:༅｡ᴛɪᴀ's ɢᴀʟᴀxʏ☕

“Good morning. I’ll have a pumpkin spice latte. And that cream cheese danish over there. Yep, that one, thank you. And—he’ll have chamomile tea. No sugar,”
“I hate tea,—And chamomile.”
“That is unfortunate.”
“You smart-ass.”

📚The Love Hypothesis

“Favorite color?”
“Dammit.”
“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.”
“You know, I don’t think I can accept that. White’s not really a color. More like all colors put together—”

📚The Love Hypothesis

“Well. This was fun.”
“Is fake-dating Wednesday over?”
“Yep. Great job, team, now hit the showers. You’re free until next week.”

📚The Love Hypothesis

For a moment she hesitated, wondering if she should be offended. Was Adam being his well-known ass self? Was he patronizing her? Did he think she was poor? Then she remembered that she was, in fact, poor, and that he probably made five times as much as her. She shrugged, adding a chocolate chip cookie, a banana, and a pack of gum to her coffee.

“Oh, no. No, no, no. No. You can’t pay for my stuff.”
“I can’t?”
“That’s not the kind of fake relationship we’re having.”
“It isn’t?”
“Nope. I would never fake-date a dude who thinks that he has to pay for my coffee just because he’s a dude.”
“I doubt a language exists in which the thing you just ordered could be referred to as ‘coffee.’ ”
“Hey—”
“And it’s not about me being a ‘dude’ —but about you still being a grad student. And your yearly income.”

📚The Love Hypothesis

“What’s your favorite color?”
“What?”
“Your favorite color.”
“My favorite color?”
“Yep.”
“I—don’t know?”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“They’re colors. They’re all the same.”
“There must be one you like most.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Red?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yellow? Vomit green?”
“Okay. Black, I guess.”
“Figures.”
“What’s wrong with black?”
“It’s not even a color. It’s no colors, technically.”
“It’s better than vomit green.”

📚The Love Hypothesis

📚The Love Hypothesis

📚The Love Hypothesis

"Fun?”
“Yeah. What do you do when you’re not at work?”
“Sometimes I work at home, too. And I work out. And I sleep.”
“Um, great. Anything else?”
“What do you do for fun?”
“Plenty of things. I . . .Um. I work out?”

📚The Love Hypothesis

"I think that’s pretty standard protocol, before embarking on a fake-dating relationship.”
“Standard protocol?”
“Yup.”
“How many times have you done this?”
“Zero. But I am familiar with the trope.”
“The . . . what?

📚The Love Hypothesis

He was smiling, staring at her with a strange light in his eyes. And would you look at that: Adam Carlsen had dimples. Cute ones.

“I don’t think people who are dating just . . . say hi to each other.”
“What do people who are dating do?”

Funny how she used to be scared of him. Now he was the only person in the world who knew about her worst fuckup ever, and it was hard to feel intimidated—even harder, after discovering that he was the kind of person who’d be desperate enough to pretend to date someone to get his research funds back.

📚The Love Hypothesis

“Are you not . . .Married, or something?”
“My wife and the twins won’t mind.”
“I . . . Oh my God, I didn’t— I am so sorry—”
“Just kidding.”

📚The Love Hypothesis

“If what bothers you is that people are talking about you dating a professor, the damage is done, I’m afraid. Telling everyone that we broke up is not going to undo the fact that they think we dated.”

“Maybe we can tell people that I broke up with you?”
“That’s very flattering,”
“Fine. We can say that you broke up with me.”
“Because that sounds credible,”
“What if we tell people that it was a mutual breakup?”
“Sounds good.”
“Really? Great, then! We’ll—”
“We could ask Cherie to add it to the departmental newsletter.”
“What?”
“Or do you think a public announcement before seminar would be better?”
“No. No, it’s—”
“Maybe we should ask IT to put it on the Stanford home page. That way people would know—”
“Okay, okay, fine! I get it.”

📚The Love Hypothesis

“I thought we were friends.”
“We are.”
“Good friends.”
“We are. You and Anh are my best friends. What—”
“Clearly not, if I had to hear it from Stella, who heard it from Jess, who heard it from Jeremy, who heard it from Anh—”
“Hear what?”
“—who heard it from I don’t even know who. And I thought we were friends.”
“Hear what?”
“I’m done. I’m letting the cockroaches eat you. And I’m changing my Netflix password.”
“Malcolm. Hear what?”
“That you are dating Adam Carlsen.”

📚The Love Hypothesis