Page 90 - The Love Hypothesis

“Here’s the deal. I’m going to give you two weeks to write up a report

on everything you’ve been doing so far—protocols, findings, challenges. In
two weeks, send me the report and I’ll make a decision based on it. Does
that sound feasible?”

She grinned, nodding enthusiastically. “Yes!” She could absolutely do
that. She’d need to pull the intro from one of her papers, the methods from

her lab protocols, the preliminary data from that grant she’d applied for and
not won. And she’d have to rerun some of her analyses—just to make sure

that the report was absolutely flawless for Tom. It would be lots of work in
little time, but who needed sleep? Or bathroom breaks?

“Great. In the meantime I’ll see you around and we can chat more.
Adam and I will be joined at the hip for a couple of weeks, since we’re
working on that grant we just got. Are you coming to my talk tomorrow?”

Olive had no idea he was giving a talk, let alone when or where, but she
said “Of course! Can’t wait!” with the certainty of someone who had

installed a countdown widget on her smartphone.
“And I’m staying with Adam, so I’ll see you at his place.”

Oh no. “Um . . .” She risked a glance at Adam, who was unreadable.
“Sure. Though we usually meet at my place, so . . .”

“I see. You disapprove of his taxidermy collection, don’t you?” Tom
stood with a smirk. “Excuse me. I’ll get some coffee and be right back.”
The second he was gone, Olive instantly turned to Adam. Now that they

were alone there were about ten million topics for them to debrief on, but
the only thing she could think of was, “Do you really collect taxidermied

animals?”
He gave her a scathing look and took his arm away from around her

shoulders. She felt cold all of a sudden. Bereft.
“I’m sorry. I had no idea he was your friend, or that you two had a grant

together. You do such different research, the possibility didn’t even cross
my mind.”
“You did mention that you don’t believe cancer researchers can benefit

from collaborating with computational modelists.”