Page 23 of The Charm Offensive
“My system must have upgraded.”
Dev throws a puzzle piece at him. It bounces off his nose and it slides under the couch.
“I swear, if we get to the end of this thousand-piece puzzle and we’re missing one—”
“I’ll get it.” Dev crawls across the floor, twists his body, and sticks his arm under the couch. His black T-shirt rides up to reveal his dark brown stomach, a trail of black hair disappearing into the waistband of his cargo shorts. “Ha!”
Dev sits up triumphantly, brandishing the puzzle piece. His T-shirt is still bunched in the corner. Charlie looks away.
“I was serious before,” Dev says, the silences shortening. “Is this how you picture your life with a partner? Puzzing and watching nerdy sci-fi shows?”
“I’ve honestly never pictured my life with a partner. We weren’t all indoctrinated into the cult of fairy-tale love at a young age.”
“Don’t quote Jules at me while I’m trying to puzz.”
Maybe because he’s so caught up in his intense focus on the puzzle—or maybe because Dev never stops pushing, and Charlie knows his usual evasive strategies won’t work—he speaks without filtering. “When you can barely make it to a third date with a woman, it’s hard to imagine another person permanently in your life.”
“But you look likethat.” Dev gesticulates wildly, upending the puzzle box from its display stand. “I don’t get how you’re bad at dating.”
“You could only spendthirty minuteson a practice date with me because you had such a thoroughly miserable time.”
“Excuse you, we’re still on that practice date, and I just connectedfivepieces in a row.” He snaps another puzzle piece into place. “I’m having a fucking incredible time.”
Charlie smiles down at the table. “Well, no one has ever said that about a date with me before.” He doesn’t explain that he never enjoyed those dates either, that he hated the pressure to be perfect, to conform to the assumptions people made about him based on how he looks. He doesn’t explain how the dates were something he did out of obligation, because dating was something he wassupposedto do. He doesn’t explain how they always felt wrong, like Charlie was putting on a costume that didn’t fit quite right.
“Plusthis”—Charlie adopts Dev’s frantic hand gesture—“this is for my mental health. All the exercise, I mean. I don’t do it because I care what my body looks like. I do it because I care how my brain feels.”
Dev looks up from the picture they’re assembling on the coffee table. He has a geometric face—the sharp V of his chin, the 90-degree angle of his jaw, the straight line of his nose—but his expression softens entirely when his eyes lock onto Charlie’s. Charlie prepares himself for Dev to make a snide comment about his mental health.
Instead, he cocks his fist and punches Charlie in the arm. “Bro.That was awesome! You opened up to me about something!”
“Ouch,” Charlie mumbles.
“Sorry, I got a little overexcited.” Dev winces apologetically and reaches out to massage Charlie’s bare arm.One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.“But that was really good! That’s the kind of thing you should share with the women on your dates.”
Dev’s hand is still on Charlie’s skin, just below the cuffed sleeve of his shirt, hot fingers kneading into Charlie’s bicep.Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi. “You think the women want to hear about my mental health?”
“Yes!” Dev shouts enthusiastically.Five Mississippi.“They want you to open up.”
This didn’t seem to be true. The women he went out withsaidthey wanted him to open up, be vulnerable, let down his guard. Yet whenever he showed even a smidge of real emotion, they were turned off completely. They mostly confirmed what his father always used to say: real men don’t cry, and they definitely don’t talk publicly about their self-care.
Dev’s fingers encircle Charlie’s bicep completely, his thumb brushing the inside of Charlie’s arm. Charlie loses count of his Mississippis. “The women want you to be your true self,” Dev says, before his hand falls away. He turns back to the puzzle.
“We made good progress,” Dev says as he slots together a few more pieces. “Emotionally and puzzlely. You know, I think this is the best practice date I’ve had.”
Charlie doesn’t tell Dev it’s the best date he’s had, period.
“Practice dates?” Parisa repeats during their video call late Wednesday night. “What the hell is a practice date?”
“Like a fake date. To help me feel more comfortable on the real dates. With the women.”
Parisa pokes at her lavender-and-seaweed-extract mask, staring at her own face inlaid in the corner of her phone screen. They’re both doing facials, per their usual tradition. In Charlie’s normal life, every two weeks or so, Parisa shows up unexpectedly at his apartment with a bottle of expensive wine and face masks. She usually invents some excuse for needing to talk to him—somethingterrible happened at work; something terrible happened with her meddling extended family; something terrible happened with her current girlfriend or boyfriend or whoever she’s hooking up with at the moment—but Charlie knows the truth. Parisa pops over whenever she hasn’t heard from him in a while. She comes over to make sure he’s okay. When she packed his things for the show, she stuck a dozen face masks in his bag so she could have a pretext for these conversations. He was happy to let her.
“And what exactly do you do on these practice dates?”
“We mostly work on puzzles after filming and watchThe Expanse. Sometimes we talk about stuff.”
“Youtalk about stuff? What kind of stuff?”
