The Charm Offensive(4)
(It’s not. However, there were enough nudity clauses in his contract to raise legitimate concern.)
He looks down at the magazine lying casually on the seat between them and experiences the cognitive dissonance of seeing photos of himself. If he could look in a mirror right now, he knows his face would be sweaty and red, pinched together anxiously at the corners of his eyes and the corners of his mouth. But the man on the magazine cover isn’t anxious about anything. His face is smooth, his eyes friendly, his mouth casually tilting in the corner. The man on the magazine cover is a stranger.
The man on the magazine cover is a lie—a lie he has to live for the next two months. He’s made a deal with the proverbial devil, and he can’t control much about his circumstances at the moment, but at the very least, he can take off this stupid plastic crown. He reaches up.
“Don’t do that, dear,” Maureen Scott snaps, eyes still on her phone.
Even with the dear, there is an edge to her words, and his hands fall limply at his sides. He’s stuck with the crown, then.
Or… he could jump out of the moving vehicle and abort this foolish, misguided publicity stunt right now. He tests the door handle, but of course it’s locked. He’s been labeled a flight risk, which is why the show’s creator is personally escorting him from the studio to the set.
Two days ago, Ever After took him to a beach where they expected him to ride a white horse for the intro package, like the Prince Charming he’s supposed to be. Prince Charmings are supposed to intrinsically know how to ride horses. They’re definitely not supposed to be afraid of horses. Instead of looking strapping and manly, he kept slouching and delaying production and grimacing with every uncomfortable jostle of the saddle until the sun was gone and everyone was generally pissed with the shots. The bald woman running set called him “fucking uncoachable.”
Which sounds about right, honestly.
He tries to remember what his publicist said before he left: “You’re Charlie fucking Winshaw. You built a billion-dollar tech company before you got your braces off. You can handle Ever After.”
“But I lost my company,” he had muttered in response. Parisa pretended not to hear him. She knows what he lost. That’s why he’s here. This is his last chance to get it all back.
He feels the pressure of it weighing down on him, and before his generalized anxiety turns the corner into full-blown panic attack, he runs through his coping strategies: three deep breaths; count to thirty in seven languages; tap out the Morse code for “calm” thirteen times on his knee.
Maureen Scott stops jabbing her thumbs against the phone screen and looks at him—really looks at him for the first time all evening. “What are we going to do with you?” she muses, her voice sickly sweet.
He wants to remind her she is the one who sought him out. She’s the one who pestered his publicist for months until he agreed to do the show. He says nothing.
“You need to relax,” she drawls, as if telling someone to relax has ever once in the history of human beings yielded that outcome. Maureen’s silver-gray bob swishes stylishly as she shoots him a threatening look. “All of our futures are riding on this. You need some personal rebranding, for obvious reasons. The show does too. Don’t fuck this up for everyone.”
He would like the record to show he does not fuck things up on purpose. He would very much like to be a not-fucking-things-up sort of person. If he were that sort of person, he wouldn’t be the new star of a reality dating show.
Maureen narrows shrewd eyes at him. “Stop looking so gloomy, darling. You get to date twenty beautiful women, and when it’s over, you will propose to whoever is left standing. What’s so awful about that?”
What’s so awful about dating on television when he has not gone on a real date in two years? What’s so awful about getting fake-engaged to an almost-stranger on the slim promise he might be able to work again when this is over?
Nothing. Nothing at all. He feels great about all of this.
In other news, he’s probably going to vomit.
“And who knows,” Maureen says cloyingly. “Maybe you’ll even find real love by the end.”
He won’t. That’s the one thing he knows for absolute certain.
The car comes to a smooth stop, and Maureen pockets her phone. “Now, when we get out, you’ll meet Dev, your new handler, and he’ll coach you through the entrance ceremony.”
Charlie wants to ask what was wrong with his old handler, but the driver turns off the engine, and without another word, Maureen gets out of the car and disappears into the night. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to follow her, or just sit in the car like a pretty puppet until someone shows up to pull his strings.
He chooses the former, refusing to relinquish every ounce of his free will as he embarks on this two-month journey through reality television hell. He dramatically throws his weight against the door… which gives with suspicious ease.
Because it turns out someone is opening the door at that exact moment. He’s thrown off balance. In one fluid motion, he lands facedown at someone’s feet.
“Shit. Are you okay?”
Suddenly, there are hands on him, hoisting him into a standing position exactly like a pretty puppet. The hands belong to a tall man with dark skin whose Adam’s apple is at Charlie’s eye line. There is something disconcerting about having to look up that drastically at another person. He looks up. Dramatic cheekbones and intense eyes behind plastic-framed glasses and an amused mouth. The man gripping the front of his tux (Dev?) slides his fingers into Charlie’s hair to adjust the crown, and it’s too much.