Page 45 of The Statistically Unlikely Reunion

“Do you want to put your head between your knees?”

He nods at me and proceeds to do just that, squatting down and letting his still longish hair hang between his spread legs. One of the TSA guards looks over, eyebrows raised, but luckily for us, Lucas looks more like a nerd who can’t deal than a . . . terrorist. The TSA guys smirks and carries on, wandering to another section of the security area. “There will be airbags and flotation devices.”

“We’ll be flying over land. Arkansas and New Mexico. Texas oil fields. How will a flotation device help?”

Aurora was like this. Our father flew her out once, deemed her a disappointment, never giving her a second chance. She was near tears by the time we boarded the plane, openly crying by takeoff. It took all of my patience to settle her before we landed. What I more remembered was that facts didn’t matter. Aurora didn’t care about how safe modern aviation was, in theory. “Will statistics help? Or is this an illogical, nothing-I-say-will-help thing?”

“This is an absolutely logical fear based on the fact that a 747 weighs 180 tons.” He brings his head up briefly, hazel eyes wide, glasses askew. “That’s when the plane’s empty.”

“I had a very light breakfast.” I smile, but Lucas doesn’t notice.

“That’s the weight of forty elephants. We’re going to be forty thousand feet in the air, ten thousand feet higher than the top of Mount Everest, but strapped into an aluminum canister weighing forty elephants while being told that flotation devices will help if we crash-land over New Mexico. I know this isn’t a normal way of thinking, but⁠—”

I bend until he’s forced to look at me. “Normal is a distribution.”

He huffs out a reluctant laugh, and several long breaths later, he allows me to pull him up. Still, he doesn’t move to rejoin the line.

Instead, his hands find and grip mine almost painfully.

“We could take a train.”

“From LA to Boston?”

“Or we could rent a car. Road trip. Everyone does a road trip in college, right? My mother will happily make and pack enough pasta and granola to⁠—”

“We’d arrive late and exhausted.”

He lets go of my hands to take his phone out, barely listening to me. He’s already scrolling through car rentals. “My mother’s car isn’t reliable enough, but with three of us driving a rental and splitting the costs⁠—”

I tug his T-shirt with one hand while my other comes up to cup his face and then I kiss him.

I can feel the breath he sucks in as our lips meet, that moment of hesitation before his lips press into mine.

We’re in the middle of the TSA line and everything smells like stale coffee and commercial-grade cleaners, and yet for a moment, none of that matters. Lucas’s lips are on mine, firm and warm, and the faint stubble of his beard scratches against my delicate skin in the best way. I register a brief clatter of something, which I’m guessing is Lucas’s phone, as both his arms go around me. He helps arch my body into his, to better compensate for the height difference, and it is glorious.

I close my eyes as he deepens the kiss. My lips part of their own volition, and our tongues are a delicious tangle that⁠—

“Ahem.”

My eyes fly open, and I push against Lucas’s chest, as if I wasn’t the one who initiated our embrace.

“So sorry,” I stammer, turning to face the middle-aged couple directly behind us.

“Plenty of time for that later,” the woman says, pointing at the gap in the line we hadn’t meant to rejoin. My cheeks are burning, and I can’t even look at Lucas as we both politely speedwalk to close the gap.

It’s not until after we’re through the machines and almost at the sky lounge when Lucas leans in. “Remind me to get anxious more often, if that’s how you help me relax.”

“We haven’t even gone on a real date yet.” I bite the inside of my lip as soon as the words are out, because it sounds like I’m complaining.

“You keep accepting my mother’s invitations to dinner.”

“I like Delilah. And the twins.” We’re almost at the lounge check-in. My lips still tingle from our kiss, and I’m smiling at the attendant, handing over my ID when I say, “And you keep coming to teach Aurora⁠—”

“She has real potential.”

“She’s ten.”

“The twins were never interested. If I had started programming at ten⁠—”