responses.

Olive: You must know that you fail more people than anyone else. And your criticism is needlessly harsh. As in, immediatelydrop-out-of-grad-school-and-never-look-back harsh. You must know how grads perceive you.

Adam: I don’t.