Page 265 of Every Almost

"And autoshuffle."

Reyna watched Charlie for a moment.

"And what exactly does autoshuffle do on this program Tavi made?"

"It plays more songs at random. One right after another, from any of them in the whole library. I use it with Tavi when we work in Engineering. There's something kind of freeing about letting the program pick for you and not knowing what's coming next." She laughed. "Even if I do know every song already."

Reyna didn't say anything.

She could tell Charlie was nervous about something, that she was saying more than she needed to. Reyna listened to all of it. Truthfully, she would have listened to Charlie Wickett read a supply manifest.

But the song overhead had been working on her the whole time it played.

"Do you know what songthisis?" The question came out softly.

"Yes."

And Charlie didn't say anything else. She just stood there, a few feet away, breathing heavily with her eyes on Reyna.

"What is it called, Charlie?"

Charlie took a breath.

"It's called 'Into the Mystic.'"

And neither of them said anything after that.

The man's singing voice moved through the Observation Room like something alive. It was warm, reaching, unhurried. Reyna immediately understood that this was the kind of song that makes a room feel smaller, where the space between two people feels infinite and impossible to bear.

Both their smiles faded into something fragile. But to Reyna, it felt enormous and months in the making.

The room changed. The laughter was still warm in her chest, the breathlessness still close, but the music was pulling her somewhere different now. Somewhere Reyna had been circling for months.

And this time, she let it pull her.

She walked slowly toward Charlie, keeping her gaze. Reyna walked towards the woman who had pulled her out of a spiral with a singer named Whitney and a ridiculous amount of dancing, walked towards the woman whose face had been telling her everything she needed to see for months, and towards the silence that said more than any confession could. She walked towards Charlie because she was done wasting time.

Reyna stopped right in front of her, close enough to her to see the brown and green mix of color in her eyes. It was more beautiful than any constellation Reyna had ever seen.

Reyna could hear Charlie's ragged breathing. But she knew this was the only chance she might get.

She closed her eyes, took a deep, long, deliberate breath, and made a decision that her heart had already made a long time ago.

She opened her eyes and slowly, gently, lifted her arms to wrap them around Charlie's neck.

Then she leaned in.

And started to sway to the music.

It took Charlie a moment, but Reyna felt every part of Charlie's reaction. She felt a hitch in Charlie's breath against her. She saw her heartbeat pulse in her neck from shock. There was even a brief second where Charlie did absolutely nothing at all.

But then Charlie committed.

Fully.

Charlie folded her arms around Reyna and pulled her in close, and Reyna felt Charlie melt into her as the song moved through them both.

They drifted together, no formal dance positions this time. Just two bodies pressed close, breathing together, feeling the ache of the music everywhere it could reach.