The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

pitch her voice. “Or do you maybe want to fake–break up
early?”
He didn’t reply for a second. Then, just as Dr. Moss took
the mic to thank Tom and ask the audience for questions, she
heard him say, “No. I don’t want to fake–break up.”
He really did smell good. And he was funny in a weird,
deadpan way, and yes, a known ass, but friendly enough to her
that she could sort of ignore that about him. Plus, he was
spending a small fortune on sugar for her. Truly, she had
nothing to complain about.
Olive settled herself more comfortably and turned her
attention back to the podium.
—
AFTER THE TALK, Olive considered walking down to the podium
to compliment Tom and ask him one or two questions she
already knew the answers to. Sadly, there were dozens of
people waiting to speak to him, and she decided that the asskissing
wasn’t worth standing in line. So she said goodbye to
Adam, waited for Anh to wake up from her nap while
contemplating getting revenge by drawing a dick on her face,
and then slowly headed with her across campus back to the
biology building.
“Is it going to be a lot of work, the report Benton asked
for?”
“A fair amount. I need to run a few control studies to make
my results stronger. Plus there’s other stuff I should be
working on—the TA’ing, and my poster presentation for the
SBD conference in Boston.” Olive bent her head back, felt the
sun warm her skin, and smiled. “If I hole up in the lab every
night this week and the next, I should be able to finish it on
time.”