The Charm Offensive(41)

“You’re not dancing!” Charlie screams in his face. He grabs Dev’s waist and pulls him toward where Jules is grinding on someone wearing fishnets and nothing else. Skylar’s in her own world, arms vertical, completely free from her usual stress. It really is a perfect night.

“I was just watching you enjoy yourself.”

“What?” Charlie shouts over the music.

“Nothing!” Dev laughs, but for the first time all night, it doesn’t feel funny. Charlie’s hands are massive on his narrow hips, like bookends holding him upright. Charlie pulls him even closer, knees brushing knees.

“You’re too nice to me,” Charlie shouts.

“No one can ever be too nice to you, Charlie.”

“No. No.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. He looks so serious, carved in florescent, flashing light. “I’m worried you don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“I’m worried you don’t know what you deserve.” He grabs Dev’s shoulders. “Six years is a long time to stay.”

For a second, Dev isn’t sure if Charlie is talking about his six years with Ryan or his six years with Ever After. Charlie’s hands are on the back of his neck, and he pulls their foreheads together. Dev can taste the alcohol on Charlie’s breath with every exhale. “You’re too amazing to settle for Goonies T-shirts and a PS5.”

Ryan, then. “Thanks, Charlie.”

Charlie leans back just enough to reach out for a man dancing close by. He pulls the man into their little hug-circle. “This is my friend Dev,” Charlie tells the stranger. “You should love him.”

The man is drunk enough to roll with this moment. “Okay,” he says, winking at Dev.

“No, listen.” Charlie’s got one hand on the back of Dev’s neck, one hand on the back of this other man’s. “Dev is the best there is. The absolute best. He’s so fucking beautiful. Look at him.”

And then Charlie is looking at him. It’s the same horrible combination of Charlie’s eyes and Dev’s skin as before. “Isn’t he the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen?”

“I think you are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” the stranger tells Charlie in a husky voice, and Dev detaches himself from the triangle of limbs, pushing himself away from Charlie. He needs more alcohol. Or maybe less alcohol. Or air. Or something.

“Hey!” Jules follows him to the fringes of the club, to a dark corner where the music isn’t tangled in his heart, where Charlie isn’t tangled in his body. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He manages an easy smile. “Of course! It’s just…” He points to where Charlie is still talking with the man. “He’s a human cockblock.”

“I’m not sure what you expected. He’s gorgeous.”

Dev feels that same tug in his chest from earlier. “Careful, Jules. Your crush is showing.”

She rolls her eyes. “My crush?”

“What?”

“Dev.”

“Seriously, what?”

“Dude.” Her voice cuts through the noise of the club. “If you really wanted to find a random hookup tonight, you would have done it.”

“It’s not my fault no one even notices me with Charlie around.”

“You could try not being around Charlie.”

“It’s my job to take care of him.”

“You’re not working tonight.”

He feels like his brain is trying to swim upstream through a powerful current of Patrón as understanding reaches him. This is his career and his professional reputation she’s questioning. He conjures drunk flippancy, strives for humor. “Gay men can be platonic friends with straight men, Jules. This isn’t some non-hetero When Harry Met Sally.”

“I am sure gay men and straight men can be friends. But I am also seventy percent sure you and Charlie aren’t.”

Dev needs to find the right thing to say, the right line of dialogue, because what Jules is suggesting is not an option. It would be wrong on a million different levels. On a professional level, and a friendship level, and a too-old-to-crush-on-a-straight dude level. On every level, feeling anything toward Charlie other than professional regard would be catastrophic, and he doesn’t. He can’t.

Strobe lights and music and bodies pressing in on all sides, and he can’t find the right thing to say to Jules to convince her she’s wrong, so wrong. “I just broke up with Ryan.”

“I thought you were ready for a rebound?”

He sucks in his cheeks. “Charlie is our star.”

“Okay,” Jules says with a casual shrug, as if they both didn’t sign contracts forbidding fraternization with the talent. As if the entire future of their franchise isn’t hanging in the balance, depending on Dev helping Charlie fall in love with a woman. “But if it makes a difference, I think he’s into you, too.”

Dev can’t afford to think about that. “I’m going to head back to the hotel.”

“Dev, wait!” Jules calls after him as he turns toward the exit, but he doesn’t stop until he’s outside. And air… air is what he needs. He takes greedy gulps of it as he stumbles past the bouncers and a line of clubgoers and a twenty-one-year-old puking her guts out on the curb. Dev makes it a good twenty feet before he collapses against a brick wall.