The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

She huffed, crossing her arms over her chest, and they
exchanged a small smile.
“I can ask Holden or Tom if I can stay with them, and leave
you my room,” he suggested. “But they know that I already
have one, so I’d have to come up with excuses—”
“No, I’m not going to kick you out of your room.” She ran
a hand through her hair and exhaled. “You’d hate it.”
He tilted his head. “What?”
“Rooming with me.”
“I would?”
“Yeah. You seem like a person who . . .” You seem like you
like to keep others at arm’s length, uncompromising and ever
so hard to know. You seem like you care very little about what
people think of you. You seem like you know what you’re
doing. You seem equally horrible and awesome, and just the
thought that there’s someone you’d like to open up to, someone
who’s not me, makes me feel like I can’t sit at this table any
longer. “Like you’d want your own space.”
He held her gaze. “Olive. I think I’ll be fine.”
“But if you end up not being fine, then you’d be stuck with
me.”
“It’s one night.” His jaw clenched and relaxed, and he
added, “We are friends, no?”
Her own words, thrown back at her. I don’t want to be your
friend, she was tempted to say. Thing was, she also didn’t want
to not be his friend. What she wanted was completely outside
of her ability to obtain, and she needed to forget it. Scrap it
from her brain.
“Yes. We are.”
“Then, as a friend, don’t force me to worry about you using
public transportation late at night in a city you’re not familiar