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“Okay, so, it's not like… like the Dark Knight or the Godfather or something really masculine and dumb and sad. No white male rage movies. It’s literally dumb fun so if you are going to enjoy the film, which you need to, by the way, you need to be prepared to have dumb fun.”
“I am. Now please, babe, put on Mamma Mia.”
“Okay, but please just try to enjoy it,” Olive grumbled, pushing her hair behind her ears.
“I will enjoy it!” he responded, kissing her cheek as she lent into him.
Adam, after a substantial amount of begging, was going to watch Mamma Mia, with the promise that he would keep the post-movie criticisms to a minimum. Olive could have guessed pretty easily that this film would not have been his thing but once she let slip that this was her favourite movie, he was absolutely desperate to watch it with her.
He was always doing stuff like that, finding out something small and stupid about her and then having the strange desire to learn as much about that thing as he could. When he learnt her favourite flowers were tulips, he brought her a new bouquet every week, when he found out her favourite juice was orange juice, he stocked his whole fucking fridge. And for a while, at the beginning, she tried to dissuade him from spending copious amount of money in the supermarket’s juice aisle but everytime she tried, he just got this sad look on his face, like a kicked puppy, and, okay, saying no to Adam when he looks like that is just… she cannot… it’s not something Olive is trained to do.
He might be grumpy, like, 90% of the time, but around her, he was basically a big teddy bear who really wanted her to have her orange juice. It was basically the only vitamins she got.
“Okay so, they live in Greece but they are Swedish?”
“No,” she replied, popping a strawberry starburst into her mouth, “they live in Greece but they are English. Donna–”
“Meryl Streep?”
“Yep. She had sex with a bunch of men while on this big Greek vacation and then had a baby and decided to stay on the island.”
“And the dad is either James Bond, Stellan Skarsgard or Colin Firth?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, biologically, it makes the most sense that Skarsgard–”
“Bill, Adam.”
“–has to be the dad right. That kid is stuffed with recessive genes.”
“I cannot tell if that is gross or not,” Olive giggled, propping her feet up on one of the leftover cardboard boxes from (as Malcolm lovingly calls it) the day of abandonment.
It had been a year and a half since she and Adam had officially gotten together and, in that time, they had spent a lot less of it with each other than she would have wanted. After everything that happened at the conference last year and with… him, it took Olive a little while before feeling prepared to go back to research. She basically was out of a job anyway, with no space or resources to continue her work, so she decided that the best decision would be to delay looking for a lab or making any commitments that she would not be able to keep.
She knew that she needed this, a break. To slowly re-enter the world of academia would be better for her. It was a taxing environment to be in, and she did not even really notice until she left.
During all of this, Adam was her light.
This wonderful, intelligent, caring man did everything and anything he could to make the process as easy as possible for her and his small gestures did not go noticed. Restocking her fridge, booking out his weekends just for her and bringing her books on the way home which people were apparently “offering to give away” around the labs (straight fucking bullshit if you asked her, grad students can’t afford to give anything away).
But still, he was a hard-working, high up faculty member. Despite how much they wanted it, he could not spend all his days on a staycation with Olive. Their time was much more limited than she would have hoped and, maybe this was the codependent in her talking, but she felt as though she had very little to do without him. Biology had been her thing, her driving force for so long, but now, it was slightly tainted. Not black, just a little bit greyer than before. The whole thing was rather demoralising. How she was meant to nurse herself back to health when she was so terrified of confronting it she didn’t know.
She knew Adam would be there though. That made up for the difference.
“We should really clear out these boxes,” she said, quickly scanning the living room and counting up the seven of them yet to be thrown out, “the cardboard does not go with your colour scheme.”
“Is that your only problem with the box decor?”, he replied, kicking his legs up on the box next to hers.
“Oh yeah,” she said, “otherwise I think it really adds a nice rustic feel to the place, y’know?”
Adam grinned, looking down at Olive, “Oh absolutely. I could repaint it though, if you truly wanted to keep the boxes.”
Olive giggled, looking back up at him, her Adam. He was gorgeous. His dark black hair, flopping over his warm, brown eyes, small crows feet wrinkling at the corner of them. The dark, knit jumper he was wearing somehow did not wash out his skin but perfectly contrasted against his skin, bringing out the warmth in it. His smile, his eyes, his adorable, crooked nose. Every single thing about him came together to create the most stunningly handsome man she had ever seen.
She knew that she was not the only person that saw how beautiful he was. There had been rumours when she started at Stanford about good-looking, grumpy Doctor Carlsen (people basically described as a WattPad character came to life). Their opinions of him did soon change when they learnt that he had the miraculous ability to destroy research careers with one feedback session, but that didn’t change the fact that he was so fucking pretty.
Moving in with him was an absolute no brainer.
It had happened gradually. Leaving a lip gloss at his place, then adding her shampoo to the shower rack, then doing some washing at his place and leaving some jeans and panties behind just in case. Then, almost four months later, she realised that she actually kept very little at her own apartment and that her friends were essentially doing the same. When the lease ran out, it made no sense to rent again. Adam’s place was nicer, cleaner and had fewer suspicious stains on the walls. It was a quicker commute after she returned to Stanford and the bed was a king. And she loved him. That was a factor in it too.
Malcolm did not take it very well though. He was all but moved in with Holden, the only thing they had to do was admit it, but he still treated it like a day of mourning.
“21st of July, 2022, the day of abandonment. I thought we had something Kalamata.”
He and Holden were engaged two weeks later.
Dramatic little dipshit.
I love him.
“Don’t zone out of me darling,” Adam said, placing a soft kiss on her forehead, “what are you thinking about?”
Olive leaned forward, picking out a navy blue polka dot comforter from a basket filled with fluffy blankets, wrapping it around her shoulders, “you, how handsome you are, how wonderful you are, how much I love you.”
“Bit obsessive don’t you think,” he replied blushing, eyes intently focused on the TV.
“Hey! Wasn’t all about you, I decided what I wanted for dinner too.”
“What?”
“Chinese, but I could also go for–.”
“Marry me.”
…
What .
“What?” Olive whispered, turning to face Adam. His eyes were fixed on the screen still, slightly glazed though, and his cheeks were paling.
Was he serious? Is this an actual proposal? He wouldn’t just spit that out as a joke… would he? That’s… so not funny.
Come on Adam. Speak to me.
“Adam, are you serious?” she said quietly, studying his face as ABBA’s SOS lulled in the background. He was fully zoned out now, eyes running around in their sockets, his breathing increasing and irregular, wetting his lips and opening his mouth. Then closing his mouth. Again and again. He wanted to say something, she could tell.
Say something.
“Olive I…” Adam said, wringing his hands out as he leant forward, “I love you. Like, so fucking much. I.. I want to be with you. Always. Like, all the fucking time I think about being with you, now or in the future. And…” he turned to look at her, “I want to be your husband. I want you to be my wife. I want to be yours. I want an us. It's all I have ever wanted since this whole thing began. I… you… this was meant to be more romantic, I know. Proposals are meant to be something special and for you, it.. I should have made it fucking magical, by a river of pumpink spice or something,” Olive let out a wet laugh. Oh great, she is crying, “But I am not going to lie and take it back because I could never lie to you about something like that. I love you, more than you will ever know, more than… Mr Darcy loves Jane Austen–”
“Elizabeth Bennett.”
“Elizabeth Bennett,” he chucked wetly too, ”more than Sam is clearly in love with Donna–”
“Clearly.”
“... More than you I could show you in a lifetime. I know it’s not romantic, but I guess I never really was too, call it a marriage preview I guess… if you expect that is! Don’t feel you have to, but, y’know, what do you say?”
Olive looked at him. This sweet, antagonistic, welcoming, unapproachable, intelligent and stupid, beautiful, gorgeous, teddy bear of a man. She looked at him and saw all of him. His kind, protective nature, his grumpy old man persona, his hatred of starbuck but his willingness to buy every drink the chain offered. Because he loved her. He loved her. And, fuck, she loved him too.
“Yes.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
And he kissed her. In every way, all at once. It was sweet and loving, it was hot and passionate, it was comforting and oh so incredibly Adam. It said so much and so little. I love you, I love you, I love you.
“When you're gone, how can I even try to go on…”
Olive Carlsen.
It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?