The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

by Jennifer E. Smith

That’s the thing about flying: You could talk to someone for hours and never even know his name, share your deepest secrets and then never see him again.

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

it is, in her limited experience, a big enough place to lose someone entirely.

There’s always a gap between the burn and the sting of it, the pain and the realization.

“They’re all for show. You shouldn’t need to prove anything if you really mean it. It should be a whole lot simpler than that. It should mean something.” “I think it does,” Oliver says quietly. “It’s a promise.” “I guess so,” she says, unable to keep the sigh out of her voice. “But not everyone keeps that promise.” She looks over toward the woman, still fast asleep. “Not everyone makes it fifty-two years, and if you do, it doesn’t matter that you once stood in front of all those people and said that you would. The important part is that you had someone to stick by

you all that time. Even when everything sucked.”

“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.

“It’s not supposed to,” Mom said with a smile. “Love is the strangest, most illogical thing in the world.”

“No one is useless in this world,” it reads, “who lightens the burden of it for any one else.”