Page 198 - The Love Hypothesis

Olive just bet that he could. She didn’t know Adam’s former adviser, but

academia was very much an old boys’ club, where those who held the
power liked to take advantage of those who didn’t without repercussions.
“Was it? A formative experience?”

He shrugged again. “As much as anything that keeps you awake in a
panic for forty-eight hours straight can be.”

Olive smiled. “And how did you do?”
“I did . . .” He pressed his lips together. “Not well enough.” He was

silent for a long moment, his gaze locked somewhere outside the café’s
window. “Then again, nothing was ever good enough.”

It seemed impossible that someone might look at Adam’s scientific
accomplishments and find them lacking. That he could ever be anything
less than the best at what he did. Was that why he was so severe in his

judgment of others? Because he’d been taught to set the same impossible
standards for himself?

“Do you still keep in touch with him? Your adviser, I mean.”
“He’s retired now. Tom has taken over what used to be his lab.”

It was such an uncharacteristically opaque, carefully worded answer.
Olive couldn’t help being curious. “Did you like him?”

“It’s complicated.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw, looking pensive and
far away. “No. No, I didn’t like him. I still don’t. He was . . .” It took him so
long to continue, she almost convinced herself that he wouldn’t. But he did,

staring at the late-afternoon sunlight disappearing behind the oak trees.
“Brutal. My adviser was brutal.”

She chuckled, and Adam’s eyes darted back to her face, narrow with
confusion.

“Sorry.” She was still laughing a little. “It’s just funny, to hear you
complain about your old mentor. Because . . .”

“Because?”
“Because he sounds exactly like you.”
“I’m not like him,” he retorted, more sharply than Olive had come to

expect from him. It made her snort.