“No. God, no.” He looked so horrified by the assumption, she had to laugh.

“Why do you stick around, then?”

“Unclear.” There was a flash of something in his eyes that Olive couldn’t quite interpret, but—nothing surprising about that. There was a lot about Adam Carlsen she didn’t know. He was an ass, but with unexpected depths.

“There’s an element of sunk-cost fallacy, probably—hard to step away, when you’ve invested so much time and energy. But the science makes it worth it.

When it works, anyway.”

She hummed, considering his words, and remembered The Guy in the bathroom. He’d said that academia was a lot of bucks for little bang, and that one needed a good reason to stick around. Olive wondered where he was now.

If he’d managed to graduate. If he knew that he’d helped someone make one of the hardest decisions of their life. If he had any idea that there was a girl, somewhere in the world, who thought about their random encounter surprisingly often. Doubtful.

“I know grad school is supposed to be miserable for everyone, but it’s depressing to see tenured faculty here on a Friday night, instead of, I don’t know, watching Netflix in bed, or getting dinner with their girlfriend—”

“I thought you were my girlfriend.”

Olive smiled up at him. “Not quite.” But, since we’re on the topic: why exactly don’t you have one? Because it’s getting harder and harder for me to figure that one out. Except that maybe you just don’t want one. Maybe you just want to be on your own, like everything about your behavior suggests, and here I am, annoying the shit out of you. I should just pocket my chips and my candy and go back to my stupid protein samples, but for some reason you are so comfortable to be around. And I am drawn to you, even though I don’t know why.

“Do you plan to stay in academia?” he asked. “After you graduate.”

“Yes. Maybe. No.”

He smiled, and Olive laughed.

“Undecided.”

“Right.”

“It’s just . . . there are things that I love about it. Being in the lab, doing research. Coming up with study ideas, feeling that I’m doing something meaningful. But if I go the academic route, then I’ll also need to do a lot of other things that I just . . .” She shook her head.

“Other things?”

“Yeah. The PR stuff, mostly. Write grants and convince people to fund my research. Network, which is a special kind of hell. Public speaking, or even one-on-one situations where I have to impress people. That’s the worst, actually. I hate it so much—my head explodes and I freeze and everyone is looking at me ready to judge me and my tongue paralyzes and I start wishing that I was dead and then that the world was dead and—” She noticed his smile and gave him a rueful look. “You get the gist.”

“There are things you can do about that, if you want. It just takes practice.

Making sure your thoughts are organized. Stuff like that.”

“I know. And I try to do that—I did it before my meeting with Tom. And I still stammered like an idiot when he asked me a simple question.” And then you helped me, ordered my thoughts, and saved my ass, without even meaning to. “I don’t know. Maybe my brain is broken.”

He shook his head. “You did great during that meeting with Tom, especially considering that you were forced to have your fake boyfriend sit next to you.” She didn’t point out that his presence had actually made things better. “Tom certainly seemed impressed, which is no small feat. And if anyone screwed up, it was definitely him. I’m sorry he did that, by the way.”

“Did what?”

“Force you to talk about your personal life.”

“Oh.” Olive looked away, toward the blue glow of the vending machine.

“It’s okay. It’s been a while.” She was surprised to hear herself continue. To feel herself wanting to continue. “Since high school, really.”

“That’s . . . young.” There was something about his tone, maybe the evenness, maybe the lack of overt sympathy, that she found reassuring.

“I was fifteen. One day my mom and I were there, just . . . I don’t even know. Kayaking. Thinking about getting a cat. Arguing over the way I’d pile stuff on top of the trash can when it was overflowing and I didn’t want to take it out. And next thing I knew she had her diagnosis, and three weeks later she’d already—” She couldn’t say it. Her lips, her vocal folds, her heart, they just wouldn’t form the words. So she swallowed them. “The child welfare system couldn’t figure out where to send me until I became of age.”

“Your dad?”

She shook her head. “Never in the picture. He’s an asshole, according to my mom.” She laughed softly. “The never-takes-out-the-trash gene clearly came from his side of the family. And my grandparents had died when I was a kid, because apparently that’s what people around me do.” She tried to say it jokingly, she really tried. To not sound bitter. She thought she even succeeded. “I was just . . . alone.”

“What did you do?”

“Foster home until sixteen, then I emancipated.” She shrugged, hoping to brush off the memory. “If only they’d caught it earlier, even just by a few months—maybe she’d be here. Maybe surgery and chemo would have actually done something. And I . . . I was always good at science stuff, so I thought that the least I could do was . . .”

Adam dug into his pockets for a few moments and held out a crumpled paper napkin. Olive stared at it, confused, until she realized that her cheeks had somehow grown wet.

Oh.

“Adam, did you just offer me a used tissue?”

“I . . . maybe.” He pressed his lips together. “I panicked.”

She chuckled wetly, accepting his gross tissue and using it to blow her nose. They’d kissed twice, after all. Why not share a bit of snot? “I’m sorry.

I’m usually not like this.”

“Like what?”

“Weepy. I . . . I shouldn’t talk about this.”

“Why?”

“Because.” It was hard to explain, the mix of pain and affection that always resurfaced when she talked about her mother. It was the reason she almost never did it, and the reason she hated cancer so much. Not only had it robbed her of the person she loved the most, but it had also turned the happiest memories of her life into something bittersweet. “It makes me weepy.”

He smiled. “Olive, you can talk about it. And you should let yourself be weepy.”

She had a sense that he really meant it. That she could have talked about her mom for however long she liked, and he would have listened intently to every second of it. She wasn’t sure she was ready for it, though. So she shrugged, changing the topic. “Anyway, now here I am. Loving lab work and barely dealing with the rest—abstracts, conferences, networking. Teaching.

Rejected grants.” Olive gestured in Adam’s direction. “Failed dissertation proposals.”

“Is your lab mate still giving you a hard time?”

Olive waved her hand dismissively. “I’m not his favorite person, but it’s fine. He’ll get over it.” She bit into her lip. “I’m sorry about the other night.

I was rude. You have every right to be mad.”

Adam shook his head. “It’s okay. I understand where you were coming from.”

“I do get what you’re saying. About not wanting to form a new generation of crappy millennial scientists.”