The Charm Offensive(21)
Dev is sitting on the opposite side of the coffee table slowly sorting out the edge pieces while trying to watch the television show playing on his laptop. After the disastrous brunch full of germ-related crises and verbal idiocy and far too much leg touching, Dev asked Charlie what he would do with his ideal afternoon. So now they’re working on a jigsaw puzzle while watching the first season of The Expanse, because Dev has never seen it.
“The fascinating thing about this show is,” Charlie explains, “in most science fiction, they totally ignore the physiological repercussions of FTL.”
Dev looks the opposite of fascinated. “What’s FTL?”
“Faster-than-light travel.”
“Right. Okay, so to recap”—Dev points to the actors on-screen—“the hot skinny guy, the hot buff guy, the hot maybe-Indian guy, and the hot lady just fly around in the ship solving mysteries like Scooby-Doo in space?”
“That’s not remotely the premise of this show. Are you even paying attention?”
“Any of these hot dudes ever going to hook up with each other?”
“No…”
“Then what is even the point of it?”
“The science!” Charlie says, perhaps a little too passionately.
Dev does this infuriating crooked smile, and Charlie understands they’re playing a different game, in addition to the puzzle, with Dev trying to coax out little tidbits of who Charlie is, the things he usually keeps tucked away so they can’t be used against him.
Charlie falls silent, and for a while Dev does too, his tongue tapping his front teeth as he concentrates on the image displayed on the front of the box. With Dev, silence never lasts long, though. “Would you say you’re looking for a lady to puzz with you on a Saturday night?”
“I do not believe that is the correct verb form of puzzle. Just organize your edge pieces.”
“I haven’t puzzed since… shit, middle school trips to Nag’s Head with my parents, maybe? I don’t usually sit still for this long.”
“I haven’t noticed that about you.”
“Was that sarcasm? What, you’re capable of sarcasm now?”
“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 like that.” Dev gesticulates wildly, upending the puzzle box from its display stand. “I don’t get how you’re bad at dating.”
“You could only spend thirty minutes on 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 connected five pieces 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 was supposed to do. He doesn’t explain how they always felt wrong, like Charlie was putting on a costume that didn’t fit quite right.
“Plus this”—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.”