She hadn’t thought of that. “I— Maybe. Maybe, but—”
It was true that Anh had seemed happy. Maybe she had already invited Jeremy to accompany her to that movie festival—possibly right after telling him about Olive and Carlsen, damn her. But this was exactly what Olive had wanted.
“Are you going to tell her the truth?”
She let out a panicked sound. “I can’t. Not now.” God, why did Olive ever agree to date Jeremy? She wasn’t even into him. Yes, the Irish accent and the ginger hair were cute, but not worth any of this. “Maybe we can tell people that I broke up with you?”
“That’s very flattering,” Dr. Carlsen deadpanned. She couldn’t quite figure out if he was joking.
“Fine. We can say that you broke up with me.”
“Because that sounds credible,” he said drily, almost below his breath. She was not sure she’d heard him correctly and had no idea what he might mean, but she was starting to feel very upset. Fine, she had been the one to kiss him first—God, she’d kissed Adam Carlsen; this was her life; these were her choices—but his actions in the break room the day before surely hadn’t helped matters. He could at least display some concern. There was no way he was okay with everyone believing that he was attracted to some random girl with one point five publications—yes, that paper she had revised and resubmitted three weeks ago counted as half.
“What if we tell people that it was a mutual breakup?”
He nodded. “Sounds good.”
Olive perked up. “Really? Great, then! We’ll—”
“We could ask Cherie to add it to the departmental newsletter.”
“What?”
“Or do you think a public announcement before seminar would be better?”
“No. No, it’s—”
“Maybe we should ask IT to put it on the Stanford home page. That way people would know—”
“Okay, okay, fine! I get it.”
He looked at her evenly for a moment, and when he spoke, his tone was reasonable in a way she would never have expected of Adam “Ass” Carlsen. “If what bothers you is that people are talking about you dating a professor, the damage is done, I’m afraid. Telling everyone that we broke up is not going to undo the fact that they think we dated.”
Olive’s shoulders slumped. She hated that he was right. “Okay, then. If you have any ideas on how to fix this mess, by all means I am open to—”
“You could let them go on thinking it.”
For a moment, she thought she hadn’t heard him correctly. “W-What?”
“You can let people go on thinking that we’re dating. It solves your problem with your friend and what’s-his-face, and you don’t have much to lose, since it sounds like from a . . . reputation standpoint”—he said the word “reputation” rolling his eyes a little, as if the concept of caring about what others thought were the dumbest thing since homeopathic antibiotics—“things cannot get any worse for you.”
This was . . . Out of everything . . . In her life, Olive had never, she had never . . .
“What?” she asked again, feebly.
He shrugged. “Seems like a win-win to me.”
It so did not, to Olive. It seemed like a lose-lose, and then lose again, and then lose some more, type of situation. It seemed insane.
“You mean . . . forever?” She thought her voice came out whiny, but it was possible that it was just an effect of the blood pounding in her head.
“That sounds excessive. Maybe until your friends are not dating anymore? Or until they’re more settled? I don’t know. Whatever works best, I guess.” He was serious about this. He was not joking.
“Are you not . . .” Olive had no idea how to even ask it. “Married, or something?” He must have been in his early thirties. He had a fantastic job; he was tall with thick, wavy black hair, clearly smart, even attractive looking; he was built. Yeah, he was a moody dick, but some women wouldn’t mind it. Some women might even like it.
He shrugged. “My wife and the twins won’t mind.”
Oh, shit.
Olive felt a wave of heat wash over her. She blushed crimson and then almost died of shame, because— God, she had forced a married man, a father, to kiss her. Now people thought that he was having an affair. His wife was probably crying into her pillow. His kids would grow up with horrible daddy issues and become serial killers.
“I . . . Oh my God, I didn’t— I am so sorry—”
“Just kidding.”
“I really had no idea that you—”
“Olive. I was joking. I’m not married. No kids.”
A wave of relief crashed into her. Followed by just as much anger. “Dr. Carlsen, this is not something you should joke—”
“You really need to start calling me Adam. Since we’ve reportedly been dating for a while.”
Olive exhaled slowly, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Why would you even— What would you even get out of this?”
“Out of what?”
“Pretending to date me. Why do you care? What’s in it for you?”
Dr. Carlsen—Adam—opened his mouth, and for a moment Olive had the impression that he was going to say something important. But then he averted his gaze, and all that came out was “It would help you out.” He hesitated for a moment. “And I have my own reasons.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What reasons?”
“Reasons.”
“If it’s criminal, I’d rather not be involved.”
He smiled a bit. “It’s not.”
“If you don’t tell me, I have no choice but to assume that it entails kidnapping. Or arson. Or embezzlement.”
He seemed preoccupied for a moment, fingertips drumming against a large biceps. It considerably strained his shirt. “If I tell you, it cannot leave this room.”
“I think we can both agree that nothing that has happened in this room should ever leave it.”
“Good point,” he conceded. He paused. Sighed. Chewed on the inside of his cheek for a second. Sighed again.
“Okay,” he finally said, sounding like a man who knew that he was going to regret speaking the second he opened his mouth. “I’m considered a flight risk.”
“Flight risk?” God, he was a felon on parole. A jury of his peers had convicted him for crimes against grad students. He’d probably whacked someone on the head with a microscope for mislabeling peptide samples. “So it is something criminal.”
“What? No. The department suspects that I’m making plans to leave Stanford and move to another institution. Normally it wouldn’t bother me, but Stanford has decided to freeze my research funds.”
“Oh.” Not what she’d thought. Not at all. “Can they?”
“Yes. Well, up to one-third of them. The reasoning is that they don’t want to fund the research and further the career of someone who—they believe—is going to leave anyway.”
“But if it’s only one-third—”
“It’s millions of dollars,” he said levelly. “That I had earmarked for projects that I planned to finish within the next year. Here, at Stanford. Which means that I need those funds soon.”
“Oh.” Come to think of it, Olive had been hearing scuttlebutt about Carlsen being recruited by other universities since her first year. A few months earlier there had even been a rumor that he might go work for NASA. “Why do they think that? And why now?”
“A number of reasons. The most relevant is that a few weeks ago I was awarded a grant—a very large grant—with a scientist at another institution. That institution had tried to recruit me in the past, and Stanford sees the collaboration as an indication that I am planning to accept.” He hesitated before continuing. “More generally, I have been made aware that the . . . optics are that I have not put down roots because I want to be able to flee Stanford at the drop of a hat.”
�
��Roots?”
“Most of my grads will be done within the year. I have no extended family in the area. No wife, no children. I’m currently renting—I’d have to buy a house just to convince the department that I’m committed to staying,” he said, clearly irritated. “If I was in a relationship . . . that would really help.”
Okay. That made sense. But. “Have you considered getting a real girlfriend?”
His eyebrow lifted. “Have you considered getting a real date?”
“Touché.”
Olive fell silent and studied him for a few moments, letting him study her in return. Funny how she used to be scared of him. Now he was the only person in the world who knew about her worst fuckup ever, and it was hard to feel intimidated—even harder, after discovering that he was the kind of person who’d be desperate enough to pretend to date someone to get his research funds back. Olive was sure that she would do the exact same for the opportunity to finish her study on pancreatic cancer, which made Adam seem oddly . . . relatable. And if he was relatable, then she could go ahead and fake-date him, right?
No. Yes. No. What? She was crazy for even considering this. She was certifiably mental. And yet she found herself saying, “It would be complicated.”
“What would be?”
“To pretend that we’re dating.”
“Really? It would be complicated to make people think that we’re dating?”
Oh, he was impossible. “Okay, I see your point. But it would be hard to do so convincingly for a prolonged period.”
He shrugged. “We’ll be fine, as long as we say hi to each other in the hallways and you don’t call me Dr. Carlsen.”
“I don’t think people who are dating just . . . say hi to each other.”
“What do people who are dating do?”
It beat Olive. She had gone on maybe five dates in her life, including the ones with Jeremy, and they had ranged from moderately boring to anxiety inducing to horrifying (mostly when a guy had monologued about his grandmother’s hip replacement in frightening detail). She would have loved to have someone in her life, but she doubted it was in store for her. Maybe she was unlovable. Maybe spending so many years alone had warped her in some fundamental way and that was why she seemed to be unable to develop a true romantic connection, or even the type of attraction she often heard others talk about. In the end, it didn’t really matter. Grad school and dating went poorly together, anyway, which was probably why Dr. Adam Carlsen, MacArthur Fellow and genius extraordinaire, was standing here at thirtysomething years old, asking Olive what people did on dates.
Academics, ladies and gentlemen.
“Um . . . things. Stuff.” Olive racked her brain. “People go out and do activities together. Like apple picking, or those Paint and Sip things.” Which are idiotic, Olive thought.
“Which are idiotic,” Adam said, gesturing dismissively with those huge hands of his. “You could just go to Anh and tell her that we went out and painted a Monet. Sounds like she’d take care of letting everyone else know.”
“Okay, first of all, it was Jeremy. Let’s agree to blame Jeremy. And it’s more than that,” Olive insisted. “People who date, they—they talk. A lot. More than just greetings in the hallway. They know each other’s favorite colors, and where they were born, and they . . . they hold hands. They kiss.”
Adam pressed his lips together as if to suppress a smile. “We could never do that.”
A fresh wave of mortification crashed into Olive. “I am sorry about the kiss. I really didn’t think, and—”
He shook his head. “It’s fine.”
He did seem uncharacteristically indifferent to the situation, especially for a guy who was known to freak out when people got the atomic number of selenium wrong. No, he wasn’t indifferent. He was amused.
Olive cocked her head. “Are you enjoying this?”
“ ‘Enjoying’ is probably not the right word, but you have to admit that it’s quite entertaining.”
She had no idea what he was talking about. There was nothing entertaining about the fact that she had randomly kissed a faculty member because he was the only person in the hallway and that, as a consequence of that spectacularly idiotic action, everyone thought she was dating someone she’d met exactly twice before today—
She burst into laughter and folded into herself before her train of thought was even over, overwhelmed by the sheer improbability of the situation. This was her life. These were the results of her actions. When she could finally breathe again, her abs hurt and she had to wipe her eyes. “This is the worst.”
He was smiling, staring at her with a strange light in his eyes. And would you look at that: Adam Carlsen had dimples. Cute ones. “Yep.”
“And it’s all my fault.”
“Pretty much. I kind of yanked Anh’s chain yesterday, but yeah, I’d say that it’s mostly your fault.”
Fake dating. Adam Carlsen. Olive would have to be a lunatic. “Wouldn’t it be a problem that you’re faculty and I’m a graduate student?”
He tilted his head, going serious. “It wouldn’t look great, but I don’t think so, no. Since I have no authority whatsoever over you and am not involved in your supervision. But I can ask around.”
It was an epically bad idea. The worst idea ever entertained in the epically bad history of bad ideas. Except that it really would solve this current problem of hers, as well as some of Adam’s, in exchange for saying hi to him once a week and making an effort not to call him Dr. Carlsen. It seemed like a pretty good deal.
“Can I think about it?”
“Of course,” he said calmly. Reassuringly.
She hadn’t thought he’d be like this. After hearing all the stories, and seeing him walk around with that perpetual frown of his, she really hadn’t thought he’d be like this. Even if she didn’t quite know what this even meant.
“And thank you, I guess. For offering. Adam.” She added the last word like an afterthought. Trying it out on her lips. It felt weird, but not too weird.
After a long pause, he nodded. “No problem. Olive.”
Chapter Three
HYPOTHESIS: A private conversation with Adam Carlsen will become 150 percent more awkward after the word “sex” is uttered. By me.
Three days later, Olive found herself standing in front of Adam’s office.
She’d never been there before, but she had no problem finding it. The student scurrying out with misty eyes and a terrified expression was a dead giveaway, not to mention that Adam’s door was the only one in the hallway completely devoid of pictures of kids, pets, or significant others. Not even a copy of his article that had made the cover of Nature Methods, which she knew about from looking him up on Google Scholar the previous day. Just dark brown wood and a metal plaque that read: Adam J. Carlsen, Ph.D.
Maybe the J stood for “Jackass.”
Olive had felt a bit like a creep the night before, scrolling down his faculty web page and going through his list of ten million publications and research grants, staring at a picture of him clearly taken in the middle of a hiking trip and not by Stanford’s official photographer. Still, she’d quickly quashed the feeling, telling herself that a thorough academic background check was only logical before embarking on a fake-dating relationship.
She took a deep breath before knocking and then another between Adam’s “Come in” and the moment she finally managed to force herself to open the door. When she entered the office, he didn’t immediately look up and continued typing on his iMac. “My office hours were over five minutes ago, so—”
“It’s me.”
His hands halted, hovering half an inch or so above the keyboard. Then he turned his chair toward her. “Olive.”
There was something about the way he talked. Maybe it was an accent, maybe just a quality of his voice. Olive didn’t quite know what, but it was there,
in the way he said her name. Precise. Careful. Deep. Unlike anyone else. Familiar—impossibly so.
“What did you say to her?” she asked, trying not to care about how Adam Carlsen spoke. “The girl who ran out in tears?”
It took him a moment to remember that less than sixty seconds ago there had been someone else in the office—someone whom he clearly made cry. “I just gave her feedback on something she wrote.”
Olive nodded, silently thanking all the gods that he was not her adviser and never would be, and studied her surroundings. He had a corner office, of course. Two windows that together must total seventy thousand square meters of glass, and so much light, just standing in the middle of the room would cure twenty people’s seasonal depression. It made sense, what with all the grant money he brought in, what with the prestige, that he’d been given a nice space. Olive’s office, on the other hand, had no windows and smelled funny, probably because she shared it with three other Ph.D. students, even though it was meant to accommodate two at the most.
“I was going to email you. I talked to the dean earlier today,” Adam told her, and she looked back at him.
He was gesturing to the chair in front of his desk. Olive pulled it back and took a seat.
“About you.”
“Oh.” Olive’s stomach dropped. She’d much rather the dean didn’t know about her existence. Then again, she’d also rather not be in this room with Adam Carlsen, have the semester begin in a handful of days, have climate change be a thing. And yet.
“Well, about us,” he amended. “And socialization regulations.”
“What did she say?”
“There’s nothing against you and me dating, since I’m not your adviser.”
A mix of panic and relief flooded through Olive.
“However, there are some issues to consider. I won’t be able to collaborate with you in any formal capacity. And I’m part of the program’s awards committee, which means that I’ll have to excuse myself if you are nominated for fellowships or similar opportunities.”
The Love Hypothesis Page 5