The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

His cheek curved. “You are such a smart-ass.”
Olive looked back to the slides, smiling. “Has it been
weird? Having to lie to Tom about us?”
Adam seemed to think about it. “No.” He hesitated. “It
looks like your friends are buying that we’re together.”
“I think so. I’m not exactly a convincing liar, and
sometimes I worry that Anh might get suspicious. But I
walked in on her and Jeremy making out in the grad lounge
the other day.”
They fell quiet and listened to the last few minutes of the
talk in silence. In front of them, Olive could see at least two
professors taking a nap, and several surreptitiously working on
their laptops. Next to Adam, Dr. Rodrigues had been playing
Candy Crush on his phone for the past half an hour. Some
people had left, and Anh had found a seat about ten minutes
ago. So had several of the students who had been next to
Olive, which meant that she could have technically stood up
and left Adam alone. Technically. Technically, there was an
open chair somewhere in the third-to-last row. Technically.
Instead she brought her lips to Adam’s ear once more and
whispered, “It’s working out well for me, I have to say. This
whole fake-dating thing.” More than well. Better than she ever
thought it would.
Adam blinked once and then nodded. Maybe his arm
tensed a little around her. Maybe it didn’t, and Olive’s mind
was playing tricks on her. It was starting to get late, after all.
Her last coffee had been too long ago, and she wasn’t fully
awake, her thoughts fuzzy and relaxed.
“What about you?”
“Mmm?” Adam wasn’t looking at her.
“Is it working for you?” It came out a little needy. Olive
told herself that it was only because of how low she had to