The Statistical Probability Of Love At First Sight Read Online Free Page B

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.
    He laughs. “It’s not
that
bad.”
    “No, I’m sure it’s not,” she says, biting her lip. “Do you live there?”
    “I grew up there.”
    “So where do you live now?”
    “Connecticut, I guess,” he says. “I go to Yale.”
    Hadley’s unable to hide her surprise. “You do?”
    “What, I don’t look like a proper Yalie to you?”
    “No, it’s just so
close
.”
    “To what?”
    She