“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.