Page 203 - The Love Hypothesis

moved around. Staying in here with him wouldn’t feel like a singularly

sadistic version of seven minutes in heaven.
Not that they’d be together much. She was going to give her talk in a
couple of hours—ugh—then go to the department’s social and hang out

with her friends until . . . well, as long as she feasibly could. Odds were that
Adam already had tons of meetings scheduled, and maybe they wouldn’t

even see each other. Olive would be asleep when he came back tonight, and
tomorrow morning one of them would pretend not to wake up while the

other got ready. It was going to be fine. Harmless. At the very least, not
make things worse than they currently were.

Olive’s usual conference outfit was black jeans and her least-frayed
cardigan, but a few days ago Anh had mentioned that the ensemble might
be too casual for a talk. After sighing for hours Olive had decided to bring

the black wrap dress she’d bought on sale before interviewing for grad
school and black pumps borrowed from Anh’s sister. It had seemed like a

good idea at the time, but as soon as she slipped into the bathroom to put on
the dress, she realized that it must have shrunk the last time she washed it. It

didn’t quite hit her knees anymore, not by a couple of inches. She groaned
and snapped a picture for Anh and Malcolm, who texted her, respectively,

Still conference appropriate and a fire emoji. Olive prayed that Anh was
right as she combed the waves in her hair and fought against dried-out

mascara—her fault for buying makeup at the dollar store, clearly.
She had just got out of the bathroom, rehearsing her talk under her

breath, when the door opened and someone—Adam, of course it was Adam
—entered the room. He was holding his key card and typing something in
his phone, but stopped as soon as he looked up and noticed Olive. His

mouth opened, and—
That was it. It just stayed open.

“Hey.” Olive forced her face into a smile. Her heart was doing
something weird in her chest. Beating a little too quickly. She should
probably have it checked as soon as she got back home. One could never be

too careful about cardiovascular health. “Hi.”