“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 seventy-two 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—”