The Charm Offensive

by Alison Cochrun

“You need to relax,” she drawls, as if telling someone to relax has ever once in the history of human beings yielded that outcome.

Nothing. Nothing at all. He feels great about all of this. In other news, he’s probably going to vomit.

eyes. He’s like a terrified baby bird. Like a two-hundred-twenty-pound baby bird with crippling anxiety and a fairly intense germ phobia who can’t navigate his way through a complete sentence.

Megan drags him to a small bench beside the pool where cameras are already waiting. She proceeds to sit too close to him, touch him too much without permission, and drone sweet nothings in his ear about her YouTube channel where she posts exercise videos.

Something he probably should’ve pieced together sooner. So he asks, inelegantly: “Wait, are you gay?”

Charlie hasn’t met many people like this—people who don’t make assumptions about you when they discover your brain doesn’t work like theirs; people who don’t judge you; people who simply stay with you and ask what they can do to

fears. “I have OCD,” he says before he can’t. Dev props an elbow on the countertop and leans into his hand. “Okay.” “Real OCD. Not the thing where people think it’s cute that they’re anal about organizing their pen cup.” “Yes, I figured.”

it. A miscommunication. An enemies-to-lovers trope Charlie remembers from his days of reading Star Trek fanfic on his home-built laptop.

He’s not entirely sure what you’re supposed to do when you discover your sort-of friend who you also like to kiss might have clinical depression,

“I’m not afraid of anything. Except emotional intimacy and abandonment.”

When Dev finally releases his mouth, Charlie sighs. “You make me so fucking happy.”

followed. “We ate pizza on the floor of your new apartment, and I asked you why it took you six years to break up with someone who didn’t make you happy. Do you remember what you said?” He shakes his head. “You said sometimes easy is better than happy.”

would do just about anything for that little house in Venice Beach, including hiding away there like a gay Rapunzel, waiting for the moments when Charlie could come to him in secret.

don’t think happily ever after is something that happens to you, Dev. I think it’s something you choose to do for yourself.”