The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

him wouldn’t feel like a singularly sadistic version of seven
minutes in heaven.
Not that they’d be together much. She was going to give
her talk in a couple of hours—ugh—then go to the
department’s social and hang out with her friends until . . .
well, as long as she feasibly could. Odds were that Adam
already had tons of meetings scheduled, and maybe they
wouldn’t even see each other. Olive would be asleep when he
came back tonight, and tomorrow morning one of them would
pretend not to wake up while the other got ready. It was going
to be fine. Harmless. At the very least, not make things worse
than they currently were.
Olive’s usual conference outfit was black jeans and her
least-frayed cardigan, but a few days ago Anh had mentioned
that the ensemble might be too casual for a talk. After sighing
for hours Olive had decided to bring the black wrap dress
she’d bought on sale before interviewing for grad school and
black pumps borrowed from Anh’s sister. It had seemed like a
good idea at the time, but as soon as she slipped into the
bathroom to put on the dress, she realized that it must have
shrunk the last time she washed it. It didn’t quite hit her knees
anymore, not by a couple of inches. She groaned and snapped
a picture for Anh and Malcolm, who texted her, respectively,
Still conference appropriate and a fire emoji. Olive prayed that
Anh was right as she combed the waves in her hair and fought
against dried-out mascara—her fault for buying makeup at the
dollar store, clearly.
She had just got out of the bathroom, rehearsing her talk
under her breath, when the door opened and someone—Adam,
of course it was Adam—entered the room. He was holding his
key card and typing something in his phone, but stopped as
soon as he looked up and noticed Olive. His mouth opened,
and—
That was it. It just stayed open.