* * *
They forget about the competition and the social hour and haul the cast back to the hotel. The women and Charlie go to their respective rooms to shower and change into their pajamas. Then everyone rendezvouses in Charlie’s hotel room, where the cameras and lights are set up. They order massive amounts of takeout, and for the first time all season, Charlie and the contestants are just allowed to be together. The previous bonding of the day has created some temporary illusion that makes the women forget they’re here to compete against each other. Instead, they sit on the floor with wet hair, eating jambalaya and passing around bottles of rosé.
When he’s not feeling pressured to kiss them, Charlie really likes all of these women. That realization is quickly chased by guilt.
Charlie knows, realistically, that most of these women are not here for him, just like he’s not here for them. Megan is here to promote her exercise videos, and Sabrina is trying to get more hits on her travel blog. Rachel wants to brick-and-mortar her food truck, and Jasmine is trying to expand her brand as the former Miss Kentucky. And all of them want more Instagram followers.
Still, it seems impossible that he’s going to get through the next five weeks without hurting one—if not all—of these wonderful women.
“Have we entered the hotel dance party stage of the evening yet?” Angie asks the room, and Lauren L. immediately cues up an upbeat Leland Barlow song on her handler’s phone and grabs Sabrina’s hand to pull her into a tango. Charlie instinctively looks for Dev. He’s standing in the doorway between their adjoining rooms, hiding behind a camera, and their eyes meet across the budding dance party. Charlie tells himself to look away. But he doesn’t.
* * *
“I think we should discuss your relationship trajectories with the remaining contestants before the next Crowning Ceremony,” Dev says a little after midnight, when the contestants have gone back to their rooms and the production team has finished cleaning up the mess.
“Everyone knows you and Daphne are like identical blond wedding-cake toppers, and you have amazing chemistry with Angie, though I get the impression Angie Griffin would have amazing chemistry with a cactus. But Lauren L. was a real surprise today, and I think we’ve been sleeping on Sabrina.” Dev is holding a bag of Double Stuf Oreos, and he sits down on Charlie’s bed beside him. “What are your thoughts?”
At the moment, his thoughts are about how close Dev is sitting next to him. “My thoughts are solely preoccupied by you brazenly eating Oreos in my bed.”
Dev leans over, so when he takes a bite, little black Oreo crumbs fall into Charlie’s lap.
“You’re a monster.”
“As I was saying…” Dev continues to talk about the contestants while absentmindedly brushing crumbs out of Charlie’s lap. Charlie feels his entire body seize up: Dev’s fingers and Dev’s smoky-sweet smell and Dev’s body close to his on his bed like it’s nothing. Which is why Charlie has to keep pretending the kiss never happened, even though the secret churns his stomach every time he thinks about it. Because the kiss clearly meant nothing to Dev—he can ignore it, let it vanish into the drunken ether, carry on being friends like normal.
Charlie isn’t sure what he wants the kiss to mean, but he knows it wasn’t nothing.
* * *
On the day of his Courting Date with Lauren L., Charlie turns twenty-eight years old.
He’s done everything in his power to conceal this information from cast and crew alike because he hates his birthday. He hates the attention and the pressure to do something memorable and the feeling he’s failing at life. Another year has passed, and he’s still the same old Charlie.
（Except now he’s a Charlie who was brave enough to kiss a person he likes but is still too much of a coward to admit it.）
Birthdays are always a twenty-four-hour anxiety trap, and he would happily pop a Xanax and sleep through the whole day if he didn’t have to get up for filming.