Charlie watched Reyna deliver the admission and proceeded to just stand there with her, letting it be as heavy as it was between them so Reyna didn't have to brave it alone.
Eventually, Reyna turned to Charlie and looked at her for a long moment.
"Katie would be so proud of you," Reyna whispered. "You know that, right?"
And that just went straight in.
Katie had been nineteen. She'd stood in the doorway of the only house both of them had shared but never felt at home in, and told the two people who made her that Charlie was was extraordinary. Charlie had never gotten over it, and she'd never told a living soul that everything she'd built since that day had been possible only because of a nineteen-year-old kid in a doorway.
Katie would be proud of her.
Charlie had wanted to hear that sentence her whole adult life. She just never would have known it would be Reyna saying it.
She wanted nothing more than Katie to be proud of her. God, she wanted that.
But now, now she wanted Reyna Solas to keep looking at her the exact way she was looking at her right now, plus so much more.
Oh, Charlie thought.I'd do anything for her.Charlie took a staggering breath.I want the rest of my life to have her in it.
Charlie stopped there. She stopped right there, hard, because Charlie stood three feet away from Reyna and she was not going to be able to hold herself together if she let that go any further.
"Yeah," Charlie managed. "I think she would be."
The music cutout mid-song like a record scratch, and forty people turned around at once to find out why.
"So!" Tavi's voice bellowed from the room as he stood on a chair. "It's the captain's birthday!"
The room made a very loud noise about that. Charlie looked over to see Reyna duck her head slightly.
"And on Earth," Tavi continued. "They have this tradition. Charlie told me all about it." He looked at her, and she gave him eyes that said, 'Don't do it.' But obviously, he didn't care. "When it's somebody's birthday, someonesingsto them." The crowd made noises at this, laughter and comments filtering through the crowd. "That's how they do it. Humans, am I right?" The crowd laughed. "But it just so happens that our festive gathering tonight has exactly one Earthling."
The library exploded.
The whole crew, everybody Charlie had spent six months feeding stories to and teaching to dance, turned around and started cheering at her. Charlie even saw Borran banging something metal on a table. Even Torvax said, in a voice that carried straight to her ears, "I would like to observe this."
Charlie's face had gone so hot she could feel her own pulse in her neck.
I don’t know if I can do this.
"I'm going to kill him," she said. "I'm going to take his console apart with my hands."
Maybe this is a bad idea.
But then, a voice from beside her broke through.
"You sing?"
Charlie turned.
Reyna was looking at her with her head tilted a little, something happening in the corner of her mouth.
"No," Charlie said automatically. "No, I absolutely do not. Not at all. Tavi's just an idiot."
"He seems pretty certain," Reyna countered.
"He's certain about a lot of things," Charlie stated. "He's wrong about most of them. This would be one of those things he's wrong about."
And there it was. There was the same move she'd been making since she was fifteen.Nope, not happening.Change the subject. Turn the radio down.