The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

on his iMac. “My office hours were over five minutes ago, so
—”
“It’s me.”
His hands halted, hovering half an inch or so above the
keyboard. Then he turned his chair toward her. “Olive.”
There was something about the way he talked. Maybe it
was an accent, maybe just a quality of his voice. Olive didn’t
quite know what, but it was there, in the way he said her name.
Precise. Careful. Deep. Unlike anyone else. Familiar—
impossibly so.
“What did you say to her?” she asked, trying not to care
about how Adam Carlsen spoke. “The girl who ran out in
tears?”
It took him a moment to remember that less than sixty
seconds ago there had been someone else in the office—
someone whom he clearly made cry. “I just gave her feedback
on something she wrote.”
Olive nodded, silently thanking all the gods that he was not
her adviser and never would be, and studied her surroundings.
He had a corner office, of course. Two windows that together
must total seventy thousand square meters of glass, and so
much light, just standing in the middle of the room would cure
twenty people’s seasonal depression. It made sense, what with
all the grant money he brought in, what with the prestige, that
he’d been given a nice space. Olive’s office, on the other hand,
had no windows and smelled funny, probably because she
shared it with three other Ph.D. students, even though it was
meant to accommodate two at the most.
“I was going to email you. I talked to the dean earlier
today,” Adam told her, and she looked back at him.
He was gesturing to the chair in front of his desk. Olive
pulled it back and took a seat.