The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

unwelcome. It helped melt the yucky feeling the conversation
with Tom had left behind.
“Then again, so is your boyfriend.” Tom winked at her.
“Okay, Olive. Tell you what.” Tom leaned forward, elbows on
the table. “I’ve read your paper. And the abstract you
submitted to the SBD conference. Are you still planning to
go?”
“If it’s accepted.”
“I’m sure it will be. It’s excellent work. But it sounds like
your project has progressed since you submitted that, and I
need to know more about it. If I decide that you can work in
my lab next year, I’ll cover you completely—salary, supplies,
equipment, whatever you need. But I need to know where
you’re at to make sure that you’re worth investing in.”
Olive felt her heart racing. This sounded promising. Very
promising.
“Here’s the deal. I’m going to give you two weeks to write
up a report on everything you’ve been doing so far—
protocols, findings, challenges. In two weeks, send me the
report and I’ll make a decision based on it. Does that sound
feasible?”
She grinned, nodding enthusiastically. “Yes!” She could
absolutely do that. She’d need to pull the intro from one of her
papers, the methods from her lab protocols, the preliminary
data from that grant she’d applied for and not won. And she’d
have to rerun some of her analyses—just to make sure that the
report was absolutely flawless for Tom. It would be lots of
work in little time, but who needed sleep? Or bathroom
breaks?
“Great. In the meantime I’ll see you around and we can
chat more. Adam and I will be joined at the hip for a couple of
weeks, since we’re working on that grant we just got. Are you
coming to my talk tomorrow?”