The Charm Offensive(46)
* * *
“I think we should discuss your relationship trajectories with the remaining contestants before the next Crowning Ceremony,” Dev says a little after midnight, when the contestants have gone back to their rooms and the production team has finished cleaning up the mess.
“Everyone knows you and Daphne are like identical blond wedding-cake toppers, and you have amazing chemistry with Angie, though I get the impression Angie Griffin would have amazing chemistry with a cactus. But Lauren L. was a real surprise today, and I think we’ve been sleeping on Sabrina.” Dev is holding a bag of Double Stuf Oreos, and he sits down on Charlie’s bed beside him. “What are your thoughts?”
At the moment, his thoughts are about how close Dev is sitting next to him. “My thoughts are solely preoccupied by you brazenly eating Oreos in my bed.”
Dev leans over, so when he takes a bite, little black Oreo crumbs fall into Charlie’s lap.
“You’re a monster.”
“As I was saying…” Dev continues to talk about the contestants while absentmindedly brushing crumbs out of Charlie’s lap. Charlie feels his entire body seize up: Dev’s fingers and Dev’s smoky-sweet smell and Dev’s body close to his on his bed like it’s nothing. Which is why Charlie has to keep pretending the kiss never happened, even though the secret churns his stomach every time he thinks about it. Because the kiss clearly meant nothing to Dev—he can ignore it, let it vanish into the drunken ether, carry on being friends like normal.
Charlie isn’t sure what he wants the kiss to mean, but he knows it wasn’t nothing.
* * *
On the day of his Courting Date with Lauren L., Charlie turns twenty-eight years old.
He’s done everything in his power to conceal this information from cast and crew alike because he hates his birthday. He hates the attention and the pressure to do something memorable and the feeling he’s failing at life. Another year has passed, and he’s still the same old Charlie.
(Except now he’s a Charlie who was brave enough to kiss a person he likes but is still too much of a coward to admit it.)
Birthdays are always a twenty-four-hour anxiety trap, and he would happily pop a Xanax and sleep through the whole day if he didn’t have to get up for filming.
He wakes to a Bitmoji of Parisa throwing confetti. He receives a few messages on social media from old Stanford acquaintances and women he barely knows. He doesn’t hear anything from his family and doesn’t expect to. It’s fine.
He goes down to the hotel gym and exercises through the birthday blues, then showers while Jules kindly lays out his preapproved outfit for the day. When he gets out of the shower, the door between his and Dev’s room is open.
“Charlie, get dressed, and come help me with something!”
He’s in no hurry to be alone with Dev, so he takes his time putting on his mustard-colored shorts and the beautiful floral-patterned shirt Jules picked out for him.
“Charlie, now. Get over here right now.”
Charlie sighs, goes into the adjoining room, and promptly freezes in horror in the doorway. Dev’s hotel room is full of Ever After crew members. Skylar Jones has a party hat on her shaved head, and Ryan Parker blows into a noisemaker, and even Mark Davenport is there. Charlie has never seen the host off camera, but he’s here now, lounging on Dev’s bed. Jules stands in the middle of the room holding a cake.
“Happy birthday!” Dev shouts, and the woman standing next to Dev throws a literal armful of confetti into the air.
“Surprise, bitch!”
It’s Parisa.
Real-life Parisa Khadim, standing in Dev’s hotel room in New Orleans, wearing a power suit with her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Dev’s got his greasy, unwashed hair shoved under a baseball cap. Charlie’s brain can’t fully process the image of Parisa standing next to Dev, of these two people from two different parts of his life existing in the same physical space.
“What are you doing here?”
“Your handler convinced the show to let me travel with you for the next week as a birthday surprise!” Parisa claps Dev on the back, and Charlie’s head explodes. “Get over here and give me a hug, Hot-Ass.”
He takes a few shaky steps forward and lets her pull him into a hug. She wraps her round arms across his shoulders, and he collapses into the softness of her chest. He’s so unbelievably happy to see her. His real family doesn’t give a shit about his birthday, but Parisa—Parisa gives a shit about everything, and she’s here.
“Happy birthday to you,” Mark Davenport begins in an absurd falsetto, and the whole crew launches into an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Jules holds up the cake, and he blows out the candles, and Skylar starts cutting it into pieces, serving it on paper plates at nine in the morning. “Dev had me go all over town to find a gluten-free carrot cake, and honestly…” Jules eyes the cake skeptically. “I’m not sure it’s any good.”
Dev. Charlie turns to find him in the corner of the room, already massacring a giant slice of cake. “Thank you,” he says when he stumbles over to him. “Thank you for this. This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me on my birthday.”
The depressing thing is, he means it. No one has ever thrown him a surprise party, let alone flown his best friend across the country for him. But of course Dev would.