The Love Hypothesis

“Do you plan to move back home once you graduate?”

She tensed. “Not if I can help it.” She had lots of painful memories in Canada, and her only family, the people she wanted nearby, were Anh and Malcolm, both US citizens. Olive and Anh had even made a pact that if Olive was ever on the verge of losing her visa, Anh would marry her. 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.

Adam nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “Favorite color?”

Olive opened her mouth to tell him her favorite color, which was so much better than his, and . . . “Dammit.”

He gave her a knowing look. “Difficult, isn’t it?”

“There are so many good ones.”

“Yup.”

“I’m going to go with blue. Light blue. No, wait!”

“Mmm.”

“Let’s say white. Okay, white.”

He clucked his tongue. “You know, I don’t think I can accept that. White’s not really a co

lor. More like all colors put together—”

Olive pinched him on the fleshy part of his forearm.

“Ow,” he said, clearly not in pain. With a sly smile, he waved goodbye and turned away, heading for the biology building.

“Hey, Adam?” she called after him.

He paused and looked back at her.

“Thanks for buying me three days’ worth of food.”

He hesitated and then nodded, once. That thing he was doing with his mouth—he was definitely smiling down at her. A little begrudgingly, but still.

“My pleasure, Olive.”

* * *

—

Today, 2:40 p.m.

FROM:

TO:

SUBJECT: Re: Pancreatic Cancer Screening Project

Olive,

I’ll be flying in on Tuesday afternoon. How about we meet on Wednesday around 3:00 p.m. in Aysegul Aslan’s lab? My collaborator can point me in its direction.

TB

Sent from my iPhone

* * *