Casting a sideways look at Mason, I noticed he was crossing his arms. He was… he was nervous. Or maybe just out of his element. For him, both of those things seemed the same, all rooted in the fact that he felt like he didn’t have control.
“Charlie, stop doing that,” Crim said impatiently.
“…what?” I asked, snapping my eyes back to him.
“You know what. Just let me do this, okay?” he said.
“But… I didn’t do anything,” I mumbled.
“Right. So Oliver,” Crim started, snapping his focus back to the beautiful man in front of him. “You’re unhappy because you feel so, so deeply. You have an ex, an earth-type. He was threatened by you. Some engineer or something.”
Oliver cackled, tossing his head back. “You’d be able to find all that out from an internet search. It would take two seconds,” he said. “You’re so full of sh—”
“How about the fact that you grew up in Alabama? Why don’t you tell anyone that?” Crim said, cutting him off.
“I lived in Alabama for the first thirteen years of my life. That’s hardly saying I’m from there,” Oliver reasoned.
His glass of champagne was trembling slightly.
“You grew up in Alabama. Your father was in with the wrong crowd. You don’t talk to him anymore. He left you and your mom when you were thirteen, so she took you with her to Kentucky to be closer to family.”
“That could be the story of anyone in my neighborhood,” Oliver said, his voice shaking a little.
“Oh yeah? How about your first boyfriend when you were fourteen? Greg or Craig? Yeah, Craig. He got a job driving a truck, then left you, citing that he had to work too much.”
“I—”
“He left you for someone else. But you didn’t find that out until you were sixteen, didn’t you?”
Oliver was visibly shaking now.
“Your next boyfriend was pretty much a carbon copy of Craig. You thought that maybe this time it would work. But he wounded you even worse, didn’t he? There’s still a gaping hole in you from that one…”
Oliver swallowed, paralyzed by what was coming out of Crim’s mouth.
“He left you because he said he had to go to college. He did — he went to Dartmouth. Immediately found another guy, told you something like…” Crim squinted for a second, “You weren’t ambitious enough, and that you weren’t going anywhere with your life. It was just like what your father said to you all those years ago when he was still around.”
Oliver swallowed another sip of champagne, clearly rooted to the spot. It was like watching a car accident; I felt bad for him, but I couldn’t look away.
Crim pressed on, as if each word was a blow. “That got to you. So you worked really hard and pretty much stopped talking to everyone around you. They didn’t understand, did they Ollie? They didn’t know what you were doing, toiling away in the room of that trailer. You picked up a mannequin that you found in the dumpster — it was broken, but still usable. Then you started making clothes.”
“Sheila. I’ll never forget her,” Oliver whispered.
I sniggered, but it was clear that no one else was in the mood.
“Then you got a stroke of luck and were accepted into Parsons. Good thing you built up that work ethic when you were trapped in Kentucky, eh? Because it wasn’t long before you were noticed. Noticed by a hardworking engineer,”
Oliver gave the slightest of nods. I could tell that Crim was about to go in for a slam dunk.
“But that wasn’t enough, was it? He made you feel like you were never good enough unless you worked yourself to the bone. Even then, he always made it seem like he was better because he was an engineer, and in his mind, you were some lowly plebeian who spent all day matching colors and stitching rags together.”
Oliver winced.
“The more popular you got on Instagram by posting your work — to people that would appreciate the type of work you do, right? — The more you were noticed; the more you felt seen. And that’s all you really wanted, wasn’t it Oliver? You just wanted to be seen. Then you were noticed by someone else. You were noticed by the producers of this show,” Crim said.
Oliver was tense. Even though his skin was tan, it was like he’d gone white.
“And good old engineer boy— he didn’t like that one bit, did he? He tore into you. He made you feel like you were less than him, but you knew better, didn’t you?”
Oliver’s lip was trembling. Crim must have been getting to him with his words.
“You knew you deserved more. And you didn’t know what more meant until you met Charlie.”
Chapter Thirty
My mouth dropped open. All three sets of their eyes were on me. I didn’t know what to think or do in this situation; I felt like a trapped animal.
“…me?” I asked stupidly.
Oliver opened his mouth to deny it, but then looked into his champagne glass. “Sure, I had a crush on Charlie,” he admitted. “But who here doesn’t?”
“Truer words have never been spoken,” Crim said, his face twisting into a smile. “There’s something about him, isn’t there?” he said, cocking his head.
I squirmed in the water, simultaneously loving and hating all of the attention on me right now. I was terrified and excited at the same time; wanting to jump out of this bath and run from those purple eyes, but I also couldn’t wait for it to be my turn.
“You’re afraid Charlie is going to make you feel the same way the engineer made you feel,” Crim said to Oliver. “He already kind of is.”
“Is that true?” I asked Oliver, my heart breaking for him.
“It’s… not untrue,” he said, sipping his champagne.
“You’re threatened by me,” I said, watching him carefully.
Oliver stiffened. “I mean, look at the way things have shaken out. You show up here, all glamorous and beautiful, coming out of middle-of-nowhere Ohio. And then you go and catch all of our eye— even Reese’s and Leo’s!
