The Charm Offensive(67)
“I am sending you both home right now,” he says, “because I have no interest in dating women who let their producers manipulate them into acting this way.”
The room is painfully silent except for the sound of Megan’s snivels.
“I’ll see you both out.”
Producers rush off to pack their things, and the cameras hurry downstairs so they can film the black vans whisking away the two women who’ve been dismissed. Charlie finds his team again. Parisa and Jules look proud. Ryan looks amused. And Dev, in the corner next to the refrigerator—the same refrigerator he pushed them against two days ago—looks absolutely pissed.
* * *
“I can’t believe you did that,” Dev seethes when the drama is over and they’re back in their room, the door closed. “Maureen is going to be furious.”
“I can’t believe you did that today,” he snaps back. “I am furious.”
Dev peels off his sweat-stained T-shirt. “Me? I didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly. You did nothing while Delilah said all those horrible things to Megan.”
Dev snorts as he pulls a T-shirt out of his unpacked duffle and has to sniff it to verify it’s clean. “What was I supposed to do, Charlie? This is my job, and your little stunt referencing producers on camera made me look really shitty at my job.”
Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and tries to massage the tension headache forming above his eyebrows. “Your job?” he echoes. “Right. You’re only my handler, and next season, you’ll handle Angie instead when she’s named the next princess.”
“Angie will never be the next princess. She’s starting med school in the fall.”
“That’s hardly the point.” He takes three slow, deep breaths. They’ve never fought before, and Charlie doesn’t know the rules. “Don’t you think you tend to overlook the more insidious aspects of this show when it doesn’t align with your ideas of fairy-tale romance?”
Saying this, clearly, was against the rules. Dev blinks at him. “What? No. I don’t do that.”
“Dev, the way this show treats mental health, and with your depression—”
“My depression has nothing to do with this show.”
“You were depressed for a week, and no one in the crew did anything about it. They were happy to ignore you as long as I was performing for the cameras. And they work you to death during filming. Do you even have time for virtual therapy?”
Dev fidgets defensively in front of the bed. “I’m not in therapy.”
Charlie’s mind immediately flashes to the image of Dev curled up in a tight ball on the bed in Munich. “You’re not?”
“Nope.” He attempts a casual shrug, but his Fun Dev disguise is slipping in the corner. “I don’t really need it.”
Charlie is out of his depth. He doesn’t know how to have a hard conversation with someone he cares about this much—with someone he is terrified of losing. “Your treatment is your choice,” he starts, his throat dry, “but in Munich, things seemed not great.”
“I’m okay,” Dev says immediately. “I’m always okay. It’s all good, dude.”
“Did you seriously just call me dude?”
Dev puts his hands on his hips and stares Charlie down on the bed, like he’s daring him to call bullshit. Dev’s face is a perfect mask of calm. Charlie wants to rip that mask right off. He wants to grab Dev by the shoulders and shake him. Stop. Stop pretending you’re okay. You don’t have to pretend with me.
Charlie presses his fingertips against his closed eyes until he sees stars. He wishes he had the right words to make Dev understand; he likes every version of the real Dev. He wants twenty-four more days of Defensive Dev and Passionate Dev and Hangry Dev and Hopeless-Romantic Dev. Cheekbones and chin. Amused mouth and violin eyes. Legs and that patch of dark hair on his lower stomach. He doesn’t want twenty-four more days with the version of Dev that Dev thinks he needs to be to please other people.
He stands up and takes a few steps closer to Dev and tries. “I care about you,” he says. He reaches to take Dev’s face in his hands, and for a minute, Dev lets him. “I just want you to be healthy.”
Dev yanks back, severing their physical connection. “I am healthy. I’m fine. I’m not some broken thing you need to fix. I’m not you, trying to prove to a bunch of tech douches you’re neurotypical.”
Charlie physically recoils. “Needing therapy doesn’t mean you’re broken. I’ve been in therapy for my OCD since I was twelve, and not because I want to prove anything to anyone but myself.”
Dev snorts. “That’s great for you, but I really am fine.”
“I could never be with someone who isn’t healthy, Dev.”
“You’re not with me,” Dev snaps. “This is all just practice.”
Dev told him four days ago the only things he fears are emotional intimacy and abandonment, so maybe Charlie should’ve seen this coming. Charlie has opened up to Dev in every possible way, and what has Dev given him in return? Nothing more than dude and I’m fine. The same old Fun Dev bullshit. He is so, so stupid to think this meant anything to him.
Charlie grabs his tennis shoes off the floor by the bed.