“‘Did you…Did you just kiss me?’ He sounded puzzled, and maybe a little out of breath. His lips were full and plump and…God. Kissed. There was simply no way Olive could get away with denying what she had just done. Still, it was worth a try. ‘Nope.’ Surprisingly, it seemed to work.”

Olive realizes she kissed Adam and Adam enjoys the kiss, foreshadowing the feelings he hides from her. Olive’s reaction is an example of her rambling thought processes. The ellipses and interjections illustrate her delayed comprehension of what’s happening and what it might lead to. Her attempt at denial shows she’s willing to try any solution, no matter how unlikely it is to work.

“Suddenly, the enormity of what she had just done fully dawned on her. She had just kissed a random guy, a guy who happened to be the most notoriously unpleasant faculty member in the biology department. She’d misunderstood a snort for consent, she’d basically attacked him in the hallway, and now he was staring at her in that odd, pensive way, so large and focused and close to her, and…”

Olive’s thoughts explore consent, both as it applies to real life and as it’s handled in romance novels. Olive shows how any gender can be guilty of not gaining consent. Romance novels where men kiss the female lead in early chapters, generally without asking first, and taking only signs of attraction as a cue, are also commented on as Olive’s humiliation blooms. Olive didn’t even wait to see if Adam was interested. She kissed him, thinking only of how it would benefit her.

“This was what happened whenever Olive lied: she ended up having to tell even more lies to cover her first, and she was horrible at it, which meant that each lie got worse and less convincing than the previous. There was no way she could fool Anh. There was no way she could fool anybody. Anh was going to get mad, then Jeremy was going to get mad, then Malcolm, too, and then Olive was going to find herself utterly alone. The heartbreak was going to make her flunk out of grad school. She was going to lose her visa and her only source of income and move back to Canada, where it snowed all the time and people ate moose heart and—”

Olive often exaggerates, and these thoughts show how she spirals to illogical conclusions. Her friends getting mad is reasonable considering her actions, and given Olive’s past of being alone, going back to that could be heartbreaking for her. If she let that heartbreak control her, it could lead to depression and failing out of school. This spiral of thoughts reveals Olive’s motives for her relationships and why she lies to keep those she cares about the closest to her.

“‘What do people who are dating do?’ It beat Olive. She had gone on maybe five dates in her life, including the ones with Jeremy, and they had ranged from moderately boring to anxiety inducing to horrifying […] She would have loved to have someone in her life, but she doubted it was in store for her. Maybe she was unlovable. Maybe spending so many years alone had warped her in some fundamental way and that was why she seemed to be unable to develop a true romantic connection, or even the type of attraction she often heard others talk about. In the end, it didn’t really matter. Grad school and dating went poorly together, anyway, which was probably why Dr. Adam Carlsen, MacArthur Fellow and genius extraordinaire, was standing here at thirtysomething years old, asking Olive what people did on dates. Academics, ladies and gentlemen. […] ‘People who date, they—they talk. A lot. More than just greetings in the hallway. They know each other’s favorite colors, and where they were born, and they…they hold hands. They kiss.’”

Olive’s thoughts hint to her status on the asexual spectrum by noting how dates are stressful and how she doesn’t feel attraction like other people seem to. Neither Olive nor Adam has much experience dating, probably both a bit by choice but also because they don’t have time due to the rigors of academia. Olive’s declaration introduces expectations between herself and Adam that they dance around, building the tension between the two.

“‘So.’ Olive shifted her weight to the balls of her feet a couple of times. ‘What’s your favorite color?’ He looked at her, confused. ‘What?’ ‘Your favorite color.’ ‘My favorite color?’ ‘Yep.’ There was a crease between his eyes. ‘I—don’t know? […] Why are you asking?’ Olive shrugged. ‘It feels like something I should know.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because. If someone tries to figure out whether we’re really dating, it might be one of the first questions they ask. Top five, for sure.’ He studied her for a few seconds. ‘Does that seem like a likely scenario to you?’ ‘About as likely as me fake-dating you.’ He nodded, as if conceding her point. ‘Okay. Black, I guess.’ She snorted. ‘Figures.’ ‘What’s wrong with black?’ He frowned. ‘It’s not even a color. It’s no colors, technically.’ ‘It’s better than vomit green.’ ‘No, it isn’t.’ ‘Of course it is.’ ‘Yeah, well. It suits your scion-of-darkness personality.’”

On Adam and Olive’s first fake coffee date, their exchange highlights their unique type of banter. Olive is perky and curious while Adam offers many short or one-syllable responses. These lines harken Olive’s earlier comment that people who date know things about each other. She tries to encourage that, but ultimately rejects what she learns about him because black is not a color, but the absence of color.

“She tensed. ‘Not if I can help it.’ She had lots of painful memories in Canada, and her only family, the people she wanted nearby, were Anh and Malcolm, both US citizens. Olive and Anh had even made a pact that if Olive was ever on the verge of losing her visa, Anh would marry her. In hindsight, this entire fake-dating business with Adam was going to be great practice for when Olive leveled up and started defrauding the Department of Homeland Security in earnest.”

The mention of Olive’s past implies her traumas yet to be revealed and the found family she has created for herself in the US. Her sense of humor is painted as she jokes about defrauding the Department of Homeland Security in response to thinking of her fake relationship with Adam.

“Olive and Adam exchanged a silent look that somehow managed to speak volumes. It said, What the hell do we do? and How the hell would I know? and This is going to be weird, and No, it’s going to be plain bad.”

After Tom invites Adam and Olive back into the coffee shop to discuss Olive’s research, their connection is already evident before their first fake date has a chance to end. They are attuned to one another already. They have an entire conversation with just a look, something often attributed to couples who’ve been together for a long time.

“Tom’s report was about a third done and sitting tight at thirty-four pages single-spaced, Arial (11 point), no justification. It was 11:00am, and Olive had been working in the lab since about five—analyzing peptide samples, writing down protocol notes, taking covert naps while the PCR machine ran—when Greg barged in, looking furious. It was unusual, but not too unusual. Greg was a bit of a hothead to begin with, and grad school came with a lot of angry outbursts in semipublic places, usually for reasons that, Olive was fully aware, would appear ridiculous to someone who’d never stepped foot in academia.”

Olive demonstrates her overworked and engrained academic rigor as she spends exorbitant amounts of time at the lab, producing a well-formatted report. That Greg’s anger is no surprise to Olive points to the level of pressure and frustration experienced in her field and in academia overall. The two modes—overworked and exhausted versus overheated and angry—foil each other in a way that Olive explains away to the toxic but understandable culture in which she operates.

“‘He’s not…he doesn’t really mean it. Not about you, at least,’ Chase said while scratching his head. […] ‘Greg needs to graduate in the spring with his wife. So that they can find postdocs together. They don’t want to live apart, you know.’

She nodded—she hadn’t known, but she could imagine. Some of her anger dissipated. ‘Yeah, well.’ Being horrible to me isn’t going to make his thesis work go any faster, she didn’t add. Chase sighed. ‘It’s not personal. But you have to understand that it’s weird for us. Because Carlsen…Maybe he wasn’t on any of your committees, but you must know the kind of guy he is, right?’ She was unsure how to respond. ‘And now you guys are dating, and…’ Chase shrugged with a nervous smile. ‘It shouldn’t be a matter of taking sides, but sometimes it can feel like it, you know?’ Chase’s words lingered for the rest of the day.”

Olive is confronted with the negative impact that her fake relationship with Adam has on her work and relationships with her fellow grad students. Before Greg’s outburst, Olive focused on the benefits, but she is quickly brought to reality about her affiliation with Adam. That she takes anger for Adam’s actions demonstrate how she is already connected to Adam and how Adam—and by extension, Olive—is perceived by Olive’s peers.

“Oh God. What if they’d really met years ago? He probably didn’t remember, anyway. Surely. Olive had been no one. Still was no one. She thought about asking him, but why? He had no idea that a five-minute conversation with him had been the exact push Olive needed. That she’d thought about him for years.”

Olive realizes Adam may have been the guy she talked to in the bathroom before her admissions interview. While it feels momentous to her, she dismisses it as important, not considering that their conversation might have been meaningful to Adam, too. This offers more evidence to how Olive doesn’t always think things through and to her rampant self-doubt. She doesn’t think she’s worth remembering and so concludes that Adam doesn’t remember her.

“‘Dude, stop trying so hard.’ She kneeled until she was at eye level with the cage. The mouse kicked around with its little legs, its tail flopping back and forth. ‘You’re supposed to be bad at this. And I’m supposed to write a dissertation about how bad you are. And then you get a chunk of cheese, and I get a real job that pays real money and the joy of saying ‘I’m not that kind of doctor’ when someone is having a stroke on my airplane.”

Olive speaks to one of her lab rats, who is trying to climb after Olive has temporarily drugged it so it’s bad at climbing. She doesn’t think twice about chatting with the rat, showing how the rigors of grad school desensitize students to things others would consider to be strange behavior. This passage also shows how much of her future she pins on this rat, and by extension, her research. Her ability to graduate, get a real job, and be not-that-kind-of-doctor depend on her experiment working and the rat failing the climb.

“‘Do you hate me?’ ‘Me?’ Malcolm sounded surprised. ‘Yes.’ ‘No. Why would I hate you?’ ‘Because he’s been horrible to you, made you throw out a ton of data. It’s just—with me he’s not—' ‘I know. Well,’ he amended, waving his hand, ‘I don’t know know. But I can believe he’s different with you than when he was in my damn graduate advisory committee.’ ‘You hate him.’ ‘Yeah—I hate him. Or…I dislike him. But you don’t have to dislike him because I do.’”

Olive realizes she might have feelings for Adam and pours her fears out to her roommate. Olive showcases her conflicting emotions of fear, desire, and guilt. She fears Malcolm will hate her because she likes someone who caused him such trouble. She grapples with her new emotions, and she feels guilty about liking Adam when he’s been mean to her friends. Malcolm ends the conversation by telling Olive she doesn’t need to be afraid or guilty, revealing his emotional maturity compared to her emotional immaturity. She can have opinions that differ from his, and they can still be friends, a useful mindset for any potential disagreement.

“‘Olive,’ Dr. Aslan interrupted her with a stern tone. ‘What do I always tell you?’ ‘Um…Don’t misplace the multichannel pipette?’ ‘The other thing.’ She sighed. ‘Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.’ ‘More than that, if possible. Since there is absolutely nothing mediocre about you.’”

Olive learns she’s on a panel at the convention and panics, and Dr. Aslan talks her down. The advice she offers refers to how mediocre white men can often get away with things no one else can simply because they are white and male. Women and people of color must often be excellent beside a white man’s mediocracy, and mediocre white men often carry themselves with confidence far beyond their true skills.

“Adam was standing in front of her, the late-afternoon sunlight haloing his hair and shoulders, fingers closed around an iPad as he looked down at her with a somber expression. It had been less than a week since she’d last seen him—six days to be precise, which was just a handful of hours and minutes. Nothing, considering that she’d barely known him a month. And yet it was as if the space she was in, the whole campus, the entire city was transformed by knowing that he was back. Possibilities. That’s what Adam’s presence felt like. Of what, she was not certain.”

Adam returns from time away working with Tom, reviving Olive’s feelings of excitement. Olive felt off the entire time he was gone, and now that he’s back, her world feels right again in ways she can’t explain. Her observation that Adam feels like possibilities is foreshadowing. He, himself, can do much, but more importantly, it hints at Olive believing that they can do much together, professionally and personally.

“‘When I was in my third year of grad school,’ he said quietly, ‘my adviser sent me to give a faculty symposium in his stead. He told me only two days before, without any slides or a script. Just the title of the talk.’ […] 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. […] ‘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?”

Adam tells this story about his grad school experience in response to Olive’s anxiety about her upcoming panel. Adam’s traumatic past with his advisor shows how his experiences shaped who he is and how he acts. Adam’s advisor was harsh on him, which has led him to be harsh on his students. He isn’t abusive, but his students still feel put-upon. Olive’s observation that academia is an “old boys club” follows her advisor’s advice to have the confidence of a mediocre white man. Her comment looks at the majority male culture of academia and its harmful effects, even on younger males who attempt to flourish in the field as well.

“‘Quick question. Who do you think Adam will believe, Olive?’ She halted abruptly, just a few feet from the door. ‘Some bitch he’s been fucking for about two weeks, or someone who’s been a close friend for years? Someone who helped him get the most important grant of his career? Someone who’s had his back since he was younger than you are? Someone who’s actually a good scientist?’ She spun around, shaking with rage. ‘Why are you doing this?’ ‘Because I can.’ Tom shrugged again. ‘Because as advantageous as my collaboration with Adam has been, sometimes it’s a bit annoying how he needs to be best at everything, and I like the idea of taking something away from him for once.’”

Tom’s sexual harassment and verbal abuse of Olive reveal his true motives for allowing Olive to research in his lab at Harvard. He throws his secret insecurities that he believes about himself, such as not being a good scientist, at Olive to unbalance her and bolster himself. His reason for abusing her speaks to his jealousy of Adam’s career and relationship and his own fear of not being good enough. He perceives Olive as an easy target and doesn’t hesitate to take advantage of her, objectifying her in the process as something to be taken from Adam.

“‘What I do know now, years later, is that he was abusive. A lot of terrible things happened under his watch—scientists were not given credit for their ideas or authorship of papers they deserved. […] Once he put Holden and me on the same research project and told us that whoever obtained publishable results first would receive funding for the following semester.’ […] ‘What did you do?’ He ran a hand through his hair, and a strand fell on his forehead. ‘We paired up. […] We ran a really good study. It was exhausting, but also elating, staying up all hours to figure out how to fix our protocols. Knowing that we were the first to discover something.’ […] ‘And at the end of the semester, when we presented our findings to our adviser, he told us that we’d both be without funding, because by collaborating we hadn’t followed his guidelines.’ […] ‘But…you gave your adviser what he wanted.’ Adam shook his head. ‘He wanted a power play. And in the end he got it: he punished us for not dancing to his tune and published the findings we brought to him without acknowledging our role in obtaining them.’”

Adam offers another story from his grad school years, showing how much the experience still hurts him. This retelling bolsters the idea of academia being an “old boys club.” Adam’s advisor thought he was untouchable because he was a well-known name in the industry. He flaunted his power because he felt like doing so, and no one stopped him because they didn’t feel like they could. Adam’s advisor shows how power corrupts and the harm that corruption has on everyone around a person. It also foreshadows Adam’s urging Olive to report the misconduct against her—Adam never felt powerful enough to report his circumstances and wants to change that for Olive.

“No, that’s not the way it works. Virginity is not a continuous variable, it’s categorical. Binary. Nominal. Dichotomous. Ordinal, potentially. I’m talking about chi-square, maybe Spearman’s correlation, logistic regression, the logit model and that stupid sigmoid function, and…”

Adam finds out how few times Olive has had sex and is concerned about her lack of experience, calling her practically a virgin. Olive corrects him, and explores the difference between being a virgin and emotional experience. According to Olive, virginity is a yes-or-no event—either someone has or has not participated in sex. Their amount or frequency of sexual intercourse has no relationship to their emotional readiness to engage in intimate behavior. Having little or no experience with sex in the past does not make someone emotionally unprepared to have sex in their lifetime.

“It was a weird kind of ache, the jealousy. Confusing, unfamiliar, not something she was used to. Half cutting, half disorienting and aimless, so different from the loneliness she’d felt since she was fifteen. Olive missed her mother every day, but with time she’d been able to harness her pain and turn it into motivation for her work. Into purpose. Jealousy, though…the misery of it didn’t come with any gain. Only restless thoughts, and something squeezing at her chest whenever her mind turned to Adam.”

Olive thinks of Adam being with someone else and introduces the idea that negative emotions produce different types of pain. Jealousy and loneliness both produce negative feelings, but in different ways. The jealous pain Olive describes matches Tom’s feelings toward Adam. This does not excuse Tom’s behavior, only shows what he works to cover up by suppressing others.

“‘Carlsen and Olive never dated. They pretended so you’d believe that Olive wasn’t into Jeremy anymore—which she never was in the first place. Not sure what Carlsen was getting out of the arrangement, I forgot to ask. But halfway through the fake-dating Olive caught feelings for Carlsen, proceeded to lie to him about it, and pretended to be in love with someone else. But then…’ He gave Olive a side glance. ‘Well. I didn’t want to be nosy, but judging from the fact that the other day only one bed in this hotel room was unmade, I’m pretty sure there have been some…recent developments.’ It was so painfully accurate, Olive had to bury her face in her knees. Just in time to hear Anh say, ‘This is not real life.’ ‘It is.’ ‘Nuh-uh. This is a Hallmark movie. Or a poorly written young adult novel. That will not sell well. Olive, tell Malcolm to keep his day job, he’ll never make it as a writer.’”

After hearing Olive’s recording of Tom’s abuse, Anh wonders why Olive hasn’t brought it to Adam’s attention. Malcolm summarizes events, leading with how it is real life, calling to the idea that life is stranger than fiction. Anh’s response pokes fun at young adult romance novels and Hallmark movies. Some communities poke fun at both romance novels and Hallmark movies, and the narrative calls these tropes out in a meta-analysis of the plot.

“Olive closed her eyes and thought about it. What, exactly, would the consequences be if she didn’t do what she was planning to? Tom would be free to keep on being an absolute piece of shit, for one. And Adam would never know that he was being taken advantage of. He would move to Boston. And Olive would never have a chance to talk to him again, and all that he’d meant to her would end…In a lie. A lie, after a lot of lies. So many lies she’d told, so many true things she could have said but never did, all because she’d been too scared of the truth, of driving the people she loved away from her. All because she’d been afraid to lose them. All because she hadn’t wanted to be alone again.”

Olive works through the consequences of keeping quiet with her scientific mind. She ultimately decides she can’t live with the consequences and acts, showing how simple it is to make decisions. Her decision reflects her emotional growth as she moves towards her fear and chooses to speak the truth to keep Adam in her life.

“‘He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.’ Holden popped a bit of fortune cookie in his mouth, blinking at the message inside. ‘Is that shade?’ He looked around, indignant. ‘Did this fortune cookie just throw shade at me?’ ‘Sounds like it,’ Malcolm answered. ‘Mine says ‘Why not treat yourself to a good time instead of waiting for somebody else to do it?’ I think my cookie just shaded you, too, babe.”’

Holden and Malcolm refer to their Chinese restaurant fortune cookies as “throwing shade” at Holden. “Shade” is subtle disgust or contempt for someone, often “thrown” in a subtle way. The fortune cookies poke fun at Holden’s personality and lifestyle, and he chooses to believe it is in a contemptuous way, which represents how we view everything through a lens specific to ourselves. Holden and Malcolm’s quick banter reflects Olive and Adam’s conversations of poking fun at the one they’re interested in, demonstrating their evident attraction towards one another.

“‘It’s like—it’s like statistical hypothesis testing. Type 1 error. It’s scary, isn’t it? […] It’s just…in the past few weeks, what terrified me was the idea that I could misread a situation. That I could convince myself of something that wasn’t true. See something that wasn’t there just because I wanted to see it. A scientist’s worst nightmare, right?’ ‘Right.’ His brows furrowed. […] Her eyes bore into his, hesitant and urgent all at once. She was frightened—so frightened by what she was about to say. But also exhilarated for him to finally know. Determined to get it out. […] ‘That’s the thing with science. We’re drilled to believe that false positives are bad, but false negatives are just as terrifying.’ She swallowed. ‘Not being able to see something, even if it’s in front of your eyes. Purposefully making yourself blind, just because you’re afraid of seeing too much.’”

Despite how much Olive has grown and changed, she still speaks in circles because emotions scare her. Rather than coming out and saying what she means, she uses statistical errors to make her point. Type I error (a bias where someone sees a positive result that isn’t there) is her metaphor for Olive seeing feelings between her and Adam after she realized she wanted something to be there. Type II error (a bias where people choose not to see results) is her metaphor for Olive’s fear throughout most of the book that she was forcing herself not to see her feelings for Adam because she was afraid of what they meant.