The Charm Offensive(30)
“Real OCD. Not the thing where people think it’s cute that they’re anal about organizing their pen cup.”
“Yes, I figured.”
“And I have generalized anxiety. And a panic disorder.”
“Okay,” Dev says again. Like it truly is okay.
Charlie feels a loosening in his chest, an unburdening. He’s only ever talked about this with Parisa, but she always looks at him like he’s a rare, exotic bird living in her attic, and she’s hoping he’ll one day fly out an open window into the world.
Dev is looking at him like he’s a man sitting on a kitchen stool who didn’t like his pancakes. It’s as if nothing has changed.
Charlie takes only one breath. “Okay.”
Dev comes around the counter toward Charlie on the stool. For a second, he stands close, like he did last night, crowding between Charlie’s legs. Charlie becomes hyperaware of his skin against the seams of his clothes. Dev reaches up to ruffle Charlie’s hair again, but he’s got a pained look on his face. “You know you still deserve to have this love story. Right?”
Charlie swallows a weird lump forming in the back of his throat. Dev’s fingers are still resting in his hair, and Charlie looks up.
“You deserve love,” Dev says again, “and I honestly think Angie and Daphne are both good fits for you. I think both of them will love you, Charlie. Just as you are.”
Dev steps back. Charlie closes his legs. “Angie and Daphne,” he repeats.
Dev nods. “Oh, yeah. It’s definitely going to come down to the two of them. So, breakfast burritos?”
Charlie tries to smile. “Breakfast burritos.”
Story notes for editors:
Season 37, Episode 3
Story producer:
Ryan Parker
Air date:
Monday, September 27, 2021
Executive producer:
Maureen Scott
Scene: Daphne, Angie, and Sabrina debrief Daphne’s Courting Date Location: Poolside, Ever After castle Daphne: The date was going great. He was so sweet when I panicked about the hot-air balloon, and then I ruined it by pushing him at dinner.
Angie: It sounds like he ruined it by being unable to answer a fairly basic question.
Sabrina: It’s not unreasonable to expect a man you’re dating to be able to articulate what he’s looking for in a partner.
Angie: And if he’s looking for a Thomas Kincaid thousand-piece jigsaw, we should all know that now.
Daphne: [Cut to the close-up of her nervously pushing her hair behind her ear.] He obviously gets… I don’t know…anxious sometimes.
Sabrina: I don’t think you’re allowed to talk about things like that on Ever After.
Angie: [Shot of Angie reaching out to put a hand on Daphne’s thigh.] Girl, don’t take on the blame for this. You didn’t do anything wrong, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up.
Daphne: I shouldn’t have expected him to talk about serious stuff on our first real date.
Angie: Honestly, men. This is why it’s so much easier dating women.
Sabrina: You’re definitely not allowed to talk about that on Ever After.
Daphne: [Close-up of her staring down at Angie’s hand on her thigh.] You’ve dated… women?
Angie: What, they don’t have bisexuals on the Georgia pageant circuit?
Maureen’s note to editors: Cut this entire scene and replace it with the one of Megan and Delilah shit-talking the other women in the hot tub.
WEEK THREE
Pasadena—Wednesday, June 23, 2021
12 Contestants and 46 Days Remaining
Charlie
He can’t sleep again. He hasn’t been able to sleep in days.
It’s one in the morning, and he’s tried meditation, tried journaling, tried calling Parisa in the hopes the sound of her familiar voice might soothe him to sleep, but none of it has worked.
He should be exhausted, both emotionally and physically. At today’s Group Quest, the women competed in a relay race to rescue him from a tower (Ever After’s answer to feminism, apparently), and when Daphne won again, half the women revolted, with Megan leading the mob, claiming the game was rigged. (Which, obviously, it was.) Angie and Sabrina defended Daphne, and Charlie spent most of the day trying to mend fences and prevent an all-out war. The producers loved every minute of it.
There’s no point in counting asbestos dots in the dark for the third night in a row, so he climbs out of bed, clicks on the light, and fishes out his iPad. He hasn’t opened the email Dev sent since the Bourbon Stain Incident, but he opens it now and climbs back in bed. He starts to read Dev’s script.
It is definitely all of Dev.
As he reads the dialogue, he can hear Dev’s voice, almost as if he’s lying on the bed next to Charlie, reading it aloud to him. He doesn’t know a damn thing about screenplays, and jargon like MCU and EXT means nothing to him, but somehow, he can imagine the world Dev is creating with his words all the same. The protagonist, Ravi Patel, is Dev: a hopeless romantic who has been unlucky in love but is still convinced of its almighty power.
There is a meet-cute, as Dev would call it. A miscommunication. An enemies-to-lovers trope Charlie remembers from his days of reading Star Trek fanfic on his home-built laptop. About halfway through the script, Charlie realizes he has never read a story about two men falling in love before.