The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

Olive: Well, TSA is notoriously incompetent.
Olive: Though maybe not that incompetent?
Adam: Too bad.
needles?”; feeling stuck in an odd limbo, waiting, just waiting,
waiting . . . for nothing. Adam was going to come back in a
few days, and Olive’s lie that she was in love with someone
else was still going to be there. September twenty-ninth would
arrive all too soon, and anyway, the assumption that Adam
could ever see Olive in any romantic light was preposterous.
All considered, she was lucky he liked her enough to want to
be her friend.
On Sunday, her phone pinged while she was running at the
gym. When Adam’s name popped up at the top of the screen,
she immediately jumped to read it. Except that there wasn’t
much to read: just the image of a huge drink in a plastic cup,
topped with what looked like a muffin. The bottom of the
image proudly stated “Pumpkin Pie Frappuccino,” and below
that, Adam’s text:
Adam: Think I can smuggle this on the plane?
She didn’t need to be told that she was grinning at her
phone like an idiot.
Adam: Wish you were here, then.
Olive’s smile stayed in place for a long time. And then,
when she remembered the mess she was in, it faded into a
heavy sigh.
—
SHE WAS CARRYING a tray of tissue samples to the electron
microscope lab when someone patted her on the shoulder,
startling her. Olive nearly tripped and destroyed several