The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

Olive: Did you just fail Greg?
tricky to interpret. She mulled it over while biking home, hot
wind warming her cheeks and ruffling her hair, and while
eating two slices of the saddest pizza ever. Malcolm had been
on a health kick for weeks now (something about cultivating
his gut microbiome) and refused to admit that cauliflower
crust did not taste good.
Among her friends, Malcolm and Jeremy had had
unpleasant dealings with Adam in the past, but after the initial
shock they didn’t seem to hold Olive’s relationship with him
against her. She hadn’t concerned herself too much with the
feelings of other grads. She had always been a bit of a loner,
and focusing on the opinion of people she barely interacted
with seemed like a wasteful use of time and energy. Still,
maybe there was a glimmer of truth in what Greg had said.
Adam had been anything but a jerk to Olive, but did accepting
his help while he acted horribly toward her fellow grads make
her a bad person?
Olive lay on her unmade bed, looking up at the glow-inthe-dark
stars. It had been more than two years since she’d
borrowed Malcolm’s stepladder and carefully stuck them on
the ceiling; the glue was starting to give out, and the large
comet in the corner by the window was going to fall off any
day. Without letting herself think it through too much, she
rolled out of bed and rummaged inside the pockets of her
discarded jeans until she found her cell phone.
She hadn’t used Adam’s number since he’d given it to her a
few days ago—“If anything comes up or you need to cancel,
just give me a call. It’s quicker than an email.” When she
tapped the blue icon under his name a white screen popped up,
a blank slate with no history of previous messages. It gave
Olive an odd rush of anxiety, so much so that she typed the
text with one hand while biting the thumbnail on the other.