The Love Hypothesis

by Ali Hazelwood

She was well aware that committing to years of unappreciated, underpaid eighty-hour workweeks might not be good for her mental health.

“You mean you’ve done this before?” She frowned. “Done what?” “Put in expired contacts.” “Of course. Contacts are not cheap.” “Neither are eyes.”

All Ph.D. students were like that: thinking they were better than everyone else just because they had the dubious privilege of slaughtering fruit flies in the name of science for ninety cents an hour.

But a good kiss will do that: make a girl forget herself for a while.

It never occurred to Olive that Dr. Adam Carlsen—known ass—had called her by her name.

“Fine. We can say that you broke up with me.” “Because that sounds credible,” he said drily, almost below his breath.

he said the word “reputation” rolling his eyes a little, as if the concept of caring about what others thought were the dumbest thing since homeopathic antibiotics—“things

“If I tell you, it cannot leave this room.” “I think we can both agree that nothing that has happened in this room should ever leave it.”

jury of his peers had convicted him for crimes against grad students. He’d probably whacked someone on the head with a microscope for mislabeling peptide samples.

Maybe spending so many years alone had warped her in some fundamental way and that was why she seemed to be unable to develop a true romantic connection, or even the type of attraction she often heard others talk about.

“People who date, they—they talk. A lot. More than just greetings in the hallway. They know each other’s favorite colors, and where they were born, and they…they hold hands. They kiss.” Adam pressed his lips together as if to suppress a smile. “We could never do that.”

Adam J. Carlsen, Ph.D. Maybe the J stood for “Jackass.”

academia was a lawless land

“How many times have you done this?” “Zero. But I am familiar with the trope.” “The…what?”

talking about sex—not the meiosis kind of sex, but potential sexual intercourse between the two of them.

What do you do when you’re not at work?” The length of time that passed between Olive’s question and his answer was alarming. “Sometimes I work at home, too.

“Aren’t you going to add it to your calendar?” “I’ll remember,”

this is breathtakingly stupid.”

“I doubt a language exists in which the thing you just ordered could be referred to as ‘coffee.’ ”

She giggled. He smiled in response, as if pleased to have made her laugh. Though it was certainly for some other reason.

In hindsight, this entire fake-dating business with Adam was going to be great practice for when Olive leveled up and started defrauding the Department of Homeland Security in earnest.

“Or, you could stay mad, and we could go to your lab and throw test tubes full of toxic reagents at each other until the pain of third-degree burns overrides your shitty mood? Sounds like fun, no?”

Was she free? Technically, yes. She would have loved to run to the edge of campus and scream into the void until modern civilization collapsed, but that wasn’t exactly a pressing matter.

You weigh nothing. I don’t mind.”

“Should we just kiss, then?” she heard herself blurt out. And then she instantly wished a stray meteorite would hit the exact spot where she was standing,

HYPOTHESIS: The more I mention an attachment in an email, the less likely I will be to actually include said attachment.

there had been about thirty times when Olive had to forcibly remove her phone from her hands to avoid texting him things he couldn’t possibly care about.

Adam didn’t even remember Olive existed before she’d Title-IXed him in the hallway a few weeks ago.

‘Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.’ ”

“Why are you taking a standing nap next to your adviser’s office?”

“Good. Fine. I mean, I wish I were dead. But aside from that.”

“It will be fine, Olive.” His smile softened. “And if not, at least it will be over.”

“You were a high-powered researcher, surrounded by students who hung on your every word. And you were answering a multiparagraph email with an uncapitalized no.”

he was staring at her with an expression halfway between exasperated and indulgent.

He kisses, Olive thought, like a man starved.

“It doesn’t matter, what you said. You can always change your mind.”

“You’re so perfect, you’re driving me insane.”

He was always handsome, but now, in the witching hours, he took her breath away.

It had been one of her mother’s favorite stories. And now Olive was the only person who could tell it. It lived in her, and no one else.

She blinked at the screen, unlocked her phone, and started scrolling up. Could it be one hundred and forty-three reminders to wear sunscreen?

You are in Boston. You should be out there in an Irish pub pretending you love the Red Sox and eating Dunkies, not doing work. For your boss.”

HYPOTHESIS: People who cross me will come to regret it.

“I’m going to kill you,” he gritted out, little more than a growl. “If you say another word about the woman I love, if you look at her, if you even think about her—I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“I am going to take care of this,” he told her. There was something determined, earnest in his eyes. Olive had never felt safer, or more loved. “And then I’ll come find you, and I’ll take care of you.”

He wasn’t very good at it. At standing there and doing nothing while her eyes welled fuller and fuller.