The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(20)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

To her surprise, he lowers his face so it’s level with hers, then narrows his eyes and touches a finger lightly to her cheek.

“Eyelash,” he says, rubbing his thumb to get rid of it.

“What about my wish?”

“I made it for you,” he says with a smile so crooked it makes her heart dip.

Is it possible she’s only known him for ten hours?

“I wished for a speedy trip through customs,” he tells her. “Otherwise, you don’t have a shot in hell at making this thing.”

Hadley glances at the clock on the concrete wall above them and realizes he’s right; it’s already 10:08, less than two hours before the wedding is scheduled to begin. And here she is, stuck in customs, her hair tangled and her dress wadded up in her bag. She tries to picture herself walking down the aisle, but something about the image refuses to match up with her current state.

She sighs. “Does this usually take long?”

“Not now that I’ve made my wish,” Oliver says, and then, as if it were just that simple, the line begins to move. He gives her a triumphant look as he steps forward, and Hadley trails after him, shaking her head.

“If that’s all it takes, you couldn’t have wished for a million dollars?”

“A million pounds,” he says. “You’re in London now. And no. Who’d want to deal with the taxes?”

“What taxes?”

“On your million pounds. At least eighty-eight percent of that would probably go straight to the Queen.”

Hadley gives him a long look. “Eighty-eight percent, huh?”

“The numbers never lie,” he says with a grin.

When they reach the point where the line forks, they’re greeted by a joyless customs official in a blue suit who’s leaning against the metal railing and pointing to a sign that indicates which direction they’re meant to go.

“EU citizens to the right, all others to the left,” he repeats over and over again, his voice thin and reedy and mostly lost to the thrum of the crowd. “EU citizens to the right…”

Hadley and Oliver exchange a look, and all her uncertainty disappears. Because it’s there in his face, a fleeting reluctance that matches her own. They stand there together for a long time, for too long, for what seems like forever, each unwilling to part ways, letting the people behind them stream past like a river around rocks.

“Sir,” says the customs official, breaking off mid-mantra to put a hand on Oliver’s back, shepherding him forward, urging him away. “I’m going to have to ask you to keep moving so you don’t hold up the line.”

“Just one minute—” Oliver begins, but he’s cut off.

“Sir, now,” the man says, directing him a little bit more insistently.

A woman with a hiccupping baby is trying to push past Hadley, shoving her forward in the process, and there seems to be nothing to do but let herself be borne along by the current. But before she can move any farther she feels a hand on her elbow, and just like that Oliver is beside her again. He looks down at her with his head tilted, his hand still firmly on her arm, and before she has a chance to be nervous, before she even fully realizes what’s happening, she hears him mutter “What the hell,” and then, to her surprise, he bends to kiss her.

The line continues to move around them and the customs official gives up for the moment with a frustrated sigh, but Hadley doesn’t notice any of it; she grabs Oliver’s shirt tightly, afraid of being swept away from him, but his hand is pressing on her back as he kisses her, and the truth is, she’s never felt so safe in her life. His lips are soft and taste salty from the pretzels they shared earlier, and she closes her eyes—just for a moment—and the rest of the world disappears. By the time he pulls away with a grin, she’s too stunned to say anything. She stumbles backward a step as the customs guy hurries Oliver along in the other direction, rolling his eyes.

“It’s not like the lines lead to separate countries,” he mutters.

The concrete partition between the two areas is coming up fast between them, and Oliver lifts a hand to wave, still beaming at her. In a moment, Hadley realizes, she won’t be able to see him at all, but she catches his eye and waves back. He points a finger toward the front of his line and she nods, hoping it means she’ll see him out there, and then he’s gone, and there’s nothing to do but keep moving, her passport in hand, the feel of the kiss still lingering like a stamp on her lips. She puts a hand to her heart to calm the thudding.

But it’s not long before she realizes Oliver’s wish has failed to come true; her line is practically at a standstill, and sandwiched between a crying baby and a huge man in a Texas shirt, Hadley’s never felt so impatient in her life. Her eyes dart from her watch to the wall behind which Oliver disappeared, and she counts out the minutes with a feverish intensity, squirming and fidgeting, pacing and sighing as she waits.

When it’s finally her turn, she practically runs up to the glass window and shoves her passport through the slot.

“Business or pleasure?” the woman asks as she studies the little booklet, and Hadley hesitates before answering, since neither answer seems quite accurate. She settles on pleasure—though watching her father get married again can hardly be categorized that way—then fires off answers to the rest of the questions with enough gusto to make the woman eye her suspiciously before stamping one of the many blank pages in Hadley’s passport.

Her suitcase rocks back and forth unsteadily as she hurries past the checkpoint and toward the baggage claim, deciding that the apple she grabbed from the fridge at home doesn’t really count as a farm product. It’s now 10:42, and if she doesn’t manage to get a cab in the next few minutes there’s pretty much no chance she’ll make the ceremony. But she’s not thinking about that yet. She’s thinking only of Oliver, and when she emerges into the baggage area—a sea of people, all crowded behind a black rope, holding signs and waiting for friends and family—her heart sinks.

The room is enormous, with dozens of carousels bearing brightly colored suitcases, and all around them, fanned out in every direction, hundreds upon hundreds of people, each of them searching for something: for people or rides or directions, for things lost and found. Hadley wheels in a circle, her bags feeling like they weigh a thousand pounds, her shirt sticking to her back, her hair falling across her eyes. There are children and grandparents, limo drivers and airport officials, a guy with a Starbucks apron and three monks in red robes. A million people, it seems, and none of them Oliver.