The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

“I told Holden that I was worried about you, and he said
that you guys were probably celebrating. Something about
Carlsen’s funds being released? By the way, you never told me
Carlsen and Holden were best friends—it seems like a piece of
information you’d want to share with your Holden-Rodriguesfan-club-founder-and-most-vocal-member
roommate—”
“Wait.” Olive sat up, wide-eyed. “The funds that were
released, are they . . . the frozen ones? The ones Stanford was
withholding?”
“Maybe? Holden said something about the department
chair finally easing up. I tried to pay attention, but talking
about Carlsen is a bit of a buzzkill—no offense. Plus, I kept
getting lost in Holden’s eyes.”
“And his butt,” Anh added.
“And his butt.” Malcolm sighed happily. “Such a nice butt.
He has little dimples on his lower back.”
“Oh my God, so does Jeremy! I want to bite them.”
“Aren’t they the cutest?”
Olive stopped listening and stood from the bed, grabbing
her phone to read the date.
September twenty-ninth.
It was September twenty-ninth.
She had known, of course. She had known for over a
month that today was coming, but in the past week she’d been
too busy fretting about her talk to focus on anything else, and
Adam hadn’t reminded her. With everything that had happened
in the past twenty-four hours, it was no surprise that he’d
forgotten to mention that his funds had been released. But still.
The implications of it were . . .
She closed her eyes, shut tight, while Anh and Malcolm’s
excited chattering kept rising in volume in the background.