Page 208 - The Love Hypothesis

around her shoulder. She spun around, noticed who it belonged to, and

immediately grinned.
“Tom!”
He was wearing a charcoal suit. His blond hair was combed back,

making him look older than he had in California, but also professional. He
was a friendly face in a sea of unfamiliar ones, and his presence took the

edge off her intense desire to puke in her own shoe.
“Hey, Olive.” He held the door open for her. “I thought I might see you

here.”
“Oh?”

“From the conference program.” He looked at her oddly. “You didn’t
notice we’re on the same panel?”
Oh, crap. “Uh—I . . . I didn’t even read who else was on the panel.”

Because I was too busy panicking.
“No worries. It’s mostly boring people.” He winked, and his hand slid to

her back, guiding her toward the podium. “Except for you and me, of
course.”

Her talk didn’t go poorly.
It didn’t go perfectly, either. She stumbled on the word

“channelrhodopsin” twice, and by some weird trick of the projector her
staining looked more like a black blob than a slice. “It looks different on my
computer,” Olive told the audience with a strained smile. “Just trust me on

this one.”
People chuckled, and she relaxed marginally, grateful that she’d spent

hours upon hours memorizing everything she was supposed to say. The
room was not as full as she’d feared, and there were a handful of people—

likely working on similar projects at other institutions—who took notes and
listened raptly to her every word. It should have been overwhelming and

anxiety inducing, but about halfway through she realized that it made her
oddly giddy, knowing that someone else was passionate about the same
research questions that had taken up most of the past two years of her life.

In the second row, Malcolm faked a fascinated expression, while Anh,
Jeremy, and a bunch of other grads from Stanford nodded enthusiastically