The Statistical Probability Of Love At First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith Page A

could go anywhere else in the world, where would it be?”
    Hadley thought about this for a moment. “Maybe Australia. Or Paris. How about you?”
    Oliver had looked at her as if it were obvious, the faintest hint of a grin at the corners of his mouth.
    “North Dakota,” he’d said.
    Now Hadley presses her forehead against the window of the taxi and once again finds herself smiling at the thought of him. 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.
    She watches with bleary eyes as the world rushes past, and tries her best to stay awake. Her phone rings four times before she realizes it’s not the cabbie’s, and when she finally fishes it out of her bag and sees that it’s her dad, she hesitates for a moment before answering.
    “I’m in a taxi,” she says by way of greeting, then cranes her neck to check the clock on the dashboard. Her stomach does a little somersault when she sees that it’s already 11:24.
    Dad sighs, and Hadley imagines him in his tux, pacing the halls of the church. She wonders if he wishes she hadn’t come after all. There are so many more important things for him to be worrying about today—flowers and programs and seating arrangements—that Hadley’s missed flight and the fact that she’s running late must seem more of a headache than anything else.
    “Do you know if you’re close?” he asks, and she covers the mouthpiece and clears her throat loudly. The driver flinches, quite obviously annoyed at being interrupted.
    “Excuse me, sir,” she says. “Do you know how far now?”
    He puffs out his cheeks, then heaves a sigh. “Twenty minutes,” he says. “Thirty. Eh, twenty-five. Thirty, maybe. Thirty.”
    Hadley frowns and returns the phone to her ear. “I think maybe a half hour.”
    “Damn it,” Dad says. “Charlotte’s gonna have a stroke.”
    “You can start without me.”
    “It’s a wedding, Hadley,” he says. “It’s not like skipping the previews at the cinema.”
    Hadley bites her lip to keep from saying “movie theater.”
    “Look,” Dad says, “tell the driver you’ll give him an extra twenty quid if he can get you here in twenty minutes. I’ll talk to the minister and see if we can stall for a bit, okay?”
    “Okay,” she says, looking doubtfully at the driver.
    “And don’t worry—Charlotte’s friends are on standby,” Dad says, and Hadley can once again hear the humor in his voice, that trace of laughter behind his words that she remembers from when she was little.
    “For what?”
    “For you,” he says cheerfully. “See you soon.”
    The driver seems to perk up quite a bit at the idea of a bonus, and after striking a bargain he turns off the motorway and onto a series of smaller roads lined with colorful buildings, an assortment of pubs and markets and little boutiques. Hadley wonders if she should try to start getting ready in the car, but this seems far too daunting an endeavor, and so instead she just looks out the window, biting her fingernails and trying not to think about anything at all. It seems almost easier to go into this blindfolded. Like a man about to be shot.
    She glances down at the phone in her lap, then flips it open to try to call her mom. But it goes straight to voice mail, and she snaps it shut again with a heavy feeling. A quick calculation tells her it’s still early in Connecticut, and Mom—being a bear of a sleeper, completely oblivious to the world until she’s had a shower and a massive amount of coffee—is probably still in bed. Somehow, despite their uneven parting, Hadley suspects her mother’s voice might be just the thing to make her feel better, and she wishes for nothing more than to hear it right now.
    The cabbie is true to his word; at exactly 11:46, they pull up to an