“Are those his real shoulders?” Anh asked. “Did he have shoulderenhancement surgery?”
“That must be how he used the MacArthur grant,” Jeremy said. “I don’t think shoulders like that exist in nature.”
“God, is that Carlsen’s chest?” Malcolm leaned his chin over Olive’s shoulder. “Was that thing under his shirt while he was ripping my dissertation proposal a new one? Ol. Why didn’t you say that he was shredded?”
Olive just stood there, rooted to the ground, arms dangling uselessly at her sides. Because I didn’t know. Because I had no idea. Or maybe she had, a bit, from seeing him push that truck the other day—though she’d been trying to suppress that particular mental image.
“Unbelievable.” Anh pulled Olive’s hand toward herself, overturning it to squirt a healthy dose of lotion on her palm. “Here, put this on your shoulders.
And your legs. And your face, too—you’re probably at high risk for all sorts of skin stuff, Freckles McFreckleface. Jer, you too.”
Olive nodded numbly and began to massage the sunscreen into her arms and thighs. She breathed in the smell of coconut oil, trying hard not to think about Adam and about the fact that he really did look like that. Mostly failing, but hey.
“Are there actual studies?” Jeremy asked.
“Mmm?” Anh was pulling her hair up in a bun.
“On the link between freckles and skin cancer.”
“I don’t know.”
“Feels like there would be.”
“True. I wanna know now.”
“Hold on. Is there Wi-Fi here?”
“Ol, do you have internet?”
Olive wiped her hands on a napkin that looked mostly unused. “I left my phone in Malcolm’s car.”
She turned her head away from Anh and Jeremy, who were now studying the screen of Jeremy’s iPhone, until she had a good view of the Ultimate Frisbee group—fourteen men and zero women. It probably had to do with the general excess of testosterone in STEM programs. At least half the players were faculty or postdocs. Adam, of course, and Tom, and Dr. Rodrigues, and several others from pharmacology. All equally shirtless. Though, no. Not equal at all. There was really nothing equal about Adam.
Olive wasn’t like this. She really was not. She could count the number of guys she’d been this viscerally attracted to on one hand. Actually—on one finger. And at the moment said guy was running toward her, because Tom Benton, bless his heart, had just thrown the Frisbee way too clumsily, and it was now in a patch of grass approximately ten feet from Olive. And Adam, shirtless Adam, just happened to be the one closest to where it landed.
“Oh, check out this paper.” Jeremy sounded excited.
“Khalesi et al., 2013. It’s a meta-analysis. ‘Cutaneous markers of photodamage and risk of basal cell carcinoma of the skin.’ In Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.”
Jeremy fist-pumped. “Olive, are you listening to this?”
Nope. No, she was not. She was mostly trying to empty her brain, and her eyes, too. Of her fake boyfriend and the sudden warm ache in her stomach.
She just wished she were elsewhere. That she were temporarily blind and deaf.
“Hear this: solar lentigines had weak but positive associations with basal cell carcinoma, with odds ratios around 1.5. Okay, I don’t like this. Jeremy, hold the phone. I’m giving Olive more sunscreen. Here’s SPF fifty; it’s probably what you need.”
Olive tore her eyes from Adam’s chest, now alarmingly close, and turned around, stepping away from Anh. “Wait. I already put some on.”
“Ol,” Anh told her, with that sensible, motherly tone she used whenever Olive slipped and confessed that she mostly got her veggie servings from french fries, or that she washed her colors and whites in the same load. “You know the literature.”
“I do not know the literature, and neither do you, you just know one line from one abstract and—”
Anh grabbed Olive’s hand again and poured half a gallon of lotion in it.
So much of it that Olive had to use her left palm to prevent it from spilling over—until she was just standing there like an idiot, her hands cupped like a beggar as she half drowned in goddamn sunscreen.
“Here you go.” Anh smiled brightly. “Now you can protect yourself from basal cell carcinoma. Which, frankly, sounds awful.”
“I . . .” Olive would have face-palmed, if she’d had the freedom to move her upper limbs. “I hate sunscreen. It’s sticky and it makes me smell like a piña colada and—this is way too much.”
“Just put on as much as your skin will absorb. Especially around the freckled areas. The rest, you can share with someone.”
“Okay. Anh, then, you take some. You too, Jeremy. You’re a ginger, for God’s sake.”
“A redhead with no freckles, though.” He smiled proudly, like he’d created his genotype all on his own. “And I already put on a ton. Thanks, babe.” He leaned down for a brief kiss to Anh’s cheek, which almost devolved into a make-out session.
Olive tried not to sigh. “Guys, what do I do with this?”
“Just find someone else. Where did Malcolm
go?” Jeremy snorted. “Over there, with Jude.”
“Jude?” Anh frowned.
“Yeah, that neuro fifth-year.”
“The MD-Ph.D.? Are they dating or—”
