The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

“That was—no offense, Ol—but that was the most bizarre
kiss I have ever seen.”
Calm. Stay calm. She doesn’t know. She cannot know. “I
doubt that,” Olive retorted weakly. “Take that upside-down
Spider-Man kiss. That was way more bizarre than—”
“Ol, you said you were on a date that night. You’re not
dating Carlsen, are you?” She twisted her face in a grimace.
It would have been so easy to confess the truth. Since
starting grad school Anh and Olive had done heaps of moronic
things, together and separately; the time Olive panicked and
kissed none other than Adam Carlsen could become one of
them, one they laughed about during their weekly beer-ands’mores
nights.
Or not. There was a chance that if Olive admitted to lying
now, Anh might never trust her again. Or that she’d never go
out with Jeremy. And as much as the idea of her best friend
dating her ex had Olive wanting to puke just a bit, the thought
of said best friend being anything but happy had her wanting
to puke a lot more.
The situation was depressingly simple: Olive was alone in
the world. She had been for a long time, ever since high
school. She had trained herself not to make a big deal out of it
—she was sure many people were alone in the world and
found themselves having to write down made-up names and
phone numbers on their emergency contact forms. During
college and her master’s, focusing on science and research had
been her way of coping, and she had been perfectly ready to
spend the rest of her life holed up in a lab with little more than
a beaker and a handful of pipettes as her faithful companions
—until . . . Anh.
In a way, it had been love at first sight. First day of grad
school. Biology cohort orientation. Olive entered the
conference room, looked around, and sat in the first free seat