He glanced at her, surprised. “Do you remember your first seminar talk?”
“I do. Why?”
“Your elevator pitch—you called it a turbolift pitch. You put a picture from The Next Generation on your slides.”
“Oh, yes. I did.” She let out a low laugh. “I didn’t know you were a Trekkie.”
“I had a phase. And that year’s picnic, when we got rained on. You were playing freeze tag with someone’s kids for hours. They loved you—they had to physically peel the youngest off you to get him inside the car.”
“Dr. Moss’s kids.” She looked at him curiously. A light breeze rose and ruffled his hair, but he didn’t seem to mind. “I didn’t think you liked kids. The opposite, actually.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t like twenty-five-year-olds who act like toddlers. I don’t mind them if they’re actually three.”
Olive smiled. “Adam, the fact that you knew who I was . . . Did it have anything to do with your decision to pretend to date me?”
About a dozen expressions crossed his face as he looked for an answer, and she couldn’t pick apart a single one. “I wanted to help you, Olive.”
“I know. I believe that.” She rubbed her fingers against her mouth. “But was that all?”
He pressed his lips together. Exhaled. Closed his eyes, and for a split second looked like he was having his teeth and his soul pulled out. Then he said, resigned, “No.”
“No,” she repeated, pensive. “This is my place, by the way.” She pointed at the tall brick building on the corner.
“Right.” Adam looked around, studying her street. “Should I carry your bag upstairs?”
“I . . . Maybe later. There is something I need to tell you. Before.”
“Of course.”
He stopped in front of her, and she looked up at him, at the lines of his handsome, familiar face. There was only fresh breeze between them, and whatever distance Adam had seen fit to keep. Her stubborn, mercurial fake boyfriend. Wonderfully, perfectly unique. Delightfully one of a kind. Olive felt her heart overflow.
She took a deep breath. “The thing is, Adam . . . I was stupid. And wrong.” She played nervously with a lock of her hair, then let her hand drift down to her stomach, and—okay. Okay. She was going to tell him. She would do this. Now. “It’s like—it’s like statistical hypothesis testing. Type I error. It’s scary, isn’t it?”
He frowned. She could tell he had no idea where she was going with this. “Type I error?”
“A false positive. Thinking that something is happening when it’s not.”
“I know what type I error is—”
“Yes, of course. It’s just . . . in the past few weeks, what terrified me was the idea that I could misread a situation. That I could convince myself of something that wasn’t true. See something that wasn’t there just because I wanted to see it. A scientist’s worst nightmare, right?”
“Right.” His brows furrowed. “That is why in your analyses you set a level of significance that is—”
“But the thing is, type II error is bad, too.”
Her eyes bore into his, hesitant and urgent all at once. She was frightened—so frightened by what she was about to say. But also exhilarated for him to finally know. Determined to get it out.
“Yes,” he agreed slowly, confused. “False negatives are bad, too.”
“That’s the thing with science. We’re drilled to believe that false positives are bad, but false negatives are just as terrifying.” She swallowed. “Not being able to see something, even if it’s in front of your eyes. Purposefully making yourself blind, just because you’re afraid of seeing too much.”
“Are you saying that statistics graduate education is inadequate?”
She exhaled a laugh, suddenly flushed, even in the dark cool of the night. Her eyes were starting to sting. “Maybe. But also . . . I think that I have been inadequate. And I don’t want to be, not anymore.”
“Olive.” He took one step closer, just a few inches. Not enough to crowd, but plenty for her to feel his warmth. “Are you okay?”
“There have been . . . so many things that have happened, before I even met you, and I think they messed me up a little. I’ve mostly lived in fear of being alone, and . . . I’ll tell you about them, if you want. First, I have to figure it out on my own, why shielding myself with a bunch of lies seemed like a better idea than admitting even one ounce of truth. But I think . . .”