Page 187 of Every Almost

That night,at the Aetherfin atrium, Reyna arrived first and stood at the railing for forty minutes before Charlie appeared at the far end of the corridor.

Charlie was wearing the same pajamas she often wore. Her hair was pulled back in the same loose knot, her bracelet visible on her left wrist the way it always was. She padded across the deck in bare feet, as she always did, before leaning against the railing next to her at exactly the distance she always maintained.

Everything about Charlie arriving tonight was exactly the same as every other night.

But this time, Reyna noticed every single detail as though she were seeing them for the first time.

Thirteen years.

She didn't look over at Charlie when she approached. Instead, she looked at the Aetherfin, drifting through its sphere in blues and purples.

"Couldn't sleep?" Charlie asked, the same question she always asked, as though this weren't the ninth consecutive night they'd both ended up here.

"Something like that," Reyna answered.

And they stood there, watching the Aetherfin drift, close enough that Reyna could feel Charlie's warmth without touching her. The silence between them had weight, but wasn't suffocating. This silence felt closer to a blanket wrapped around them than suffocation.

And that, Reyna thought, was exactly the problem.

TWENTY-TWO

TWO KINDS OF DIFFICULT

The shift had beengradual enough that Charlie almost missed it. But in the past week, two Engineering crew members had come to her directly with diagnostic questions, bypassing Cael's console entirely. It wasn't conspiratorially or as part of a rebellion against the mediocre Engineering Chief. They had simply consulted Charlie at her station because Charlie had better answers. This path of least resistance had quietly rerouted around the Chief Engineer like water finding a new channel.

But Cael was taking notice. He didn't say anything about it, but his markings had run amber for the rest of the shift.

His skin had said everything for him.

The other shiftthat began didn't bypass Charlie in the slightest. And Charlie was still debating on whether or not she wished it did.

It started when Reyna sat one chair closer during the morning briefing.

It wasn't crossing the table to sit beside her. Just one seat over from where she usually sat, which put her close enough that Charlie could hear her breathe when the room went quiet between agenda items.

Two months ago, Charlie wouldn't have noticed. Two weeks ago, she probably would have noticed, followed by 'nope.' But now, Charlie had memories. The Observation Room, the bench, and the two inches. And though Charlie didn't want to admit it, she had the night she fell asleep to Chrissie Hynde asking the exact question Charlie was refusing to answer.

Shenoticed. She sat in that briefing, feeling the proximity in her spine.This is what trouble feels like from the inside.

In a corridor the following morning while heading to Engineering, Charlie heard footsteps fall into pace beside her. Reyna appeared, matching her stride without speaking. They walked together for forty meters before Reyna turned off toward the bridge with a nod and a "Wickett" as a departure, and somehow that was worse, because Charlie had counted the meters, and she knew exactly why she had counted the meters.

During a meal in the galley the next day, Reyna took the seat beside Charlie. Sat down, picked up her utensil, and then looked over and bumped Charlie's shoulder with a smile, the same way she had that first night in the Observation Room, before turning to the group and joining the conversation as if this was where she'd always sat.

The table kept talking. Yet Charlie heard none of it.

Her left arm, the one closest to Reyna, became the most alert limb on her body for the duration of the meal. She'd had that arm for twenty-nine years and it had never once betrayed her like this.

But none of that compared to what happened at the habitat console. She couldn't tell you what day of the week it was. But she could tell you the exact second it started.

Charlie had been recalibrating the thermal regulators in the Canoplyn Glider habitat when Reyna came through on her rounds. She checked on habitats regularly, especially after new rescues. She was reviewing data at the opposite console when Charlie hit a secondary reading she wanted a second opinion on. The membrane sensitivity values were holding, but there was a variance in the backup regulator that sat just outside the margin she was comfortable with.

"Captain, could you take a look at this?" Charlie called, without thinking. Without thinking about anything at all, including the fact that her console was exactly wide enough for two people if neither of them breathed.

Reyna came around to Charlie's side, leaned in to look at the readout, and her forearm settled against Charlie's.

Kaelari skin was warm, warmer than human skin. Not by much, but in a way that would translate to a fever in humans. Charlie had actually known this abstractly since her first handshake with Reyna when she arrived on the Emberkind. But knowing it from a handshake and feeling it pressed against three inches of her forearm turned out to be a completely different science.

Her skin registered the contact before her brain caught up. Her pulse adjusted. Her breathing followed. And then her brain arrived, two full seconds late with aNope.As if 'nope' had been working at all for her in the first place.