Page 234 of Every Almost

Charlie hung on the ladder in the falling light and laughed, completely helpless by it.

Below her, Reyna looked up. And Charlie took a second longer to study her face. She knew Reyna's careful face. The one she held as Captain, kept during moments that pushed her to her limits, and displayed when she was taking care of her crew. Charlie had been seeing that face for months, closer than she probably should have been.

But this was something entirely different. This face was just Reyna, wet through, lit blue-gold by the coolant, looking up at Charlie like she'd never seen anything like her.

"That," Reyna said, "was fucking extraordinary," she said with an exasperated laugh. Charlie watched her turn to the bay. "All of you were fucking extraordinary. Maren!" Charlie wished she could have seen Maren's face when the captain shouted her name. "The containment held because of you. And Tavi, your readings were the only part that kept us up-to-date with the timing." Then Reyna returned her gaze to Charlie. "And you," She stopped. "I have served on ships my entire adult life, and I have never watched anyone solve a cascade like that. With that kind of precision, that kind of instinct." A beat. "I could have watched you do it all night."

Charlie could take being told the work was good, especially when her friends received their due praise as well.

But what Charlie couldn't take was the way Reyna was looking at her while she said those words. And Charlie couldn't because, for one dangerous second, it looked like something Charlie had no business hoping it was.

She looked at Maren and Tavi before she could talk herself into believing it.

"You two were unbelievable," Charlie said. "Maren, I imagine you didn’t blink the whole time, which is super impressive. And Tavi, you know I'd take you into a disaster any day."

"Naturally," Tavi said, making Charlie laugh softly.

"I couldn't have done any of this without either of you," Charlie finished.

They grinned at her.

Then she looked at Reyna.

"And I couldn't have done it withoutyou, honestly. You were—" She paused. "You were the best second I've ever had. You read me before I finished talking. Every time. I never once hadto check what you gave me." She shook her head, coolant flying. "And you're the captain. That's not even your job."

"It was tonight," Reyna said softly.

Charlie couldn't help but hold her gaze, no matter how much it pressed on her chest to see Reyna look at her that way. And as she hung there, that hum, that rightness came flooding back, and Charlie realized she needed to get off this ladder and onto solid ground before she said something she could not take back.

Reyna seemed to give her the out without knowing it. She turned away from Charlie, embracing the captain again, to start ordering people around.

"Good work, all of you," Reyna started. "It's over, but it's not clean yet." Her voice filled the bay, steady, certain, the voice that made people move. "Maren, I want a full systems report, from every junction, before you rest, if I can please."

"Absolutely, Captain," Maren responded.

Reyna nodded, then turned to Tavi. "Tavi, get the pump-down started and pull the burst lines out of service."

"Aye aye, Cap," Tavi said, climbing down the crate.

Reyna then turned to the assistants. "You two, cut power to the forward conduits and start the containment protocol."

"Yes, Captain," said an assistant, as they both ran off to the power grid.

Everyone went their separate ways because there was still work to be done. The bay emptied of people in under a minute.

But then, Charlie realized it was just the two of them in the flooded bay. She’d been swept into listening to Reyna’s order that she was still on the ladder with Reyna below her. The thirty inches of space in the shaft was filled with glowing water and a charged air between them.

Charlie's mouth went dry.

Get down. Get on the ground. Get out of this shaft before you do something incredibly stupid.

She came down the ladder fast. And that was the mistake.

The unspoken engineer's plan inside Charlie's brain was orderly. It would go like this:

Step one: Reyna clears the console end. Step two: Charlie comes down and Charlie clears the shaft.

And that's how it would have been done. Each step, just one at a time, because that was how you managed thirty inches of space between two people.