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

together in the dark. And now here they are, like two polite strangers, like she’d only ever imagined the rest of it. She wishes they could turn around again and fly back in the other direction, circling the globe backward, chasing the night they left behind.
    “Do you think,” she says, the words emerging thickly, “we might have used up all our conversation last night?”
    “Not possible,” says Oliver, and the way he says it, his mouth turned up in a smile, his voice full of warmth, unwinds the knot in Hadley’s stomach. “We haven’t even gotten to the really important stuff yet.”
    “Like what?” she asks, trying to arrange her face in a way that disguises the relief she feels. “Like what’s so great about Dickens?”
    “Not at all,” he says. “More like the plight of koalas. Or the fact that Venice is sinking.” He pauses, waiting for this to register, and when Hadley says nothing, he slaps his knee for emphasis. “Sinking! The whole city! Can you believe it?”
    She frowns in mock seriousness. “That does sound pretty important.”
    “It
is
,” Oliver insists. “And don’t even get me started on the size of our carbon footprint after this trip. Or the difference between crocodiles and alligators. Or the longest recorded flight of a chicken.”
    “Please tell me you don’t actually know that.”
    “Thirteen seconds,” he says, leaning forward to look past her and out the window. “This is a total disaster. We’re nearly to Heathrow and we haven’t even properly discussed flying chickens.” He jabs a finger at the window. “And see those clouds?”
    “Hard to miss,” Hadley says; the plane is now almost fully enveloped in fog, the grayness pressing up against the windows as the plane dips lower and lower.
    “Those are cumulus clouds. Did you know that?”
    “I’m sure I should.”
    “They’re the best ones.”
    “How come?”
    “Because they look the way clouds are supposed to look, the way you draw them when you’re a kid. Which is nice, you know? I mean, the sun never looks the way you drew it.”
    “Like a wheel with spokes?”
    “Exactly. And my family certainly never looked the way I drew them.”
    “Stick figures?”
    “Come on now,” he says. “Give me a little credit. They had hands and feet, too.”
    “That looked like mittens?”
    “But it’s nice, isn’t it? When something matches up like that?” He bobs his head with a satisfied smile. “Cumulus clouds. Best clouds ever.”
    Hadley shrugs. “I guess I never really thought about it.”
    “Well, then, see?” Oliver says. “There’s loads more to talk about. We’ve only just gotten started.”
    Beyond the window the clouds are bottoming out, and the plane lowers itself gently into the silvery sky below. Hadley feels a rush of illogical relief at the sight of the ground, though it’s still too far away to make any sense, just a collection of quilted fields and shapeless buildings, the faint tracings of roads running through them like gray threads.
    Oliver yawns and leans his head back against the seat. “I guess we probably should have slept more,” he says. “I’m pretty knackered.”
    Hadley gives him a blank look.
    “Tired,” he says, flattening the vowels and notching his voice up an octave so that he sounds American, though his accent has a vaguely Southern twang to it.
    “I feel like I’ve embarked on some kind of foreign-language course.”
    “Learn to speak British in just seven short hours!” Oliver says in his best announcer’s voice. “How could you pass up an advert like that?”
    “Commercial,” she says, rolling her eyes. “How could you pass up a
commercial
like that?”
    But Oliver only grins. “See how much you’ve learned already?”
    They’ve nearly forgotten the old woman beside them, who’s been sleeping for so long that it’s the absence of her muffled snoring that finally startles them into looking over.
    “What did I miss?” she asks, reaching for her