The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

“You were a high-powered researcher, surrounded by
students who hung on your every word. And you were
answering a multiparagraph email with an uncapitalized no.”
“Nice. Was I happy?”
“Of course not.” Anh snorted. “It’s academia.”
“Ladies, the department social starts in half an hour.”
Malcolm leaned in to kiss Olive on the cheek and squeeze her
waist. When she was wearing heels, he was just a tiny bit
shorter than her. She definitely wanted a picture of the two of
them side by side. “We should go celebrate the single time
Olive managed to pronounce ‘channelrhodopsin’ right with
some free booze.”
“You dick.”
He pulled her in for a tight hug and whispered in her ear,
“You did amazing, Kalamata.” And then, louder: “Let’s go get
wasted!”
“Why don’t you guys go ahead? I’ll get my USB and put
my stuff back in the hotel.”
Olive made her way through the now-empty room to the
podium, feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off her
shoulders. She was relaxed and relieved. Professionally, things
were starting to look up: as it turned out, with adequate
preparation she could actually string together several coherent
sentences in front of other scientists. She also had the means to
carry out her research next year, and two big names in her
field had just complimented her work. She smiled, letting her
mind wander to whether she should text Adam to tell him that
he was right, she did make it out alive; she should probably
ask how his keynote address had gone, too. If his PowerPoint
had acted up and he’d mispronounced words like
“microarrays” or “karyotyping,” whether he planned to go to
the department social. He was probably meeting up with