Page 281 of Every Almost

"I'm sure you would, Captain," Orion said, nodding his head once. "Now, our Charlie here has been so open with us about her music, it was one of the first things I noticed when we started our sessions to record Earth's data." Orion walked over to stand in front of Reyna, addressing the whole Bridge. "Then Tavi created the music program, and it became ship-wide. So, naturally, one day I used my datapad and opened up the program, wanting to see all the music Charlie brought to us."

"Now, I'm no engineer like Charlie or Tavi, but I did some poking around in that program and found a log file that showed the people who were using it, and how often they accessed it. Not to mention it showed their action—whether playing a song, adding it to a playlist, or some other variance—along with the time and date stamp."

Orion clapped his hands together.

"Now, naturally, Tavi was the one who was at the top of the list. And my goodness, that boy has a lot of playlists."

Reyna laughed.

"But the second more frequent user was Charlie. And Captain." Orion stopped, turning to look at Reyna directly. "As you can see from my analysis, Charlie's logtells a story."

Reyna felt tears pool in her eyes.

"And, frankly? I think it's a story about someone she's crazy about."

"You do?" Reyna asked softly.

"I do. In fact, I think the playlist is an unintentional story about Charlie falling forher."

Reyna let out a sound that was part sob and part laughter.

"You really think she...?" Reyna started, her voice breaking.

Orion smiled at her, quietly, with nothing but warmth.

"Yes, Captain."

Reyna looked down at the datapad again.

Every timestamp on that datapad lined up with something she remembered. All of it. Down to the minute. Every corridor. Every suppressed warmth.

Every almost.

Months. This was months of Charlie Wickett telling her, over and over, in the only language she had.

Then Reyna scrolled to the last entry, timestamped tonight.

"Right Here Waiting..." Reyna read.

500.169 / Added 0114. Unplaced. No corresponding event in my records.

"Yes. A good song, actually. I took a listen," Orion added gently. "I just don't know what caused the addition."

Reyna dropped her hand from her mouth to select the song on the datapad.

It began to play softly from the small device speaker, barely audible over the Bridge's operational hum.

Reyna stared at the entry on the datapad. She remembered. She had walked out of the Observation Room when the alarm went off. At 0106.

Eight minutes. Eight minutes after Reyna took her arms off that woman and arrived on this Bridge, Charlie Wickett had sat back down in the dark and put a song on a list about staying exactly where you are and waiting for somebody to come back.

Reyna stood up, reaching for her datapad at her station.

"Torvax. Get me Breck."

"Captain, the shuttle is?—"

"Now."