He clenches his jaw and tries to listen to her stories about working as a spray-tan technician in Tampa until they’re interrupted by another blonde who comes to confront Megan about hogging Charlie’s time. Soon, the two women are yelling at each other. He tries to de-escalate the unexpected tension, then quickly learns the tension is not so much unexpected as it is carefully coordinated by producers with headsets who poke and prod the women into these little altercations.
There are some okay moments. He talks to a software engineer named Delilah who starts a jokey argument about spaces versus tabs, and it’s the first time all night he feels like he knows what’s going on. A woman named Sabrina tells interesting stories about her travel blog. At one point, when attempting to dodge a very assertive woman who won’t stop touching his ass, he finds Daphne （the first woman out of the limo, he remembers now） and Angie （the woman who danced with him, he could never forget） sharing a bottle of wine behind a generator. They kindly offer him a top-off of pinot and let him know half of his shirt buttons are open, which is kind.
Soon it’s two in the morning, and he has a raging headache, indigestion, and an unsettling pit of anxiety metastasizing in his chest. Worse, he feels the horrible certainty of knowing this was a mistake. He never should’ve deluded himself into thinking he could handle this. He never should have let Parisa convince him this was the right move.
He’ll back out—pay for the money lost in production himself. Yes, all of America will hear the rumors about how Charles Winshaw had a breakdown on a reality television show. Yes, he will never work in tech again. But maybe that’s for the best. Perhaps he’s better off hiding in a secluded cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains away from all other humans. Perhaps he’ll learn to whittle.
“You’ve almost survived the worst of it,” Jules reassures him on a break as she brings him a bottle of water. Another woman fixes his hair. Dev, he notes, is nowhere to be found.
“Just one more contestant to talk to,” Jules continues, “and then you’ll need to choose four women to send home in the Crowning Ceremony.”
He wants to tell Jules about his new plan to send himself home at the Crowning Ceremony, but she’s already leading him to the place set design has arranged for his meeting with Kiana. They chat for about a minute before Charlie notices a large white man with bulging muscles and neck tattoos walking toward them. Two cameras follow, along with two security guards.
Kiana follows Charlie’s gaze, a look of unguarded horror flashing across her symmetrical features. “Oh God. No.”
“What the hell, slut?”
“What is happening?” Charlie asks, maybe of the man shouting horrendous derogatory terms. Maybe of Kiana, who is being shouted at. Maybe of the cameras, or the crew members, or the little half-circle of contestants who’ve gathered around to watch this scene.
“Are you the dude dating my girlfriend?” the man growls as he jabs a finger against Charlie’s chest. And first, ouch.
Second: Kiana had a boyfriend back home and they brought him onto the set to scream at her? What’s worse, no one steps in to stop it. Four cameras, and no one intervenes when the man gives Charlie another shove.
“Roger, it’s not his fault!” Kiana cries.
“Shut up, slut!”
Something about the second “slut” triggers the panic inside him, and Charlie can feel himself hurtle toward the brink of an episode. And he can’t have an episode right now. Not in front of all these cameras. Not when he came on this show to prove to the world that he’s the sort of man who doesn’t have triggers or episodes, the sort of man who never breaks down, who keeps it all in, keeps it all together under pressure.
Charlie looks at Kiana, her expression a mixture of sadness and shame, and the only thing more potent than the anxiety attack clawing at his chest is his outrage. He turns to the boyfriend. “It’s not acceptable to talk to her that way,” Charlie says.