The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

by Jennifer E. Smith

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

“I like how you’re neither here nor there. And how there’s nowhere else you’re meant to be while waiting. You’re just sort of… suspended.”

She wishes that it were true, all of it. That it were more than just a story. That it were their story.

The idea that their paths might have just as easily not crossed leaves her breathless, like a near-miss accident on a highway, and she can’t help marveling at the sheer randomness of it all. Like any survivor of chance, she feels a quick rush of thankfulness, part adrenaline and part hope.

He was a professor, a lover of stories, and he was building her a library in the same way other men might build their daughters houses.

It occurred to Hadley that if this was how life was going to be from now on—just one long girls’ weekend—then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

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.

“That’s the way these things work, kiddo,” he says. “Love isn’t supposed to make sense. It’s completely illogical.”

“What if it does?”

His hand on her back is like something electric, and being here like this, so suddenly close to him, is enough to make her lightheaded. It’s a feeling like falling, like forgetting the words to a song.

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