The Love Hypothesis (Love Hypothesis #1)(61)

“Congrats!” Anh smiled. “But that was pretty much a given, right?”

“It was accepted as a talk.”

For a few seconds, two pairs of eyes just stared at her in silence. Olive thought that Malcolm might be wincing, but when she turned to check, there was just a vague smile pasted on his face. “That’s . . . awesome?”

“Yeah.” Anh’s eyes darted to Malcolm and back to Olive. “That’s, um, great.”

“It’s a disaster of epic proportions.”

Anh and Malcolm exchanged a worried glance. They knew very well how Olive felt about public speaking.

“What is Dr. Aslan saying about it?”

“The usual.” She rubbed her eyes. “That it will be fine. That we’ll work on it together.”

“I think she’s right,” Anh said. “I’ll help you practice. We’ll make sure you know it by heart. And it will be fine.”

“Yeah.” Or it won’t. “Also, the conference is in less than two weeks. We should book the hotel—or are we doing Airbnb?”

Something odd happened the moment she asked the question. Not with Anh—she was still peacefully sipping on her coffee—but Malcolm’s cup froze halfway to his mouth, and he bit his lip while studying the sleeve of his sweater.

“About that . . . ,” he began.

Olive frowned. “What?”

“Well.” Malcolm shuffled his feet a little, and maybe it was accidental, the way he seemed to be drifting away from Olive—but she didn’t think so. “We already have.”

“You already booked something?”

Anh nodded cheerfully. “Yes.” She didn’t appear to notice that Malcolm was about to have a stroke. “The conference hotel.”

“Oh. Okay. Let me know what I owe you then, since—”

“The thing is . . .” Malcolm seemed to move even farther away.

“What thing?”

“Well.” He fidgeted with the cardboard holder of his cup, and his eyes darted to Anh, who seemed blissfully oblivious to his discomfort. “Jeremy’s hotel room is paid for because of that fellowship he’s on, and he asked Anh to stay with him. And then Jess, Cole, and Hikaru offered for me to stay with them.”

“What?” Olive glanced at Anh. “Seriously?”

“It will save all of us a lot of money. And it will be my first trip with Jeremy,” Anh interjected distractedly. She was typing something on her phone. “Oh my God, guys, I think I found it! A location for the Boston event for BIPOC women in STEM! I think I’ve got it!”

“That’s great,” Olive said weakly. “But I thought . . . I thought we’d room together.”

Anh glanced up, looking contrite. “Yeah, I know. That’s what I told Jeremy, but he pointed out that you . . . you know.” Olive tilted her head, confused, and Anh continued, “I mean, why would you want to spend money on a room when you could stay with Carlsen?”

Oh. “Because.” Because. Because, because, because. “I . . .”

“I’ll miss you, but it’s not as if we’ll be in the rooms for anything other than sleeping.”

“Right. . . .” She pressed her lips together, and added, “Sure.”

Anh’s grin made her want to groan. “Awesome. We’ll get meals together and hang out for poster sessions. And at night, of course.”

“Of course.” It was all Olive could do not to sound bitter. “I look forward to it,” she added with as good a smile as she could muster.

“Okay. Great. I gotta go—the Women in Science outreach committee is meeting in five. But let’s get together this weekend to plan fun activities for Boston. Jeremy said something about a ghost tour!”

Olive waited until Anh was out of earshot before turning to face Malcolm. He was already raising his hands defensively.

“First of all, Anh came up with this plan while I was monitoring that twenty-four-hour experiment—worst day of my life, I cannot graduate soon enough. And after that—what was I supposed to do? Inform her that you’re not going to stay with Carlsen because you’re fake-dating? Oh, but wait—now that you’ve got a huge crush on him maybe it’s sort of real—”

“Okay, I get it.” Her stomach was starting to ache. “You still could have told me.”

“I was going to. And then I dumped Neuro Jude and he went crazy and egged my car. And after that my dad called me to say hi and asked me about how my projects are going, which devolved into him grilling me on why I’m not using a C. elegans model, and, Ol, you know how incredibly nosy and micromanaging he can be, which led to us having an argument and my mom got involved and—” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Well, you were there. You heard the screams. Bottom line is, it totally slipped my mind, and I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine.” She scratched her temple. “I’m going to have to find someplace to stay.”

“I’ll help you,” Malcolm told her eagerly. “We can look online tonight.”

“Thanks, but don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.” Or not. Probably. Likely. Since the conference was in less than two weeks, and everything was likely already booked up. What was left was undoubtedly so out of her price range, she’d have to sell a kidney to be able to afford it. Which could be an option—she did have two.