Then a blue bubble appeared, filling up her entire screen.
Adam: I’m doing my job, Olive. Which is not to deliver feedback in a pleasant way or to make the department grads feel good about themselves. My job is to form rigorous researchers who won’t publish useless or harmful crap that will set back our field. Academia is cluttered with terrible science and mediocre scientists. I couldn’t care less about how your friends perceive me, as long as their work is up to standard. If they want to drop out when told that it’s not, then so be it. Not everyone has what it takes to be a scientist, and those who don’t should be weeded out.
She stared at her phone, hating how unfeeling and callous he sounded. The problem was—Olive understood exactly where Greg was coming from, because she’d been in similar situations. Perhaps not with Adam, but her overall experience in STEM academia had been punctuated by self-doubt, anxiety, and a sense of inferiority. She’d barely slept the two weeks before her qualifying exams, often wondered if her fear of public speaking was going to prevent her from having a career, and she was constantly terrified of being the stupidest person in the room. And yet, most of her time and energy was spent trying to be the best possible scientist, trying to carve a path for herself and amount to something. The idea of someone dismissing her work and her feelings this coldheartedly cut deep, which is why her response was so immature, it was almost fetal.
Olive: Well, fuck you, Adam.
She immediately regretted it, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to send an apology. It wasn’t until twenty minutes later that she realized that Adam wasn’t going to reply. A warning popped up on the upper part of her screen, informing her that her battery was at 5 percent.
With a deep sigh, Olive stood up from her bed and looked around the room in search of her charger.
* * *
—
“NOW GO RIGHT.”
“Got it.” Malcolm’s finger flicked the turn signal lever. A clicking sound filled the small car. “Going right.”
“No, don’t listen to Jeremy. Turn left.”
Jeremy leaned forward and swatted Anh’s arm. “Malcolm, trust me. Anh has never been to the farm. It’s on the right.”
“Google Maps says left.”
“Google Maps is wrong.”
“What do I do?” Malcolm made a face in the rearview mirror. “Left? Right? Ol, what do I do?”
In the back seat, Olive looked up from the car window and shrugged. “Try right; if it’s wrong, we’ll just turn around.” She shot Anh a quick, apologetic glance, but she and Jeremy were too busy mock-glaring at each other to notice.
Malcolm grimaced. “We’ll be late. God, I hate these stupid picnics.”
“We are, like”—Olive glanced at the car’s clock—“one hour late, already. I think we can add ten minutes to that.” I just hope there’s some food left. Her stomach had been growling for the past two hours, and there was no way everyone in the car hadn’t noticed.
After her argument with Adam three days ago, she’d been tempted to just skip the picnic. Hole herself up in the lab and continue with what she had been doing the whole weekend—ignore the fact that she had told him to fuck off, and with very little reason. She could use the time to work on Tom’s report, which was proving to be trickier and more time-consuming than she’d initially thought—probably because Olive couldn’t forget how much was at stake and kept rerunning analyses and agonizing over every single sentence. But she’d changed her mind last minute, telling herself that she’d promised Adam that they’d put on a show for the department chair. It would be unfair of her to back out after he’d done more than his share of the deal when it came to convincing Anh.
That was, of course, in the very unlikely case that he still wanted anything to do with Olive.
“Don’t worry, Malcolm,” Anh said. “We’ll get there eventually. If anyone asks, let’s just say that a mountain lion attacked us. God, why is it so hot? I brought sunblock, by the way. SPF thirty and fifty. No one is going anywhere before putting it on.”
In the back seat Olive and Jeremy exchanged a resigned look, well acquainted with Anh’s sunscreen obsession.
The picnic was in full swing when they finally arrived, as crowded as most academic events with free food. Olive made a beeline for the tables and waved at Dr. Aslan, who was sitting in the shade of a giant oak with other faculty members. Dr. Aslan waved back, no doubt pleased to note that her authority extended to commandeering her grads’ free time on top of the eighty hours a week they already spent in the lab. Olive smiled weakly in a valiant attempt not to look resentful, grabbed a cluster of white grapes, and popped one into her mouth while letting her gaze wander around the fields.
Anh was right. This September was uncommonly hot. There were people everywhere, sitting on the lawn chairs, lying down in the grass, walking in and out of the barns—all enjoying the weather. A few were eating from plastic plates on folding tables close to the main house, and there were at least three games going on—a version of volleyball with the players standing in a circle, a soccer match, and something that involved a Frisbee and over a dozen half-dressed dudes.
“What are they even playing?” Olive asked Anh. She spotted Dr. Rodrigues tackle someone from immunology and looked back to the almost empty tables, cringing. Slim pickings was all that was left. Olive wanted a sandwich. A bag of chips. Anything.
“Ultimate Frisbee, I think? I don’t know. Did you put on sunblock? You’re wearing a tank top and shorts, so you really should.”
Olive bit into another grape. “You Americans and your fake sports.”
“I’m pretty sure there are Canadian tournaments of Ultimate Frisbee, too. You know what’s not fake?”
“What?”
“Melanoma. Put on some sunscreen.”
“I will, Mom.” Olive smiled. “Can I eat first?”
“Eat what? There’s nothing left. Oh, there’s some corn bread over there.”
“Oh, cool. Pass it over.”
“Don’t eat the corn bread, guys.” Jeremy’s head popped up between Olive and Anh. “Jess said that a pharmacology first-year sneezed all over it. Where did Malcolm go?”
“Parking— Holy. Shit.”
Olive looked up from her perusal of the table, alarmed by the urgency in Anh’s tone. “What?”
“Just, holy shit.”
“Yeah, what—”
“Holy shit.”
“You mentioned that already.”
“Because—holy shit.”
She glanced around, trying to figure out what was going on. “What is— Oh, there’s Malcolm. Maybe he found something to eat?”
“Is that Carlsen?”
Olive was already walking toward Malcolm to find something edible and skip the whole sunscreen nonsense altogether, but when she heard Adam’s name, she stopped dead in her tracks. Or maybe it wasn’t Adam’s name but the way Anh was saying it. “What? Where?”
Jeremy pointed at the Ultimate Frisbee crowd. “That’s him, right? Shirtless?”
“Holy shit,” Anh repeated, her vocabulary suddenly pretty limited, given her twentysomething years of education. “Is that a six-pack?”
Jeremy blinked. “Might even be an eight-pack.”
“Are those his real shoulders?” Anh asked. “Did he have shoulder-enhancement 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 photo-damage 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—”
“Guys.” It took Olive all she had not to yell. “I have no mobility. Please, fix this sunscreen mess you created.”
“God, Ol.” Anh rolled her eyes. “You’re so dramatic sometimes. Hang on—” She waved at someone behind Olive, and when she spoke, her voice was much louder. “Hey, Dr. Carlsen! Have you put on sunscreen yet?”
In the span of a microsecond Olive’s entire brain burst into flames—and then crumbled into a pile of ashes. Just like that, one hundred billion neurons, one thousand billion glial cells, and who knew how many milliliters of cerebrospinal fluid, just ceased to exist. The rest of her body was not doing very well, either, since Olive could feel all her organs shut down in real time. From the very beginning of her acquaintance with Adam there had been about ten instances of Olive wishing to drop dead on the spot, for the earth to open and swallow her whole, for a cataclysm to hit and spare her from the embarrassment of their interactions. This time, though, it felt as though the end of the world might happen for real.
Don’t turn around, what’s left of her central nervous system told her. Pretend you didn’t hear Anh. Will this into nonexistence. But it was impossible. There was this triangle of sorts, formed by Olive, and Anh in front of her, and Adam probably—surely—standing behind her; it wasn’t as if Olive had a choice. Any choice. Especially when Adam, who couldn’t possibly imagine the depraved direction of Anh’s thoughts, who couldn’t possibly see the bucketful of sunscreen that had taken residence in Olive’s hands, said, “No.”
Well. Shit.
Olive spun around, and there he was—sweaty, holding a Frisbee in his left hand, and so very, very shirtless. “Perfect, then!” Anh said, sounding so chipper. “Olive has way too much and was wondering what to do with it. She’ll put some on you!”
No. No, no, no. “I can’t,” she hissed at Anh. “It would be highly inappropriate.”
“Why?” Anh blinked at her innocently. “I put sunscreen on Jeremy all the time. Look”—she squirted lotion on her hand and haphazardly slapped it across Jeremy’s face— “I am putting sunscreen on my boyfriend. Because I don’t want him to get melanoma. Am I ‘inappropriate’?”
Olive was going to murder her. Olive was going to make her lick every drop of this stupid sunscreen and watch her writhe in pain as she slowly died of oxybenzone poisoning.
Later, though. For now, Adam was looking at her, expression completely unreadable, and Olive would have apologized, she would have crawled under the table, she would have at least waved at him—but all she could do was stare and notice that even though the last time they’d talked she’d insulted him, he didn’t really seem angry. Just thoughtful and a little confused as he looked between Olive’s face and the small lake of white goop that now lived in her hands, probably trying to figure out if there was a way to get out of this latest shitshow—and then, finally, just giving up on it.
He nodded once, minutely, and turned around, the muscles in his back shifting as he threw Dr. Rodrigues the Frisbee and yelled, “I’m taking five!”
Which, Olive assumed, meant that they were actually doing this. Of course they damn were. Because this was her life, and these were her poor, moronic, harebrained choices.
&nbs
p; “Hey,” Adam said to her once they were closer. He was looking at her hands, at the way she had to hold them in front of her body like a supplicant. Behind her, Anh and Jeremy were no doubt ogling them.
“Hey.” She was wearing flip-flops, and he had sneakers on, and—he was always tall, but right now he towered over her. It put her eyes right in front of his pecs, and . . . No. Nope. Not doing that.
“Can you turn around?”
He hesitated for a moment, but then he did, uncharacteristically obedient. Which ended up resolving none of Olive’s problems, since his back was in no way less broad or impressive than his chest.
“Can you, um . . . duck a bit?”
Adam bent his head until his shoulders were . . . still abnormally high but somewhat easier to reach. As she lifted her right hand, some of the lotion dripped to the ground—Where it belongs, she thought savagely—and then she was doing it, this thing that she had never thought she would ever, ever do. Putting sunscreen on Adam Carlsen.
It wasn’t her first time touching him. Therefore, she shouldn’t have been surprised by how hard his muscles were, or that there was no give to his flesh. Olive remembered the way he’d pushed the truck, imagined that he could probably bench-press three times her weight, and then ordered herself to stop, because that was not an appropriate train of thought. Still, the issue remained that there was nothing between her hand and his skin. He was hot from the sun, his shoulders relaxed and immobile under her touch. Even in public, close as they were, it felt like something intimate was happening.
“So.” Her mouth was dry. “This might be a good time to mention how sorry I am that we keep getting stuck in these situations.”
“It’s fine.”
“I really am, though.”
“It’s not your fault.” There was an edge in his voice.
“Are you okay?”
The Love Hypothesis Page 12