Page 76 - The Love Hypothesis

excessive amount of time looking for something appropriate. Dress for

success and all that.
Finally, it occurred to her that she had no idea what Dr. Benton—
arguably the most important person in her life at the moment, and yes, she

was aware of how sad that sounded but decided not to dwell on it—even
looked like. She looked him up on her phone and found out that he was

somewhere in his late thirties, blond with blue eyes, and had very straight,
very white teeth. When she arrived at the campus Starbucks, Olive was

whispering to his Harvard headshot, “Please, let me come work in your
lab.” Then she noticed Adam.

It was an uncharacteristically cloudy day. Still August, but it almost felt
like late fall. Olive glanced at him, and she immediately knew that he was
in the nastiest of moods. That rumor of him throwing a petri dish against a

wall because his experiment hadn’t worked out, or because the electron
microscope needed repairs, or because something equally inconsequential

had happened came to mind. She considered ducking under the table.
It’s okay, she told herself. This is worth it. Things with Anh were back to

normal. Better than normal: she and Jeremy were officially dating, and last
weekend Anh had showed up to beers-and-s’mores night wearing leggings

and an oversize MIT sweater she’d clearly borrowed from him. When Olive
had eaten lunch with the two of them the other day, it hadn’t even felt
awkward. Plus, the first-, second-, and even third-year grads were too

scared of Adam Carlsen’s “girlfriend” to steal Olive’s pipettes, which meant
that she didn’t have to stuff them in her backpack and take them home for

the weekend anymore. And she was getting some grade A free food out of
this. She could take Adam Carlsen—yes, even this pitch-black-mood Adam

Carlsen. For ten minutes a week, at the very least.
“Hey.” She smiled. He responded with a look that exuded moodiness

and existential angst. Olive took a fortifying breath. “How are you?”
“Fine.” His tone was clipped, his expression tenser than usual. He was
wearing a red plaid shirt and jeans, looking more like a wood-chopping

lumberjack than a scholar pondering the mysteries of computational
biology. She couldn’t help noticing the muscles and wondered again if he