“Will do, babe. Now tell us about the sex.”
The fact that Malcolm, usually very forward with the details of his sex life, just closed his eyes and smiled, spoke volumes. Anh and Olive exchanged a long, impressed glance.
“And that’s not even the best part. He wants to see me again. Today. A date. He used the word ‘date’ unprompted.” He fell back on the mattress. “He’s so hot. And funny. And nice. A sweet, filthy beast.”
Malcolm looked so happy, Olive couldn’t resist: she swallowed the lump that had taken residence in her throat sometime last night and jumped on the bed next to him, hugging him as tight as she could. Anh followed and did the same.
“I’m so happy for you, Malcolm.”
“Same.” Anh’s voice was muffled against his hair.
“I am happy for me, too. I hope he’s serious. You know when I said I was training for gold? Well, Holden’s platinum.”
“You should ask Carlsen, Ol,” Anh suggested. “If he knows what Holden’s intentions are.”
She probably wasn’t going to have the opportunity anytime soon. “I will.”
Malcolm shifted a bit and turned to Olive. “Did you really fall asleep last night? Or were you and Carlsen celebrating in unmentionable ways?”
“Celebrating?”
“I told Holden that I was worried about you, and he said that you guys were probably celebrating. Something about Carlsen’s funds being released? By the way, you never told me Carlsen and Holden were best friends—it seems like a piece of information you’d want to share with your Holden-Rodrigues-fan-club-founder-and-most-vocal-member roommate—”
“Wait.” Olive sat up, wide-eyed. “The funds that were released, are they . . . the frozen ones? The ones Stanford was withholding?”
“Maybe? Holden said something about the department chair finally easing up. I tried to pay attention, but talking about Carlsen is a bit of a buzzkill—no offense. Plus, I kept getting lost in Holden’s eyes.”
“And his butt,” Anh added.
“And his butt.” Malcolm sighed happily. “Such a nice butt. He has little dimples on his lower back.”
“Oh my God, so does Jeremy! I want to bite them.”
“Aren’t they the cutest?”
Olive stopped listening and stood from the bed, grabbing her phone to read the date.
September twenty-ninth.
It was September twenty-ninth.
She had known, of course. She had known for over a month that today was coming, but in the past week she’d been too busy fretting about her talk to focus on anything else, and Adam hadn’t reminded her. With everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, it was no surprise that he’d forgotten to mention that his funds had been released. But still. The implications of it were . . .
She closed her eyes, shut tight, while Anh and Malcolm’s excited chattering kept rising in volume in the background. When she opened them, her phone lit up with a new notification. From Adam.
Adam: I have interview meetings until 4:30, but I’m free for the night. Would you like to get dinner? There are several good restaurants near campus （though a shameful lack of conveyor belts）。 If you’re not busy, I could show you around campus, maybe even Tom’s lab.
Adam: No pressure, of course.
It was almost two in the afternoon. Olive felt as though her bones weighed twice as much as the day before. She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and began typing her reply to Adam.
She knew what she had to do.