The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

by Jennifer E. Smith

Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?

In the end, it’s not the changes that will break your heart; it’s that tug of familiarity.

“When you’re on the other side of it,” she says, “fifty-two years can seem like about fifty-two minutes.” She tips her head back and swallows the pill. “Just like when you’re young and in love, a seven-hour plane ride can seem like a lifetime.”

“Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?”

He’s like a song she can’t get out of her head. Hard as she tries, the melody of their meeting runs through her mind on an endless loop, each time as surprisingly sweet as the last, like a lullaby, like a hymn, and she doesn’t think she could ever get tired of hearing it.

“Love is the strangest, most illogical thing in the world.”

Never has any period of time seemed so unending. And though she knows it’s nothing but a collection of minutes, all of them strung together like popcorn on a tree, she can see now how easily they become hours, how quickly the months might have turned to years in just the same way, how close she’d come to losing something so important to the unrelenting

movement of time.

“Love isn’t supposed to make sense. It’s completely illogical.”

“People who meet in airports are seventy-two percent more likely to fall for each other than people who meet anywhere else.”

“Did you know that people who meet at least three different times within a twenty-four

four hour period are ninety-eight percent more likely to meet again?”