Page 166 - The Love Hypothesis

“Ol.”

“No,” she said, firm. With her tears gone, she felt marginally better.
Maybe she was not who she had thought, but she could fake it. She could
pretend, even to herself. “I’m not going to tell him. It’s a horrible idea.”

“Ol.”
“How would that conversation even work? How would I phrase it? What

are the right words?”
“Actually you should probably—”

“Do I tell him that I’m into him? That I think about him all the time?
That I have a huge crush on him? That—”

“Olive.”
In the end, what tipped her off was not Malcolm’s words, or his panicky
expression, or the fact that he was clearly looking at a spot somewhere

above her shoulders. In the end, Anh chose that exact moment to text her,
which drew Olive’s eyes to the numbers on the screen.

10:00 a.m.
It was ten. On a Wednesday morning. And Olive was currently sitting in

the campus Starbucks, the very same Starbucks where she had spent her
Wednesday mornings for the past few weeks. She whirled around and—

She wasn’t even surprised to find Adam. Standing behind her. Close
enough that unless both his eardrums had ruptured since the last time they’d
talked, he must have heard every single word that came out of Olive’s

mouth.
She wished she could expire on the spot. She wished she could crawl

outside her body and this café, melt in a pool of sweat, and seep between
the tiles on the floor, just vanish into thin air. But all these things were

currently beyond her skill set, so she fixed a weak smile on her face and
looked up at Adam.