The Charm Offensive, page 2
Two days ago, Ever After took him to a beach where they expected him to ride a white horse for the intro package, like the Prince Charming he’s supposed to be. Prince Charmings are supposed to intrinsically know how to ride horses. They’re definitely not supposed to be afraid of horses. Instead of looking strapping and manly, he kept slouching and delaying production and grimacing with every uncomfortable jostle of the saddle until the sun was gone and everyone was generally pissed with the shots. The bald woman running set called him “fucking uncoachable.”
Which sounds about right, honestly.
He tries to remember what his publicist said before he left: “You’re Charlie fucking Winshaw. You built a billion-dollar tech company before you got your braces off. You can handle Ever After.”
“But I lost my company,” he had muttered in response. Parisa pretended not to hear him. She knows what he lost. That’s why he’s here. This is his last chance to get it all back.
He feels the pressure of it weighing down on him, and before his generalized anxiety turns the corner into full-blown panic attack, he runs through his coping strategies: three deep breaths; count to thirty in seven languages; tap out the Morse code for “calm” thirteen times on his knee.
Maureen Scott stops jabbing her thumbs against the phone screen and looks at him—really looks at him for the first time all evening. “What are we going to do with you?” she muses, her voice sickly sweet.
He wants to remind her she is the one who sought him out. She’s the one who pestered his publicist for months until he agreed to do the show. He says nothing.
“You need to relax,” she drawls, as if telling someone to relax has ever once in the history of human beings yielded that outcome. Maureen’s silver-gray bob swishes stylishly as she shoots him a threatening look. “All of our futures are riding on this. You need some personal rebranding, for obvious reasons. The show does too. Don’t fuck this up for everyone.”
He would like the record to show he does not fuck things up on purpose. He would very much like to be a not-fucking-things-up sort of person. If he were that sort of person, he wouldn’t be the new star of a reality dating show.
Maureen narrows shrewd eyes at him. “Stop looking so gloomy, darling. You get to date twenty beautiful women, and when it’s over, you will propose to whoever is left standing. What’s so awful about that?”
What’s so awful about dating on television when he has not gone on a real date in two years? What’s so awful about getting fake-engaged to an almost-stranger on the slim promise he might be able to work again when this is over?
Nothing. Nothing at all. He feels great about all of this.
In other news, he’s probably going to vomit.
“And who knows,” Maureen says cloyingly. “Maybe you’ll even find real love by the end.”
He won’t. That’s the one thing he knows for absolute certain.
The car comes to a smooth stop, and Maureen pockets her phone. “Now, when we get out, you’ll meet Dev, your new handler, and he’ll coach you through the entrance ceremony.”
Charlie wants to ask what was wrong with his old handler, but the driver turns off the engine, and without another word, Maureen gets out of the car and disappears into the night. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to follow her, or just sit in the car like a pretty puppet until someone shows up to pull his strings.
He chooses the former, refusing to relinquish every ounce of his free will as he embarks on this two-month journey through reality television hell. He dramatically throws his weight against the door… which gives with suspicious ease.
Because it turns out someone is opening the door at that exact moment. He’s thrown off balance. In one fluid motion, he lands facedown at someone’s feet.
“Shit. Are you okay?”
Suddenly, there are hands on him, hoisting him into a standing position exactly like a pretty puppet. The hands belong to a tall man with dark skin whose Adam’s apple is at Charlie’s eye line. There is something disconcerting about having to look up that drastically at another person. He looks up. Dramatic cheekbones and intense eyes behind plastic-framed glasses and an amused mouth. The man gripping the front of his tux (Dev?) slides his fingers into Charlie’s hair to adjust the crown, and it’s too much.
Too much touching.
Too much everything, too quickly.
The anxiety hijacks his brain, and in a panic, he throws himself backward against the car door to break contact. The new handler raises a single eyebrow in response. “So, no touching, then?” He flashes Charlie a crooked smile, like this is all a big joke.
Touching is never a joke to Charlie. He doesn’t hate it as a general rule, but he does prefer advance warning and for hand sanitizer to be involved. He knows he signed up for this show where touching is required, so he attempts to explain. “You can touch me anywhere you like,” he starts.
And he realizes he’s phrased this inelegantly when the man’s other eyebrow shoots up.
“Wait, no, what I meant was… I don’t mind being touched by you, but if you could just… uh… if you could wash your hands first? Not that I think you are unclean. I’m sure you are very clean. I mean, you smell clean, but I have a thing about germs, and if you could maybe warn me? Before you touch me?”
This is what he gets for attempting verbal communication with a stranger. At first, his handler simply stares at him in openmouthed silence. Then… “No!” he says firmly. “Get back in the car.”
Dev yanks the door back open and kicks at Charlie’s legs with the toe of his Converse. Charlie’s reentrance into the car is about as graceful as his exit two minutes before. He tries to scoot backward to make room for the very tall man who is now halfway sitting on top of him.
Dev asks the driver to get out. “I’m sorry,” Charlie blurts. Apologizing always seems like a good idea when he doesn’t understand a social situation, and he has absolutely no idea what’s happening right now.
“Please stop talking!” Dev plunges his hands into a gigantic shoulder bag and pulls out a tiny bottle of green hand sanitizer. He lathers his hands, and Charlie is weirdly moved by the gesture. Then, when he realizes the hand sanitizer means more touching, he is weirdly freaked out by the gesture.
“Lean forward,” Dev orders.
“Uh…”
“Hurry! Lean forward!”
Charlie leans and this total stranger reaches around his back and untucks his shirt, warm fingers sliding across his skin. And yes, in the past few days, he’s learned LA types are very weird about both personal space and naked bodies, but Charlie is not an LA type. He’s not accustomed to being groped in cars by men wearing truly hideous cargo shorts.
Dev’s fingers feel like pinpricks every time they make contact as he fondles the nude-colored mic belt wardrobe put on Charlie back at the studio. After fifteen excruciating seconds, which Charlie counts out one Mississippi at a time to stop himself from spiraling, Dev pulls away and slumps back against the seat. Charlie finally exhales.
“Holy shit, dude. You were hot.”
“I—what?”
“Your mic.” Dev points to the place where Charlie’s shirt is now untucked in the back and then points to his own earpiece, where someone is presumably shouting things. “Someone left your mic on from earlier, and you’re back in receiver range. Always be wary of a hot mic. Consider this the first lesson from your new handler: anything you say can be taken out of context. Your soliloquy about letting me touch you could easily be inserted into a very different kind of scene.”
“Oh.” He’s suddenly reminded it’s June in Southern California, and he is sweating without the air-conditioning. “Right. Okay, right. Yeah. Sorry.”
From two feet away, his new handler studies him carefully behind his glasses. Charlie holds eye contact for one Mississippi, two Mississippi, then looks down and nervously adjusts his cuffs.
“Did you get hurt? When you fell out of the car?” Dev asks softly. “You look like you’re in pain.”
“Oh. Uh, no.”
Dev dives back into his shoulder bag. “I’ve got pain killers and Tiger Balm and Band-Aids. What do you need?”
“N-nothing,” he mutters. “I’m fine.”
Dev is cradling an entire first-aid kit in his arms. “But your face. It’s all pinched together like you’re in pain.”
“Um. That’s just. My face.”
At that, Dev throws his head back and laughs. One of Charlie’s chief failures in life is his inability to understand when someone is laughing with him versus laughing at him. Nine times out of ten, it’s the latter.
“It’s confusing,” Dev notes in a tone that almost makes Charlie think he’s laughing with him, “because you look like the guy in a fancy cologne commercial, but you’re distinctly acting like the guy in an IBS medication commercial.”
“I can be both of those guys simultaneously.”
“Not on this show you can’t.” Dev pulls the People magazine out from under him and jabs a finger at the face on the cover. “If this whole thing is going to work, you’ve got to be this guy for the cameras.”
Charlie stares at the magazine version of himself, fumbling for a way to explain. I’m not that guy. I don’t know how to be that guy. This was a huge mistake.
“I…”
The car door behind Dev opens. He manages, quite easily, not to fall out.
“Dev! What the fuck are you doing in here? We’re behind schedule, and Skylar is going to demote us to casting if we don’t get the prince to his fucking mark this fucking instant.”
The petite foul-mouth shoves her arm toward Charlie. “Jules Lu. Nice to meet you. I’m your production assistant. It’s my job to make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there. And you are not where you’re supposed to be right now.”
“Sorry.” He stares at her hand but doesn’t take it. “Uh, you… also meet.”
“Does he think that was a sentence?” Jules asks Dev. “God, we’re screwed.”
Jules yanks Dev out of the car, and Dev yanks Charlie out of the car, and anything Charlie was going to say to Dev gets swallowed up by the madness all around them. They head up a path toward the set, which is supposed to look like a fairy tale. The castle is lit up in the distance, and the show’s host, Mark Davenport, waits in front of an ornate fountain. There are twinkle lights and flowers and a horse-drawn carriage ripped straight out of Cinderella.
It should look like a fairy tale, but the castle is actually just a millionaire’s house in Pasadena, and there are crew members dressed in black, shouting and vaping. Mark Davenport screams at his assistant about kombucha until she cries.
So, like, not quite Walt Disney’s vision.
“Stand here for me.” Dev motions to a little tape x, and he warns Charlie before he slides his hands around Charlie’s back again to click on his mic. Charlie tenses. This is it. He can’t undo it, can’t back out, can’t hide. If he thinks too hard about the past year and all the things that led him here, to this single act of desperation, he knows he won’t be able to keep it together.
“Remember,” Dev says low and close to his ear, “everyone in Command Central can hear you now.”
Charlie swallows the lump forming in his throat.
“You look miserable.”
“Oh, that’s probably because I am miserable.”
“Mic.”
“I’m… ah… miserably happy to be here.”
“Very convincing save. You’re a natural at this.”
Charlie smiles despite himself, and Dev explodes with an enthusiastic, “Yes! Yes!” He turns his fingers into a box and squints one eye like he’s lining up the shot. “Just like that! Smile just like that when the cameras are on.”
Unfortunately, Charlie’s smile collapses in on itself as soon as Dev draws attention to it.
“Well, now you look like you’re going to vomit.”
“I probably am.”
“You’re not going to vomit! You’re about to meet twenty women who are all here on a quest to find love with you!” Dev seems to think this is a delightful prospect, as if all of Charlie’s fairy-tale dreams are about to come true. As if Charlie has fairy-tale dreams. “This is going to be amazing!”
Dev forgets the advance-notice-for-touching rule, and his hand folds around Charlie’s bicep, burning through the layers of his tux. Charlie isn’t sure what’s happening to his body right now, but it’s not good. It’s maybe very, very bad.
Dev leans in even closer. His breath is hot on Charlie’s cheek. He smells like sugar and chocolate and something else Charlie can’t quite place. “I know you’re freaked out right now, but at the end of all of this, you’re going to find love,” Dev whispers. “In nine weeks, you’re going to have a fiancée.”
And that’s when Charlie truly does vomit, all over Dev.
Dev
There is vomit on his Chucks.
Granted, there is always vomit on his shoes the first night of shooting, but it usually happens at dawn, not dusk, and the vomit typically belongs to an overserved contestant, not to Prince Charming himself.
Then again, it turns out Charles Winshaw is no one’s definition of a Prince Charming, no matter how much he might look the part. And he really does look the part. Broad-shouldered, with the tux doing little to conceal his muscular build. Straight-nosed and square-jawed and sweet—it’s the sweetness that caught Dev off guard when Charles fell out of the town car. All the men who come on this show are handsome. None of them have ever been sweet.
Then again, none of them have ever been quite this handsome. Charles Winshaw is somehow the most beautiful man Dev’s ever seen in real life, even with vomit in his chin dimple. Even talking absolute nonsense. Even with all the nervous sweating.
(Maybe especially with all the nervous sweating.)
“I… I’m s-so, so, so sorry,” he sputters.
Any annoyance Dev feels about the vomit disappears when he looks up into Charles Winshaw’s enormous eyes. He’s like a terrified baby bird. Like a two-hundred-twenty-pound baby bird with crippling anxiety and a fairly intense germ phobia who can’t navigate his way through a complete sentence.
A man from set design comes over with a hose to casually clean the puke off the pavement and douses Dev with a burst of cold water, which is pretty par for the course on his night so far.
“I… seriously… so sorry,” Charles says again as the makeup team swoops in to fix his face without missing a beat.
The vomit is cleared from his chin, the lights are adjusted, and from somewhere in the dark, the first AD shouts, “Final checks, please!” whether Charles is ready to become Prince Charming or not.
He’s definitely not. He looks gray and sickly, and Dev wants to stay by his side, but the AD calls to lock it up, and Dev jumps out of frame at the last second.
They’re rolling. The sound of horse hooves on wet flagstone fills the now-silent set, and then the carriage comes into view, rolling up to the fountain where Charles is waiting. Camera one stays trained on Charles, while camera two films the door opening. A woman in a blue dress steps out: big blue eyes to match her dress, blond beach curls, slender figure. She smiles shyly when she sees Charles, a cross necklace framed in her plunging neckline.
Her name is Daphne Reynolds, and she’s the former beauty queen from Dev’s limo. It’s no surprise Maureen sent her out of the carriage first. Quite frankly, she looks like someone fed a 3-D printer the algorithm for creating an Ever After winner. Dev knows from her file she has a college degree and her father’s a reverend, which means she perfectly straddles the line of catering to the show’s large conservative fan base without alienating its even larger feminist fan base, which claims to watch ironically.
“Hi,” Daphne says, her heels now clacking on the stones. Charles does not say hi back. Charles does not move. He stands by the fountain, his arms stiff and awkward and maybe not attached to his body, and he does not react to the beautiful woman approaching him. No smile. Not a flicker of lust.
Perhaps in response to his indifference, Daphne hesitates as she gets closer. Sputters, stops, and briefly looks like she’s contemplating a leap over the gate. She takes another step forward, and her silvery heels either catch the hem of her dress or an especially wet stone, and she slips, topples forward directly into the immovable, stoic wall that is Charles Winshaw. It’s almost a perfect—albeit unconventional for this show—meet-cute, except instead of putting out an arm to rescue Daphne, Charles flinches backward at her physical contact with his chest. She manages to right herself without his help.
“Stop! Stop!” Skylar screams. The director bursts out of the Command Central tent and into the shot, even though the cameras never stop rolling on Ever After. “What the hell was that? How can two sexy people be so offensively unsexy together? Take it again!”
Daphne’s handler escorts her back to the carriage, and they take the scene from the opening of the door. This time, Daphne doesn’t trip, but Charles still looks disinterested, and they shake hands like this is a board meeting. So they film the scene again. And again. By the fifth take, Jules is turtling into her overalls from secondhand embarrassment, Charles looks like he might vomit again from the stress, and Skylar is screaming profanities into everyone’s earpieces.
Dev has to do something before the season actually is epically fucked. He waves his hands in front of the camera to get Skylar’s attention back at Command Central and requests a five-minute break. Then he darts across the courtyard toward the first limo, where the contestants wait for their carriage ride.
“Ladies!” he greets as he slides inside. “How’s it going in here?”
They’ve all had another two hours’ worth of limo champagne fed to them by their new handler, Kennedy, who looks slightly shell-shocked by their sudden, unexpected promotion. The women hoot and holler in response. They seem to be in the middle of a dance party. Dev briefly mourns the fact that he’s not going to be spending the next nine weeks with these amazing women. “Sorry I abandoned y’all, but they’ve got me working with your Prince Charming. He’s a little bit nervous about meeting so many beautiful women.”
