Page 28 of The Charm Offensive
He tiptoes cautiously toward the problem. “Are you… upset?”
“No,” Dev snaps. Sounding very upset.
“Okay, but uh… you don’t seem like yourself.”
Dev keeps his eyes on the window. “I’m so sorry my bad mood is ruining your night,” he says in a clipped tone. “I will try to only be Fun Dev from now on.”
Charlie is somehow screwing this up in record time, and he desperately tries to save it. “I don’t need you to be Fun Dev, but if you’re upset about what happened with Daphne, I’m sorry.”
Dev finally turns his head toward Charlie, his face damp in the passing street lamps. Devis crying. “It’s not you. It’s Ryan. Ryan and I sort of dated… for six years. We broke up three months ago.”
“Oh,” Charlie says.
Oh, Charlie thinks, something important about Dev clicking into place. Something he probably should’ve pieced together sooner. So he asks, inelegantly: “Wait, are you gay?”
The tension in the backseat of the town car breaks, and Dev starts laughing. “Yes, Charlie!Oh my God. How did you not know I’m gay?”
Honestly, the possibility hadn’t even occurred to him. “In my defense, you’re obsessed with helping straight people find love, and your cargo shorts are heinous.”
“The way I dress has nothing to do with the fact that I like dick.”
Charlie flinches involuntarily.
Dev groans and runs his fingers through the stubble on his angular jaw. “Please don’t be awkward about this. Don’t be one of those straight guys who acts like every gay dude wants to date you. I’m not trying to get in your pants.”
“Eh, I mean…obviously.”
“You’re going to be awkward about this, aren’t you?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you going to freak out every time I touch you now?”
“I already freak out when you touch me.”
Dev’s mouth slides open before promptly snapping shut.
“That… that came out wrong. I didn’t mean…” Charlie feels the sweat gather on the back of his neck, and he pivots, hard. “Why did you and Ryan break up?”
“Because he bought me a girl’s T-shirt for my birthday.”
“I know I don’t have a lot of relationship experience, butwhat?”
Dev sighs. “For my twenty-eighth birthday, Jules threw me this huge surprise party with half the crew at my favorite bar, and Ryan showed up with aGooniesT-shirt still in the brown paper Target bag as his gift. I’m not materialistic, but we had been together forsix years, and he bought me a novelty T-shirt for twelve bucks in the girls’ section at Target. It was clear he had forgotten my birthday and picked it up on the way to the party. And it was an XXL, so it didn’t even fit me. It was like a wide crop top, and not in a sexy,A Nightmare on Elm Streetkind of way.”
“Well, I mean, do you likeThe Goonies?”
“Of course, I likeThe Goonies! That’s not the point! The point is…thatis what our relationship was worth to him: a twelve-dollar T-shirt that didn’t fit. I wanted marriage and babies, and he didn’t even care about me enough to know my shirt size. And the worst part is…” Dev sucks in his cheeks, making the geometric angles of his face even more dramatic in the dark car. “The worst part is, I knew going into the relationship that Ryan didn’t want any of those things, but I thought I could change his mind. I thought that if I were good enough and fun enough, Ryan would want to be with me forever.”
Dev pauses for a second, his breath catching on the rough edge of tears again, and Charlie panics, unsure of the protocol here. He thinks about Dev on the sidewalk, Dev on the bench, Dev always comforting Charlie when he needs it. Charlie reaches over to put a hand on Dev’s knee. “I’m sorry,” Charlie says.
Dev looks down at Charlie’s pale fingers on his dark skin. “Actually, the worst part is, I threw away six years on someone who only loved me when I was Fun Dev.”
“What’s so special about Ryan?” Charlie isn’t sure why this is the first question that springs to his mind.
“Well, I mean, you’ve seen him. He’shot. Like way out of my league.”
Charlie would politely disagree; Ryan looks like a pirate who is going to try to upsell you rental car insurance, some befuddling blend of scruffy and preppy that almost disguises the fact that he’s rather boring to look at. Dev’s face is never boring. “And, I don’t know.…” Dev shrugs. “He liked me? He laughed at my jokes? He usually enjoyed my company?”
