Page 58 of The Charm Offensive
WEEK FIVE
Munich, Germany—Monday, July 5, 2021
8 Contestants and 34 Days Remaining
Charlie
“Dev! Come on!” Parisa pounds on his hotel door. “We’re ready to go!”
“There’s strudel!” Jules adds. “You love strudel!”
Charlie fists his hands and shoves them into his raincoat pockets. It’s July, but it’sraining. “Maybe Dev doesn’t want to come with us,” he mumbles.
Jules’s head tilts at him. “Why wouldn’t he come with us? We said we were going to explore the city together on our day off.”
Charlie grinds the toe of his shoe into the hotel carpet outside of Dev’s room. “Maybe he just… maybe we should go without him?”
Jules tries calling his phone, and Parisa tries knocking, but neither attempt gets any response. So, they explore Munich without him.
Dev hasn’t talked to Charlie at all since the garden, hasn’t even looked at him, and Charlie shouldn’t be surprised. He shouldn’t be hurt. What did he think was going to happen? Did he think they wouldbetogether in secret for the rest of the season? Did he honestly think Dev would want that? When he made it soclear everything was for practice, so Charlie could be a better version of himself for the cameras?
Charlie doesn’t want that either. He didn’t come on this show for the stupid fairy tales it sells to gullible people. He doesn’t want a relationship or romance. He doesn’t want someone who kisses him numb and calls him love. He doesn’t.
Charlie tries to enjoy the Glockenspiel and the strudel and this precious time with Parisa, but even as his body wanders up and down the halls of the Residenz, his mind is behind that closed door with Dev.
Tuesday morning, the crew meets in the hotel lobby for the first Munich Group Quest, which, to Charlie’s infinite delight, will involve horses. Dev is late.
Dev has never been late for filming, and when he finally shows up, he’s wearing black sweatpants and a wool beanie. He hasn’t shaved, apparently hasn’t showered. In the van on the way to set, Dev keeps his headphones in so he doesn’t have to talk to anyone and silently eats chocolate-dipped biscuits from the Aldi down the street from the hotel. Jules pokes at him for a bit, tries to draw him out, but even she gives up eventually.
When they arrive at the shoot out in the Black Forest, Dev coaches Charlie robotically. He doesn’t joke with Charlie, doesn’t touch Charlie unnecessarily. He won’t even look him in the eye.
The horses make everything a thousand times worse, especially because Skylar won’t let him wear a helmet, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to fall off this massive beast and get concussed. With any luck, he’ll end up with selective amnesia, and he won’tremember what Dev was like before Munich, so he won’t have to miss Dev so much when he’s standing right there.
“Is Dev okay?” Angie asks during her and Charlie’s one-on-one time. “He doesn’t seem like his normal self.”
Charlie doesn’t know what to say, but he must look thoroughly pathetic, because Angie reaches up and takes him by the chin. “Oh, sweetheart. Areyouokay?”
“Not really, no.”
“What is it?”
He knows he can’t tell her, but he wishes he could; as the only openly queer contestant, she might understand. He wishes he could tellsomeonethat for one night, Dev felt likehis, and now he feels like someone else entirely. “I… I just want Dev to be okay again.”
Angie looks up at him with a soft expression. Then, she pulls him in close, brushes kisses along his forehead. “Sweetie, I know. I know.”
Charlie looks at Angie.Reallylooks at her. At her beautiful hair, which she wears pulled back today. At her dark brown eyes, framed with pretty lashes. At her heart-shaped face, which comes to a lovely point at the chin, kind of like Dev’s.
Angie is smart and funny and kind. She listens to him, and she respects him, and he thinks maybe he could learn to love her, at least platonically, at least if he really tried. He wonders if loving Angie would fix things with Dev.
By Wednesday morning, the panic has started to settle on Charlie’s skin, which is prickling and restless.
Dev has told the production team he has the flu, and he uses this as an excuse to get out of crew breakfast and crew dinnerand crew nightcaps in thebräuhausacross the street from the hotel. He’s literally willing to lie about being sick to avoid seeing Charlie.
For his part, Charlie has tried to distract himself by forcing Jules on long, punishing runs with him in the rain; he lifts every night in the hotel gym until his body goes numb. It fixes nothing.
Wednesday’s Group Quest is out near Neuschwanstein Castle, its Romanesque white turrets rising out of the fog on the hill. It’s the real-life inspiration forSleeping Beauty’s castle, and therefore half the inspiration for this godforsaken show, but based on Dev’s disinterest, it might as well be a Lego castle constructed by a six-year-old.
The contestants compete in a medieval-style obstacle course with the castle perfectly framed in the backdrop of every shot. Charlie tries to focus on spending time with the contestants—with Lauren L., who successfully manages to give him a piggyback ride when Sabrina dares her to; with Angie, who cheers him up by telling dad jokes; with Daphne, who is perfectly pleasant as long as Parisa is twenty yards away.
