Page 336 of Every Almost

Charlie smiled.

“Then we have a plan.”

Reyna kissed her once more before straightening.

She collected two datapads from the table and brought the room’s second chair over to the desk. It fit beside Charlie’s with barely enough space between them, their knees touching once Reyna sat down.

Reyna opened the first report.

Then she reached for Charlie’s hand. Charlie went to her.

“I’m right here,” she said.

Charlie looked at her and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek before nodding and turning back to the desktop.

She let Reyna’s hand go and picked up the star pen.

Charlie lowered it to the page.

Dear Kit,

She sat with that for a second. Then she continued.

So. Guess what happened to me?

I got thrown across the universe, Kit-Kat. I'm not even exaggerating.

There was an accident at the lab that morning, just as I was finishing the message on your machine. One second I was there and the next I was on the floor of a kitchen of a spaceship. Yeah, you read that right. A starship called the Emberkind. I was completely covered in cake batter. It was a whole thing. I'll tell you about it someday, in person, because I plan to tell you all of it in person, and I'm going to make you sit through every boring part.

I'm alright. Actually, I'm better than alright. I'm part of a crew, a real one, on a spaceship, Kit-Kat. I have a whole family of people from worlds you and I used to make up stories about, and they took me in, and kept me. I'm one of the chief engineers. Can you believe that? I run the entire engine room with my two co-chiefs, Maren and Tavi. Me, Kit. The girl who couldn't keep a houseplant alive is keeping a starship in the sky.

The problem is, I can't come home. I want to say that plainly. But it's not by choice. It's that something happened to me out here, something to do with how I got here. Now, I don't age the way humans are supposed to. Instead, I age more slowly. Much slower, in fact. It meansEarth isn't a place I can go back to without causing more trouble than I'm sure you can imagine.

You want to know something funny? I brought your music with me. Completely by accident. But Kit, I have to tell you about this because it's the best thing I've done out here. And it's completely your fault.

Every mixtape you ever made me helped teach an entire ship full of aliens about Earth music, Kit. Fleetwood Mac in a nebula. Springsteen at three in the morning. Then, there's Tavi, who fell in love with Led Zeppelin on a shuttle to a mission, and I lost him after that. He built a music program for the whole ship from scratch so everyone could listen. And do you know what I did, Kit? I made a playlist, adding songs one at a time, never thinking about why, until it became clear I was writing a love letter. Every single song was about her. I wrote it for months before I understood I was writing it at all.

Charlie stopped.

Beside her, Reyna set down her own datapad, and a hand came to rest between Charlie's shoulder blades, warm, not asking anything. Charlie leaned back into it for a second, then bent to the page again.

Her name is Reyna.

Kit, I'm not going to be able to do this part right. I've got the pen and the paper, and I still don't have the words.

She's the captain of this ship. She is the bravest, driest, most infuriatingly contained person I have ever met, and underneath all of it she loves like the whole universe depends on it, and somehow, for reasons I will never fully understand, she chose me. Not a version of me or a me that had to be smaller or easier or quieter. Me.

You know, there was a time when I was somewhere she couldn’t reach me, and do you know what she did? She spoke to me in music.

I wish you could meet her so badly it aches. You'd see it in about four seconds, the way you saw everything, even the things I couldn't. You'd take one look and go, "Oh, Charlie," in that voice, and you'd be right. I know you would love her. Immediately. You would pretend you were still deciding, obviously, but I'd know the truth. You’d ask her questions when I left the room, and she'd answer every one of them honestly. She is completely incapable of giving a convenient answer when a true one is available. There would come a day when you’d both start looking at me the same way whenever I was being unreasonable, and I would hate it.

I want it more than I know how to say, Kit.

You know she tells me that she loves me all the time now? Not always in words. Sure, sometimes she says it quietly when we’re alone. But she'll also say it by bringing me food because I forgot dinner, or in her hand finding mine under a table. There are times she'll walk into Engineering, look at my face, and know immediately that something went wrong, even though nobody has told her.

She does little things like come and kiss me as she passes my chair, as if she has done it a thousand times. We haven’t had a thousand times yet. But we will.

Everything is different now. Everything is better. I keep waiting to get used to being this happy, and I just don't. It keeps being new.