Page 49 of The Charm Offensive
As if Charlie’s shame is strong enough to summon Dev, he walks in through the open bathroom door wearing sunglasses and carrying the world’s largest cup of coffee. “We’ve got to get downstairs to film the greeting scene with the contestants. Are we ready to go?”
“Charlie is sitting fully clothed in a shower, so no.”
“Get it together, Charles. We have work to do,” Dev says condescendingly. He then casually turns and throws up into the sink.
“Gross!” Jules screams.
“You were sitting on the toilet seat! What was I supposed to do?”
Jules covers her nose and mouth, rushing from the bathroom, and Dev blots vomit from the corner of his mouth, looking as dignified as possible. They’re alone, both of them smelling like vomit and each refusing to speak first. Charlie stares up at him through the shower water. Dev stares down at him throughhis sunglasses. Charlie has no idea what’s going on inside Dev’s head.
Maybe Dev forgot?
“How… how much do you remember of last night?” Dev finally asks.
Everything. He remembers every damn second.
Charlie kissed Dev last night. He kissed Dev, and it was what kissing issupposedto feel like. He enjoyed kissing Dev in a way he’s never enjoyed kissing anyone. He’s overwhelmed by the clarity of this fact, and he’s overwhelmed by the confusion of what happens next. He kissed Dev, but he knows he can never kiss him again, not without ruining this season and Dev’s entire career. Not without hurting the ten women who are still on this show to date him and not without destroying his chance to rebuild his reputation.
It was a mistake. He made a huge mistake. But Dev is standing there handing them anoutwith this question—a way to undo what happened—and Charlie doesn’t think about what he wants. He thinks about what he needs to do.
“I don’t remember much.” Charlie swallows the sick rising in his throat. “I can remember getting to the dance club, and that’s… it.”
“Okay.” Dev’s face is unreadable behind the sunglasses. “Okay.”
Then he marches out of the bathroom, calling, “Jules!Will you please get him dressed?”
Jules comes back into the bathroom and tries to hoist Charlie into a standing position. He immediately vomits again. She smirks. “Today should be fun.”
Absolutely none of it is fun.
He’s so hungover he can barely film the welcome scene with the contestants in the French Quarter. Even by Tuesday’s Group Quest, he doesn’t feel wholly recovered. He meets the ten remaining women at Mardi Gras World, and they receive a tour where they learn about the history of the parade. Then they’re taken to a warehouse where the women are divided into two teams tasked with building their own Mardi Gras parade floats, even though it’s June.
The producers want him to mingle with the women while they work on their floats, and he gravitates toward Daphne first before he remembers they also have awkward, kiss-related drama. “Uh, hey,” he starts.
Daphne smiles shyly up at him. “Hey. I’ve been hoping to talk to you.” She leads him—and by extension, two cameras—across the warehouse to where the other women won’t overhear. “I just really wanted to apologize about the ball,” she says, fiddling with her braid. “I shouldn’t have, um, thrown myself at you like that.”
“It takes two to consensually dry-hump,” he attempts.
Daphne doesn’t smile. Her mouth worries itself into a grimace. “Megan said something to provoke me, and I maybe had a few more glasses of wine than normal, and Maureen told me I should.… I made a silly, drunken decision.”
He swallows. “I can maybe relate.”
Daphne nervously unbraids her blond hair, then rebraids it, then sighs. “The thing is, I really do like you, Charlie. I feel like we have a lot in common, and we have fun together.”
Everything she’s saying is true, and when he looks at Daphne in her cute overalls, he feels tenderness and affection for her. But he doesn’t feel any particular impulse to push Daphne up against a brick wall and shove his tongue down her throat.
“So I think we should trust our bond,” Daphne is saying, “and not feel any need to rush the physical aspects of our relationship.”
“Agreed,” he says too quickly.
Daphne opens her arms with a tentative offer to hug, and Charlie accepts, tucking her slender body against his. It’s actually sort of lovely.
“Hey!” Angie pops up holding a dripping paintbrush. “Did y’all have a postmortem on your cringey make-out?”
Daphne blushes. “Um, yes. Thank you for phrasing it like that.”
“Awesome! Group hug!” Angie wedges herself into the circle of their embrace and splatters paint all over Daphne’s overalls. “Oops! Sorry, Daph!”
