The Charm Offensive(20)
Charlie’s mouth falls open. “Like what?”
“I don’t know, Charlie!” He knows he’s losing his temper again, and he knows that means Charlie will only continue shrinking into himself, but he can’t help it. The more Charlie retreats, the more Dev wants to advance. He wishes he could get back to the brief understanding they struck after Charlie got punched, when Charlie let him hold one ice pack and peeled back the tiniest corner of himself.
The waiter arrives with their brunch in unprecedented time for Los Angeles food service, and they both look grateful to have something to occupy their hands and mouths. After a torturous silence in which Dev inhales four slices of bacon without breathing, he snaps, “What are you so afraid of, Charlie?”
Charlie spears a piece of cantaloupe with his sterilized fork and hovers the fruit in front of his open mouth, brushing it against his bottom lip. (And for practical purposes, Dev will have the rest of this conversation with Charlie’s left ear.) “What do you mean?”
Dev mops up some excess Hollandaise sauce with his sourdough. “Why can’t you just say what’s on your mind?”
“I… I have a tendency to, uh… say the wrong thing.”
“How so?”
“I just…” Charlie flails his left hand. “I… I… am not good with words, or with trying to communicate my thoughts. People always think I’m weird, so it is easier if I never talk.”
“Well,” Dev says after a long pause. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Charlie sits up straight in his chair, like he’s attempting to project confidence Dev knows he doesn’t have. “No, it’s fine, really. Some people have strong emotional intelligence. Interpersonal skills.” He gestures vaguely at Dev. “I don’t. But my brain is really good at other stuff, and if I keep my mouth shut, I’m not even abnormal by Palo Alto standards.”
Dev shifts in his chair, and their knees brush under the table again. This time, Charlie doesn’t immediately move, so neither does Dev, and it’s the first night handshake all over again but with knees. “Plenty of people struggle with social anxiety,” Dev tells him. “You’re not abnormal by any standards.”
“Says the guy who told me I have to be the cologne ad version of myself.”
Dev pushes aside his plate. He feels like an asshole. It’s obvious whatever abnormalities Charlie is convinced he has, people have been historically unkind about them. “You’re right. That was a bullshit thing for me to say. You shouldn’t have to change yourself for love.”
Behind them, a group gets up to leave, and Charlie scrunches his shoulders, becomes as small as possible to avoid being bumped by their swinging purses. Under the table, Charlie’s leg presses even more firmly against Dev’s, and he can feel Charlie trembling in the place where their bodies meet. He thinks about the crowded patio and the noise and all the germs. Under the table, Dev reaches out and puts a hand on Charlie’s knee to steady him. He can feel Charlie relax by a few degrees beneath his fingers.
“You hate eating at restaurants, don’t you?” Dev asks gently.
“I don’t hate it,” Charlie starts unconvincingly, beads of sweat gathering around his hairline, “but it can be tricky for me, on bad days. Days when I’m already anxious.”
Dev understands bad days, and now he’s back to feeling like an asshole, because he’s gone about this whole practice-dating thing all wrong. Of course it’s been an unmitigated disaster. It didn’t even occur to him to ask Charlie what he would want to do on a date, even though the entire point of this exercise is to help him feel more comfortable.
Incidentally, Charlie isn’t the only one who is out of practice when it comes to first dates. “Come on.” Dev smiles. “Let’s get out of here.”
Dev removes his hand from Charlie’s leg and waves over the waiter, who is never more than ten feet away from Charlie’s gravitational pull. Dev asks for the bill. “Before we go, a quick experiment, okay?”
Charlie looks skeptical but nods. “Okay.”
“I want you to say exactly what’s on your mind at this moment.”
Charlie folds his lips into a thin, worried line and stares down at his empty plate.
“No self-censoring, no worrying about saying the wrong thing, no overthinking it,” Dev orders. “Just say what’s on your mind this exact instant.”
“Um—”
“You’re overthinking.”
Charlie makes sudden, unexpected eye contact, and Dev forgets his previous commitment to only staring at Charlie’s ear. He’s now confronted with the whole image of Charlie’s face—the stormy gray eyes with their faint bruising and the blond curls and the chin dimple, and it’s a lot, and Charlie keeps staring at him, and when Charlie opens his mouth, Dev feels something drop in his lower stomach.
“You have Hollandaise sauce all over your face!” Charlie blurts.
The tension in Dev’s chest uncoils. “Well,” he says, reaching for a napkin, “I guess that’s a start.”
Charlie
“This is your idea of a romantic time?”
“I never claimed to know anything about romance,” Charlie clarifies from his cross-legged position on the floor of the guesthouse living room, “but I enjoy a good puzzle, yes.”