“Is everything okay?” He said it looking into her eyes, in a low, intimate tone. Like they were alone. Like Anh was not there. He said it in a way that should have made Olive uncomfortable but didn’t. For some inexplicable reason his presence in the room soothed her, even though until a second ago she had been freaking out. Perhaps two different types of unease neutralized each other? It sounded like a fascinating research topic. Worth pursuing.
Maybe Olive should abandon biology and switch to psychology. Maybe she should excuse herself and go run a literature search. Maybe she should expire on the spot to avoid facing this crapfest of a situation she’d put herself in.
“Yes. Yes. Everything is great. Anh and I were just . . . chatting. About our weekends.”
Carlsen looked at Anh, as though realizing for the first time that she was in the room. He acknowledged her existence with one of those brief nods dudes used to greet others. His hand slid lower on Olive’s spine just as Anh’s eyes widened.
“Nice to meet you, Anh. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Carlsen said, and he was good at this, Olive had to admit. Because she was sure that from Anh’s angle it looked like he was groping her, but in fact he was . . . not.
Olive could barely feel his hand on her.
Just a little, maybe. The warmth, and the slight pressure, and—
“Nice to meet you, too.” Anh looked thunderstruck. Like she might pass out. “Um, I was just about to leave. Ol, I’m going to text you when . . . yeah.”
She was out of the room before Olive could answer. Which was good, because Olive didn’t need to come up with more lies. But also slightly less good, because now it was just her and Carlsen. Standing way too close. Olive
would have paid good money to say that she was the one to put some distance between them, but the embarrassing truth was that it was Carlsen who stepped away first. Enough to give her the space she needed, and then some.
“Is everything okay?” he asked again. His tone was still soft. Not something she would have expected from him.
“Yes. Yes, I just . . .” Olive waved her hand. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Did you hear what she said? About Friday and . . .”
“I did. That’s why I . . .” He looked at her, and then at his hand—the one that had been warming her back a few seconds ago—and Olive immediately understood.
“Thank you,” she repeated. Because Adam Carlsen might have been a known ass, but Olive was feeling pretty damn grateful right at the moment.
“Also, uh, I couldn’t help noticing that no agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation have knocked on my door to arrest me in the past seventytwo hours.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Minimally. “Is that so?”
Olive nodded. “Which makes me think that maybe you haven’t filed that complaint. Even though it would have been totally within your rights. So, thank you. For that. And . . . and for stepping in, right now. You saved me a lot of trouble.”
Carlsen stared at her for a long moment, looking suddenly like he did during seminar, when people mixed up theory and hypothesis or admitted to using listwise deletion instead of imputation. “You shouldn’t need someone to step in.”
Olive stiffened. Right. Known ass. “Well, it’s not as if I asked you to do anything. I was going to handle it by myse—”
“And you shouldn’t have to lie about your relationship status,” he continued. “Especially not so that your friend and your boyfriend can get together guilt-free. That’s not how friendship works, last I checked.”
Oh. So he’d actually been listening when Olive vomited her life story at him. “It’s not like that.” He lifted an eyebrow, and Olive raised a hand in
defense. “Jeremy wasn’t really my boyfriend. And Anh didn’t ask me for anything. I’m not some sort of victim, I just . . . want my friend to be happy.”
“By lying to her,” he added drily.
“Well, yeah, but . . . She thinks we’re dating, you and I,” Olive blurted out. God, the implications were too ridiculous to bear.
“Wasn’t that the point?”
“Yeah.” She nodded and then remembered the coffee in her hand and took a sip from her mug. It was still warm. The conversation with Anh couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes. “Yeah. I guess it was. By the way—I’m Olive Smith. In case you’re still interested in filing that complaint. I’m a Ph.D. student in Dr. Aslan’s lab—”
“I know who you are.”
“Oh.” Maybe he had looked her up, then. Olive tried to imagine him combing through the Current Ph.D. Students’ section on the department website. Olive’s picture had been taken by the program secretary on her third day of grad school, well before she had become fully aware of what she was in for. She had made an effort to look good: tamed her wavy brown hair, put on mascara to pop the green of her eyes, even attempted to hide her freckles with some borrowed foundation. It had been before she’d realized how ruthless, how cutthroat academia could be. Before the sense of inadequacy, before the constant fear that even if she was good at research, she might never be able to truly make it as an academic. She had been smiling. A real, actual smile.
“Okay.”
“I’m Adam. Carlsen. I’m faculty in—”
She burst out laughing in his face. And then regretted it immediately as she noticed his confused expression, as though he’d seriously thought Olive might not know who he was. As though he was unaware of being one of the most prominent scholars in the field. The modesty was not at all like Adam Carlsen. Olive cleared her throat.
“Right. Um, I know who you are, too, Dr. Carlsen.”
“You should probably call me Adam.”
“Oh. Oh, no.” That would be way too . . . No. The department was not like that. Grads didn’t call faculty by their first names. “I could never—”
“If Anh happens to be around.”
“Oh. Yeah.” It made sense. “Thank you. I hadn’t thought of that.” Or of anything else, really. Clearly, her brain had stopped working three days ago, when she’d decided that kissing him to save her own ass was a good idea. “If that’s o-okay with you. I’m going to go home, because this whole thing was kind of stressful and . . .” I was going to run an experiment, but I really need to sit on the couch and watch American Ninja Warrior for forty-five minutes while eating Cool Ranch Doritos, which taste surprisingly better than you’d give them credit for.
He nodded. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
“I’m not that distraught.”
