The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(35)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

He hands the book back to Hadley, who hugs it to her chest, waiting for him to continue.

“I always thought it was only worth something to him for the wrong reasons,” he says, his voice softer now. “I never saw him reading anything but legal briefs. But every once in a while, completely out of the blue, he’d quote some passage.” He laughs, a humorless sound. “It was so out of character. Like a singing butcher or something. A tap-dancing accountant.”

“Maybe he wasn’t what you thought….”

Oliver looks at her sharply. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” he says, his eyes flashing. He rubs at his forehead, then rakes a hand through his hair. A breeze bends the grass at their feet, lifting the heavy air from their shoulders. From inside the church, the music from the organ ends abruptly, as if it’s been interrupted.

“You say you can be honest with me?” Hadley asks after a moment, addressing Oliver’s rounded shoulders, and he twists to look at her. “Fine. Then talk to me. Be honest.”

“About what?”

“Anything you want.”

To her surprise, he kisses her then. Not like the kiss at the airport, which was soft and sweet and full of farewell. This kiss is something more urgent, something more desperate; he presses his lips hard against hers, and Hadley closes her eyes and leans in, kissing him back until, just as suddenly, he breaks away again, and they sit staring at each other.

“That’s not what I meant,” Hadley says, and Oliver gives her a crooked smile.

“You said to be honest. That was the most honest thing I’ve done all day.”

“I meant about your dad,” she says, though in spite of herself, she can feel the color rising to her cheeks. “Maybe it’ll help to talk about it. If you just—”

“What? Say that I miss him? That I’m completely gutted? That this is the worst day of my life?” He stands abruptly and, for a brief and frightening moment, Hadley thinks he’s going to walk away. But instead, he begins pacing back and forth in front of the bench, tall and lean and handsome in his shirtsleeves. He pauses, spinning to face her, and she can see the anger scrawled across his face. “Look, today? This week? Everything about it has been fake. You think your dad is so awful for what he did? At least your dad was honest. Your dad had the guts not to stick around. And I know that’s rubbish, too, but from what it sounds like, he’s happy and your mum’s happy, and so you’re all better off in the end anyway.”

All except me, Hadley thinks, but she remains quiet. Oliver begins to walk again, and her eyes follow his progress like a game of tennis, back and forth and back and forth.

“But my dad? He cheated on my mum for years. Your dad had one affair, and that turned into love, right? It turned into marriage. It was out in the open, and it set you all free. Mine had about a dozen affairs, maybe more, and the worst part is, we all knew. And nobody talked about it. Somewhere along the line, someone made the decision that we’d all just be quietly miserable, and so that’s what we did. But we knew,” he says, his shoulders sagging. “We knew.”

“Oliver,” she says, but he shakes his head.

“So no,” he says with a little shrug. “I don’t want to talk about my dad. He was a bloody jerk, not just because of the affairs, but in a million other ways, too. And I’ve spent my whole life pretending it’s fine, for my mother’s sake. But now he’s gone, and I’m done pretending.” His hands are balled into fists at his sides, and his mouth is pressed into a thin line. “Is that honest enough for you?”

“Oliver,” she says again, setting aside the book and rising to her feet.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’m fine.”

From a distance comes the sound of his name being called, and a moment later a girl with dark hair and even darker sunglasses appears at the gate. She can’t be much older than Hadley, but there’s a confidence to her, a sense of ease that makes Hadley feel immediately disheveled by comparison.

The girl stops short when she sees them, clearly surprised.

“It’s almost time, Ollie,” she says, pushing her sunglasses up onto her head. “The procession’s about ready to leave.”

Oliver’s eyes are still on Hadley. “One minute,” he says without looking away, and the girl hesitates, like she might be about to say something more, but then turns around again with a small shrug.

When she’s gone, Hadley forces herself to meet Oliver’s eyes again. Something about the girl’s arrival has broken the spell of the garden, and now she’s keenly aware of the voices beyond the hedge, of the car doors slamming, of a dog barking in the distance.

Still, he doesn’t move.

“I’m sorry,” Hadley says softly. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“No,” Oliver says, and she blinks at him, straining to hear the words inside that word, beneath it or around it: Don’t go or Please stay or I’m sorry, too. But all he says is: “It’s okay.”

She shifts from one foot to the other, her heels sinking into the soft dirt. “I should go,” she says, but her eyes say I’m trying, and her hands, trembling in an effort not to reach out, say Please.

“Right,” he says. “Me, too.”

Neither of them moves, and Hadley realizes she’s holding her breath.

Ask me to stay.

“Good to see you again,” he says stiffly, and to her dismay, he holds out a hand. She takes it gingerly, and they hover there like that, halfway between a grip and a shake, their knotted palms swaying between them until Oliver finally lets go.

“Good luck,” she says, though with what, she’s not entirely sure.

“Thanks,” he says with a nod. He reaches for his jacket and slings it over his shoulder without bothering to brush it off. As he turns to cross the garden, Hadley’s stomach churns. She closes her eyes against the flood of words that never reached her, all those things left unsaid.

And when she opens them again, he’s gone.

Her purse is still on the bench, and as she moves to pick it up again she finds herself sinking down onto the damp stone, folding wearily like the survivor of some great storm. She shouldn’t have come. That much is clear to her now. The sun is dipping lower in the sky, and though she has somewhere else to be right now, whatever momentum was propelling her before now seems to have disappeared entirely.