The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

this time with the sleeve of his shirt. “We can kiss.”
“Oh.”
“If you think that . . . If your friend is watching.”
“Yeah.” Olive swallowed. “But we don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“Unless you want to.” Olive’s palms felt damp and
clammy, so she surreptitiously wiped them on her jeans. “And
by ‘want to’ I mean, unless you think it’s a good idea.” It so
was not a good idea. It was a horrible idea. Like all her ideas.
“Right.” He looked past Olive and toward Anh, who was
probably in the middle of doing an entire Instagram Story on
them. “Okay, then.”
“Okay.”
He stepped a little closer, and really, he was not gross. How
someone this sweaty, someone who’d just pushed a truck, still
managed to smell good was a topic worthy of a Ph.D.
dissertation, for sure. Earth’s finest scientists should have been
hard at work on this.
“Why don’t I . . .” Olive inched slightly into him, and after
letting her hand hover for a moment she rested it over Adam’s
shoulder. She pushed up on her toes, angling her head up
toward him. It helped very little, as Olive was still not tall
enough to reach his mouth, so she tried to get more leverage
by putting her other hand on his arm, and immediately realized
that she was basically hugging him. Which was the exact thing
he had asked her not to do a second ago. Crap.
“Sorry, too close? I didn’t mean to—”
She would have finished the sentence, if he hadn’t closed
the distance between them and just—kissed her. Just like that.
It was little more than a peck—just his lips pressing against
hers, and his hand on her waist to steady her a little. It was a