The Statistical Probability Of Love At First Sight (3 page)

Hadley tugged at the collar of her ski jacket, then unzipped it. “No,” she said, her heart thumping wildly. “Yes. I don’t know. I want to get out of here.”

“They’ll be here soon,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do till—”

“No,
now
, Dad,” she said, feeling slightly frantic. It was the first time she’d called him Dad since they’d gotten to Aspen; until that point, she’d pretty much avoided calling him anything at all.

His eyes skipped around the tiny elevator. “Are you having a panic attack?” he asked, looking a bit panicky himself. “Has this happened before? Does your mom—”

Hadley shook her head. She wasn’t sure what was happening; all she knew was that she needed to get out of there
right now
.

“Hey,” Dad said, taking her by the shoulders and forcing her to meet his eyes. “They’ll be here in a minute, okay? Just look at me. Don’t think about where we are.”

“Okay,” she muttered, gritting her teeth.

“Okay,” he said. “Think about someplace else. Somewhere with open spaces.”

She tried to still her frenzied mind, to bring forth some soothing memory, but her brain refused to cooperate. Her face was prickly with heat, and it was hard to focus.

“Pretend you’re at the beach,” he said. “Or the sky! Imagine the sky, okay? Think about how big it is, how you can’t see the end of it.”

Hadley screwed her eyes shut and forced herself to picture it, the vast and endless blue marred only by the occasional cloud. The deepness of it, the sheer scope of it, so big it was impossible to know where it ended. She felt her heart begin to slow and her breathing grow even, and she unclenched her sweaty fists. When she opened her eyes again, Dad’s face was level with hers, his eyes wide with worry. They stared at each other for what felt like forever, and Hadley realized it was the first time she’d allowed herself to look him in the eye since they’d arrived.

After a moment, the elevator shuddered into motion, and she let out a breath. They rode down the rest of the way in silence, both of them shaken, both of them eager to step outside and stand beneath the enormous stretch of western sky.

Now, in the middle of the crowded terminal, Hadley pulls her eyes away from the windows, from the planes fanned out across the runways like windup toys. Her stomach tightens again; the only time it doesn’t help to imagine the sky is when you’re thirty thousand feet in the air with nowhere to go but down.

She turns to see that the boy is waiting for her, his hand still wrapped around the handle of her suitcase. He smiles when she catches up, then swings out into the busy corridor, and Hadley hurries to keep up with his long stride. She’s concentrating so hard on following his blue shirt that when he stops, she very nearly runs into him. He’s taller than she is by at least six inches, and he has to duck his head to speak to her.

“I didn’t even ask where you’re going.”

“London,” she says, and he laughs.

“No, I meant
now
. Where are you going now?”

“Oh,” she says, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t know, actually. To get dinner, maybe? I just didn’t want to sit there forever.”

This is not entirely true; she’d been heading to the bathroom, but she can’t quite bring herself to tell him this. The thought of him waiting politely just outside while she stands in line for the toilet is more than she can bear.

“Okay,” he says, looking down at her, his dark hair falling across his forehead. When he smiles, she notices that he has a dimple on only one side, and there’s something about this that makes him seem endearingly off-balance. “Where to, then?”

Hadley stands on her tiptoes, turning in a small circle to get a sense of the restaurant choices, a bleak collection of pizza and burger stands. She isn’t sure whether he’ll be joining her, and this possibility gives the decision a slightly frenzied feel; she can practically feel him waiting beside her, and her whole body is tense as she tries to think of the option that’s the least likely to leave her with food all over her face, just in case he decides to come along.

After what seems like forever, she points to a deli just a few gates down, and he heads off in that direction obligingly, her red suitcase in tow. When they get there, he readjusts the bag on his shoulder and squints up at the menu.

“This is a good idea,” he says. “The plane food’ll be rubbish.”

“Where are you headed?” Hadley asks as they join the line.

“London as well.”

“Really? What seat?”

He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and produces his ticket, bent in half and ripped at one corner. “Eighteen-C.”

“I’m eighteen-A,” she tells him, and he smiles.

“Just missed.”

She nods at his garment bag, which is still resting on his shoulder, his finger hooked around the hanger. “You going over for a wedding, too?”

He hesitates, then jerks his chin up in the first half of a nod.

“So am I,” she says. “Wouldn’t it be weird if it was the same one?”

“Not likely,” he says, giving her an odd look, and she immediately feels silly. Of course it’s not the same one. She hopes he doesn’t think she’s under the impression that London is some kind of backwater town where everyone knows everyone else. Hadley’s never been out of the country before, but she knows enough to know that London is enormous; it is, in her limited experience, a big enough place to lose someone entirely.

The boy looks as if he’s about to say something more, then turns and gestures toward the menu instead. “Do you know what you’d like?”

Do I know what I’d like?
Hadley thinks.

She’d like to go home.

She’d like for home to be the way it once was.

She’d like to be going anywhere but her father’s wedding.

She’d like to
be
anywhere but this airport.

She’d like to know his name.

After a moment, she looks up at him.

“Not yet,” she says. “I’m still deciding.”

7:32 PM Eastern Standard Time

12:32 AM Greenwich Mean Time

Despite having ordered her turkey sandwich without mayo, Hadley can see the white goo oozing onto the crust as she carries her food to an empty table, and her stomach lurches at the sight. She’s debating whether it would be better to suffer through eating it or risk looking like an idiot as she scrapes it off, and eventually settles for looking like an idiot, ignoring the boy’s raised eyebrows as she dissects her dinner with all the care of a biology experiment. She wrinkles her nose as she sets aside the lettuce and tomato, ridding each disassembled piece of the clinging white globs.

“That’s some nice work there,” he says around a mouthful of roast beef, and Hadley nods matter-of-factly.

“I have a fear of mayo, so I’ve actually gotten pretty good at this over the years.”

“You have a fear of
mayo?
”

She nods again. “It’s in my top three or four.”

“What are the others?” he asks with a grin. “I mean, what could
possibly
be worse than mayonnaise?”

“Dentists,” she offers. “Spiders. Ovens.”

“Ovens? So I take it you’re not much of a cook.”

“And small spaces,” she says, a bit more quietly.

He tilts his head to one side. “So what do you do on the plane?”

Hadley shrugs. “Grit my teeth and hope for the best.”

“Not a bad tactic,” he says with a laugh. “Does it work?”

She doesn’t answer, struck by a small flash of alarm. It’s almost worse when she forgets about it for a moment, because it never fails to come rushing back again with renewed force, like some sort of demented boomerang.

“Well,” says the boy, propping his elbows on the table, “claustrophobia is nothing compared to mayo-phobia, and look how well you’re conquering that.” He nods at the plastic knife in her hand, which is caked with mayonnaise and bread crumbs. Hadley smiles at him gratefully.

As they eat, their eyes drift to the television set in the corner of the café, where the weather updates are flashed over and over again. Hadley tries to focus on her dinner, but she can’t help sneaking a sideways glance at him every now and then, and each time, her stomach does a little jig entirely unrelated to the traces of mayo still left in her sandwich.

She’s only ever had one boyfriend, Mitchell Kelly: athletic, uncomplicated, and endlessly dull. They’d dated for much of last year—their junior year—and though she’d loved watching him on the soccer field (the way he’d wave to her on the sidelines), and though she was always happy to see him in the halls at school (the way he’d lift her off her feet when he hugged her), and though she’d cried to each and every one of her friends when he broke up with her just four short months ago, their brief relationship now strikes her as the most obvious mistake in the world.

It seems impossible that she could have liked someone like Mitchell when there was someone like this guy in the world, someone tall and lanky, with tousled hair and startling green eyes and a speck of mustard on his chin, like the one small imperfection that makes the whole painting work somehow.

Is it possible not to ever know your type—not to even know you
have
a type—until quite suddenly you do?

Hadley twists her napkin underneath the table. It occurs to her that she’s been referring to him in her head simply as “The Brit,” and so she finally leans across the table, scattering the crumbs from their sandwiches, and asks his name.

“Right,” he says, blinking at her. “I guess that part
does
traditionally come first. I’m Oliver.”

“As in Twist?”

“Wow,” he says with a grin. “And they say Americans are uncultured.”

She narrows her eyes at him in mock anger. “Funny.”

“And you?”

“Hadley.”

“Hadley,” he repeats with a nod. “That’s pretty.”

She knows he’s only talking about her name, but she’s still unaccountably flattered. Maybe it’s the accent, or the way he’s looking at her with such interest right now, but there’s something about him that makes her heart quicken in the way it does when she’s surprised. And she supposes that might just be it: the surprise of it all. She’s spent so much energy dreading this trip that she hadn’t been prepared for the possibility that something good might come out of it, too, something unexpected.

“You don’t want your pickle?” he asks, leaning forward, and Hadley shakes her head and pushes her plate across the table to him. He eats it in two bites, then sits back again. “Ever been to London before?”

“Never,” she says, a bit too forcefully.

He laughs. “It’s not
that
bad.”

“No, I’m sure it’s not,” she says, biting her lip. “Do you live there?”

“I grew up there.”

“So where do you live now?”

“Connecticut, I guess,” he says. “I go to Yale.”

Hadley’s unable to hide her surprise. “You do?”

“What, I don’t look like a proper Yalie to you?”

“No, it’s just so
close
.”

“To what?”

She hadn’t meant to say that, and now she feels her cheeks go warm. “To where I live,” she says, then rushes on. “It’s just that with your accent, I figured you—”

“Were a London street urchin?”

Hadley shakes her head quickly, completely embarrassed now, but he’s laughing.

“I’m only playing,” he says. “I just finished up my first year there.”

“So how come you’re not home for the summer?”

“I like it over here,” he says with a shrug. “Plus I won a summer research grant, so I’m sort of required to stick around.”

“What kind of research?”

“I’m studying the fermentation process of mayonnaise.”

“You are not,” she says, laughing, and Oliver frowns.

“I am,” he says. “It’s very important work. Did you know that twenty-four percent of all mayonnaise is actually laced with vanilla ice cream?”

“That
does
sound important,” she says. “But what are you really studying?”

A man bumps hard into the back of Hadley’s chair as he walks past, then moves on without apologizing, and Oliver grins. “Patterns of congestion in U.S. airports.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Hadley says, shaking her head. She looks off toward the busy corridor. “But if you could do something about these crowds, I wouldn’t mind it. I hate airports.”

“Really?” Oliver says. “I love them.”

She’s convinced, for a moment, that he’s still teasing her, but then realizes he’s serious.

“I like how you’re neither here nor there. And how there’s nowhere else you’re meant to be while waiting. You’re just sort of… suspended.”

“That’s fine, I guess,” she says, playing with the tab on her soda can, “if it weren’t for the crowds.”

He glances over his shoulder. “They’re not always as bad as this.”

“They are if you’re me.” She looks over at the screens displaying arrivals and departures, many of the green letters blinking to indicate delays or cancellations.

“We’ve still got some time,” Oliver says, and Hadley sighs.

“I know, but I missed my flight earlier, so this sort of feels like a stay of execution.”

“You were supposed to be on the last one?”

She nods.

“What time’s the wedding?”

“Noon,” she says, and he makes a face.

“That’ll be tough to make.”

“So I’ve heard,” she says. “What time’s yours?”

He lowers his eyes. “I’m meant to be at the church at two.”

“So you’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I suppose I will.”

They sit in silence, each looking at the table, until the muffled sound of a phone ringing comes from Oliver’s pocket. He fishes it out, staring at it with a look of great intensity while it carries on, until at last he seems to come to a decision and stands abruptly.

“I should really take this,” he tells her, sidestepping away from the table. “Sorry.”

Hadley waves a hand. “It’s okay,” she says. “Go.”

She watches as he walks away, picking a path across the crowded concourse, the phone at his ear. His head is ducked, and there’s something hunched about him, the curve of his shoulders, the bend of his neck, that makes him seem different now, a less substantial version of the Oliver she’s been talking to, and she wonders who might be on the other end of the call. It occurs to her that it could very well be a girlfriend, some beautiful and brilliant student from Yale who wears trendy glasses and a peacoat and would never be so disorganized as to miss a flight by four minutes.