Page 73 of The Charm Offensive
But that’s whatEver Afterdoes. It exploits people during their most vulnerable moments, and a crew of mostly decent people lets it happen. Dev has stood by before—while the boyfriend screamed at Kiana, and while Megan bullied Daphne—and he shouldn’t be surprised Dev is standing by and letting this happen now. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing behind their closed hotel door, in their shared bed, because at the end of the day, Dev will always put the show first.
Charlie can’t believe, after everything, that he’s only just now realizing this.
He’s suddenly furious. He wants to defy Maureen Scott and her entire toxic franchise, but he doesn’t know how, doesn’t have any power over this situation.
Except—“Enough,” he hears himself say. “I am done condoning this behavior.”
“Charles,” Megan starts, falsely apologetic.
He pulls himself up off the couch and tries to look confident. “I’m sorry, but I think you both should leave.”
“You’re right,” Delilah says. She gets to play the role of the reasonable one. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow when we’ve all cooled off.”
“No, I think you should both leave the show. Permanently.”
Both women break the fourth wall, staring at the cameras and producers, clearly confused. This isn’t how they were told the night would end, but Charlie isn’t going to back down. He knows that right now, somewhere in Los Angeles, an editing team is miningthousandsof hours of footage—almost every minute of his life on this show has been documented so the whole thing can be trimmed down into eighty-minute episodes without commercials—and Maureen Scott is there, manipulating Megan’s footage so this scene becomes the culmination of her villain arc. Charlie doesn’t have power over much, but he does have the power to ruin this scene.
“I am sending you both home right now,” he says, “because I have no interest in dating women who let their producers manipulate them into acting this way.”
The room is painfully silent except for the sound of Megan’s snivels.
“I’ll see you both out.”
Producers rush off to pack their things, and the cameras hurry downstairs so they can film the black vans whisking away the two women who’ve been dismissed. Charlie finds his team again. Parisa and Jules look proud. Ryan looks amused. And Dev, in the corner next to the refrigerator—the same refrigerator he pushed them against two days ago—looks absolutely pissed.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Dev seethes when the drama is over and they’re back in their room, the door closed. “Maureen is going to be furious.”
“I can’t believeyoudid that today,” he snaps back. “Iam furious.”
Dev peels off his sweat-stained T-shirt. “Me? I didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly. You didnothingwhile Delilah said all those horrible things to Megan.”
Dev snorts as he pulls a T-shirt out of his unpacked duffle and has to sniff it to verify it’s clean. “What was I supposed to do, Charlie? This is myjob, and your little stunt referencing producers on camera made me look really shitty at my job.”
Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and tries to massage the tension headache forming above his eyebrows. “Your job?” he echoes. “Right. You’re only my handler, and next season, you’ll handle Angie instead when she’s named the next princess.”
“Angie will never be the next princess. She’s starting med school in the fall.”
“That’s hardly the point.” He takes three slow, deep breaths. They’ve never fought before, and Charlie doesn’t know the rules. “Don’t you think you tend to overlook the more insidious aspects of this show when it doesn’t align with your ideas of fairy-tale romance?”
Saying this, clearly, was against the rules. Dev blinks at him. “What? No. I don’t do that.”
“Dev, the way this show treats mental health, and with your depression—”
“My depression has nothing to do with this show.”
“You were depressed for a week, and no one in the crew did anything about it. They were happy to ignore you as long as I was performing for the cameras. And they work you to death during filming. Do you even have time for virtual therapy?”
Dev fidgets defensively in front of the bed. “I’m not in therapy.”
Charlie’s mind immediately flashes to the image of Dev curled up in a tight ball on the bed in Munich. “You’re not?”
“Nope.” He attempts a casual shrug, but his Fun Dev disguise is slipping in the corner. “I don’t really need it.”
Charlie is out of his depth. He doesn’t know how to have a hard conversation with someone he cares about this much—with someone he is terrified of losing. “Your treatment is your choice,” he starts, his throat dry, “but in Munich, things seemed not great.”
“I’m okay,” Dev says immediately. “I’m always okay. It’s all good, dude.”
