The Charm Offensive(87)
“I don’t know!” Dev takes three deep breaths, holding each one in for three seconds. Everything is spinning. It’s a humid night, suffocating. He hasn’t thought about any of this yet, and he doesn’t want to troubleshoot his future with Ryan Parker of all people.
But if he thinks about it, if he considers it for even one second, he knows. He would do it. He would live off camera in Charlie’s life if Charlie would let him. If Charlie wanted him, he would do just about anything for that little house in Venice Beach, including hiding away there like a gay Rapunzel, waiting for the moments when Charlie could come to him in secret.
He’s always known how this story ends, because it has ended the same way for thirty-six seasons. Dev doesn’t get the happily ever after, but he would settle for less if it meant being with Charlie. Because the alternative—losing Charlie—is going to destroy him.
“Charlie and I—we know we don’t have a future,” he tells Ryan when the silence stretches too tight between them.
“But you said you love him,” Ryan says quietly. He reaches out for Dev’s hand and gives it a squeeze—a squeeze that reminds Dev he and Ryan were friends once, before everything else. “Is this why you were depressed? In Germany?”
“I’m going to get back into therapy when we’re back in LA.” The words come quick. Automatic.
“Yeah. I’ve heard that one before.”
He wants to tell Ryan it’s different this time. Who he was with Ryan isn’t who he is with Charlie; Charlie isn’t Ryan, and when Dev pulls away, Charlie reaches, and when Dev slips under, Charlie stays.
But Charlie can only stay for ten more days, so what’s the point of explaining?
“Are you going to tell Skylar?”
Ryan snorts and drops Dev’s hand. “Skylar already knows.”
“She doesn’t. She can’t.”
“She definitely does, and she definitely can. She’s not an idiot, and you’re not subtle.”
“But…” Dev is spinning again. Or maybe the entire world is spinning? Either way, he needs to sit down in the dirt. The earth is so warm and his body is so weak, he sinks. “If Skylar knew, she would fire me. I’ve destroyed the season.”
“You really didn’t. This show is about the drama, and Charlie’s delivered that.”
“This show is about love,” Dev counters.
Ryan shakes his head. “D, love is the unintentional by-product of this show.”
Dev pulls his legs against his chest and buries his face in his knees.
“Skylar doesn’t care if you’re sleeping with Charlie,” Ryan says calmly from above him, “so long as Charlie delivers her the hetero fairy tale the network demands. And thanks to your amazing job as Charlie’s handler, they’re going to get it. But you—you deserve better than being someone’s dirty secret, Dev.”
Dev drums out the Morse code for “calm” against his shins and tries to remember how to breathe. Tries to remind himself he survived losing Ryan, once. He can survive losing Charlie, too. Even if those two things don’t feel equivalent on a humid night in Macon, Georgia.
“Besides,” Ryan says before he turns back to the house, “it’s not Skylar you should worry about. It’s Maureen.”
Dev wraps his arms tighter around his legs and feels himself collapse inward, like a dying star.
Charlie
His fingers clumsily fidget with the bow tie on his tux, and he watches himself in the mirror, the sweat gathering on his brow. They’ll have to redo his makeup before the Crowning Ceremony. Assuming he can figure out how to properly dress himself first.
Skylar pops her shaved head through the dressing room door. “We need you in five. Everything coming along in here?”
“Have you seen Dev?” Charlie tries to keep his voice steady around this question, but instead the words convey the panic grinding through his internal organs.
“Ryan asked him to lock up the set. Anything I can help with?”
“The t-tie,” he stammers as his fingers slip through the fabric again. “I can’t get it.”
Skylar comes closer and places her steady hands over his trembling ones. “Let me.”
The head director is shorter than he realized, standing on her toes to get a good angle on the bow tie. She seemed larger than life, indomitable, when he first met her two months ago. “Big night,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
He’s sweating and shaking and barely able to form cogent sentences. “I think you can tell exactly how I’m feeling.”
She smiles up at him as her hands deftly arrange the fabric into a perfect bow. “Do you know who you’re going to send home?”
He nods. The anxiety isn’t about sending Lauren home tonight. She is the obvious choice, the only woman remaining who doesn’t know it’s all a ruse. He’s anxious because of what sending home Lauren means. He’ll be one step closer to the end of this journey, and he still hasn’t figured out what to do about the certainty and the glittering something and the fact that Dev is already pulling away.
She steps back and admires her handiwork. “Then what are you worried about?”
Something in her tone suggests she’s not asking as Ever After’s head director; she’s asking as the woman who taught him the dance moves to “Bad Romance” in a New Orleans club. As the woman who got drunk with him on a patio in Bali.