Page 282 - The Love Hypothesis

“Maybe.”

Anh cackled. “And they say romance is dead.”
“Shut up. Then, toward the beginning of the date, something happened.
Something catastrophic that could only ever happen to me, given that my

entire damn family is obsessed with science and, therefore, attends all the
conferences. All of them.”

“No. Tell me you didn’t—”
“Yes. When we got to the restaurant, we found my mother, father, uncle,

and grandfather. Who insisted on us joining them. Which means that my
first date with Holden was a freaking Thanksgiving dinner.”

Olive looked up from her laptop and shared an appalled look with Anh.
“How bad was it?”
“Funny that you ask, because it is with the utmost disconcert that I must

say: it was fucking spectacular. They loved him—because he’s a badass
scientist and because he is smoother than an organic smoothie—and in the

span of two hours he somehow managed to help me convince my parents
that my plan of being an industry scientist is bomb. I’m not kidding—this

morning my mother called and was all about how I have grown as a person
and am finally in control of my future and how my dating choices reflect

that. She said that Dad agrees. Can you believe it? Anyway. After dinner we
got ice cream and then we went back to Holden’s hotel room and sixty-
nined like the world was about to end—”

“A girl like you. Who figured out so early in her academic career that
fucking well-known, successful scholars is how to get ahead. You fucked

Adam, didn’t you? We both know you’re going to fuck me for the same reas
—”

Olive slammed the spacebar, immediately stopping the replay of the
recording. Her heart was pounding in her chest—first from confusion, then

from the realization of what she’d inadvertently recorded, and finally from
anger at hearing the words again. She brought a trembling hand to her lips,
trying to purge Tom’s voice from her head. She had spent two days trying to

recover, and now—
“The hell was that?” Malcolm asked.