“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!”
To which Daphne responds by swiftly marching across set, picking up a paintbrush, and running it down the front of Angie’s romper. Angie half gasps, half laughs, nothing like the usual fights that break out between the women on set. “How dare you? You’re buying me a new romper!”
“That’s my romper! You stole it out of my luggage!”
Then both women turn to him with very grave expressions, paintbrushes outstretched. Charlie holds up his hands. “You know, I’m really not feeling well today, and I think you should strongly consider your chances of receiving a tiara if you ruin these shorts—”
It’s a useless plea, and they both flick him with drops of paint until it covers the front of his T-shirt, his legs, his face. “You’re both going home immediately,” he threatens, but the women just laugh hysterically, loud enough for the other contestants to wander over. And from there, the float-making competition quickly devolves into an all-out paint war.
The producers don’t intervene on anyone’s behalf as the women run around like children, covering each other in paint. Sabrina dips Daphne’s braid in blue paint and uses it like a brush across Delilah’s crop top and Lauren L.’s skirt. Charlie tries to protect Jasmine from a paint bomb concocted by Becca and ends up with paint drenched down the front of his shirt. So, he takes off his shirt.
“Big mistake,” Angie tells him. “Now we know what we have to do to get you naked.”
Someone—Whitney, he thinks—has the bright idea to add glitter to the mix, and even Megan bonds with the rest of the contestants as they all become human Mardi Gras parade floats. Charlie has never laughed this much or this hard in his entire life.
Ryan is livid. “They’re all covered in paint and glitter!” he shouts when they finally call cut. “We can’t take them to the restaurant like this for the social hour!”
“Ryan, this is the best footage we’ve gotten all season,” Skylar argues. “It’s the most likeable Charlie has ever been.”
“But what are we going to do with them now? We need at least ten minutes’ worth of footage for tonight’s social hour.”
Dev, who has been keeping his distance from Charlie all day, raises his hand. “I might have an idea.”