“What?”
“This.” She gestured inchoately around herself. “Academia. Does it get better, after grad school? Once you have tenure?”
“No. God, no.” He looked so horrified by the assumption, she had to laugh.
“Why do you stick around, then?”
“Unclear.” There was a flash of something in his eyes that Olive couldn’t quite interpret, but—nothing surprising about that. There was a lot about Adam Carlsen she didn’t know. He was an ass, but with unexpected depths. “There’s an element of sunk-cost fallacy, probably—hard to step away, when you’ve invested so much time and energy. But the science makes it worth it. When it works, anyway.”
She hummed, considering his words, and remembered The Guy in the bathroom. He’d said that academia was a lot of bucks for little bang, and that one needed a good reason to stick around. Olive wondered where he was now. If he’d managed to graduate. If he knew that he’d helped someone make one of the hardest decisions of their life. If he had any idea that there was a girl, somewhere in the world, who thought about their random encounter surprisingly often. Doubtful.
“I know grad school is supposed to be miserable for everyone, but it’s depressing to see tenured faculty here on a Friday night, instead of, I don’t know, watching Netflix in bed, or getting dinner with their girlfriend—”
“I thought you were my girlfriend.”
Olive smiled up at him. “Not quite.” But, since we’re on the topic: why exactly don’t you have one? Because it’s getting harder and harder for me to figure that one out. Except that maybe you just don’t want one. Maybe you just want to be on your own, like everything about your behavior suggests, and here I am, annoying the shit out of you. I should just pocket my chips and my candy and go back to my stupid protein samples, but for some reason you are so comfortable to be around. And I am drawn to you, even though I don’t know why.
“Do you plan to stay in academia?” he asked. “After you graduate.”
“Yes. Maybe. No.”
He smiled, and Olive laughed.
“Undecided.”
“Right.”
“It’s just . . . there are things that I love about it. Being in the lab, doing research. Coming up with study ideas, feeling that I’m doing something meaningful. But if I go the academic route, then I’ll also need to do a lot of other things that I just . . .” She shook her head.
“Other things?”
“Yeah. The PR stuff, mostly. Write grants and convince people to fund my research. Network, which is a special kind of hell. Public speaking, or even one-on-one situations where I have to impress people. That’s the worst, actually. I hate it so much—my head explodes and I freeze and everyone is looking at me ready to judge me and my tongue paralyzes and I start wishing that I was dead and then that the world was dead and—” She noticed his smile and gave him a rueful look. “You get the gist.”
“There are things you can do about that, if you want. It just takes practice. Making sure your thoughts are organized. Stuff like that.”
“I know. And I try to do that—I did it before my meeting with Tom. And I still stammered like an idiot when he asked me a simple question.” And then you helped me, ordered my thoughts, and saved my ass, without even meaning to. “I don’t know. Maybe my brain is broken.”
He shook his head. “You did great during that meeting with Tom, especially considering that you were forced to have your fake boyfriend sit next to you.” She didn’t point out that his presence had actually made things better. “Tom certainly seemed impressed, which is no small feat. And if anyone screwed up, it was definitely him. I’m sorry he did that, by the way.”