The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

“No,” she repeated, pensive. “This is my place, by the
way.” She pointed at the tall brick building on the corner.
“Right.” Adam looked around, studying her street. “Should
I carry your bag upstairs?”
“I . . . Maybe later. There is something I need to tell you.
Before.”
“Of course.”
He stopped in front of her, and she looked up at him, at the
lines of his handsome, familiar face. There was only fresh
breeze between them, and whatever distance Adam had seen
fit to keep. Her stubborn, mercurial fake boyfriend.
Wonderfully, perfectly unique. Delightfully one of a kind.
Olive felt her heart overflow.
She took a deep breath. “The thing is, Adam . . . I was
stupid. And wrong.” She played nervously with a lock of her
hair, then let her hand drift down to her stomach, and—okay.
Okay. She was going to tell him. She would do this. Now. “It’s
like—it’s like statistical hypothesis testing. Type I error. It’s
scary, isn’t it?”
He frowned. She could tell he had no idea where she was
going with this. “Type I error?”
“A false positive. Thinking that something is happening
when it’s not.”
“I know what type I error is—”
“Yes, of course. It’s just . . . in the past few weeks, what
terrified me was the idea that I could misread a situation. That
I could convince myself of something that wasn’t true. See
something that wasn’t there just because I wanted to see it. A
scientist’s worst nightmare, right?”
“Right.” His brows furrowed. “That is why in your
analyses you set a level of significance that is—”