The Charm Offensive, page 18
“Shoes,” Charlie scolds.
Dev sighs and kicks off his filthy shoes in a pile on the floor. Charlie props his suitcase up on the stand. He hangs his shirts, then his slacks, then—
“Can unpacking wait until morning?” Dev asks with his head in a pile of pillows.
“That’s how clothes wrinkle.”
Charlie is also maybe stalling a little bit.
“That’s what irons are for.”
“I do not believe you’ve ever used an iron in your life.”
When he’s done folding his shorts into dresser drawers, Charlie goes into the bathroom to perform his nighttime routine. Thirty minutes later, he comes out of the bathroom, and Dev is still lying on top of the bed in his khaki shorts, scrolling through his phone. “Are you going to change for bed?”
Dev turns toward him, heavy-lidded. “Are you going to come over here and help me?”
Charlie crosses his arms and leans against the bathroom doorframe. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Can you promise me something?” Dev squints one eye. “Promise you will always blush like you are right now.”
Charlie feels his face heat around the collar of his shirt. “I think I can safely make that promise, yeah.”
“Good. Now are you going to come to bed?”
Charlie wants to climb into bed next to Dev, but he can’t seem to unstick himself from the wall. They haven’t slept in the same bed since the one night in Munich, haven’t kissed since New Orleans, haven’t talked about any of it at all. They’re back to pretending like it never happened. And Dev—Dev is still so closed off. Charlie isn’t sure what he’s allowed, and if he climbs into bed next to Dev, he’s going to want all of it.
Dev studies his not-so-casual lean. “What are you doing over there?”
“Just looking.”
“Looking at what?”
“At you.” Dev nervously knocks his glasses up his nose with his knuckle. Charlie likes having the power to make Dev nervous, so he adds, “I like to look at you.”
Dev swallows, his face suddenly serious. “You shouldn’t say things like that to me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it makes it very difficult for me to keep my hands to myself.”
Charlie smiles. “That’s kind of the idea.”
He slowly approaches the bed—their bed, the bed they’ll be sharing for the next week. He feels as nervous as Dev looks. Nervous about the kissing, and about not talking about the kissing, not admitting what the kissing means. About what this is, about how it wasn’t supposed to happen. About how badly he wants it to happen.
Dev meets him at the edge of the bed. “You’re spiraling,” Dev whispers as he brushes his fingers along the ridge of Charlie’s twisted brow. Dev plants a kiss there, in the place where Charlie’s eyebrows bunch in the middle. “Tell me what you need.”
Charlie needs to kiss him, so he does. And when Dev kisses him back, the spiral loosens. Dev traces Charlie’s bottom lip with his tongue, and when Charlie opens for him, everything shifts around the fixed point of where they come together. Hands in his hair and hands up his shirt, and Dev’s tongue and Dev’s teeth, falling back onto the bed, the beautiful asymmetry of their bodies. Moving quickly. Too quickly.
Charlie rolls off of Dev to catch his breath. Dev pouts petulantly in response.
“I was thinking,” Charlie pants.
Dev pokes his ribs. “No thinking.”
“I was thinking… you know what we haven’t done in a while? Gone on a date. My skills are likely to atrophy at this rate.”
“You think you have skills?”
“I’m serious.” He sits up so he can look down at Dev, black hair matted and messy against a hotel comforter, glasses crooked on his nose. “Let me take you on a date tomorrow.”
“For practice, you mean?” Dev clarifies.
“Sure.” Charlie swallows down the lump forming in his throat. “For practice.”
Dev
He couldn’t say no to ten drunken seconds against a brick wall with Charlie Winshaw, and now Charlie’s staring at him with those earnest gray eyes like he thinks Dev has the willpower to say no to this. To a date with him.
“We have to film your confessionals first thing in the morning,” Dev says, impressed by his own professionalism, particularly in light of the fact that he had his hands up Charlie’s shirt two minutes ago. “You have to tell the cameras all about how you could see yourself falling in love in Cape Town.”
“Hmm,” is all Charlie says about that. “After confessionals, then.”
“I don’t—”
Charlie interrupts his new excuse by reaching for the sides of his face. Charlie kisses him again, and it feels so different than when they kissed in New Orleans. There’s no frenzy in it, no razor’s edge of panic cutting between their lips. No fear that at any minute the kissing could end. The kiss feels steadying, solid, like something Dev can lean against. Something that isn’t going to collapse beneath him.
Even though, rationally, he knows it will. He knows that wanting Charlie is self-destructive and stupid—that he’ll probably end up back in the dark, drowning place—but he wants him anyway.
“Okay. Yeah. A practice date,” Dev says when Charlie releases his mouth.
Charlie smiles, and Dev tries to hide the fact that he’s smiling, too.
Dev takes off his jeans and changes one T-shirt for another before he finally crawls into their massive bed. Charlie lies down stiff as a board on the opposite side. It feels like there’s an ocean of space between them. There’s been an ocean of space between them all week.
“Good night, Charlie,” Dev says as he clicks off the light beside the bed.
“Good night, Dev.”
Dev tries lying on his back, tries turning onto his side, tries not to think about how epically fucked this season truly is thanks to him. Tries not to think about Charlie five feet away.
“Are you asleep?” he asks into the dark.
“It’s been three minutes, so no.”
Dev twists and turns uncomfortably. “You know in Munich… when you sort of… held me?”
Charlie slides across the bed without further prompting. Dev can feel his body heat between the sheets as he gets closer. His solidity.
Charlie begins to gather Dev up and pull him up onto his chest. “Do you want to be on top?”
Dev opens his mouth to retort.
“Oh, shut up, I heard it,” Charlie snipes as he wraps his arms tighter around his shoulders.
“Are you blushing?”
Charlie doesn’t respond. Dev wishes he could see his face right now, but he settles for nuzzling himself into Charlie’s warm throat.
“And now you’re pretending to be asleep to escape your embarrassment.”
“Please, Dev,” Charlie says, but Dev can hear the smile in his voice, “just go to sleep.”
So Dev does. It’s the best sleep he’s had all season.
* * *
It’s winter here, fifty-five degrees with a cold breeze coming off the water, and early-morning clouds lingering over the mountain. Behind the clouds, though, Dev can see the sky is a perfect blue—as blue as the ocean, as crisp as the South African air, as beautiful as Charlie wearing a cowl-neck sweater and a pair of snug, dark-wash jeans.
“It’s not too late to go back for real shoes,” Charlie says as they climb into their Uber in front of the hotel. “We’re going to be walking a lot. Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, please,” he tells their driver. They’ve told the crew they’re going to an undisclosed location to spend the day planning the rest of Charlie’s romantic journey, and Dev has relinquished total control to Charlie to plan the entire (practice) date. So far, the date has only included Charlie being fussy about Dev’s flip-flops.
“I can walk in these.”
Charlie looks wholly unconvinced.
In his six years with Ever After, Dev’s circled the globe numerous times, visited a dozen Caribbean islands, put his toes in almost every ocean; he’s watched a proposal at sunrise over Machu Picchu, and he’s written confessions of love on six continents. Cape Town is somehow better than all of that, better than anywhere he’s ever been. The colors are brighter here, with Table Mountain rising massive above the city, and Dev is in love even before he discovers what bunny chow is.
He marvels at the metallic tray weighed down with curry. “It’s Indian food. Inside a bread bowl.”
“I thought you might like it.”
“It’s Indian food inside a bread bowl.”
“Yes, I know, Dev. I chose this place.”
“It’s Indian food inside a fucking bread bowl!”
“You’re shouting,” Charlie says, shooting an apologetic look at the street vendor ladling Charlie’s vegetarian tikka masala. “Did you know South Africa has a large population of Indian immigrants?”
Dev did know this, because Charlie listened to a podcast on the way here and insisted on reciting the entire thing from memory.
After they eat an amazing lunch of Indian food served inside a bread bowl, Charlie leads the way to a giant market set up in an old warehouse where hundreds of stalls sell craft supplies and delicacies and little curios. The space is cavernous, echoing with sounds, stuffed with smells. Dev immediately loves it.
Charlie immediately does not. As soon as they step inside, his shoulders climb up toward his ears and his eyebrows twist into their usual snarl. “Let’s take a quick minute.”
Dev leads them over to a bench out of the way, and Charlie collapses onto it. Dev discreetly presses the Morse code pattern between his shoulder blades while he calms down. “Sorry…” Charlie exhales. “I wanted today to be perfect.”
“Today already is perfect. Do you need to be reminded about the bread bowl?”
Charlie smiles feebly.
“We don’t have to stay here,” Dev offers. “We can go somewhere else.”
“Don’t you want to check out the stalls?”
“I just want to spend the day with you,” he says without thinking. “I mean, since this is a practice date, I think it’s good for you to practice speaking up for what you need.”
Charlie takes a steady breathe and smiles. “I think I’m okay, actually. Let’s look around for a bit.”
“Great. I need your help getting my parents something classy for their fortieth anniversary this September.”
Charlie lets himself be hauled off the bench. “I’ll need to know more about Sunil and Shameem to be of any help in this regard.”
Dev does not fixate on the fact that Charlie remembers his parents’ names from one casual reference. “Well, imagine two Indian kids, coming to the US in the sixties, growing up in super traditional households, meeting freshman year at Cornell in the premed program. Then picture them getting arrested at various protests, becoming art history professors instead of doctors, and smoking a ton of weed, and you pretty much have my parents. Now they spend most of their time running a Raleigh art co-op and going on weekend yoga retreats run by white people.”
Charlie stares at him, unblinking. “That all tracks.”
They wander toward a stall selling gorgeous ceramics—very Shameem, very not in Dev’s price range. A little plaque at the stand explains that half of all proceeds go toward a community school in a nearby township. “What about your parents?” Dev can’t resist reverting back to their old dynamic, with Dev trying to weasel his way behind Charlie’s layers.
Only Dev doesn’t have to weasel. Charlie opens right up. “There’s not much to say about my parents. My dad is a construction foreman. My mom stayed home to raise me and my brothers, who all played football and loved beating the shit out of me. No one in my house had the slightest idea what to do with a little neurodivergent kid who feared contamination and loved taking apart household appliances to learn how they worked. There is a reason I wanted to leave at sixteen.”
It takes what little willpower Dev has not to reach out and kiss Charlie on his face in the middle of the market, and thankfully the artist steps out from behind the register at that exact moment.
“Can I help you find anything?” she asks.
“Your work is lovely,” Charlie says. Dev studies a beautiful bowl and serving platter set, imagines the look on his parents’ face when they discover he bought them something other than a cheap tea towel from his travels.
“Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“A gift for my parents,” Dev answers. “They would love your pieces.”
“Those ones were made by my wife, actually.”
Charlie tugs on the edge of Dev’s jean jacket. “You should buy them.”
Dev subtly tilts the bowl so he can see the price tag on the bottom. He’s fuzzy on the rand-to-US-dollar exchange rate, but he’s not that fuzzy. “I think—sorry, I think we’re going to keep looking.”
Dev tries to slide around the end of the stall, but Charlie doesn’t move. “Do you ship items to the United States?”
“Yes, although it usually takes three to four weeks.”
“That’s perfect. We’ll take the bowl and the serving platter.”
“Charlie, no. I can’t.…” Dev leans in so the artist won’t overhear. “I can’t afford them.”
“But I can. What’s your parents’ address?”
“You don’t have to do this for me.”
“I know I don’t have to,” he says plainly. “I want to.”
Their shoulders press together for a second, but only a second, before Charlie pulls out his wallet to pay. Dev watches Charlie hand over his credit card and doesn’t let himself fixate on Charlie’s profound kindness, either.
* * *
By the time they get back outside, the clouds have melted away into a warm afternoon, and Charlie produces a pair of Fendi sunglasses from some unknown pocket and pulls off his sweater. He begins tying it around his waist.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“What?” Charlie gestures to the double-knotted sleeves snug on his hips. “It’s fucking hot, and I’m not going to carry it all day.”
Dev shakes his head in feigned disgust. It’s so quintessentially Charlie: looking like a cologne model from the shoulders up with his five-hundred-dollar sunglasses, and like a soccer mom from the waist down, with his sweater tied around him and his sensible shoes.
Dev has the sudden urge to take a picture of him, to document this day and this exact version of Charlie, so six months from now, when Dev is sitting on his couch at his El Monte apartment, with his three Craigslist roommates, watching Charlie’s televised wedding to Daphne Reynolds, he’ll have proof there is some version of Charlie Winshaw who buys other people’s parents extravagant anniversary presents, who lets Dev eat off his plate, who says fuck. A version of Charlie Winshaw who belongs only to him, even if it’s only for a minute, even if it’s only for one practice date.
The urge is too great to ignore. He grabs Charlie by the elbow and drags him down to the pier where there’s a pretty tableau of Table Mountain. “Take a selfie with me, Charlie.”
Charlie doesn’t resist. He puts an arm around Dev’s shoulder, and he leans in close, the indent of his temple locking against the hard line of Dev’s jaw, and all Dev can think about for hours afterward is how perfectly Charlie fits there, tucked beneath his chin.
Charlie
Charlie really wants to kiss Dev right now.
“Where to next?” Dev asks as their limbs come apart slowly like bits of Velcro. Charlie points vaguely toward Table Mountain, unable to concentrate on anything but Dev’s mouth.
“The sky? Are we going for a helicopter ride? How very Ever After of you.”
Charlie really, really wants to kiss him. With his head tucked under Dev’s chin, he could have reached up and kissed him here, on the pier of the V&A Waterfront, with hundreds of tourists going about their own sightseeing as witnesses.
Which is, of course, why he couldn’t kiss him.
“No, we’re going to Table Mountain.”
Dev narrows his eyes. “How do we get up there? By helicopter?”
“There’s a cable car.”
Dev nervously pushes his glasses up his nose. “A cable car?”
“Yes.”
“That, like, goes up the side of the mountain?”
“Yes, logistically, that’s how it will work.”
Dev swallows.
“Are you afraid of heights?”
He throws his shoulders back with some kind of forced bravado. “I’m not afraid of anything. Except emotional intimacy and abandonment.”
And heights. He is clearly afraid of heights. He fidgets in the backseat of the Uber on the way to the aerial Cableway, and when the red cable car comes into view, making its three-thousand-foot ascent, Dev has to wipe his palm sweat onto his skinny jeans.
“We don’t have to do this.”
“I mean, I’m sure it’s worth it, once you get to the top.”
“Yeah, but if—”
“If you can handle shopping, I can handle this.”
They climb out of the Uber and get into the advance-ticket line. Charlie woke up at five in the morning so he could prebook their time slot before his confessional, and soon they’re stepping into the giant car crammed full of sixty other tourists.
Dev tucks himself against a handrail with his back to the window. The car lurches forward. Dev loses his balance, reaches out for Charlie’s hand as the floor begins to rotate for three-sixty views of Cape Town. Dev clenches his eyes shut. “Just tell me when it’s over, okay?”
Charlie gives his hand a small squeeze, secretly grateful for Dev’s fear and the justification it gives them to hold hands. They’re two thousand feet up, trapped in a metal box, spinning their way up a mountain. Dev’s hand is in his, and the view is too spectacular for fear.
“Dev,” he whispers. “Open your eyes. It’s beautiful. Dev.”
Dev peels open one eye. Then another. Charlie watches the view register on Dev’s equally beautiful face. “Whoa,” Dev says when he sees the way the city melts into the lush green of rolling hills, the impossible blue of the ocean, the sharp juts of gray mountain appearing beneath them, Lion’s Head peak puncturing the skyline.
