Love Hypothesis

In Adam’s defense, he thought it was a dream.

Given the context clues, it was the only reasonable conclusion: Adam rarely got kissed out of the blue; he rarely got kissed in his workplace, on the way back from running gels; and, perhaps most crucially, he rarely got kissed by Olive Smith.

It wasn’t too unusual for Olive to be in the lab this late, even during the weekend. He often caught glimpses of her as she walked around the nearly deserted biology department, usually with her head bent over her phone, often sporting a messy bun and a dewy, flushed complexion that hinted at her coming to check on her animals after a run or a workout at the gym. Most times, she showed up alone, but sometimes she’d be following a small dark-haired woman, the one who came to faculty meetings as the student representative. The one whose legs were approximately four inches shorter than Olive’s and yet always outpaced everyone around her.

Once—only once—he’d seen Olive come in while holding hands with another student. Adam had firmly refused to pay attention to the boy—it was better for the both of them if he didn’t know who he was. However, every night that week, he’d gone home and exhausted himself with runs that ranged from twelve to eighteen miles.

The Strava app had been very pleased with him.

Adam, however, had felt slightly nauseous.

Earlier tonight, too, he had seen Olive walk into the department. Alone. She’d been fifty feet or so ahead of him, the line of her shoulders unusually tense, a faintly furtive air about her as she glanced at her surroundings over and over, as though she was trying to avoid someone.

Adam, who often felt like something of a stalker when he noticed her while remaining unnoticed himself, had wondered what that was about. Not him, for sure. Olive’s awareness of his existence had come into being approximately three years ago and had extinguished less than ten minutes later. The impact their conversation had had on her was clearly negligible compared to him, and after an initial struggle with disappointment, Adam had elected to be okay with that. Even if she’d remembered him as fondly as he had her, there would have been nowhere for them to go from there.

Maybe when she graduates, he’d told himself a couple of times, especially in the beginning of her tenure at Stanford. Maybe if I meet her at a conference after I transfer to Harvard. Maybe if we run into each other at the grocery store. Maybe if I decide to leave biology and take up the van lifestyle. Maybe there is something here. Maybe.

But even just entertaining the thought made him uneasy enough. Because, he’d discovered, the possibility of finally talking to Olive again was not half as rewarding to him as the certainty of her peace of mind. There was no universe in which being approached by an older, sasquatch-size, socially stunted man who also happened to be a professor in her field of study wouldn’t cause her some degree of discomfort. Maybe, if he was lucky, she’d ask him to be part of her thesis committee and he’d get one or two interactions out of that. He would, naturally, recuse himself with some believable justification—he was wise enough to know how idiotic it would be to put himself in a position of power over the first girl on whom he’d ever had a long-lasting, long-distance, long-pining crush.

But that was it. Olive Smith was no longer allowed to loiter within Adam’s rational thoughts. Which meant that the way she was currently kissing him had to be the product of a dream. And if this was a dream, it didn’t matter too much that he was getting more worked up than he’d been in years. Or ever.

Above all, it didn’t matter that it was happening with a student.

She’s not your student, the sensible voice in his dream pointed out, because Holden was right, and Adam was genetically incapable of fun, even in his most harmless and private thoughts. Not even close.

Right, he told the voice. Yes.

But Olive’s lips were hot and somewhat stiff underneath his own, and something new occurred to Adam: since this was clearly his own personal dream, and he was in control, he could build an even better scenario for them. One that minimized his guilt and maximized her comfort. We cleared it with the dean. Signed paperwork. In fact, she transferred to another department.

Ah yes. Perfect. The voice sounded pleased. She’s now getting her doctorate in classics.

Yes. Lovely. Dream Olive was passionate about Greek tragedies. Aeschylus was her favorite. The Myrmidons, in particular, were an area of particular interest for—

No. This would not do. Actually, I’d rather she transferred to chemistry, or pharmacology. I’ve been following the progress of her work, and I think it would be a loss for the department if she were to abandon biology altogether—

Sure. Fine. She’s moved schools and is now a pharmacology student at Berkeley. She’s here for the weekend to visit her friends. When she saw you, she was naturally overcome by lust and decided to kiss you. All good? the voice asked, bristling. It was starting to become irritated. Which wasn’t too surprising, since it was Adam’s subconscious.

Acceptable, Adam declared, and promptly went back to his Dream, capital D, in which the frenzied grip of Olive’s hands on the fabric of his clothes was slowly loosening to something softer—something that involved her palms climbing up his shoulders, making him hot, breathless, dizzy. She smelled of sugar, and vanilla, and, ever so faintly, of the same brand of industrial-strength disinfectant Adam purchased for his lab. Later in The Dream, he was going to take her there and do wonderful, unspeakable things to her. Better yet, he would carry her to his office, lock the door behind him, and they would remain in it for a couple of years. Three, maybe.

Hell, it was his Dream. Why not forever?

Before that could happen, though, he really needed to do something about the kiss. Because he was, to be candid, not at all pulling his weight. For one, she was much shorter than him, and the wooden way he stood, like a scarecrow, wasn’t helping the angle of things. Not to mention, he wasn’t exactly kissing her back. It was more of a full-frontal crash of mouths and noses, and he would have loved to turn this into something a little more pleasant for her, but there were issues at play. Namely, that he was severely out of practice.

Not only could Adam not recall the last time he’d kissed a woman, but he could have stretched so far as to say that he didn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to kiss a woman.

And yet, recklessly, he wanted to kiss Olive. Even more, he wanted her to want to kiss him—now, and later, and many, many more times. Which was how, faced with his inability to ensure that she would come back to him, at the geriatric age of thirty-four, Adam J. Carlsen, Ph.D., found himself wishing, for the very first time in his life, that he’d better applied himself to the whole dating thing.

Adam Carlsen’s last relationship had ended several years earlier, toward the end of his doctorate, with something that his old-money parents would have undoubtedly called “a scene,” but Adam liked to think of it as a simple misunderstanding.

The breakup came as a big surprise. Not because there weren’t reasons for it, or because the accusations leveraged against him were false. It was more the case that Adam hadn’t known that he and the girl in question were dating.

“This can’t go on,” the girl told him. “I introduced you to all my friends, and you don’t even say hi back to them when you see them around campus, which is incredibly rude. It was my birthday last week, and you not only forgot about it, you also didn’t return my roommate’s texts when she invited you to the dinner she organized for me. And you didn’t need to be that mean to my brother when he said that humans only use ten percent of their brains—he’s in high school, for fuck’s sake!”

Adam had no doubt that the entirety of the coffee place could hear what she was saying. Perhaps he should have interrupted her, or tried to placate her, or apologized for the many offenses she was laying down at his feet—offenses that he could not recall committing, but they sounded very much in character for him. The problem was, his centrifuge was going to be done in exactly twenty minutes, and he cared more about being back in time for that than he did about preserving the privacy of his personal life.

“The worst part is that sometimes I wish you were rude to me, too, Adam. Because you clearly just... you don’t give a shit. I would love to assume that you’re just using me because you like to fuck me, but you don’t seem very interested in that, either.”

She had that right. Adam wasn’t. She was beautiful and clearly very intelligent, a slightly older postdoc whose research he greatly respected and with whom he’d enjoy collaborating, if the opportunity ever arose. However, by this point in his life, Adam accepted that his sex drive was uniquely low. It would take him a decade or so to realize that that wasn’t quite the case, but for now, all he could think to do was stare back at her and say, “I see.”

“I’m sorry, Adam. It’s just not working,” she told him eventually, giving him exactly five minutes to nod somberly and take the elevator back to his lab.

Her timing was nothing short of impeccable. He would always carry that in his heart.

“Have you forgotten her name yet?” Holden asked that night. Adam would not have told him about what had happened, but just as he suspected, the conversation had been overheard. Holden, unlike Adam, was very skilled at keeping abreast of the department gossip.

“I have not,” Adam told him, taking a sip of his draft beer. “And I will never forget it.”

Holden cast an intrigued glance in his direction. It was short-lived.

“She is first author on a seminal paper on mutant RAS,” Adam explained. “I cite it regularly.” Her last name and first initial were safe in the vault. If she ever got married, however, they might have a problem.

“Seriously?” Holden had asked him. “Is this a new phase for you? The whole fuckboy routine? Use ’em and lose ’em?”

“Very little using occurred,” Adam pointed out. “That was the issue.”

“You realize you broke her heart, right? She’s probably locked herself in her room to cry and listen to Taylor Swift instead of writing more seminal papers about mutant RAS.” She hadn’t. In the following five years, the woman would go on to produce a bounty of field-redefining knowledge. In thirty years, she would win a Nobel Prize. But Adam did not yet know this, and therefore had to listen to his friend say, “Congratulations, Carlsen. You have successfully dicked your way into delaying scientific development.”

He glared at Holden, narrow-eyed. “I certainly hope you feel responsible for this, since you’re the one who orchestrated it.”

“Bro, I did not orchestrate shit. Just, when I found out that she was into you, I told her that you’d expressed interest in her, too—”

“I had not.”

“—and hinted that you would be in the graduate lounge—”

“You lured me there by saying that you were, and I quote, ‘bleeding out.’”

“—and gave her your number and set up your first dinner.”

Adam felt that he didn’t need to make his case any more clear, and Holden must have been in agreement, because he sighed and scratched his head. “Maybe you’re right, and it was my fault. Maybe I should stop trying to get you to be...”

“‘Be’?” Adam strove for his least annoyed Please, continue look.

“Happy.”

Not this again. “I am happy, Holden.”

A raised eyebrow.

“I am content,” Adam amended. “But the reasons for unhappiness in my life have little to do with me not being in a relationship and more with my present inability to correct the shortcomings of computational models aiming at predicting the clonal evolution in—”

“Yes, yes. I know. One day you’ll...” Holden stopped. He leaned back in his seat. “Well, I was going to say that one day you’ll find someone who does it for you just as much as the clonal evolution in tumors, but the truth is, there’s no guarantee of that. Maybe no one will ever do it for you. I guess we’ll see.” Holden shrugged, seemingly okay with that.

And Adam was okay with that, too. Or so he thought. Unfortunately, that turned out to be nearsighted of him. Because it never crossed his mind that maybe one day he’d find someone who did it for him—and that he simply would not do it for her. Above all, it never occurred to him that when that day came and he was standing in front of her, he would wish that he’d spent his life trying harder to become a better person.

Because Olive Smith deserved the best.

Lamentably, Adam wasn’t quite there yet.

The realization took form right as his teeth clinked against hers, nearly giving him a split lip.

This was Adam’s Dream. Consequently, it didn’t matter if he was bad at this. Within the confines of his own mind, if he wanted to be a smooth, skilled kisser of great talent and experience, he could be one. It was that simple—and it changed everything.

All at once, Olive didn’t need to arch up into him all on her own, because he could incline his head toward hers and wrap his hands around her waist to better prop her up. He could allow his palms to slide upward and meet the flare of her rib cage. He could feel the goose bumps peppering her skin and press her a little closer into himself, protecting her from the harsh blowing of the AC.

Even in The Dream he wasn’t bold enough to deepen the kiss. He considered it—her lips were right there, a slight part at the seam, and he could run his tongue through it and coax her mouth open, discover whether the delicious vanilla scent came accompanied by a vanilla taste. Adam hadn’t even known he liked vanilla (the things one discovered about oneself by becoming smitten were ever surprising). But funnily enough, he didn’t feel the need to reach for more. He was mostly interested in remaining at Olive’s disposal as she pushed into their embrace, just a little...

Yeah. Those were her breasts pressing into his chest—this was a Dream, and it was okay to admit to himself that he could feel her nipples hardening against his pecs. That her fingers were cool as they brushed over his jaw. That her nails scraping through the scalp at his nape sent heat coiling at the base of his spine. It was okay to feel his control yield and become something softer. To appreciate the sigh she let out against his mouth as her breath hitched. To tighten his hold, just a little.

Yes. This was good. Perfect, even. So much so that he thought it might be the perfect time for The Dream to graduate to a different location. His office awaited. They were going to magically transition there, and he was going to show Olive and his subconscious that a new era was coming. Adam was, at last, very interested in sex. They could have it on his desk, maybe after he and Olive had an interesting conversation about the advancements she’d been making on her pancreatic cell project. Or before, he wasn’t—

Abruptly, The Dream began malfunctioning.

 It was supposed to be shifting to a new and improved scenario, but it did the opposite: not only did it remain in the department hallway, but Olive pulled back from Adam. She furiously glanced around, as though the kiss had never happened, as though Adam were little more than an afterthought in his own oneiric activity. Her pupils were blown out with something that looked less like arousal and more akin to... worry?

He stared down at her, noticing the faint tremble in her hands; her wild, mussed hair that always charmed him to no end; the freckles on her nose he’d repeatedly ordered himself to stop thinking about, because it was the literal definition of a slippery slope. Her mouth was full and bee-stung. Darker than usual. Yes, he could easily tell, because of course he had an extensive visual library against which to compare it.

Dream Olive didn’t look too pleased with what was happening. Perhaps it was that Adam’s performance was lacking. Perhaps she’d just changed her mind. Either way, if Dream Olive was upset, it felt wrong to be as profoundly horny as he felt in that moment.

Adam took a deep breath, willing his control over himself to solidify a tad, and asked, “Did you... Did you just kiss me?” His voice came out hoarser than he would have liked. Oh well. He didn’t mind it if Dream Olive realized exactly how enamored with her he was. He might even confess it himself.

“Nope,” she said. She was a terrible liar. It was the wobbliest, most house-of-cards denial he’d never witnessed. Her smile looked like a grimace. The fidgeting made her seem so guilty, if she’d told him that the Earth was round, he probably would have found himself rethinking his knowledge of astrophysics.

And yet, her nope made sense. Why would Olive Smith, of all people, kiss Adam Carlsen, of all people? She was... well. Perfect, as far as he could tell. And he was not. The kiss simply made no sense. Even within The Dream, it seemed more likely that he had hallucinated the whole experience. So Adam nodded, said, “Ah. Okay, then,” and before he could fall prey to a few more bouts of delusion, he turned around and took several steps down the hallway.

God, he thought. This was the best dream of my whole life. Thank you.

You’re welcome, the subconscious voice replied smugly.

Adam felt as though he were gliding on a moving walkway made of clouds. On impulse, he decided that since The Dream had already been so generous to him, he might be able to wish for one last thing. A small, tiny, undeserved gift.

He stopped and glanced at Olive from over his shoulder, craving just one more interaction. “Are you sure?” he asked. He didn’t care about the answer. All he wanted was to hear her voice. Except the answer did come. In the form of Olive burying her face in her hands and looking supremely distressed. And that... that just didn’t make sense.

Olive was panicking on Adam’s subconscious’s watch, which could signify only one of two things. The first was that this was not a Dream, but a Nightmare. Adam could easily discount that, though. He’d been there for the kiss, and it had not been nightmare material. That was categorical.

There was a single possibility left: what had just happened had not been a dream at all.

Which meant that, inexplicably, Olive Smith had just kissed him.

In real life.

Adam had never been good with names—students’ names, colleagues’ names, extended family members’ names. He was sure he took after his mother. When she’d been a diplomat in the Netherlands, she had commandeered several aides whose sole job was to whisper a person’s name and backstory in her ear. In fact, most of Adam’s shortcomings could, in one way or another, be traced back to his parents.

His father, whose sole request to Adam had been for a law career and whose interest in his only son had declined as that became less and less likely, had once proudly declared at a dinner party that he believed he met most criteria for a self-diagnosis of sociopathy. His mother, as she’d drunkenly revealed at Adam’s grandmother’s wake, had hoped that her maternal instincts would grow—“well, sprout is more like it”—once she’d had a son, and didn’t quite know why they hadn’t. “Maybe I’m not meant to be a mother. Maybe you’re not meant to be a son, Adam. We should discuss this further when I’m sober.”

(They hadn’t.)

Adam, though, didn’t blame her or his father too much. They had been raised by parents who were even more distant and less functioning; not to mention, thirtysomething years ago, society hadn’t been kind to women who’d decided to openly prioritize their career. In many ways, it still wasn’t now. Adam had to admit that his relationship with his parents had vastly improved now that he no longer depended on them for his emotional, financial, or physical needs. He had his own money, no longer felt slighted when someone wouldn’t kiss his boo-boo better or hold him after a nightmare, and he’d learned to reduce his experience of feelings (feeling?) to the highest common factor: irritation. He was no longer required to summer in coastal towns, wear seersucker suits, or watch regattas, which had accounted for about 70 percent of the intrafamily friction.

And yet he sometimes still experienced resentment toward his parents. He certainly had when he’d met Olive for the first time. Adam wasn’t good with names, no, but hers had imprinted on his brain the second he’d heard it. Unfortunately, he also wasn’t good with people, but there was little he could do about that. All he knew was that there was something inside him, something that tended to swat people away from his surroundings, something that he’d decided to cultivate since he was young enough to understand the consequences of it. And now that he’d found someone he wanted to keep nearby... well.

Simply put, Adam was fucked.

Because in the computational model of his life, he’d forgotten to account for the existence of Olive Smith.

It was impossible to say what it was that intrigued him so much about her. As time went on, as Adam would grow to know her better, it would get easier to articulate the various facets of his love for her. In the decades following their first meeting, there would be many wonderful things that he could never have imagined. There would be professional successes that could no longer be untangled from the personal. There would be a surprise wedding that would leave him feeling so understood he wouldn’t be able to speak for many, many hours. There would be fights over things that would unfailingly reveal themselves to be inconsequential. There would be more kisses, and sex that would take up a lot of his brain space. There would be friends with their own weddings, their kisses, and their baby showers. There would be marathons, and students co-mentored who would go on to accomplish great things, and houses bought together, and pets and travels and their own family—a remarkably successful do-over for both of them.

But in the first few weeks of Olive, there were no more than the barest hints of this. A whisper of a promise. Less than. Adam couldn’t yet tell why she was unlike anyone he’d ever met. Maybe it was her teasing, at once gentle and sharp. The certainty that she didn’t want him to be any more or any less than he already was. The knowledge that she truly cared about the people around her, and coaxed them into caring in return. Her ability to tease him out of his dark moods. Her passion for her work, her perseverance, her stubbornness. The way her chaotic brain seemed to always settle his own. The joyful crap she put into her body, her terrible music, the scent of her skin. And yes, she was beautiful, and he did want to fuck her, but that had less to do with sex itself and more with his yearning to be as close to her as humanly possible, in as many ways as he could find.

She was very inconvenient. A student, and a young one at that. Adam had seen her academic CV, and he could easily estimate her age, which was . . . not something he wanted to think about. Later, he would find out that none of it mattered in the grand scheme of things. But on the night of the kiss, he would tell himself that he was being incredibly stupid, that this could never happen again, that he had no reason to let her haunt him the way she did.

All of this to say: Adam tried. That he failed was just the happiest accident of his life.

With her face in her open hands, Olive was obviously terrified. She muttered something into her palms that came out muffled, something that sounded a lot like not the way it looks. Adam wondered if she was about to have a mental breakdown, and whether this was one of those situations Holden often talked about in which it would be appropriate of him to pat her shoulder exactly three times and say, There, there.

Probably not.

So he let her have her moment. Adam wasn’t unsympathetic toward Olive, or toward most of his grads. He remembered what it had been like when he was a student, interacting with professors. How intimidating it had been. Adam’s adviser had been the worst person he’d ever met, and he’d instilled a widespread fear of God in the whole department.

Adam had noticed that most graduate students today seemed particularly jumpy and hard to relate to, but he’d chalked it up to a generational quirk. According to Holden, Adam himself was “the Scrooge of the entire fucking School of Humanities and Sciences,” but Holden was always needlessly dramatic. Adam did his job, and he did it well. Science didn’t come with participation trophies, and most of the students and postdocs he’d mentored had gone on to do great things, which was the only way he was willing to measure success.

Still, he could think of few things he would enjoy less than Olive Smith being distraught. So he asked, in his most conciliatory and composed tone, “What’s going on here?” There had to be an explanation. Girls like Olive didn’t just walk around kissing men, especially not men like Adam.

He wasn’t that fucking lucky.

“I...”  Olive let her hands drop back to her sides and took a minute to collect herself, which he was happy to allow. Seeing her face again suddenly reminded him of how intensely beautiful she was, and his head was spinning again, because he was remembering how she’d felt pressed against him, and...

“Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but this is really none of your business.”

He didn’t care about the rudeness bit. He didn’t need her to be polite. In fact, she could slap him in the face, if she so pleased. However, he drew the line at not knowing why the woman of his dreams, who had ignored him for nearly three years, had just kissed him out of the blue.

He could have repeated his question. Insisted. Cajoled. But in his experience, the best way to convince someone to do what they should was to have them taste the consequences of their own actions. Or inactions. So he said calmly, “Yes. Of course. I’ll just go back to my office and begin to work on my Title IX complaint.”

“Yeah.” Olive looked so relieved, he wondered if maybe she didn’t understand what he was talking about. “That would be great, since— Wait. Your what?”

“Title IX is a federal law that protects against sexual misconduct within academic settings—”

“I know what Title IX is.” Her eyes were wide with panic. What the hell was going on?

“I see. So you willfully chose to disregard it.”

“I— What? No. No, I didn’t!”

Was she okay? Had she hit her head? Was she in the throes of some kind of folie state? Maybe he should call a doctor. You mean, a real one? Adam’s father’s voice asked.

He mentally rolled his eyes. “I must be mistaken, then. Someone else must have assaulted me.”

“Assault—I didn’t ‘assault’ you.”

“You did kiss me.”

“But not really.”

Well, that kiss had felt very, very real to him. “Without first securing my consent.”

“I asked if I could kiss you!”

Had she? Maybe. Perhaps she had. Honestly, his brain was fried. He’d stopped retaining information the second her lips had made contact with his. But, yes, it did ring a bell. A hand fisted in the upper sleeve of his shirt. Her round chin tilted upward. A brief, hushed Can I please kiss you? whispered in his direction. But Adam couldn’t recall replying. He was almost sure he hadn’t. “And then did so without waiting for my response.”

“What? You said yes.”

“Excuse me?”

“I asked if I could kiss you, and you said yes.” He could feel her panic clawing at him.

“Incorrect. You asked if you could kiss me and I snorted.” That was the only possible explanation.

“I’m pretty sure I heard you say yes.”

He had not. He was just as sure of it.

“Listen,” she continued, her beautiful eyes shiny with... were those tears? They’d better not be. You’d better not be making Olive Smith cry, you piece of shit. If there had been any way of doing so without alarming Olive further, Adam would have punched his own stupid face.

“I’m really sorry,” she said. “It was a weird situation. Can we just forget that this happened?”

Yes. Yes, they could. Or: she could forget, and he could treasure what had happened as a cherished memory for the rest of his days.

Except he couldn’t let go of this, because it was clear that there was something really wrong going on. The Title IX shit he’d said, it was inappropriate, and he regretted making it sound like a threat. But the truth was, worry tasted like acid in the back of his throat, and he was starting to doubt the truth of what had happened.

He hadn’t been the one to initiate the kiss, right? He hadn’t cornered her in the hallway and pulled her in? The reason she was so clearly upset—was it him? Adam didn’t care about the repercussions on his career, not as much as he cared about having done damage to her. He had fucked up, for sure. But how bad?

“Is there something wrong?” he asked

“What? No. No, there isn’t.” Truly, she was the worst liar he’d ever met. It was endearing. Attractive, even.

“Because kissing a stranger at midnight in a science lab might be a sign that there is.”

“There isn’t.”

“Very well. Expect mail in the next few days, then.” God. Why was he being such a damn... He needed to leave. Get away from this girl. He walked past her, going who the hell knew where.

“You didn’t even ask my name!” she yelled after him.

Oh, Olive No-Middle-Name Smith. She’s cute, his subconscious said. “I’m sure anyone could figure it out, since you must have swiped your badge to get in the labs area after hours. Have a good night.”

“Wait!” She wrapped a hand around his wrist, and his brain short-circuited.

She was touching him. Again. Of her own free will.

And the warmth that had shot down his spine a few minutes earlier was back with a vengeance. He glanced at the place where her skin touched his, and decided that he needed to leave. Now.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—” She let go of him.

“The kiss.” Maybe this was a dream after all, because he could no longer follow the way events were unfolding. “Explain.”

And at last, she must have realized that he was serious, because after a moment of hesitation, she started, “Anh Pham, the girl who was passing by. She’s a graduate student in the biology department.”

The smaller girl, he thought. The student representative Olive was with all the time. Her good friend.

“Anh has... I was seeing this guy in the department. Jeremy Langley, he has red hair and works with Dr. ... Anyway, we went out just a couple of times, and then I brought him to Anh’s birthday party, and they just sort of hit it off and—”

He watched her shut her eyes, and even though he didn’t want to, he remembered. The boy with whom Olive had been holding hands. Adam had tried so very hard not to notice him, but his hair was a pale orange that didn’t exactly help him blend with the gray-and-metallic backdrop of the biology department.

And then Olive started talking again, and Adam was strongly reminded of something from his past. High school. A double date with Holden and some guy. They’d set Adam up with a girl, and needless to say, she and Adam hadn’t quite hit it off. In fact, Holden hadn’t really hit it off with the guy, either. However, Holden and the girl had bonded, and they’d remained friends for a while afterward. They liked the same cheesy teen shows, the ones with dozens of characters and convoluted plot points and complex systems of allegiances that Adam just could not keep up with. They’d talk about them in excruciating detail. And Olive’s explanation...

Well. It sounded exactly like them summarizing one of those shows.

“Long story short, after Jeremy and I ended things he asked Anh out. She said no because of... girl code and all that, but I can tell that she really likes him. She’s afraid to hurt my feelings, and no matter how many times I told her it was fine she wouldn’t believe me. So I just lied and told her that I was already dating someone else. Because she’s one of my closest friends and I’d never seen her like a guy this much and I want her to have the good things she deserves and I’m positive that she would do the same for me and—”

Adam was attempting to follow, but the third-degree theory of mind was a little too advanced for him. Why didn’t people just say what they meant? Wouldn’t the world be a better place?

“Tonight. I told her I’d be on a date tonight.”

“Ah.”

“But I’m not. So I decided to come in to work on an experiment, but Anh showed up, too. She wasn’t supposed to be here. But she was. Coming this way. And I panicked—well.” Olive wiped a hand down her face. “I didn’t really think.”

Obviously, Adam thought, but he wisely kept it to himself. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. They seemed already beaten up.

“I just needed her to believe that I was on a date.”

“So you kissed the first person you saw in the hallway,” he said, mostly recapping the situation for himself. Perfectly logical, he thought.

Or... had he said it out loud? Because Olive was wincing. “When you put it like that, perhaps it wasn’t my best moment.”

“Perhaps,” he conceded. He could omit, but he wasn’t going to straight-up lie to her.

“But it wasn’t my worst, either!” she countered. “I’m pretty sure Anh saw us. Now she’ll think that I was on a date with you and she’ll hopefully feel free to go out with Jeremy and—” All of a sudden, she seemed done with the conversation. But Adam wasn’t. Not quite yet. “Listen. I’m so, so sorry about the kiss.”

“Are you?”

“Please, don’t report me. I really thought I heard you say yes. I promise I didn’t mean to...”

Something in her demeanor changed. He watched her clutch her chest as if in the middle of a life-altering realization. Her lips trembled. The lucid sheen of her eyes looked more and more wet, and... “Actually,” she said, “you’re absolutely right. And I am so sorry. If you felt in any way harassed by me, you really should report me, because it’s only fair. It was a horrible thing to do, though I really didn’t want to... Not that my intentions matter; it’s more like your perception of...”

She was crying. And all Adam wanted was for her... for her not to. Not to be sad. Not to be afraid. Not to have to spare her friends’ feelings at the expense of her own. Not to bother with lies.

“I’m going to leave now, okay? Thank you, and... I am so, so, so sorry.”

A second later, she was running away, and... No. She couldn’t leave, not in this state. “Olive,” he called after her. “Olive, wait—”

He wanted to go after her. And he started to. He could probably catch up easily enough. But... did he have any right to? And, most importantly, would he be making things worse for her? It was obvious that she regretted the kiss, and her impulsivity, and... interacting with him in the first place, probably. He’d acted like an ass, and he understood her wanting to get the hell away from him. Besides, she deserved better than to be chased after by an older, bigger, socially constipated professor in her department.

She deserved better than Adam.

He wondered if this was it—if this was what he would get.

If he would remember this late-summer night for the rest of his life as the last time he ever spoke to Olive Smith.

____________

LIAM

Liam were asked to compile a list of the most momentous days of his life-the ones that'll surely flash before his eyes when he's death adjacent, even though in the meantime he'll have to stash them in a corner of his heart, hidden and secure, because dwelling on the feelings they elicit is overwhelming, unmanageable, and just plain dangerous-today would make it to the very top.

Not number five, like that Tuesday two years ago when he tried to propose and Mara didn't quite let him, bursting out with a "Yes, yes, yes!" after he barely managed a "Will you m-" (It allowed him to spend the following week pretending that he'd only wanted to ask her to mail out the census form: amusing for him; less so for her.)

And not number three, like the day Mara announced that she was planning to move into his bedroom, and to convert her own into a "The Bachelor blogging studio." Approximately twenty minutes later, Liam's walls were full of pictures of two girls he'd never even met in person yet, and his serviceable gray comforter had been replaced with a chevron rainbow quilt that should have given him a headache but instead had him craving cake pops for the first time in his life.

Today... today is number one. The most perfect day of his life. Mara in his arms, the words she just said in the air between them, and the promise of what's to come.

It could be a boy. Or a girl. Or both, or neither. It doesn't matter. Liam couldn't care less. All he hopes for is carrot-red, curly hair and freckles. The baby should have Mara's looks. And her understanding of numbers. And her temperament. Her love for broccoli, her ability to fix things, and Liam's...

Okay. Ideally, the baby will take exclusively after Mara. Liam would be perfectly okay if none of his alleles made it into its karyotype. Liam is taller, which is useful when it comes to reaching for higher shelves, but legroom on planes is a bitch and a half, and he really wouldn't wish the cramps on anyone, let alone his progeny-

"Hannah was right."

He pulls back to look at Mara. Her legs are wrapped around his waist, because he picked her up the second he got home and she used the p-word. There's something lodged in Liam's fist-ah, yes. The test.

She showed him the second he got home, wagging it under his nose. There's probably pee on it, and he should probably find it disgusting, but...

Yeah. No.

"Hannah? About what?"

"About your reaction." Mara presses a kiss to Liam's cheek, then grins, then disentangles herself from his arms. A steady, nimble descent. "She said you were going to buffer for fifteen minutes once 1 told you."

"When you told me...? "

"About this." Her fingers splay against her abdomen, and for a split second his brain short-circuits in the best possible way. It's happening. This is going to happen. This is his life. He doesn't deserve it, but somehow this is his life, and-

"Wait." He shakes his head, chasing the other, less pleasant train of thought. "How can Hannah know about the baby?"

"I told her, of course." Mara smiles again and grabs his hand, pulling him into the kitchen. She also takes the test from him and drops it into the hallway trash bin. It's not something Liam's ready for, saying good-bye to the one piece of evidence that yes, this is happening, so he makes a mental note to retrieve it later. In the meantime...

"When did you tell her?"

"Earlier this morning. When I found out."

Earlier this...

Liam frowns. Then he scowls. Then a sound comes out of him, and Mara stops in her tracks to look back at him. She's beautiful and still happy-looking, but also narrow eyed all of a sudden.

"Did you just... growl?" she asks.

"No." Yes. "Did you tell your friends about the baby before telling me?"

"Yeah." She shrugs. "I had to tell someone."

"Did you consider... me?"

"You were in court. All day."

"You could have called me."

"I couldn't tell you on the phone." Her hands come to her hips-usually Liam's cue to let go of an argument.

He does not let go. "You told your friends on the phone." He sounds sullen.

"It's totally different. And anyway, Hannah and Sadie have been asking for updates every day since I told them we'd been trying, so."

"They knew we-" The sound chokes somewhere in his trachea. Liam clears his throat. Twice. "They knew we were trying?"

"Yeah." Mara blushes a little, and Liam takes a step closer.

This time, it's his hands on his hips. "What did you tell them?"

"Just... you know... "The way she hand-waves is very suspicious and reveals something:

Her friends know everything about their sex lives for the last two months.

Every. Single. Thing.

"What about lan and Erik? Do they know I'm having a baby?"

"I'm not sure," Mara says, evasive.

Too evasive.

"Mara."

"Well, Erik sent over celebratory croissants. They were really good. I left you one, by the way. Well, half. And lan texted me to ask if we're going to call the baby X Æ A-Xii. It's an Elon Musk joke. And Elon Musk is an engineer, so it's kinda funny-"

"I know who Elon Musk is."

For maybe half a second, Mara looks contrite. It all melts when her arms slide into the loops of his and she hugs herself to his chest. "They're really happy for us," she murmurs against his shirt. "I'm really happy for us."

Okay. Fine. Who cares? So everyone knows about their sex schedule. Big deal. What's some reproductive life talk among friends, after all?

happiest."

"I'm happier," he murmurs against the crown of her hair. "l'm happiest."

But while Mara brings him dinner (half a croissant that looks more like one third), he checks his phone, scrolls past the group chat he shares with Mara's friends and their partners, and zeroes in on the text thread with lan and Erik. It was pinging today while he was busy in court. lan, trying to convince Erik to buy a PS5 to play the FIFA 22 game. As if.

First of all, you assholes could have mentioned I'm having a baby.

Liam's just too happy to be mad.

But more importantly: FIFA 19 is a million times better.

___________

ERIK

The phone buzzes in Erik's pocket, but he doesn't check what for.

He doesn't move. Doesn't take his eyes off Sadie. Doesn't step away from his strategic position-leaning against the fridge - which allows him a full view of the kitchen, and, above all, of his wife.

It's not because she's pretty, or mesmerizing, or his happy place-even though she is all of these things. It's not because he's in love with her, or interested in what she's doing, or enthralled by the way she moves-even though he is all of these things.

The reason he won't look away from his beloved spouse on this beautiful April night is a bit more basic, and vaguely embarrassing:

Abject fear.

Not quite of Sadie, but of what she might do to his brother. His poor, unsuspecting, clearly terrified brother.

Anders has been "finding himself" all over the world for the past several years, and has therefore never met Erik's wife before today. Maybe if he'd showed up to their wedding in Copenhagen... but he was too busy picking plums in Australia. Which means that his knowledge of Sadie is undoubtedly secondhand, most likely through Erik's parents. And, oh, Erik can just imagine his mom's review. What a kind, radiant, lovely bride. A brilliant, gentle young woman. A bit superstitious-she forbade anyone to gift knives and she put six pennies in her shoe, which fell out while she was walking to the altar-but so lovely. The football-shaped wedding cake she insisted on-unusual, but delightful. She's perfect for your brother.

Yup. Erik can just imagine. Just like he can imagine Anders shitting himself as Sadie leans over the kitchen table to hiss at him: "Who the hell do you think you are?"

"I'm-I-" He points at Erik. To no one's surprise, his finger is shaking. "His younger brother-"

"I know who you are." Sadie's eyes narrow. "What I asked is: Who do you think you are, to come into my house and steal my cat?"

"Um, technically, Garfield is my-"

"His name is Cat."

Anders blinks. "Pretty sure I named him Garfield."

"You named him Garfield. Past tense. Then Erik took him in because you were Eat Pray Loving your way through Europe. Erik opened his home and his heart, and renamed him Cat. And Cat likes it much better than Garfield. Don't you, babe?"

On the windowsill, Cat licks his orange paw in what almost looks like a nod. Mmm.

"Knowing Erik, I seriously doubt he opened his heart to-"

"Things have changed around here, Anders." Sadie's tone is so sharp, Erik's six-foot-something, two-hundred-pound brother presses himself deeper into his chair. Yeah, Erik thinks, watching little wisps of hair come undone from her bun and frame her face. She's terrifying. And cute. "Especially between Erik and Cat. They are bonded now."

They are not. Cat hates Erik, and Erik hates Cat, especially after watching him scoot his asshole against Erik's toothbrush less than twelve hours ago. However, they are both very fond of Sadie, and have therefore established a truce of sorts.

To facilitate peaceful cohabitation, Erik has disseminated decoy toothbrushes all around the house.

"Okay, listen..." Anders scratches his neck. "Don't you guys have a budding engineering firm to run? Do you even have time to take care of Garf- Cat?"

"We have nothing but time," Sadie cuts in, as though Grantham & Nowak is not growing exponentially, as though they haven't been busier than ever. Erik fondly remembers how anxious Sadie was when they both left their previous jobs. What if, with working and living together, you get tired of me? It sounded so unlikely, he could only laugh. "And as you know, the house we're building up- state is almost finished. Cat could come up with us on weekends.

In fact, we've been thinking about getting a dog-and I think we can all agree that Cat would love to torment a puppy. Wouldn't you, Cat?"

"Meow."

Erik's phone buzzes again. This time he takes his eyes off Sadie to check his texts.

Clearly, Mara told Liam about the baby. Clearly, she told him last.

ERIK: Congrats, man.

ERIK: Unrelated question: Are you guys ever scared of your wives?

The replies are instantaneous.

LIAM: 100%.

IAN: Hannah's still not my wife, but yeah. Shitless.

Erik sighs, slides his phone back into his pocket, and decides to intervene. He goes to Sadie, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. Her slight weight settles into his side. Sorry, Erik tells his brother with a look. But she's very cute and very terrifying. "What about joint custody?" he proposes.

Anders glares at him, and then nods, defeated.

Sadie smiles, triumphant.

Cat is nowhere to be seen. Must be in the bathroom, Erik thinks. Looking for toothbrushes.

__________

IAN

The words come out of lan's mouth before he's fully processed them. By the time he notices Hannah's raised eyebrows and her dubious expression, it's just too late to take them back.

She stops in the middle of the hallway.

lan stops, too.

She looks at him, skeptical.

lan tries not to avert his eyes.

It's not easy: The Jet Propulsion Lab is crawling with interns, students, engineers. They're all at the end of their workday, and they're all trying to exit the building from that door over there. The one that's maybe ten feet away.

And, apparently, lan and Hannah are about to have this con- versation right in front of it. Perfect.

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing." He shakes his head. "Let's just go home. Forget that I-"

"Did you just ask me why we are not married?"

"No. Well, yes, but .

"In response to me asking you if we should get Thai tonight?"

lan scratches his temple and looks at his feet. "Perhaps not my best segue." His hand lifts to her back, and he tries to nudge her toward the parking lot. "Let's go home."

Hannah stays put. "Where's this coming from?" she asks, just as NASA's deputy administrator strolls in and out of lan's field of view, waving cheerfully. Hannah's eyes fall on the phone in his hand. "Aah."

"Aah?'

"Aah." She nods knowingly. "You've been talking with Erik and Liam."

lan frowns. "What does that have to do with it?"

"You get like this when you talk to them." She grins and grabs his sleeve, pulling him into the parking lot.

"I get like what?"

"Homey. Marriagey."

"I don't."

"Yeah, you do."

"I'm pretty sure l've never mentioned marriage before." In fact, he's been very careful not to mention anything that's even remotely connected. Everyone knows that lan and Hannah are together, but when lan's manager asked him if he'd be taking his "wife" to her barbecue - Dr. Arroyo, right, who leads the A & PE team? - he made sure to say, Yes, I'll bring my partner. When Sadie pushed her bridal bouquet of Danish lilies into Hannah's very unreceptive, mostly slack hands, he made sure to nod while Hannah listed the reasons marriage is an archaic institution grounded in a capitalistic landscape.

It's not that he doesn't want to get married. It's more that he knows her, and her issues with commitment. She's already come so far, and it's not like lan doesn't feel how much she loves him every minute of every day. Which means that he can accept the way she is, and the fact that she'd laugh in his face if he bought a ring, went on one knee, and proposed.

"You never mentioned marriage, and yet here you are." Hannah's eyes are inscrutable as they walk to his car. "Thinking of proposing because my best friend is having a little ginger baby."

"The baby might not be ginger-"

"It will be."

"Okay, it will be. But it was an unrelated question. I was just wondering if..."

"If?" lan's car is... well, lan's car. But Hannah plucks the keys from his fingers and slides in on the driver's side.

"Hypothetically," he continues, settling for the passenger seat.

"Hypothetically?"

He looks straight ahead. Swallows. Swallows again. "If I were to ask. Hypothetically. What would you say?"

There is a thick, suspicious silence on the driver's side of the car. Not at all auspicious. And when it pulls his gaze in Hannah's direction, her expression isn't serious, or annoyed, or anything else that he can discern.

"I guess you'll have to try and see," is all she says.

lan presses his lips together and smiles. "I guess l'll have to try and see."

But her free hand slides into his immediately as they drive away, and he thinks that maybe, maybe, he knows what the answer will be. And maybe, maybe, he should ask soon.

So they pick up Thai that night. And lan doesn't look at his phone again.