The Charm Offensive(98)
The real reason they flew across the country is finally clear. They have a show to make, a story to wrap up, a fairy tale that needs its happy ending. Dev thinks about the season he just watched and about the Charlie-shaped sinkhole in his chest. He thinks about the house in Silver Lake, the plants by the window, Charlie in a soft sweater. He thinks about a bed where the sheets always smell like oatmeal body wash and a life that’s always filled with him. On an end table in his parents’ living room are a serving platter and bowl, flown halfway across the world by Charlie Winshaw.
Then he thinks about who he was three months ago and who he is now and who he wants to be and—
“I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
And he turns and walks out of the living room.
* * *
It’s Jules who comes, Jules who finds him sobbing into a jean jacket on his childhood bed. She sits down on the corner, and he waits for her impassioned speech about why he should risk everything to profess his love for a man on national television.
“You left me, too, you know,” she eventually says, with no sympathy and all bite. “So that sucked.”
Since he’d rather be yelled at than cajoled at the moment, he sits up and reaches for her hand.
“Jules.”
She stops him. “I don’t want you to apologize, okay? I get it. You weren’t in a healthy place, and you had to do what was right for you. And the reality of our friendship is, you always kept me at a distance. You never really let me in. I’ve been talking to my therapist about it—”
His right eyebrow shoots up.
“Yes, I have a therapist. Everyone has a fucking therapist,” she snaps. “I’m not exactly good at letting people in, either. I don’t like to be vulnerable with anyone, but I’m worried you never let me see the real you because you were afraid I wouldn’t love all of you.”
Jules’s words cut as deep as the image on the magazine cover, exposing the fear he carries around with him, always. Still.
“In case I’m right, I want to make sure you know that I love you for who you are, even when you’re a cowardly asshole who bails on his friends for three months,” she says in a very Jules Lu–like fashion. Then she does something very un-Jules. She reaches for both of his hands, gathers them to her heart, right over the face of J. C. Chasez. “You are deserving of my love just as you are, and you’re deserving of his love, too.”
He starts crying again, but Jules doesn’t let go of his hands, doesn’t let him hide the evidence of his tears. “You deserve the love you’ve been orchestrating for other people for the last six years. You deserve a happily ever after.”
“A happily ever after?” he snorts, and an unseemly wad of snot gathers on his upper lip. Jules kindly pretends not to notice while she lets him reach for a tissue. “You don’t believe in happily ever afters. You think our show is stupid.”
“Our show is stupid. We once made women downhill ski in Switzerland while wearing bikinis. In the dead of winter. People come on our show so desperate for marriage, they delude themselves into thinking they’re in love. Barely half the couples make it past six months.”
“What about Brad and Tiffany? They’ve been married for fifteen years, and they have three kids.”
“Yes, we parade them around a lot.”
“Or Luke and Natalie, or Greg and Jane, or Brandon and Lindsey—”
“The point is,” Jules interjects, “most people don’t fall in love in two months. But sometimes you meet someone, and you just know. And then we put them on a boat in Bali, because who can resist falling in love on a boat?”
“Don’t quote me to me.”
She squeezes his hands impossibly tight. “That list you just recited of our rare successful couples… do you notice any patterns?”
“They all have names you can easily find on a souvenir license plate?”
“They’re all white, yes. White and passably straight and middle class and Christian and incredibly hot.”
Dev laughs, narrowly avoiding another snot situation.
“Ever After is good at selling one very particular kind of love story. Most of the people who come on our show are all the same, but Charlie—”
Just the sound of his name makes Dev’s heart punch into his throat.
“Someone like Charlie never should’ve come on our show, but he did. He’s so special.”
“I know he is.” Dev bristles. “He’s the most incredible person I’ve ever met.”
She looks like she wants to slap him across the face. “So what’s the fucking problem?”
“What if I’m like our na?ve contestants? What if… what if the love I’ve wanted my whole life isn’t real? What if there are no happily ever afters?”
Jules takes their knotted hands and drops them into her lap, but still, she refuses to let go of him. “I don’t think happily ever after is something that happens to you, Dev. I think it’s something you choose to do for yourself.”
Story notes for editors: Season 37, Episode 10
Story producer:
Jules Lu
Air date:
Monday, November 15, 2021
Executive producer: Ryan Parker