The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

WAS LATE for her second fake-dating Wednesday, too, but
OLIVE
for different reasons—all Tom Benton related.
First, she’d overslept after staying up late the previous
night rehearsing how she was going to sell him her project.
She’d repeated her spiel so many times that Malcolm had
started finishing her sentences, and then, at 1:00 a.m., he’d
hurled a nectarine at her and begged her to go practice in her
room. Which she had, until 3:00 a.m.
Then, in the morning, she’d realized that her usual lab
outfit (leggings, ratty 5K T-shirt, and very, very messy bun)
would probably not communicate “valuable future colleague”
to Dr. Benton, and spent an excessive amount of time looking
for something appropriate. Dress for success and all that.
Finally, it occurred to her that she had no idea what Dr.
Benton—arguably the most important person in her life at the
moment, and yes, she was aware of how sad that sounded but
decided not to dwell on it—even looked like. She looked him
up on her phone and found out that he was somewhere in his
late thirties, blond with blue eyes, and had very straight, very
white teeth. When she arrived at the campus Starbucks, Olive
was whispering to his Harvard headshot, “Please, let me come
work in your lab.” Then she noticed Adam.
It was an uncharacteristically cloudy day. Still August, but
it almost felt like late fall. Olive glanced at him, and she
immediately knew that he was in the nastiest of moods. That
rumor of him throwing a petri dish against a wall because his
experiment hadn’t worked out, or because the electron
microscope needed repairs, or because something equally
inconsequential had happened came to mind. She considered
ducking under the table.
It’s okay, she told herself. This is worth it. Things with Anh
were back to normal. Better than normal: she and Jeremy were
officially dating, and last weekend Anh had showed up to