The Statistical Probability Of Love At First Sight (2 page)

Out the window, the sky is a dusky pink now, and the pinpricks of light that outline the planes are beginning to flicker to life. Hadley can make out her reflection in the glass, all blond hair and big eyes, somehow already looking as careworn and rumpled as if the journey were behind her. She wedges herself into a seat between an older man flapping his newspaper so hard she half expects it to up and fly away and a middle-aged woman with an embroidered cat on her turtleneck, knitting away at what could still turn out to be anything.

Three more hours
, she thinks, hugging her backpack, then realizes there’s no point in counting down the minutes to something you’re dreading; it would be far more accurate to say two more days. Two more days and she’ll be back home again. Two more days and she can pretend this never happened. Two more days and she’ll have survived the weekend she’s been dreading for what feels like years.

She readjusts the backpack on her lap, realizing a moment too late that she didn’t zip it up all the way, and a few of her things tumble to the floor. Hadley reaches for the lip gloss first, then the gossip magazines, but when she goes to pick up the heavy black book that her father gave her, the boy across the aisle reaches it first.

He glances briefly at the cover before handing it back, and Hadley catches a flicker of recognition in his eyes. It takes her a second to understand that he must think she’s the kind of person who reads Dickens in the airport, and she very nearly tells him that she’s not; in fact, she’s had the book for ages and has never cracked it open. But instead, she smiles in acknowledgment, then turns quite deliberately toward the windows, just in case he might be thinking about striking up a conversation.

Because Hadley doesn’t feel like talking right now, not even to someone as cute as he is. She doesn’t feel like being here at all, actually. The day ahead of her is like something living and breathing, something that’s barreling toward her at an alarming rate, and it seems only a matter of time before it will knock her flat on her back. The dread she feels at the idea of getting on the plane—not to mention getting to London—is something physical; it makes her fidget in her seat, sets her leg bobbing and her fingers twitching.

The man beside her blows his nose loudly, then snaps his newspaper back to attention, and Hadley hopes she’s not sitting next to him on her flight. Seven hours is a long time, too big a slice of your day to be left to chance. You would never be expected to take a road trip with someone you didn’t know, yet how many times has she flown to Chicago or Denver or Florida beside a complete stranger, elbow to elbow, side by side, as the two of them hurtled across the country together? That’s the thing about flying: You could talk to someone for hours and never even know his name, share your deepest secrets and then never see him again.

As the man cranes his neck to read an article his arm brushes against Hadley’s, and she stands abruptly, swinging her backpack onto one shoulder. Around her, the gate area is still teeming with people, and she looks longingly toward the windows, wishing she were outside right now. She’s not sure she can sit here for three more hours, but the idea of dragging her suitcase through the crowd is daunting. She edges it closer to her empty seat so that it might look reserved, then turns to the lady in the cat turtleneck.

“Would you mind watching my bag for a minute?” she asks, and the woman holds her knitting needles very still and frowns up at her.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” she says pointedly.

“It’s just for a minute or two,” Hadley explains, but the woman simply gives her head a little shake, as if she can’t bear to be implicated in whatever scenario is about to unfold.

“I can watch it,” says the boy across the aisle, and Hadley looks at him—really looks at him—for the first time. His dark hair is a bit too long and there are crumbs down the front of his shirt, but there’s something striking about him, too. Maybe it’s the accent, which she’s pretty sure is British, or the twitch of his mouth as he tries to keep from smiling. But her heart dips unexpectedly when he looks at her, his eyes skipping from Hadley back to the woman, whose lips are set in a thin line of disapproval.

“It’s against the
law
,” the woman says under her breath, her eyes shifting over to where two bulky security guards are standing just outside the food court.

Hadley glances back at the boy, who offers her a sympathetic smile. “Never mind,” she says. “I’ll just take it. Thanks anyway.”

She begins to gather her things, tucking the book under her arm and swinging her backpack up onto her other shoulder. The woman just barely pulls her feet back as Hadley maneuvers the suitcase past her. When she gets to the end of the waiting area, the colorless carpeting gives way to the linoleum of the corridor, and her suitcase teeters precariously on the rubber ridge that separates the two. It rocks from one wheel to the other, and as Hadley tries to right it the book slips from under her arm. When she stoops to pick it up again, her sweatshirt flutters to the floor as well.

You’ve
got
to be kidding
, Hadley thinks, blowing a strand of hair from her face. But by the time she gathers everything and reaches for her suitcase again, it’s somehow no longer there. Spinning around, she’s stunned to see the boy standing beside her, his own bag slung over his shoulder. Her eyes travel down to where he’s gripping the handle of her suitcase.

“What’re you doing?” she asks, blinking at him.

“You looked like you might need some help.”

Hadley just stares at him.

“And this way it’s perfectly legal,” he adds with a grin.

She raises her eyebrows and he straightens up a bit, looking somewhat less sure of himself. It occurs to her that perhaps he’s planning to steal her bag, but if that’s the case, it’s not a very well-planned heist; pretty much the only things in there are a pair of shoes and a dress. And she would be more than happy to lose those.

She stands there for a long moment, wondering what she could have done to have secured herself a porter. But the crowds are surging around them and her backpack is heavy on her shoulders and the boy’s eyes are searching hers with something like loneliness, like the very last thing he wants is to be left behind right now. And that’s something Hadley can understand, too, and so after a moment she nods in agreement, and he tips the suitcase forward onto its wheels, and they begin to walk.

7:12 PM Eastern Standard Time

12:12 AM Greenwich Mean Time

An announcement comes over the loudspeaker about a passenger missing from his plane, and Hadley can’t stop the thought from tiptoeing into her head: What if she were to skip out on her own flight? But as if he can read her mind, the boy in front of her glances back to make sure she’s still there, and she realizes she’s grateful to have some company on this of all days, unexpected as it may be.

They walk past a row of paneled windows that face out over the tarmac, where the planes are lined up like floats in a parade, and Hadley feels her heart pick up speed at the thought of having to board one soon. Of all the many tight places in the world, the endless nooks and crannies and corners, nothing sets her trembling quite as much as the sight of an airplane.

It was just last year when it happened for the first time, this dizzying worry, a heart-thudding, stomach-churning exercise in panic. In a hotel bathroom in Aspen, with the snow falling fast and thick outside the window and her dad on the phone in the next room, she had the sudden sensation that the walls were too close and getting closer, inching toward her with the steady certainty of a glacier. She stood there trying to measure her breathing, her heart pounding out a rhythm in her ears so loud it nearly drowned out the sound of Dad’s muffled voice on the other side of the wall.

“Yeah,” he was saying, “and we’re supposed to get another six inches tonight, so it should be perfect tomorrow.”

They’d been in Aspen for two whole days, doing their best to pretend this spring break was no different from any other. They rose early each morning to get up the mountain before the slopes were too crowded, sat silently with their mugs of hot chocolate in the lodge afterward, played board games at night in front of the fireplace. But the truth was, they spent so much time
not
talking about Mom’s absence that it had become the only thing either of them could think about.

Besides, Hadley wasn’t stupid. You didn’t just pack off to Oxford for a semester, spend your days teaching poetry classes, and then suddenly decide you wanted a divorce without a good reason. And though Mom hadn’t said a word about it—had, in fact, grown nearly silent on the subject of Dad in general—Hadley knew that reason must be another woman.

She’d planned to confront him about it on the ski trip, to step off the plane and thrust an accusing finger at him and demand to know why he wasn’t coming home. But when she made her way down to the baggage claim to find him waiting for her he looked completely different, with a reddish beard that didn’t match his dark hair and a smile so big she could see the caps on his teeth. It had been only six months, but in that time he’d become a near stranger, and it wasn’t until he stooped to hug her that he came back again, smelling like cigarette smoke and aftershave, his voice gravelly in her ear as he told her how much he’d missed her. And for some reason, that was even worse. In the end, it’s not the changes that will break your heart; it’s that tug of familiarity.

And so she’d chickened out, instead spending those first two days watching and waiting, trying to read the lines of his face like a map, searching for clues to explain why their little family had so abruptly fallen apart. When he’d gone off to England the previous fall, they’d all been thrilled. Until then he’d been a professor at a small mid-tier college in Connecticut, so the idea of a fellowship at Oxford—which boasted one of the best literature departments in the world—had been irresistible. But Hadley had been just about to start her sophomore year, and Mom couldn’t leave her little wallpaper shop for four whole months, so it was decided that they’d stay behind until Christmas, when they’d join him in England for a couple of weeks of sightseeing, and then they’d all return home together.

That, of course, never happened.

At the time, Mom had simply announced that there was a change of plans, that they’d be spending Christmas at Hadley’s grandparents’ house in Maine instead. Hadley half believed her dad would be there to surprise her when they arrived, but on Christmas Eve, it was only Grandma and Pops and enough presents to confirm that everyone was trying to make up for the absence of something else.

For days before that, Hadley had been overhearing her parents’ tension-filled phone calls and listening to the sound of her mother crying through the vents of their old house, but it wasn’t until the drive home from Maine that Mom finally announced that she and Dad would be splitting up, and that he’d be staying on for another semester at Oxford.

“It’ll just be a separation at first,” she said, sliding her eyes from the road over to where Hadley sat numbly, absorbing the news one incremental thought at a time—first,
Mom and Dad are getting divorced
, and then,
Dad isn’t coming back
.

“There’s a whole ocean between you,” she said quietly. “How much more separated can you get?”

“Legally,” Mom said with a sigh. “We’re going to
legally
separate.”

“Don’t you need to see each other first? Before deciding something like that?”

“Oh, honey,” Mom said, taking a hand off the wheel to give Hadley’s knee a little pat. “I think it’s already been decided.”

And so, just two months later, Hadley stood in the bathroom of their Aspen hotel, her toothbrush in hand, as her dad’s voice drifted in from the next room. A moment earlier she’d been sure it was Mom calling to check in, and her heart had lifted at the thought. But then she heard him say a name—
Charlotte
—before lowering his voice again.

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “She’s just in the loo.”

Hadley felt suddenly cold all over, wondering when her father had become the kind of man to call the bathroom a “loo,” to whisper to foreign women on hotel phones, to take his daughter on a ski trip as if it meant something, as if it were a promise, and then return to his new life like it had never even happened.

She took a step closer to the door, her bare feet cold on the tiles.

“I know,” he was saying now, his voice soft. “I miss you, too, honey.”

Of course
, Hadley thought, closing her eyes.
Of course
.

It didn’t help that she was right; when had that ever made anything better? She felt a tiny seed of resentment take root inside of her. It was like the pit of a peach, something small and hard and mean, a bitterness she was certain would never dissolve.

She stepped back from the door, feeling her throat go tight and her rib cage swell. In the mirror, she watched the color rise up into her cheeks, and her eyes felt blurred by the heat of the small room. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the sink, watching her knuckles go white, forcing herself to wait until he was off the phone.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asked when she finally emerged from the bathroom, walked straight past him without a word, and then flopped onto one of the beds. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Fine,” Hadley said shortly.

But it happened again the next day.

As they rode the elevator down to the lobby the following morning, already warm beneath layers of ski gear, there was a sharp jolt, and then they came to an abrupt stop. They were the only two people in there, and they exchanged a blank look before Dad shrugged and reached for the emergency call button. “Stupid bloody elevator.”

Hadley glared at him. “Don’t you mean stupid bloody lift?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” she muttered, then jabbed at the buttons randomly, lighting up one after another as a rising sense of panic welled up inside of her.

“I don’t think that’s gonna do anything….” Dad began to say, but he stopped when he seemed to notice something was wrong. “Are you okay?”