“You’ve finally found someone you’re into. And okay, it’s Carlsen, but this could still turn out to be great.”
“It couldn’t. It can’t.”
“Ol, I know where you’re coming from. I get it.” Malcolm’s hand tightened on hers. “I know it’s scary, being vulnerable, but you can allow yourself to care. You can want to be with people as more than just friends or casual acquaintances.”
“But I can’t.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Because all the people I’ve cared about are gone,” she snapped.
Somewhere in the coffee shop, the barista called for a caramel macchiato.
Olive immediately regretted her harsh words.
“I’m sorry. It’s just . . . it’s the way it works. My mom. My grandparents.
My father—one way or another, everyone is gone. If I let myself care, Adam
will go, too.” There. She’d put it into words, said it out loud, and it sounded all the truer because of it.
Malcolm exhaled. “Oh, Ol.” He was one of the few people to whom Olive had opened up about her fears—the constant feeling of not belonging, the never-ending suspicions that since so much of her life had been spent alone, then it would end the same way. That she’d never be worthy of someone caring for her. His knowing expression, a combination of sorrow and understanding and pity, was unbearable to watch. She looked elsewhere —at the laughing students, at the coffee cup lids stacked next to the counter, at the stickers on a girl’s MacBook—and slid her hand away from under his palm.
“You should go.” She attempted a smile, but it felt wobbly. “Finish your surgeries.”
He didn’t break eye contact. “I care. Anh cares—Anh would have chosen you over Jeremy. And you care, too. We all care about one another, and I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s different.”
“How?”
Olive didn’t bother answering and used her sleeve to dry her cheek. Adam was different, and what Olive wanted from him was different, but she couldn’t—didn’t want to articulate it. Not now. “I won’t tell him.”
“Ol.”
“No,” she said, firm. With her tears gone, she felt marginally better.
Maybe she was not who she had thought, but she could fake it. She could pretend, even to herself. “I’m not going to tell him. It’s a horrible idea.”
“Ol.”
“How would that conversation even work? How would I phrase it? What are the right words?”
“Actually you should probably—”
“Do I tell him that I’m into him? That I think about him all the time? That I have a huge crush on him? That—”
“Olive.”
In the end, what tipped her off was not Malcolm’s words, or his panicky expression, or the fact that he was clearly looking at a spot somewhere above
her shoulders. In the end, Anh chose that exact moment to text her, which drew Olive’s eyes to the numbers on the screen.
10:00 a.m.
It was ten. On a Wednesday morning. And Olive was currently sitting in the campus Starbucks, the very same Starbucks where she had spent her Wednesday mornings for the past few weeks. She whirled around and—
She wasn’t even surprised to find Adam. Standing behind her. Close enough that unless both his eardrums had ruptured since the last time they’d talked, he must have heard every single word that came out of Olive’s mouth.
She wished she could expire on the spot. She wished she could crawl outside her body and this café, melt in a pool of sweat, and seep between the tiles on the floor, just vanish into thin air. But all these things were currently beyond her skill set, so she fixed a weak smile on her face and looked up at Adam.
Chapter Eleven
“Did you . . . did you hear that?” she blurted out.
Malcolm hurried to clear the table of his stuff, muttering tightly, “I was just about to go.”
Olive barely noticed, busy watching Adam slide the chair back to sit across from her.
Shit.
“Yes,” he said, bland and even, and Olive felt like she was about to disintegrate into a million tiny pieces, here, in this exact spot. She wanted him to take it back. Wanted him to say “No, heard what?” She wanted to go back to earlier this morning and rewind it all, this horrible mess of a day. Not
