Page 150 - The Love Hypothesis

“To death. I briefly considered going into industry.”

Olive gasped. Switching from academia to industry was considered the
ultimate betrayal.
“Don’t worry.” Adam smiled. “Tom saved the day. When I told him I

wasn’t enjoying research anymore, we brainstormed some new directions,
found something we were both enthusiastic about, and wrote the grant.”

Olive felt a sudden surge of gratitude toward Tom. Not only was he
going to rescue her project, but he was the reason Adam was still around.

The reason she’d gotten the opportunity to know him. “It must be nice to be
excited about work again.”

“It is. Academia takes a lot from you and gives back very little. It’s hard
to stick around without a good reason to do so.”
She nodded absentmindedly, thinking that the words sounded familiar.

Not just the content, but the delivery, too. Not surprising, though: it was
exactly what The Guy in the bathroom had told her all those years ago.

Academia’s a lot of bucks for very little bang. What matters is whether your
reason to be in academia is good enough.

Suddenly, something clicked in her brain.
The deep voice. The blurry dark hair. The crisp, precise way of talking.

Could The Guy in the bathroom and Adam be . . .
No. Impossible. The Guy was a student—though, had he explicitly said
so? No. No, what he’d said was This is my lab’s bathroom and that he’d

been there for six years, and he hadn’t answered when she’d asked about his
dissertation timeline, and—

Impossible. Improbable. Inconceivable.
Just like everything else about Adam and Olive.

Oh God. What if they’d really met years ago? He probably didn’t
remember, anyway. Surely. Olive had been no one. Still was no one. She

thought about asking him, but why? He had no idea that a five-minute
conversation with him had been the exact push Olive needed. That she’d
thought about him for years.

Olive remembered her last words to him—Maybe I’ll see you next year
—and oh, if only she’d known. She felt a surge of something warm and soft