The Charm Offensive(25)

“What the fuck?” Ryan comes stomping outside with Jules right behind him. “Charles, get back out there. We need to reshoot that entire conversation!”

“He needs a minute.”

“Well, it’s been a minute, and now he needs to stop being such a head case and get back to his date.”

Charlie visibly shrinks. “I’m sorry.”

And Dev just snaps. “You’re being an insensitive dick right now, Ryan.”

Everything goes silent. Then Jules inserts her tiny body between Ryan and Dev. “Why don’t I take Charlie to get his makeup fixed?” she says calmly. Charlie shoots Dev one last look before the pair vanishes, and then it’s just Ryan and Dev. Alone. For the first time since the breakup.

He’s been so busy coaching Charlie, he hasn’t had time to think about his own problems, but now they’re standing right in front of him: five feet nine inches of Dev’s insecurities in human form.

“What the hell?” Ryan seethes. “You can’t talk to me like that in front of the talent.”

“You can’t talk to my talent like that,” Dev rages right back. “He’s not a head case.”

Ryan snorts and folds his arms across his chest. “Look, I’ll give it to you, D. You’ve done more with him in two weeks than I could have, so I’m glad it’s you and not me, but”—Ryan squares his shoulders—“the dude is crazy, and it’s total bullshit that we have to deal with his antics because Maureen made a bad casting choice.”

“Jesus, Ryan, he’s not crazy because he sometimes needs a minute to collect himself. Did you think I was crazy?”

Ryan drops his hands to his hips. “What?”

“When we were together, all those days I couldn’t get out of bed… did you think I was crazy?”

Dev needs Ryan to admit this is such a shitty thing to say. He needs Ryan to recognize why it is so personally offensive to Dev to hear his ex-boyfriend of six years casually call a man crazy—why it makes Dev feel infinitesimal and defensive and angry. He needs Ryan to apologize.

Ryan rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on. You know I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t be so sensitive.”

Dev feels flattened. One-dimensional. A cardboard cutout of himself. He stares at Ryan and tries to figure out how he spent six years thinking he and Ryan were a perfect fit.

“What’s your deal with this guy, anyway?” Ryan asks. “Are you into Charles?”

Dev scrapes his fingers painfully through his hair. “Shit. No. That’s not what this is about—”

“Then why are you taking this so personally?”

He wants to find a way to explain it to Ryan, but he knows it’s pointless. He broke up with Ryan because he finally realized Ryan was never going to understand Dev—not his too-big heart or his too-busy brain—and as much as it hurts, the beauty of the breakup is Dev no longer has to try.

“It’s nothing,” he finally says.

But it doesn’t feel like nothing.





Charlie


Something is wrong with Dev.

First he screamed at Ryan. Then he didn’t talk to Charlie for the rest of the shoot, which Charlie chalked up to the disastrous conversation with Daphne. But now Dev sits in the backseat of the town car angrily working his jaw. Jules hitched a ride back to set in an equipment van, probably because she didn’t want to deal with Dev’s sulking, so there’s no buffer between Charlie and Dev’s stormy mood.

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. Dev is 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?”