The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

understand why Anh would tell Jeremy—I mean, getting those
two together was the whole point of this charade—but . . .
Why would Jeremy tell anyone?”
Carlsen shrugged. “Why wouldn’t he?”
She looked up. “What do you mean?”
“A grad student dating a faculty member seems like an
interesting piece of information to share.”
Olive shook her head. “It’s not that interesting. Why would
people be interested?”
He lifted one eyebrow. “Someone once told me that
‘Gossip in this department is the wor—’ ”
“Okay, okay. Point taken.” She took a deep breath and
started pacing, trying to ignore the way Carlsen was studying
her, how relaxed he looked, arms across his chest while
leaning against the conference table. He was not supposed to
be calm. He was supposed to be incensed. He was a known
dick with a reputation for arrogance—the idea of people
thinking that he was dating a nobody should be mortifying to
him. The burden of freaking out should not be falling on Olive
alone.
“This is— We need to do something, of course. We need to
tell people that this is not true and that we made it all up.
Except that they’ll think that I’m crazy, and maybe that you
are, too, so we have to come up with some other story. Yes,
okay, we need to tell people we’re not together anymore—”
“And what will Anh and what’s-his-face do?”
Olive stopped pacing. “Uh?”
“Won’t your friends feel bad about dating if they think
we’re not together? Or that you lied to them?”
She hadn’t thought of that. “I— Maybe. Maybe, but—”