“Because virgin-shaming is much better,” Charlie says. No one hears him. Delilah and Megan are screaming at each other, and the cameras are gleefully capturing the scene. Delilah keeps throwing out words like psycho and unstable, and he’s back at WinHan, hearing the whispers in the hallways. It’s offensive. Horrible.
Behind the cameras, Jules looks livid, but she holds Parisa back before she impales the producers on the heels of her Louboutins. Even Ryan Parker looks mildly ill. But when Charlie finds Dev across the room, he’s watching the fight with cool detachment. He doesn’t understand how Dev can just stand there and let this play out, let two women emotionally abuse each other for entertainment.
But that’s what Ever After does. 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 mining thousands of 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 believe you did that today,” he snaps back. “I am furious.”
Dev peels off his sweat-stained T-shirt. “Me? I didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly. You did nothing while 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 my job, and your little stunt referencing producers on camera made me look really shitty at my job.”