The Charm Offensive(88)
“I never thought it would feel real,” he starts. He can’t answer her as anything other than the star of her show, so he quickly adds, “with Daphne, I mean. I never thought I’d develop real feelings for anyone on the show, and I’m not sure what to do. How do you know when you’re going to love someone forever?”
Skylar stares up at him, her face an unknowable mask. She takes two steps backward and collapses onto a folding chair. “Did you know I was married to a man for ten years before I met my current partner?”
He obviously did not. Skylar never talks about her personal life outside of the show. For all he knows, she doesn’t have a life outside of this show.
“Mm.” She reaches into the pocket of her jeans and pulls out a roll of Tums. “Diego. He was a good man. He treated me really well, and even though I wasn’t attracted to him, and even though I was repulsed by the idea of having sex with him, I was pretty happy.”
Charlie shifts uncomfortably on his feet but doesn’t let himself break eye contact with her as she carefully unfolds her private self to him in a slow, rhythmic voice.
“I was aware of the fact that I was more drawn to women, but I didn’t particularly want to have sex with them, either, so I swept it aside for years and years, until finally, I decided to try a support group for questioning adults. That’s where I met my current partner, Rey. They were the first person I ever heard use the word asexual as anything other than the punch line of a joke.”
Skylar pauses, and Charlie drops his gaze to the floor. “Why are you telling me this?”
She ignores his question and continues on with her story. “I went up to Rey after the group session, and we started talking. For a long time, we were just friends. They were the person who helped me figure out I’m biromantic, the person who helped me feel okay about being sex-repulsed. They see me exactly as I am while also helping me become a truer version of myself.”
Charlie thinks about Dev and about the beautiful simplicity of being seen.
“I’m telling you this, Charlie, because you asked how you know you’re going to love someone forever, and the truth is, despite what we tell people on this show, forever is never a guarantee. I don’t know if I’m going to love Rey for the rest of my life, but I know right now, I can’t imagine a future where I don’t love them. And for me, that’s enough.”
Charlie fidgets with his tux jacket and wishes he could find a way to thank her for sharing herself with him, find a way to tell her what it means.
Skylar swallows an antacid. “I think you have to decide if you love him enough right now to try for forever.”
Charlie chokes. “Him? Her. Daphne. I… I love… Daphne.”
Skylar rises from her chair and approaches him again, reaches up to brush the errant curls off his forehead so he’s camera ready. “Son, I know everything that happens on my set.”
She doesn’t say it threateningly, doesn’t sound angry. She says the word son the same way Dev says the word love—as if Skylar knows he’s always wanted to be someone’s son, too.
“But what if,” he asks the head director of Ever After, “I don’t know how to choose him?”
* * *
“We’re almost at the end of our quest to find love,” Mark Davenport intones for the cameras, “and tonight, Charlie will make the most important decision of all.”
Charlie stands behind the small table bearing only two tiaras. Across the room, Daphne, Angie, and Lauren L. are lined up, awaiting his decision.
“Are you ready to choose your final two?” Mark asks. Charlie clears his throat and reaches for the first tiara.
“Wait!”
He looks up to see Daphne stepping out of formation, her blue eyes wild. “Can I… Charlie, can I speak to you for a minute? Before the ceremony?”
Charlie tries not to seek out Dev in the producer lineup along the back wall as he crosses the room. Daphne leads him and the cameras out into a little alcove. “What’s wrong?” he asks, because it’s clear something is. Daphne is wringing her hands and worrying her bottom lip.
“I think,” she starts, “I think you should send me home tonight.”
Charlie tries to temper his reaction for the cameras. He doesn’t know how he’s going to keep Dev, or if it’s even possible for them to be together when this is over, but he knows the only way they stand a chance is if Charlie gets engaged to Daphne. They all need this season to be a success. “What do you mean?”
Daphne squares her shoulders. “You don’t want to get engaged to me,” she says, “and I don’t think a fake engagement is going to make either of us happy, really.”
Charlie involuntarily looks at the cameras. “It’s not, uh, fake.”
“It is. We agreed to a fake engagement, but I think we were wrong.”
“I thought you wanted people to see you in a relationship?”
She reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ears. “I’ve been thinking about it… and I don’t know. Maybe what you said in Cape Town was right. Maybe I’m chasing the wrong kind of love. Maybe I need to figure out what I really want, and I can’t do that if I’m engaged to you for the next six months. I can’t do that if I keep pretending to be someone I’m not.” Daphne takes his hand. “Don’t you want to figure out what you really want?”