The Charm Offensive, page 9
He knows the stain isn’t literally getting bigger, but it feels like it is. It’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and Charlie’s skin is getting tighter and tighter. He tries to revert to a coping strategy, count to thirty in German, but the spiral is too strong, and he is unable to latch onto any thought but stain.
Stain stain stain.
If he doesn’t do something about it right now, he’ll peel off his own skin.
Without thinking, he reaches out for the bottom of Dev’s white T-shirt and pulls. “Take off your shirt!”
Dev
Charlie’s fist is knotted in the fabric of his shirt. Dev takes another large step backward until it’s not. “Excuse me?”
Dev knows, professionally speaking, getting drunk alone with Charlie Winshaw is maybe not the smartest thing he’s ever done, but it felt so good to finally open up to someone about everything with Ryan—to have someone listen, to have someone give him permission to let go of the Fun Dev mask a tiny bit. Just for a minute.
In his defense, he could not have predicted Charlie would start demanding he remove articles of clothing.
Charlie springs off the stool. “You need to take your shirt off so we can soak the stain.” He rushes into the small kitchen, flings open cupboards, pulling things down violently. “Why is there no white vinegar in this house?”
“Well, it’s a fake house.…”
“Dish soap will have to work.”
It isn’t until Charlie has filled a bowl with warm water and Dawn dish soap that Dev realizes what’s going on. “It’s just a shirt, Charlie. They come in Costco three-packs. Don’t stress about it.”
“I can’t just not stress about it!” Charlie’s fists slam onto the countertop. “My mind doesn’t work that way!”
And oh.
Until this exact moment, Dev assumed Charlie’s social awkwardness was the product of generalized anxiety and too many Friday nights spent in front of a computer screen instead of out in the world with other humans. It hadn’t occurred to him it could be something else.
Briefly, viciously, Ryan’s “head case” creeps back into his mind. But then he’s thinking about Charlie’s constant fear of saying the wrong thing, and Charlie’s fear of letting other people get close, and Dev wonders if maybe there isn’t something very specific Charlie Winshaw doesn’t want other people to see.
The anger fades from Charlie’s posture as quickly as it appeared, and Dev crosses the kitchen and puts a cautious hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Okay,” he says quietly. “We’ll soak the shirt.”
Dev pulls the T-shirt up over his head, and Charlie’s eyes travel the distance between his clavicle and his hipbones before they fix themselves back on the bowl of soapy water. “Um, we should soak it for fifteen minutes.” Charlie sets the timer on his phone. “And then put it in the wash.”
“Okay,” Dev says again. He knows the signs of Charlie’s anxiety now—the way his shoulders rise up to his ears, the way his eyebrows compress together, his mouth a painful grimace, his eyes hazy. Dev starts tapping a pattern over and over again with two fingers onto Charlie’s shoulder.
Charlie watches Dev’s fingers. “How do you…?” He seizes an awkward breath. “It’s Morse code. For ‘calm.’ ”
“Is it? Huh.” Dev keeps drumming the pattern. His voice is low, quiet. Calm. He’s not sure where the calm is coming from, but calm is what Charlie needs, so Dev pulls it up from some secret wellspring he didn’t know he had. “I’ve seen you do this on set when you’re anxious. When it gets like this, how can I help?”
Charlie swallows. “No one has ever asked me that before.” He looks back at Dev, and his eyes linger this time. They’re close enough for Dev to smell his oatmeal body wash and feel the way Charlie tenses, tightens a bit beneath Dev’s fingers. Dev is always so careful to not look at Charlie fully, but Charlie’s right here, in freckle-counting range, letting Dev help him through this, and Dev is overwhelmed by how desperately he wants to help.
“Take your deep breaths,” Dev whispers. Charlie takes three breaths—always exactly three—whenever he needs to calm down, and he takes a shaky one now and holds it in.
“Exhale.” Charlie does, and they’re so close, Charlie’s breath is humid on Dev’s throat. “Again.”
Charlie takes another slow, painful breath, and Dev can see it strain against the buttons on Charlie’s shirt.
“Last one.”
Charlie takes his third breath, deep and clear, and Dev slips his fingers into Charlie’s hair as he waits for the exhale. He teases apart Charlie’s thick blond curls, massaging his scalp. In this moment, it feels like Charlie is wide open for him. A week of puzzle pieces, sci-fi shows, and the smallest hints of a hard childhood, but at two in the morning in the guesthouse kitchen, it almost feels like he’s glimpsing Charlie Winshaw in his entirety—anxious and obsessive and still so fucking beautiful—leaning into Dev like there’s some secret part of Charlie that wants to let other people in but doesn’t know how. “I’m sorry I’m such a… burden.”
That word opens a fissure inside Dev’s chest. Burden. The way he felt as a kid every time his mom got off work early to take him to therapy; the way he felt every time his dad just wanted to spend a fun Saturday together, but he was too restless or too lethargic, too loud or too quiet, spontaneously crying in front of a Rodin sculpture at the North Carolina Museum of Art. The way he felt every time they sat him down and begged him to just tell them what was wrong, and even though he loved words—loved using words to build stories and escape hatches from the real world—he could never find the right ones to help his parents understand his heart and his mind.
“You’re not a burden, Charlie. Let me take care of you. It’s my job.”
For one more second, he does. Charlie exhales and arches into Dev’s hand. Just as quickly, he pulls away, tripping into the cabinets behind him.
“Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah. Yes. No, that helped, so… thank you. But I should… bed.”
“What about the shirt?” Dev points to the bowl on the counter, but Charlie’s already out of the kitchen, rushing into his bedroom.
Dev stands there staring at the closed door for a long time after Charlie’s locked himself away behind it.
Charlie
He doesn’t sleep. He twists himself into a thousand anxious knots between starched sheets that aren’t his, in a bed that’s not his, in a room that’s not his. He stares up at a popcorn ceiling in the dark and counts dots into the thousands. He hasn’t had an episode that severe in years.
As a kid, long before he knew what the term compulsion meant, he would get stuck in these patterns he couldn’t explain. He would sit on the swings at recess, reciting the same storybooks from memory over and over again until he got it just right; he would have to spit up his saliva into tissues because he was terrified if he swallowed he would choke on it; he would have to do every school assignment perfectly, even if it meant spending hours on a single hand turkey for Thanksgiving. Being perfect was the only way to ensure everything was safe and everything was healthy.
Then he grew up. He had good teachers who took a vested interest in his intelligence. His good teachers found him good therapists, who provided him with good treatment and good meds, and for the most part, his intrusive thoughts and compulsions haven’t controlled his adult life. Not in a long time. Not until he lost his damn mind over two drops of bourbon on a white T-shirt.
He had an episode in front of Dev, and now Dev’s going to act differently. People always do.
Except… Dev tried to understand, which people almost never do.
Let me take care of you.
Charlie punches his pillows, trying to get comfortable, but it’s no use. His brain is a runaway train, and he’s never going to sleep. He does calculus in his head until it’s an acceptable hour to get up. Then he does the most strenuous exercise video he can find on YouTube as punishment for the Bourbon Stain Incident, for the way he can’t seem to keep it all together, even now, when it matters the most.
When exercise doesn’t help, he calls his therapist to schedule an emergency session, takes a Xanax, and throws himself into the shower. He puts off facing Dev for as long as he can, then forces himself to go into the kitchen to deal with the fallout.
He finds his roommate dancing to Leland Barlow in front of the stove. Something is burning. “I’m making brunch,” Dev announces, flinging his spatula like a baton. “And yes, the pancakes are vegan and gluten-free. Do you want blueberries in yours?”
“Um…” Charlie doesn’t know what to make of this scene. Is Dev’s plan to butter him up with baked goods before he stages a mental illness intervention? (It wouldn’t be the first time—Josh once bought him a new micro soldering kit before he told Charlie he couldn’t do interviews on behalf of the company anymore.)
“I’m taking that as a yes,” Dev says, sprinkling blueberries into the batter on the skillet. “Do you need help deciding who you’re going to send home at tonight’s ceremony?”
Dev deposits a plate of dark brown pancakes in front of Charlie. “Uh, what?”
“You’ve got to send home two more contestants tonight, and I think it’s between Shawna, Emily, and Lauren S.”
“Who is Shawna again?”
“Exactly.”
Charlie picks up his fork and knife and begins cutting his pancake into meticulous little squares, waiting for Dev to pull the rug out from under him, waiting for Dev to act less Dev and more like people do whenever he has a breakdown.
“How are the pancakes?”
Somehow both burned and raw in the middle. “Delicious.”
“Be honest, Charlie.”
“I think I already have food poisoning.”
Dev laughs, and Charlie stares at his mouth. He doesn’t understand what’s happening. Why isn’t Dev being awkward around him like his colleagues at WinHan used to be after an episode, avoiding eye contact like they were embarrassed for him, skirting him in the halls like he was a bomb set to go off? Why isn’t Dev confronting him about the Bourbon Stain Incident? Why isn’t he looking at Charlie with the mixture of pity and fear he memorized on Josh’s face?
“Well, this was a failure,” Dev says, grabbing the plate and sliding the contents straight into the trash. “Should I send Jules to get takeout? I’m thinking breakfast burritos.”
Charlie stares at Dev in his hideous cargo shorts and his ill-fitting T-shirt, toothpaste in the corner of his mouth, and he finally accepts Dev is never going to pull out the rug.
Charlie hasn’t met many people like this—people who don’t make assumptions about you when they discover your brain doesn’t work like theirs; people who don’t judge you; people who simply stay with you and ask what they can do to help. People who trustingly hand you all of themselves in PDF form.
“You’re staring at me. Do I have something on my face?”
“Literally always,” Charlie says, and Dev laughs again, louder this time. Charlie feels the sound unlocking all his twisted fears. “I have OCD,” he says before he can’t.
Dev props an elbow on the countertop and leans into his hand. “Okay.”
“Real OCD. Not the thing where people think it’s cute that they’re anal about organizing their pen cup.”
“Yes, I figured.”
“And I have generalized anxiety. And a panic disorder.”
“Okay,” Dev says again. Like it truly is okay.
Charlie feels a loosening in his chest, an unburdening. He’s only ever talked about this with Parisa, but she always looks at him like he’s a rare, exotic bird living in her attic, and she’s hoping he’ll one day fly out an open window into the world.
Dev is looking at him like he’s a man sitting on a kitchen stool who didn’t like his pancakes. It’s as if nothing has changed.
Charlie takes only one breath. “Okay.”
Dev comes around the counter toward Charlie on the stool. For a second, he stands close, like he did last night, crowding between Charlie’s legs. Charlie becomes hyperaware of his skin against the seams of his clothes. Dev reaches up to ruffle Charlie’s hair again, but he’s got a pained look on his face. “You know you still deserve to have this love story. Right?”
Charlie swallows a weird lump forming in the back of his throat. Dev’s fingers are still resting in his hair, and Charlie looks up.
“You deserve love,” Dev says again, “and I honestly think Angie and Daphne are both good fits for you. I think both of them will love you, Charlie. Just as you are.”
Dev steps back. Charlie closes his legs. “Angie and Daphne,” he repeats.
Dev nods. “Oh, yeah. It’s definitely going to come down to the two of them. So, breakfast burritos?”
Charlie tries to smile. “Breakfast burritos.”
Story notes for editors:
Season 37, Episode 3
Story producer:
Ryan Parker
Air date:
Monday, September 27, 2021
Executive producer:
Maureen Scott
Scene: Daphne, Angie, and Sabrina debrief Daphne’s Courting Date
Location: Poolside, Ever After castle
Daphne: The date was going great. He was so sweet when I panicked about the hot-air balloon, and then I ruined it by pushing him at dinner.
Angie: It sounds like he ruined it by being unable to answer a fairly basic question.
Sabrina: It’s not unreasonable to expect a man you’re dating to be able to articulate what he’s looking for in a partner.
Angie: And if he’s looking for a Thomas Kincaid thousand-piece jigsaw, we should all know that now.
Daphne: [Cut to the close-up of her nervously pushing her hair behind her ear.] He obviously gets… I don’t know…anxious sometimes.
Sabrina: I don’t think you’re allowed to talk about things like that on Ever After.
Angie: [Shot of Angie reaching out to put a hand on Daphne’s thigh.] Girl, don’t take on the blame for this. You didn’t do anything wrong, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up.
Daphne: I shouldn’t have expected him to talk about serious stuff on our first real date.
Angie: Honestly, men. This is why it’s so much easier dating women.
Sabrina: You’re definitely not allowed to talk about that on Ever After.
Daphne: [Close-up of her staring down at Angie’s hand on her thigh.] You’ve dated… women?
Angie: What, they don’t have bisexuals on the Georgia pageant circuit?
Maureen’s note to editors: Cut this entire scene and replace it with the one of Megan and Delilah shit-talking the other women in the hot tub.
WEEK THREE
Pasadena—Wednesday, June 23, 2021
12 Contestants and 46 Days Remaining
Charlie
He can’t sleep again. He hasn’t been able to sleep in days.
It’s one in the morning, and he’s tried meditation, tried journaling, tried calling Parisa in the hopes the sound of her familiar voice might soothe him to sleep, but none of it has worked.
He should be exhausted, both emotionally and physically. At today’s Group Quest, the women competed in a relay race to rescue him from a tower (Ever After’s answer to feminism, apparently), and when Daphne won again, half the women revolted, with Megan leading the mob, claiming the game was rigged. (Which, obviously, it was.) Angie and Sabrina defended Daphne, and Charlie spent most of the day trying to mend fences and prevent an all-out war. The producers loved every minute of it.
There’s no point in counting asbestos dots in the dark for the third night in a row, so he climbs out of bed, clicks on the light, and fishes out his iPad. He hasn’t opened the email Dev sent since the Bourbon Stain Incident, but he opens it now and climbs back in bed. He starts to read Dev’s script.
It is definitely all of Dev.
As he reads the dialogue, he can hear Dev’s voice, almost as if he’s lying on the bed next to Charlie, reading it aloud to him. He doesn’t know a damn thing about screenplays, and jargon like MCU and EXT means nothing to him, but somehow, he can imagine the world Dev is creating with his words all the same. The protagonist, Ravi Patel, is Dev: a hopeless romantic who has been unlucky in love but is still convinced of its almighty power.
There is a meet-cute, as Dev would call it. A miscommunication. An enemies-to-lovers trope Charlie remembers from his days of reading Star Trek fanfic on his home-built laptop. About halfway through the script, Charlie realizes he has never read a story about two men falling in love before.
He pushes himself back against the headboard and draws his knees up to his chest. There is a foreign pressure in his stomach, but he ignores it, completely engrossed in Dev’s story. The screenplay ends the only way it could, with an epic kiss and a happily ever after, and when it’s over, Charlie stares at the blank white space at the end of the PDF for a long time. Even though it’s the middle of the night, he feels compelled to talk about it. Right now.
He follows this urge all the way to Dev’s bedroom door.
Dev’s awake, sitting cross-legged with his laptop, wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt featuring a young man’s face surrounded by rainbow starbursts. When he looks up and sees Charlie, he smiles. “Hey. What are you doing awake?”
Charlie steps into the room, then pauses when he notices the white fingerprints down Dev’s shirt. “Are you eating white cheddar popcorn in your bed at three in the morning?”
“Did you come in here at three in the morning to judge me?”
“No.” Charlie sits down on the edge of Dev’s bed. He gestures to Dev’s shirt. “Did you get that at a Leland Barlow concert?”
Dev plucks at the image of the man’s face on his chest. “What? Oh, no. I missed him when he was in LA last year. Tickets were expensive, and I thought Ryan was going to get them for me for Christmas, but he bought a PS5 instead. Jules ordered me the shirt online.”
“Do you like video games?” Charlie asks, but he already knows the answer.
