The Charm Offensive(5)

Too much touching.

Too much everything, too quickly.

The anxiety hijacks his brain, and in a panic, he throws himself backward against the car door to break contact. The new handler raises a single eyebrow in response. “So, no touching, then?” He flashes Charlie a crooked smile, like this is all a big joke.

Touching is never a joke to Charlie. He doesn’t hate it as a general rule, but he does prefer advance warning and for hand sanitizer to be involved. He knows he signed up for this show where touching is required, so he attempts to explain. “You can touch me anywhere you like,” he starts.

And he realizes he’s phrased this inelegantly when the man’s other eyebrow shoots up.

“Wait, no, what I meant was… I don’t mind being touched by you, but if you could just… uh… if you could wash your hands first? Not that I think you are unclean. I’m sure you are very clean. I mean, you smell clean, but I have a thing about germs, and if you could maybe warn me? Before you touch me?”

This is what he gets for attempting verbal communication with a stranger. At first, his handler simply stares at him in openmouthed silence. Then… “No!” he says firmly. “Get back in the car.”

Dev yanks the door back open and kicks at Charlie’s legs with the toe of his Converse. Charlie’s reentrance into the car is about as graceful as his exit two minutes before. He tries to scoot backward to make room for the very tall man who is now halfway sitting on top of him.

Dev asks the driver to get out. “I’m sorry,” Charlie blurts. Apologizing always seems like a good idea when he doesn’t understand a social situation, and he has absolutely no idea what’s happening right now.

“Please stop talking!” Dev plunges his hands into a gigantic shoulder bag and pulls out a tiny bottle of green hand sanitizer. He lathers his hands, and Charlie is weirdly moved by the gesture. Then, when he realizes the hand sanitizer means more touching, he is weirdly freaked out by the gesture.

“Lean forward,” Dev orders.

“Uh…”

“Hurry! Lean forward!”

Charlie leans and this total stranger reaches around his back and untucks his shirt, warm fingers sliding across his skin. And yes, in the past few days, he’s learned LA types are very weird about both personal space and naked bodies, but Charlie is not an LA type. He’s not accustomed to being groped in cars by men wearing truly hideous cargo shorts.

Dev’s fingers feel like pinpricks every time they make contact as he fondles the nude-colored mic belt wardrobe put on Charlie back at the studio. After fifteen excruciating seconds, which Charlie counts out one Mississippi at a time to stop himself from spiraling, Dev pulls away and slumps back against the seat. Charlie finally exhales.

“Holy shit, dude. You were hot.”

“I—what?”

“Your mic.” Dev points to the place where Charlie’s shirt is now untucked in the back and then points to his own earpiece, where someone is presumably shouting things. “Someone left your mic on from earlier, and you’re back in receiver range. Always be wary of a hot mic. Consider this the first lesson from your new handler: anything you say can be taken out of context. Your soliloquy about letting me touch you could easily be inserted into a very different kind of scene.”

“Oh.” He’s suddenly reminded it’s June in Southern California, and he is sweating without the air-conditioning. “Right. Okay, right. Yeah. Sorry.”

From two feet away, his new handler studies him carefully behind his glasses. Charlie holds eye contact for one Mississippi, two Mississippi, then looks down and nervously adjusts his cuffs.

“Did you get hurt? When you fell out of the car?” Dev asks softly. “You look like you’re in pain.”

“Oh. Uh, no.”

Dev dives back into his shoulder bag. “I’ve got pain killers and Tiger Balm and Band-Aids. What do you need?”

“N-nothing,” he mutters. “I’m fine.”

Dev is cradling an entire first-aid kit in his arms. “But your face. It’s all pinched together like you’re in pain.”

“Um. That’s just. My face.”

At that, Dev throws his head back and laughs. One of Charlie’s chief failures in life is his inability to understand when someone is laughing with him versus laughing at him. Nine times out of ten, it’s the latter.

“It’s confusing,” Dev notes in a tone that almost makes Charlie think he’s laughing with him, “because you look like the guy in a fancy cologne commercial, but you’re distinctly acting like the guy in an IBS medication commercial.”

“I can be both of those guys simultaneously.”

“Not on this show you can’t.” Dev pulls the People magazine out from under him and jabs a finger at the face on the cover. “If this whole thing is going to work, you’ve got to be this guy for the cameras.”

Charlie stares at the magazine version of himself, fumbling for a way to explain. I’m not that guy. I don’t know how to be that guy. This was a huge mistake.

“I…”

The car door behind Dev opens. He manages, quite easily, not to fall out.

“Dev! What the fuck are you doing in here? We’re behind schedule, and Skylar is going to demote us to casting if we don’t get the prince to his fucking mark this fucking instant.”