The Love Hypothesis

by Ali Hazelwood

She tried to dry her cheeks with her sleeve, but the material of her wrap dress was cheap and flimsy, not half as absorbent as real cotton. Ah, the joys of being impoverished.

The day Olive met Anh’s rolling eyes, a life-changing friendship was born.

Are they deporting you back to Canada because we’ve been sharing Malcolm’s Netflix password? Tell them we didn’t know it was a federal crime.

Olive didn’t quite know what, but it was there, in the way he said her name. Precise. Careful. Deep. Unlike anyone else. Familiar—impossibly so.

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.

“Olive,” Dr. Aslan interrupted her with a stern tone. “What do I always tell you?” “Um . . . ‘Don’t misplace the multichannel pipette’?” “The other thing.” She sighed. “ ‘Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.’ ”

“It doesn’t matter what it says. It’s always one bed.”