The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

“Hold on. Is there Wi-Fi here?”
“Ol, do you have internet?”
Olive wiped her hands on a napkin that looked mostly
unused. “I left my phone in Malcolm’s car.”
She turned her head away from Anh and Jeremy, who were
now studying the screen of Jeremy’s iPhone, until she had a
good view of the Ultimate Frisbee group—fourteen men and
zero women. It probably had to do with the general excess of
testosterone in STEM programs. At least half the players were
faculty or postdocs. Adam, of course, and Tom, and Dr.
Rodrigues, and several others from pharmacology. All equally
shirtless. Though, no. Not equal at all. There was really
nothing equal about Adam.
Olive wasn’t like this. She really was not. She could count
the number of guys she’d been this viscerally attracted to on
one hand. Actually—on one finger. And at the moment said
guy was running toward her, because Tom Benton, bless his
heart, had just thrown the Frisbee way too clumsily, and it was
now in a patch of grass approximately ten feet from Olive.
And Adam, shirtless Adam, just happened to be the one
closest to where it landed.
“Oh, check out this paper.” Jeremy sounded excited.
“Khalesi et al., 2013. It’s a meta-analysis. ‘Cutaneous
markers of photo-damage and risk of basal cell carcinoma of
the skin.’ In Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.”
Jeremy fist-pumped. “Olive, are you listening to this?”
Nope. No, she was not. She was mostly trying to empty her
brain, and her eyes, too. Of her fake boyfriend and the sudden
warm ache in her stomach. She just wished she were
elsewhere. That she were temporarily blind and deaf.
“Hear this: solar lentigines had weak but positive
associations with basal cell carcinoma, with odds ratios around