The Love Hypothesis

He lifted an eyebrow. “I doubt a language exists in which the thing you just ordered could be referred to as ‘coffee.’?”

“Hey—”

“And it’s not about me being a ‘dude’?”—the word came out a touch pained—“but about you still being a grad student. And your yearly income.”

For a moment she hesitated, wondering if she should be offended. Was Adam being his well-known ass self? Was he patronizing her? Did he think she was poor? Then she remembered that she was, in fact, poor, and that he probably made five times as much as her. She shrugged, adding a chocolate chip cookie, a banana, and a pack of gum to her coffee. To his credit, Adam said nothing and paid the resulting $21.39 without batting an eye.

While they were waiting for their drinks, Olive’s mind began drifting off to her project and to whether she could convince Dr. Aslan to buy her better reagents soon. She looked distractedly around the coffee shop, finding that even though the research assistant, the postdoc, and one of the students were gone, two grads (one of whom serendipitously happened to work in Anh’s lab) were still sitting at a table by the door, glancing toward them every few minutes. Excellent.

She leaned her hip against the counter and looked up at Adam. Thank God this thing was only going to be ten minutes a week, or she’d develop a permanent crick in her neck.

“Where were you born?” she asked.

“Is this another one of your green card marriage interview questions?”

She giggled. He smiled in response, as if pleased to have made her laugh. Though it was certainly for some other reason.

“Netherlands. The Hague.”

“Oh.”

He leaned against the counter, too, directly in front of her. “Why ‘oh’?”

“I don’t know.” Olive shrugged. “I think I expected . . . New York? Or maybe Kansas?”

He shook his head. “My mother used to be a US ambassador to the Netherlands.”

“Wow.” Weird, to imagine that Adam had a mother. A family. That before being tall and scary and infamous, he’d been a kid. Maybe he spoke Dutch. Maybe he had smoked herring for breakfast on the reg. Maybe his mother had wanted him to follow in her footsteps and become a diplomat, but his shiny personality had emerged and she’d given up on that dream. Olive found herself acutely eager to know more about his upbringing, which was . . . weird. Very weird.

“Here you go.” Their drinks appeared on the counter. Olive told herself that the way the blond barista was obviously checking out Adam as he turned to retrieve a lid for his cup was none of her business. She also reminded herself that as curious as she was about his diplomat mother, how many languages he spoke, and whether he liked tulips, it was information that went well beyond their arrangement.

People had seen them together. They were going to go back to their labs and tell improbable tales of Dr. Adam Carlsen and the random, unremarkable student they’d spotted him with. Time for Olive to go back to her science.

She cleared her throat. “Well. This was fun.”

He looked up from his cup, surprised. “Is fake-dating Wednesday over?”

“Yep. Great job, team, now hit the showers. You’re free until next week.” Olive stabbed her straw into her drink and took a sip, feeling the sugar explode in her mouth. Whatever she’d ordered, it was disgustingly good. She was probably developing diabetes as she spoke. “I’ll see you—”

“Where were you born?” Adam asked before she could leave.

Oh. They were doing this, then. He was probably just trying to be polite, and Olive sighed inwardly, thinking longingly of her lab bench. “Toronto.”

“Right. You’re Canadian,” he said, like he’d already known.

“Yep.”

“When did you move here?”

“Eight years ago. For college.”

He nodded, as if storing up the information. “Why the US? Canada has excellent schools.”

“I got a full ride.” It was true. If not the whole truth.

He fidgeted with the cardboard cup holder. “Do you go back a lot?”

“Not really, no.” Olive licked some whipped cream off her straw. She was puzzled when he immediately looked away from her.