The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

He glared at her.
Olive shrugged. “No offense. I’m a simple girl, with simple
needs.”
To that, he lowered his gaze to his desk, but not before
Olive could see the corner of his mouth twitch. When he
looked up again, his expression was serious. “So, have you
decided?”
She pressed her lips together as he watched her calmly. She
took a deep breath before saying, “Yes. Yes, I . . . I want to do
it. It’s a good idea, actually.”
For so many reasons. It would get Anh and Jeremy off her
back, but also . . . also everyone else. It was as if since the
rumor had begun to spread, people had been too intimidated
by Olive to give her the usual shit. The other TAs had quit
trying to switch her nice 2:00 p.m. sections with their
horrifying 8:00 a.m. ones, her lab mates had stopped cutting in
front of her in the line for the microscope, and two different
faculty members Olive had been trying to get ahold of for
weeks had finally deigned to answer her emails. It felt a little
unfair to exploit this huge misunderstanding, but academia
was a lawless land and Olive’s life in it had been nothing but
miserable for the past two years. She had learned to grab
whatever she could get away with. And if some—okay, if most
of the grads in the department looked at her suspiciously
because she was dating Adam Carlsen, so be it. Her friends
seemed to be largely fine with this, if a little bemused.
Except for Malcolm. He’d been shunning her like she had
the pox for three solid days. But Malcolm was Malcolm—he’d
come around.
“Very well, then.” He was completely expressionless—
almost too expressionless. Like it was no big deal and he
didn’t care either way; like if she’d said no, it wouldn’t have
changed anything for him.