The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(7)

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.”

3

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.