Page 108 of The Charm Offensive
Behind him, a producer is yelling, and Charlie breaks off, thinking they’re finally going to commercial break. Maybe he’ll finally have two minutes to rush behind the risers and cry in private, because no matter how honest you’re trying to be, some things should only belong to you.
Skylar doesn’t call cut, though, and the producers keep screaming, keep cursing at a volume the studio microphones will definitely pick up. When Charlie turns toward the sound of the commotion, he sees someone rushing onto the stage. For a moment he’s terrified. While most people responded to his season with an outpouring of love, there are still some dangers to being a queer person who discusses their mental illness on the internet, even for extremely privileged white men like him. He knows Angie and Daphne both had to deal with much worse after the show aired.
“Well, this isn’t quite how we planned to do this,” Mark says with an edge of annoyance as he studies the man on set. The gate-crasher stops on the edge of the platform, and Charlie squints through the studio lights, sees black skinny jeans and a ridiculously oversize jean jacket.
It’s Dev.
Dev
I don’t think I can talk to Dev again.
That’s what Charlie said. That’s what Dev feared. As he got on a plane, as he sat in the backseat of a town car on the way to thestudio, as he sat in a greenroom watching the man he loves talk about how happy he is now without him. Why would Charlie want to talk to Dev again? After everything, why would Charlie ever want to see him?
Charlie said those words—I don’t think I can talk to Dev again—and Dev stormed out of the greenroom. Part of him wanted to run outside and call a Lyft. He ended up onstage instead.
He’s never been on this side of things before. This side of things is horrifying.
The lights are too hot and too bright. Dev squints, trying to adjust. The audience is painted in shadows, and he stumbles two steps forward, freezes. Skylar is just off camera, swearing at him.
The audience reacts to Dev’s unexpected presence with a collective gasp, and Charlie slowly rises from the couch. He looks different. His hair is shorter in the front, and he’s lost some weight, but it’s more than that. It’s the way he stands, so confidently, so unshakable, so certain of what to do with his arms.
They are thirty feet apart, separated by the glossy studio floor and two months of memories and three months of not talking.
“Hi,” Charlie says, breaking the silence first.
“Hi,” Dev says back.
Everything is too silent and too still, and it turns Dev’s brain to microphone static. He forgets everything he meant to say. He’s scripted this scene a dozen times for other people, but he has no idea what he’s supposed to say as himself. When it’sreal.He says: “I know I fucked it all up.”
Then: “Shit, you can’t say ‘fuck’ on live television. Ohfuck.”
He rams his fist into his hair and tries to take three deep breaths. He looks up and sees Charlie smiling from thirty feetaway, and that smile feels like encouragement. He takes a step forward.
“What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I feel like I owe you an apology at the very least.”
Dev takes another step forward, watches Charlie tense, and pauses. “I’m sorry I left without telling you, but I felt like there was no way for you to ever truly choose me, so I chose myself instead. I didn’t think there was room for me—for us—in the world ofEver After, but you rewrote all the fucking rules.Freakingrules.”
Dev stops talking and looks at Charlie, looks at all of him. He gives himself a minute to appreciate the exquisite beauty of this man in a gray suit, in case this is his last chance. The minute stretches. Dev doesn’t move, and Charlie doesn’t move, and it feels like there are no cameras. There is no audience. No Skylar swearing into a headset or Mark Davenport looking gleeful in his chair. There is just Charlie. Just Dev.
Charlie shatters the moment. “This sounds more like an excuse than an apology.”
“Can’t it be both?” Dev shrugs sheepishly, hopes he can somehow charm his way out of this public embarrassment. Then again, he embarrassed Charlie publicly when he left, so maybe this is exactly what he deserves. “I’m sorry I gave up when things got hard. I’m sorry I didn’t see another way for the story to end. But I’m not sorry I left, because I needed to learn to take better care of myself.”
“I know,” Charlie says. He takes a step forward, so Dev takes a step forward, and now Charlie’s only about two Devs’ lengths away. “So is that the only reason you came to speak to me in front of twenty million viewers? To apologize?”
He wants to say yes. He wants to smile and laugh it off and be Fun Dev. Charlie doesn’t want to talk to him, and it would be so much easier to slip into that old way of being like he slipped into this jean jacket, to hide his heartbreak behind an indifferent smile. Because there is nothing more terrifying than standing up in front of the world and declaring that you deserve love.
But then he thinks about what Jules said. Maybe this show is bullshit. Maybe (okay,definitely) fairy-tale love is not real. Charlie Winshaw is not Prince Charming, but he’s still pretty damn special, and maybe Dev deserves to be on this stage anyway. Maybe they both do.
“No,” Dev says. “I came here to tell you I love you, Charlie. I don’t think I know how tonotlove you, and I am even more in love with you now than I was three months ago. I want the house and the puzzles and the plants by the windows—if you still want all those things, too.”
Charlie’s face transforms into the one Dev fell in love with first, the snarl of his furrowed brow, the sheen of nervous sweat on his forehead. “Are you going to pull away again?”
“No, I won’t.”
Charlie takes three certain steps forward. As the distance fades, so does everything else, and this conversation shrinks down to the two of them, a foot apart. Charlie doesn’t speak, and Dev doesn’t know what else he can say. He doesn’t have the perfect words, because he’s not perfect, and Charlie’s not perfect, and this whole thing is so utterly imperfect, Dev snorts.
“I still want kids,” he blurts.
