The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(45)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

They fall silent again, but it’s not strained as it was earlier, at the church. A few cars drive up to the hotel entrance, the tires grumbling, the lights sweeping over them so that they’re forced to squint.

“Are you okay?” Hadley asks, and he nods.

“I will be.”

“Did it go all right?”

“I suppose so,” he says. “For a funeral.”

“Right,” Hadley says, closing her eyes. “Sorry.”

He turns toward her, just slightly, his knee brushing up against hers. “I’m sorry, too. All that stuff I said about my father…”

“You were upset.”

“I was angry.”

“You were sad.”

“I was sad,” he agrees. “I still am.”

“He was your dad.”

Oliver nods again. “Part of me wishes I could’ve been more like you. That I’d had the nerve to tell him what I thought before it was too late. Maybe then things would have been different. All those years of not talking…” He trails off, shaking his head. “It just seems like such a waste.”

“It’s not your fault,” Hadley says, glancing over at him. It occurs to her that she doesn’t even know how Oliver’s dad died, though it must have been sudden. “You should’ve had more time with him.”

Oliver reaches up to loosen his tie. “I’m not sure that would have made a difference.”

“It would have,” she insists, her throat thick. “It’s not fair.”

He looks away, blinking hard.

“It’s like with the night-light,” she says, and even when he starts to shake his head, she pushes on. “Maybe the point of the story isn’t that he wouldn’t help at first. Maybe it’s that he came around in the end.” She says this last part softly: “Maybe you both just needed more time to come around.”

“It’s still there, you know,” Oliver says after a moment. “The night-light. They turned my room into a guestroom after I left for school, and most of my things are up in the attic. But I noticed it there this morning when I dropped off my bags. I bet it doesn’t even work anymore.”

“I bet it does,” she says, and Oliver smiles.

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“This,” he says. “The rest of my family is home, but I felt like I couldn’t breathe there. I just needed some fresh air.”

Hadley nods. “Me, too.”

“I just needed…” he trails off again, glancing over at her. “Is it okay that I’m here?”

“Of course,” she says, a bit too quickly. “Especially after I…”

“After you what?”

“Barged into the funeral earlier,” she says, wincing a little at the memory. “Not that you didn’t already have company.”

He frowns at his shoes for a moment before it seems to click. “Oh,” he says. “That was just my ex-girlfriend. She knew my dad. And she was worried about me. But she was only there as a family friend. Really.”

Hadley feels a quick rush of relief. She hadn’t realized just how powerfully she’d wished for this to be true until now. “I’m glad she could be there,” she tells him truthfully. “I’m glad you had someone.”

“Yes, though she didn’t leave me with any reading material,” he says, thumping a hand against the book.

“Yeah, but she also probably didn’t force you to talk to her.”

“Or tease me about my accent.”

“Or show up without an invitation.”

“That’d be both of us,” he reminds her, glancing over his shoulder at the entrance to the hotel, where a bellhop is watching them warily. “Why aren’t you inside, anyway?”

Hadley shrugs.

“Claustrophobic?”

“No, actually,” she says. “It hasn’t been too bad.”

“You’ve been imagining the sky, then?”

She looks at him sideways. “I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

“Me, too,” Oliver says, tipping his head back.

Somehow, almost without even realizing it, they’ve moved closer together on the steps, so that although they’re not quite leaning against each other, it would be difficult to fit anything between them. There’s a scent of rain in the air, and the men smoking cigarettes nearby stub them out and head back inside. The bellhop peers up at the sky from beneath the brim of his cap, and the breeze makes the awning shudder and flap as if it were trying to take flight.

A fly lands on Hadley’s knee, but she doesn’t move to swat it away. Instead, they both watch it dart around for a moment before it takes off again, so fast they almost miss it.

“I wonder if he got to see the Tower of London,” Oliver says.

Hadley gives him a blank look.

“Our friend from the flight,” he says with a grin. “The stowaway.”

“Ah, right. I’m sure he did. He’s probably off to check out the nightlife now.”

“After a busy day in London.”

“After a long day in London.”

“The longest,” Oliver agrees. “I don’t know about you, but the last time I slept was during that stupid duck movie.”

Hadley laughs. “That’s not true. You passed out again later. On my shoulder.”

“No way,” he says. “Never happened.”

“Trust me, it did,” she says, bumping her knee against his. “I remember it all.”

He smiles. “Then I suppose you also remember getting into a fight with that woman at the gate?”

Now it’s Hadley’s turn to look indignant. “I did not,” she says. “Asking someone to watch your suitcase is a perfectly reasonable request.”

“Or a potential crime, depending on how you look at it,” he says. “You’re lucky I came to your rescue.”

“Right,” Hadley says, laughing. “My knight in shining armor.”

“At your service.”

“Can you believe that was only yesterday?”

Another plane crosses the patch of sky above them, and Hadley leans into Oliver as they watch, their eyes trained on the bright dots of light. After a moment, he nudges her forward gently so that he can stand up, then offers her a hand.

“Let’s dance.”

“Here?”

“I was thinking inside, actually.” He glances around—his eyes skipping from the carpeted steps to the restless bellhop to the cars lining up outside the entrance—then nods. “But why not?”