The Charm Offensive(34)
Charlie is standing in the middle of the room wearing nothing but his plastic crown and the smallest pair of black boxer briefs. He is basically naked, the muscles of his abdomen all funneling down to a V pointing toward his crotch like a neon flashing arrow. The sight is, in a word, pornographic.
Dev shouldn’t look but he does. At all of Charlie. So much tan skin, strong thighs, faint freckles along his collarbone, muscles reduplicating down his abdomen, and still, those big gray eyes, so innocent and sweet and contradictory to everything else.
Ryan conveniently steps in between Dev and his view of Charlie’s obliques. “He’s refusing to wear the Prince Charming suit!” Ryan screams, as if Charlie isn’t there to explain himself.
Charlie chokes. “I’m sorry. I’m so… so sorry.”
“If you’re sorry, put on the suit!”
“It’s wool. I’m sorry, but I just can’t… I don’t wear wool.”
Charlie’s deep into a spiral about this, and Dev pushes aside his thoughts about the nakedness so he can tap out Morse code against Charlie’s bare shoulder. Then he turns his attention back to Ryan. “It sounds like you need to get Charlie a new suit.”
“We’re filming in thirty minutes. How the fuck do you propose I get a new suit that quickly?”
Dev shrugs. “You’re the supervising producer on set. You’ll figure it out. It’s in Charlie’s file that he doesn’t wear wool. It’s also June.”
Ryan grinds his teeth and violently grabs his walkie-talkie. “We need a new suit, pronto,” he snaps as he storms out of the wardrobe room with a PA on his heels.
Then they’re alone in the dressing room, and Dev realizes he hasn’t really been alone with Charlie since the 3 a.m. conversation.
“Thank you,” Charlie manages, his eyes on the ground. “For sticking up for me.”
“You never have to thank me, Charlie. This is my job.”
“Your job,” Charlie echoes slowly. Dev wants to push. He wants to poke and prod. He wants to grab Charlie by both shoulders. Come back to me, he would scream. Don’t lock yourself up again.
Skylar bursts into the room, and Dev takes a step back. “What is this about a new— Son of a bitch.” Skylar stops short when she sees Charlie. “Jesus Christ. Can someone please get this man a robe?”
A different PA materializes out of thin air with a plush hotel robe, and Charlie sticks his arms inside but doesn’t tie it at the waist, like he thinks the robe is to keep him warm. It hangs open, his body still on display. Dev adopts a comical, vaguely British accent, because surely laughing about this will make it easier for Dev to stop staring at Charlie’s body. “Oh, love”—Dev fastens the front of the robe himself—“you clearly don’t know what you look like.”
Charlie lifts those huge gray eyes to Dev’s face. A splotchy pink blush has spread across his throat, and the absolute last thing Dev does is stare at any part of Charlie that is blushing right now. “What do I look like?” Charlie asks innocently.
The door to the wardrobe room opens again, and this time Maureen Scott swans in. “What seems to be the holdup?”
“The suit for the ball was made out of wool, and Charlie doesn’t wear wool,” Dev explains. “We’re finding him a different suit.”
“Oh, are we?” Maureen asks, her tone barely hinting at the layers of anger simmering beneath her affable surface. “And who authorized this?”
“I did,” Ryan says as he comes rushing back carrying a plastic dry-cleaner bag.
“Well, let’s hope our little diva finds this suit acceptable,” Maureen says with a smile. Charlie is wrestled into a suit an assistant purchased off a hotel guest, and Maureen watches him with a single raised eyebrow, her manicured nails tapping her forearm.
“Lovely,” she says when Charlie’s dressed. She grips him too tightly by both shoulders. “Don’t you look like the perfect Prince Charming ready for his ball?”
* * *
Quite predictably, it’s a shitshow.
Charlie doesn’t recover easily from the drama with his suit, and Megan doesn’t recover easily from her confrontation with Angie. It’s obvious the producers are spurring her along; in real life, away from the cameras and the pressure to win, Megan is probably a mostly decent person, if somewhat emotionally immature. But maybe because of her emotional immaturity—or maybe because she’s desperate to promote her YouTube channel by any means necessary—Megan gives in to the show’s worst impulses when it comes to pitting women against each other. At the start of the evening, she throws a fit, screams at Angie, then locks herself in the dressing room until Charlie is forced to come console her.
Daphne doesn’t recover from the earlier confrontation easily either, and in the middle of the ball, she unexpectedly makes a huge show of asking to speak with Charlie privately.
Angie is there, grabbing Daphne’s arm, hissing, “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone, Daph.”
She lightly nudges Angie away, takes Charlie’s hand, and guides him into a tiny space next to a bathroom. Dev, Jules, and Ryan all cram themselves in behind the two cameras.
“Is everything okay?” Charlie asks Daphne as they sit side by side on a bench.