Page 98 of The Charm Offensive
Charlie
“Charlie,wait!”
Charlie doesn’t wait. He storms down the hall and out into the ballroom where Angie and Lauren L. are still waiting with confused looks on their faces. He should feel anxious right now—he waits for the panic to take over—but the anger is taking up too much room inside him at the moment. He’s sofuckingangry.
He’s angry at Jules, who only supported his and Dev’s relationship when it was convenient for her to do so. He’s angry at Skylar, who knotted his bow tie and told him to choose Dev and still didn’t speak up for him. He’s angry at Maureen, obviously, for being exactly who he thought she was.
And he’s so damn angry at Dev.
He has virtually no awareness of Daphne returning from the back room, her makeup redone, taking her place between Angie and Lauren, but he knows it must have happened. He knows he picks up a tiara and calls her name, and that she steps forward. When he asks, “Are you interested in becoming my princess?”Daphne Reynolds says yes, despite everything. He knows he gives Angie the second tiara and sends Lauren home, but he can’t recall any of the particular details of that or anything else, because the anger is ringing too loudly in his ears.
After, Ryan tries to talk to him. Skylar pulls him aside. Jules apologizes. The anger drowns out all their words.
He ends up in the back of a town car. He ends up in an elevator. He ends up outside of his hotel room door. When he fumbles with his card key and gets the door open, he finds Dev there, sitting on the edge of the bed they wrecked together the night before. And Charlie is angry, but he’s also hurt, and he can’t quite help himself from falling into Dev’s arms as soon as they’re alone.
“That was awful,” Charlie cries into the crook of Dev’s neck.
Dev runs his fingers through Charlie’s hair, teasing apart the curls like he always does, but when he speaks, it’s with his hollow voice. “I know, love. I know. I’m so sorry.”
Charlie lets himself cry a bit longer, lets himself enjoy the feeling of Dev’s arms and Dev’s body before he pulls back. “What are we going to do?”
Dev’s eyes are glassy. Faraway. “There’s nothing we can do. We all signed contracts. You’ll propose to Daphne and get engaged, and the show will air, and then you’ll finally get everything you want.”
“I wantyou,” Charlie says. Because he does. Even though Dev stood there like a coward while Maureen threatened him, and even though Charlie is angry right now, he understands. Dev spent six years—hell, Dev spent most of hislife—thinking this show was the perfect fairy tale, and he only just witnessed the ugly truth of it for the first time. Charlie understands why Dev couldn’t stand up for him, couldn’t stand beside him.
What he doesn’t understand is why Dev is pulling away right now.
“We both knew how this was going to end, Charlie,” he says, as he slides out from beneath Charlie’s weight. He walks over to the hotel desk and rubs his finger along the edge of a Courtyard Marriott notepad. “We both know this has an expiration date.”
“What if I don’t want it to end? What if I want”—he almost says forever, but Dev is standing in front of the desk with his closed-off posture, and the word can’t make it past his lips—“more.”
Dev folds his arms across his chest. Charlie sees it for what it is: a feeble attempt on Dev’s part to protect himself. “There isn’t anymoreto have. We want different things.”
“I thought we both wanted that house in Venice Beach?”
“That was a fantasy!” Dev erupts. “It would never work!”
“Because of me?”
“Because of both of us! Because you’re a reality television star and I’m your producer!”
“Only for another week.”
Dev rakes his fingers violently through his hair.
“Do you want kids, Charlie?”
It’s the last thing he expected Dev to ask him, and any attempt at an answer gets sealed off inside his dry throat.
“Because I want kids. Four of them. And I want marriage. I want to walk down the aisle wearing a heinous white tux that would embarrass the shit out of you, and I don’t want to spend another six years with someone who doesn’t want what I want.”
It’s all spinning so far out of Charlie’s control. He thought, stupidly, that their uncertain future was something they couldstep into together, but now it feels like they’re pulling in opposite directions, a dysfunctional team in a three-legged race.
He tries to find a clear thought, a clear emotion, a clear string of words, and offer it to Dev. He wants to find a way to make Dev understand. “Two months ago, I came on this show believing I wasn’t worthy of love, and now you want to know if I’ve thought about marriage and kids? Dev, I haven’t. I never thought any of those things were an option for me. I’m not saying theyaren’t—I’m just saying I don’t know right now. I need time to figure myself out.”
Dev looks down at him, pushes his glasses up his nose with two fingers. “I don’t want time, Charlie. I want to walk away before we both get hurt.”
“I’m already hurt.”
