Short Story: Cosmic Probability

“She’s going to lose.”

Otto stares at the television, his back straight, shoulders stiff. The teams are both in a huddle by their bench, listening to their coaches’ final calls before the last two seconds of the championship play out. On a screen this size – in the ESPN March Madness war room – the players are almost as large as Otto.

The game, of course, is the star of the show, but it’s surrounded by smaller screens where statistics blaze. Equally fascinating, in Otto’s opinion.

Scoring leaders. Win chances. Turnovers, fouls, 3-point attempts.

And on the big screen: Duke, a 1 seed team, versus Saint Peter’s, seed 15.

She is – out of 23 million people who entered the ESPN Tournament Challenge this year – the only one who maintained a perfect bracket heading into the final.

She is the first person in verifiable history to have ever cracked the Sweet 16.

But now:

“She’s going to lose,” Harvey says again from his standing position beside Otto. There’s a note of disappointment in his colleague’s voice. Which is especially odd, considering Harvey is a Duke fan.

Otto’s hazel eyes stay fixed on the game, arms crossed over his chest in an affectation of relaxation. He’s anything but. Duke is up by 2 points. There are 2.1 seconds left on the clock. And Duke has possession after this timeout.

“She’s not playing,” Otto reminds Harvey. “Duke and Saint Peter’s are playing.”

Harvey sighs. “She’s not going to beat the bracket,” he corrects himself. “She’s going to bust.”

She was always going to bust, Otto thinks. Because nobody beats the bracket. Otto is a sports statistician by trade, and nobody. beats. this bracket.

After the first day of March Madness, 22.9 of the 23 million brackets had fallen.

After the second day of March Madness, there were only 4 perfect brackets left.

3 of those 4 were individuals who had entered at least a dozen scenarios from different accounts.

The 4th was her. Otto checked – he triple-checked – to see if he could tie any other accounts to her. He couldn’t. As far as he could tell, she’d only submitted the one.

His gaze moves from the lengthy timeout on the game screen to the far-left corner, where he can see her. Because of course ESPN put a camera on that woman the second she gave them permission.

She’s at some sports bar in New York with a group of friends, wearing a baseball cap, her light brown hair pulled through it in a ponytail. Her T-shirt is plain white. Her cap is branded with a women-focused wellness company logo, a quick Google search had informed him.

She’s beautiful – which should be beside the point – but Otto works in television, and he knows it is the entire point. The entire point that she has been recorded this whole time, the screen cutting to her when there’s a timeout, or Saint Peter’s scores a goal, or she sucks on that fruity drink with her glossed lips.

ESPN put a camera on her because she’s newsworthy and stunning.

But unlike the rest of America, who only gets to see her for a few seconds every 20 minutes, Otto has had a front row seat to this woman’s side profile throughout the entire game. He’s terrified, thinking of the stats: out of all 12 screens on the wall of this war room, what percentage of time has Otto spent watching her?

He trains his eyes back on the game.

Playtime resumes.

A Duke player on the sidelines passes the ball to another – only it doesn’t make it, only it’s smacked away. And the Saint Peter’s player who smacked it stumbles, unable to dribble the ball into his own possession, but then.

But then.

One of his teammates seems to leap through thin air, dribble the ball twice, then hurl it toward his goal. Across half the court.

Clock time goes to 0.

The basketball soars.

Otto’s eyes cut back to her.

It must have gone in, he thinks, while he watches her punch the air, her face lighting up like she’s leaking sunshine. She jumps up and down, covers her mouth with her hands. Otto finds himself mimicking it, his fingers trailing shakily over his lips, his chin.

Something is broken in him – now that this fundamental improbability has been shattered.

By her.

“Oh, my God,” Harvey says, buckling in half, his hands on his knees as he wheezes a laugh. “I cannot believe it. I cannot believe she did that.”

Otto understands what Harvey means. Because the probability of a 15 seed team beating a 1 seed team in the final is low, but not as low as her odds.

Which are, to be specific: 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

“What’s her name again?” another one of their colleagues asks, turning back from his computer monitor.

“Eloise Mayfair,” Otto says, the name jumping off his tongue like he wants to exorcise it. He looks back at the girl on screen, wondering why the hell he can’t stop.

***

He’s only going, Otto tells himself, because he needs to know how Eloise Mayfair made her picks.

Otto needs to know more than he needs oxygen.

He dresses down in a T-shirt and jeans, shaves his face, brushes his brown hair, makes sure he smells decent. He debates ditching his glasses for contacts, but the truth is, Otto hates contacts.

The morning after the game, Otto meets his coworkers at the New Haven Amtrak station, and together, they take the train into New York. ESPN is hosting a party for the bracket-beater and winning team at a 4-story bar near Times Square. All employees get in free. The entire Saint Peter’s team is there already. The TV execs want the place stacked.

But Otto’s only going because he needs to know how she made her picks. He’s gone over them dozens of times but can’t identify a pattern. And there must be a pattern. People might think they choose randomly, but in Otto’s experience, that’s hardly ever true.

He and his cohort head into the throng of the city, bypassing the line at the bar (which is no less than a block long) for the VIP entrance around the back of the building. Inside, Otto’s anxiety skyrockets. He hasn’t been in this kind of environment since college. Loud, drunk voices. Blaring sounds, streaming lights.

His coworkers head for the bar, but Otto goes to the bathroom and spends three minutes washing his hands. Then he grabs a beer and focuses on finding her. Eloise.

He searches each floor, then doubles back and looks again. She’s nowhere. He recognizes some of the friends she was with last night on TV and asks after her. They shrug, looking around, and one of them says, “Bathroom, probably? She hasn’t been gone long.”

Otto’s neck is getting sweaty. He fiddles with his T-shirt, goes back to the roof. A woman twice his age brushes up against him, her eyelashes whirring, and he escapes to a different floor.

“Smoking area?” he asks a bouncer guarding a door that seems to lead somewhere outdoors but private.

The bouncer glances at Otto’s VIP bracelet, then nods. He opens the door, and Otto walks onto a small terrace that faces an alley.

The door snicks shut and Otto gasps for air, ripping his inhaler out of his back pocket. He closes his eyes and sucks in the medicine, letting his heartrate calm.

“You, too?”

Otto’s eyes rip over at the voice, and he sees her. Not through a screen this time. He actually sees her.

Eloise Mayfair is 26. An NYU grad who majored in biochemistry. Works in the beauty industry as a product developer. Her skin is porcelain, and her hair is shiny, a nutty brown color with hints of red in the sunlight. Otto hadn’t noticed that on camera. Her voice is deeper in person, but it suits her. So does the red lipstick.

He swallows. “I don’t like crowds.”

Her lips twitch. “Then why’d you come?”

Suddenly, he’s shy, uncomfortable asking her the one thing he came to ask. Otto shrugs.

“I’m Eloise.” She jumps down from the concrete wall she’d been (dangerously) sitting atop.

“I know.” Otto wonders if that was a weird thing to admit, but Eloise only nods, like she’s already used to this. “I’m Otto. I’m a sports analyst for ESPN.”

“So, you’ve been running my numbers,” she jokes.

“Yes,” he says, perfectly seriously. And since she brought it up first: “Speaking of, how did you make your picks?”

“I have this niece who is just a baby,” she says, too quickly. “I put the phone in front of her, and she tapped all the way through for me.”

Otto’s eyes narrow. “In an interview yesterday, you said you chose based on mascot preference. And on social media you claimed the picks came to you in a dream.”

Eloise smirks. “Then why’d you ask?”

“Because both those answers were lines, and so was the one you just gave me.”

“Okay, okay. The truth is it was random.”

He studies her. “You’re still lying.”

She’s amused. “C’mon, Otto. That’s the most plausible answer.”

“Maybe so, but I don’t think that’s how you made your picks.”

He can’t remember when, but it seems he’s taken several steps closer to her. She smells like sugar. Up close, he can see that the bridge of her nose is covered in tiny freckles.

“Do you know the odds of a perfect bracket?” he asks.

“Never tell me the odds,” Eloise whispers conspiratorially, and oh, he’s in trouble now. She winks, and he’s drowning.

“What are you doing out here?” Otto keeps his voice low.

“I got overwhelmed,” she answers, her brown eyes locked on his. “Everybody kept asking me how I made my picks.”

Immediately, Otto’s gut fills with shame. He steps back from her purposefully, blushing. “I’ve ruined your moment of privacy.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Eloise.”

She watches him. “I believe that you mean that.”

He bows his head. “I’ll go.”

“You don’t have to.” Her smile returns gently, her tone warming. “So long as I get to ask you a few questions.”

He straightens, grip tightening on his beer can. She’s … interested? In his personal details? He never imagined she’d care. “Okay.”

“How old are you?”

“Just turned thirty.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“MIT.”

“Do you live near your office?”

He nods. “New Haven, actually. It’s not a bad commute.”

“Do you like it there?”

“I like it a lot. The city is nice, and it helps that I love my job.” Eloise waits, so Otto adds, “Sometimes I think I’ve only ever cared about sports and numbers.”

“Not your mom?” she asks.

He smiles. “Her, too.”

“Where are you from?”

“North Dakota.” Otto already knows that Eloise is from Rhode Island, but he wishes he could ask in earnest.

He can’t remember when, but it appears he closed most of the distance between them again. What’s left seems to crackle with static.

“Did you come to this bar just to meet me?” she murmurs.

Otto nods, very slowly. Clears his throat. “The way I think about the world is … finite. Ordered. Your existence has disrupted everything I thought I knew.”

Her lips twitch up again. “Otto, you’re a math guy. You know that what I achieved was improbable. But not impossible.”

“You had a better chance of selecting a single marked star out of the entire galaxy,” he whispers, “than you had of selecting a perfect bracket.”

“What do you think it means?” she asks, her tone taunting.

“I don’t believe in that stuff,” Otto answers.

“What you mean is, you’re trying to hold onto your preexisting faith – or lack thereof – by any means necessary because you don’t want to accept that my perfect bracket could be some kind of cosmic intervention.”

“Cosmic intervention of what?” he counters. “To what end?”

Eloise’s eyes flick to his lips. So, naturally, Otto’s flick to hers.

He wants her.

He’s wanted her from the first moment he saw her.

He keeps his hands to himself.

But she leans toward him – she leans toward him – her perfect, cherry lips parted, and his free hand twitches up –

The door bangs open. It’s one of her friends, coming to check on her.

“I better go,” Eloise says, sliding past him. He feels a monumental loss wedge in his chest. But she stalls at the door and turns back. “What are the odds I’ll ever see you again?”

He can’t tell if it’s an invitation or not. Otto’s never been great at this sort of thing.

“You tell me.”

She smiles again, bright and sunny, her gaze roaming his face. “Otto. If you follow me inside, then the odds are very good.”

***

He is in love with her before the week is out.

He is in love with the way Eloise laughs at him while she teaches him to chop a carrot.

He is love with the white lab coat she wears to her workplace – which is located halfway between Manhattan and New Haven.

On the third day of their acquaintance, which is the morning after their first date (a homecooked meal at her apartment), Otto wakes up in Eloise’s bed and takes the train and an Uber to work (he’s late), then goes home early to rapid-clean his townhouse. Because Eloise asked if she could stay over.

They order Thai takeout and talk about their families and their firsts and their biggest failures, and then they watch Murder on the Nile, and then they get ready for bed.

Otto watches while Eloise removes her makeup with care and precision.

The night before, she’d told him she loves makeup and chemistry the same way Otto loves sports and numbers. And it made absolute perfect sense to him.

They’d been so tired, having stayed up talking until Eloise passed out against Otto’s side, that they hadn’t even kissed, but simply curled up against each other in the dark. Tonight, though, under the covers, Eloise reaches for him, the pressure of her lips light on his, and Otto is enchanted with her. Enamored. Unmoored.

They make love for the first time, and it’s so good that Otto’s bones shake. It’s as if his entire purpose has swanned into his life wearing pretty lipstick and flowered hair ties. She feels like silk under him, and he thinks he’d forget his own name if it weren’t for how often she repeats it.

After, while Eloise trails a thumb over his cheekbones, she whispers, “The other day, I was joking, when I mentioned cosmic intervention.”

He kisses her fingertips, one at a time. “Were you?”

She sighs and curls into him. “Otto. I’m not laughing anymore.”

***

One Year Later

“Nobody would blame you, if you abstained,” Otto says with a grin, crawling up Eloise’s body in their bed.

She moved in two months ago. The guest bathroom now perpetually looks like somebody robbed Sephora. Otto loves it.

He loves her.

“I want to make one,” she protests, flipping onto her stomach underneath him. Otto settles over her gently, his chin on her shoulder, while she pulls up the bracket app on her phone. “So that people will finally lose interest in me.”

“Even if you bust in the first game, I’m not losing interest, El.”

She ignores this, because of course she already knew that, and focuses on her screen. Eventually, Eloise shoots him a sly look over her shoulder. “You’re still trying to figure it out, aren’t you?”

He grunts. “You could just tell me.”

He’d never asked her again, after that first day.

“It’s way more fun watching your smarty-pants brain try to work it out,” she laughs.

He studies her thumb as she makes her picks, looking for a pattern. Even a moment’s hesitation. Otto knows it wasn’t random. She’s admitted that much. But for all the sequencing he learned in school, this, Otto can’t parse.

He finally figures it out when she gets to the Final 4, mostly because he can hear her muttering letters under her breath.

“Alphabet?” he asks, voice incredulous. “Are you doing some kind of alphabet sequence?”

He can hear the smirk in her voice. “Knew you’d get there eventually, MIT.”

“Eloise.”

“Otto.”

“And you do the same thing every year?”

She nods. “But it won’t work again,” Eloise says confidently, flipping onto her back.

Otto lifts onto his elbows to give her some room. “You’re so sure?”

“It doesn’t need to work again.” Her hair splays out across the pillow. She blinks up at him, her eyes warm and soft. “The cosmos already did its job, leading you to me.”

Otto’s heart swells to the point of bursting. He loves this woman so much he sometimes feels terrified of the depth of it.

“And if it hadn’t worked?” he asks. “If you’d never beaten the bracket or even come close?”

“You would have found me some other way.” Her tone is completely assured.

“I would have,” Otto promises, voice husky, his lips going to her ear, and he means it with every fraction of his soul. Even if it took 9 quintillion more tries.

In every scenario, he’d find his way to her.