Page 269 - The Love Hypothesis

She probably wasn’t going to have the opportunity anytime soon. “I

will.”
Malcolm shifted a bit and turned to Olive. “Did you really fall asleep
last night? Or were you and Carlsen celebrating in unmentionable ways?”

“Celebrating?”
“I told Holden that I was worried about you, and he said that you guys

were probably celebrating. Something about Carlsen’s funds being
released? By the way, you never told me Carlsen and Holden were best

friends—it seems like a piece of information you’d want to share with your
Holden-Rodrigues-fan-club-founder-and-most-vocal-member roommate—”

“Wait.” Olive sat up, wide-eyed. “The funds that were released, are
they . . . the frozen ones? The ones Stanford was withholding?”
“Maybe? Holden said something about the department chair finally

easing up. I tried to pay attention, but talking about Carlsen is a bit of a
buzzkill—no offense. Plus, I kept getting lost in Holden’s eyes.”

“And his butt,” Anh added.
“And his butt.” Malcolm sighed happily. “Such a nice butt. He has little

dimples on his lower back.”
“Oh my God, so does Jeremy! I want to bite them.”

“Aren’t they the cutest?”
Olive stopped listening and stood from the bed, grabbing her phone to
read the date.

September twenty-ninth.
It was September twenty-ninth.

She had known, of course. She had known for over a month that today
was coming, but in the past week she’d been too busy fretting about her talk

to focus on anything else, and Adam hadn’t reminded her. With everything
that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, it was no surprise that he’d

forgotten to mention that his funds had been released. But still. The
implications of it were . . .
She closed her eyes, shut tight, while Anh and Malcolm’s excited

chattering kept rising in volume in the background. When she opened them,
her phone lit up with a new notification. From Adam.