Page 72 - The Love Hypothesis

He looked surprised. “It isn’t?”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “I would never fake-date a dude who
thinks that he has to pay for my coffee just because he’s a dude.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I doubt a language exists in which the thing you

just ordered could be referred to as ‘coffee.’ ”
“Hey—”

“And it’s not about me being a ‘dude’ ”—the word came out a touch
pained—“but about you still being a grad student. And your yearly

income.”
For a moment she hesitated, wondering if she should be offended. Was

Adam being his well-known ass self? Was he patronizing her? Did he think
she was poor? Then she remembered that she was, in fact, poor, and that he
probably made five times as much as her. She shrugged, adding a chocolate

chip cookie, a banana, and a pack of gum to her coffee. To his credit, Adam
said nothing and paid the resulting $21.39 without batting an eye.

While they were waiting for their drinks, Olive’s mind began drifting off
to her project and to whether she could convince Dr. Aslan to buy her better

reagents soon. She looked distractedly around the coffee shop, finding that
even though the research assistant, the postdoc, and one of the students

were gone, two grads (one of whom serendipitously happened to work in
Anh’s lab) were still sitting at a table by the door, glancing toward them
every few minutes. Excellent.

She leaned her hip against the counter and looked up at Adam. Thank
God this thing was only going to be ten minutes a week, or she’d develop a

permanent crick in her neck.
“Where were you born?” she asked.

“Is this another one of your green card marriage interview questions?”
She giggled. He smiled in response, as if pleased to have made her

laugh. Though it was certainly for some other reason.
“Netherlands. The Hague.”
“Oh.”

He leaned against the counter, too, directly in front of her. “Why ‘oh’?”