Read Online The Statistical Probability Of Love At First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith - Free Book Online Page A

pocket of his jeans for a coin, which he thumbs into the aisle with a quick snap of his wrist. Then he reaches across the sleeping woman, grabbing the coin with his left hand and snaking his right one into the cart, emerging with two miniature bottles of Jack Daniel’s wrapped in his fist. He tucks them into his pocket, along with the coin, just seconds before the flight attendant twists back in their direction.
    “Can I get you anything?” she asks, her eyes sweeping across Hadley’s stricken face, Oliver’s flushed cheeks, and the old woman still snoring with vigor at the end of the row.
    “I’m okay,” Hadley manages.
    “Me, too,” Oliver says. “Cheers, though.”
    When the flight attendant is gone again, the cart moving safely away, Hadley stares at him openmouthed. He pulls the bottles out and hands one to her, then twists the cap off the other with a shrug.
    “Sorry,” he says. “I just thought if we were going to do the whole ‘talking about our families’ thing, a bit of whiskey might be in order.”
    Hadley blinks at the bottle in her hand. “You planning to work this off or something?”
    Oliver cracks a smile. “Ten years’ hard labor?”
    “I was thinking something more along the lines of washing dishes,” she jokes, passing the bottle back to him. “Or maybe carrying luggage.”
    “I’m assuming you’ll make me do that anyway,” he says. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave a tenner on the seat when I go. I didn’t want a hassle, even though I’m eighteen and we must be closer to London than to New York at this point. You like whiskey?”
    Hadley shakes her head.
    “Have you ever tried it?”
    “No.”
    “Give it a go,” he says, offering it to her again. “Just a sip.”
    She unscrews the cap and brings the bottle to her mouth, already grimacing as the smell reaches her nose, harsh and smoky and far too strong. The liquid burns her throat as it goes down, and she coughs hard, her eyes watering, then screws the cap on and hands the bottle back to him.
    “It’s like licking a campfire,” she says, making a face. “That’s awful.”
    Oliver laughs as he finishes off his bottle.
    “Okay, so now you’ve got your whiskey,” she says. “Does that mean we get to talk about your family?”
    “Why do you care?”
    “Why wouldn’t I?”
    He sighs, a sound that comes out almost like a groan. “Let’s see,” he says eventually. “I have three older brothers—”
    “Do they all still live in England?”
    “Right. Three older brothers who still live in England,” he says, unscrewing the cap on the second bottle of whiskey. “What else? My dad wasn’t happy when I chose Yale over Oxford, but my mum was really pleased because she went to uni in America, too.”
    “Is that why he didn’t come over with you at the start of school?”
    Oliver gives her a pained look, like he’d rather be anywhere but here, then finishes off the last of the whiskey. “You ask an awful lot of questions.”
    “I told you that my dad left us for another woman and that I haven’t seen him in over a year,” she says. “Come on. I’m pretty sure there’s no family drama that could top that.”
    “You didn’t tell me that,” he says. “That you haven’t seen him in so long. I thought you just hadn’t met
her
.”
    Now it’s Hadley’s turn to fidget in her seat. “We talk on the phone,” she says. “But I’m still too angry to see him.”
    “Does he know that?”
    “That I’m angry?”
    Oliver nods.
    “Of course,” she says, then tilts her head at him. “But we’re not talking about me, remember?”
    “I just find it interesting,” he says, “that you’re so open about it. Everyone’s always wound up about something in my family, but nobody ever says anything.”
    “Maybe you’d be better off if you did.”
    “Maybe.”
    Hadley realizes they’ve been whispering, leaning close in the shadows cast by the yellow reading light of the man in front of them. It almost feels as