The Charm Offensive(48)
“All right, friends,” Jules announces, passing Dev the wine bottle. “I’ve got to get up early tomorrow for a production meeting, so I should probably head back to my room.”
“Boo!” Parisa shouts after Jules as she heads out.
“And I’m getting in the shower,” Charlie says, rolling off the bed and stumbling exhaustedly toward the bathroom.
“Double boo!”
Neither Dev nor Parisa move off Charlie’s bed, probably because they both understand you don’t leave half a bottle of wine at the end of the night. Dev tops off his cup and passes Parisa the rest.
Parisa waits until they hear the sound of the shower running before she speaks. “Thanks for doing this for him.”
“Yeah. Of course, he’s…” Dev awkwardly peels back the lip on his paper cup. “It’s his birthday.”
“Yeah,” Parisa says with an understanding nod. “He’s pretty special.”
“You and Charlie. Have you ever…?”
Parisa immediately catches his meaning. “No. Never. It’s not like that with us.”
He looks at this beautiful, confident, self-possessed woman who clearly recognizes how amazing Charlie is, just as he is. “Can I ask why?”
Parisa crosses her legs and tucks the bottle of wine between them. “I mean, I’ve thought about it. I have eyes, and when we first met, before he hired me, I thought… maybe.”
“Why didn’t maybe happen?”
“Because he’s Charlie. Because maybe never even occurred to him,” Parisa says matter-of-factly. “And I’m glad. The dude is a great friend, but he’d be a disaster of a boyfriend. He doesn’t know the first thing about how to be in a relationship.”
“Why did you send him on this show, then? Were you actively trying to humiliate him?”
“Of course not. He wants to work in tech again, and I want him to be happy. Maureen Scott promised she could help reboot his image, so…” Parisa’s eyes cut toward the closed bathroom door, and she lowers her voice. “If I tell you something, can you promise it stays between us?”
Dev nods.
“This spring, one of my cousins got married, and Charlie went with me to the wedding as my plus-one. My Pinterest-obsessed cousin decides to have the only Muslim wedding with a signature cocktail, and it turns out Charlie loves blackberry mojitos. He chugged, like, six of them, and you have to understand, when Charlie gets drunk—”
“Oh, I’ve met Drunk Charlie, actually.”
Parisa raises a perfectly arched eyebrow. “Imagine Drunk Charlie interpretive dancing to Whitney Houston at a wedding with a guest list of two hundred. He looks over at my cousin with her new husband and he points at them—I mean points, like noticeably across the dance floor, people were staring—and he says to me: ‘I want that.’?” Parisa pauses in her story and lets the weight of Charlie’s words wash over Dev. “Maureen Scott had been hounding me to let Charlie do the show for months, and there Charlie was, drunkenly admitting that some part of him wants a relationship, so I just thought…”
“Wait. Your ulterior motive for sending Charlie on this show is the actual purpose of this show?”
Parisa smooths down her ponytail. “Well, yeah. Maybe it sounds ridiculous to think he could fall in love with a woman on this show, but—”
“It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all. Not to me.”
They both sip wine in the silence for a minute. “Has he told you anything about his family?” Parisa asks, her voice even quieter.
“Not really.”
“He hasn’t told me much either. Just bits and pieces over the years. From what I’ve put together, the Winshaws are a bunch of pricks who can all burn in hell for the way they treated him.”
Dev decides Parisa is definitely the coolest person he’s ever met.
“His family didn’t deserve him. Charlie is wonderful, and they made him feel like shit growing up because his beautiful brain works a little differently sometimes.” She pauses again, and when she speaks, her voice is gentle. “I can’t really imagine what it would be like if the people who were supposed to love me unconditionally didn’t, but I think maybe if I’d grown up like that, I might have a hard time thinking I deserve love, too.”
The shower shuts off, and they both startle as if they’ve been caught. Dev unfurls his legs. Parisa slides off the bed.
“He considers you a good friend, and I’m glad,” she says as she downs the rest of the wine. “Platonic love is important, too. Night, Dev.”
The hotel door closes behind Parisa, and Dev collapses under the weight of this new guilt. Parisa sent Charlie on this show to find love, and in five weeks, Charlie can have what he wants: a fiancée and a job in tech. If Dev doesn’t screw it all up, Charlie could have everything.
The bathroom door opens, and the humid sweetness of Charlie’s oatmeal body wash rushes into the room before Charlie steps out and freezes. He stands by the bathroom door, no shirt, navy sweatpants slung so low on his hips, they’re practically inconsequential. Dev is still sitting on the bed with his wine, and he gives himself exactly thirty seconds. Thirty seconds to lament the injustice of a world where a man who looks like that kissed him and doesn’t remember it.