Page 178 - The Love Hypothesis

Olive drunkenly studied the drunken determination on Anh’s drunken

face, thinking that there was something reassuring in knowing that her
closest friend was starting to figure out what she wanted her life to be like.
Who she wanted to live it with. It did send a pang deep in Olive’s stomach,

in that spot that seemed to feel Adam’s absence most acutely, but she
pushed it down, trying not to think about it too hard. Instead she reached for

her friend’s hand, squeezed it once, and inhaled the sweet scent of apple
from her hair.

“You’ll be so good at it, Anh. I can’t wait to see you change the world.”
—

ALL, Olive’s life continued as it always had—except that for the first
ALL IN
time, there was something else she’d rather be doing. Someone else she’d

rather be with.
So, this is liking someone, she mused. Feeling like the biology building

was not worth going to because if Adam was out of town, even the most
remote chance of running into him had been taken away from her;
constantly spinning around after catching a glimpse of jet-black hair, or

when hearing a deep voice that sounded as rich as Adam’s but really
wasn’t; thinking of him because her friend Jess mentioned planning a trip to

the Netherlands, or when on Jeopardy! the correct answer to
“Aichmophobia” turned out to be “What is fear of needles?”; feeling stuck

in an odd limbo, waiting, just waiting, waiting . . . for nothing. Adam was
going to come back in a few days, and Olive’s lie that she was in love with

someone else was still going to be there. September twenty-ninth would
arrive all too soon, and anyway, the assumption that Adam could ever see
Olive in any romantic light was preposterous. All considered, she was lucky

he liked her enough to want to be her friend.
On Sunday, her phone pinged while she was running at the gym. When

Adam’s name popped up at the top of the screen, she immediately jumped
to read it. Except that there wasn’t much to read: just the image of a huge

drink in a plastic cup, topped with what looked like a muffin. The bottom of