Chapter Eight
Give me shoulders, or give me death.
Ceres
My stomach hurts. It is, of course, because I tasted Mars’s banana frozen lemonade a few hours ago, not because I forgot to eat dinner after I got home from the store. That would be ridiculous.
In hindsight, fasting until I could replace my order on Monday would not have been the end of the world.
One meal every few days is common for me.
I could have skipped the entire ordeal of entering a store, going to a gas station, and sipping an abomination if I’d just remained calm when Amelia told me the news, thanked her, and headed on home to meditate.
Glancing at the empty frozen hot chocolate cup on my crocheted succulent coaster, I relax and continue sorting through my work request queries.
These days, requests from men get trashed immediately.
Since I’m not struggling to build my career anymore, I’ve had way too many bad experiences with guys in this genre writing men like…
men …and then getting annoyed with me when I say, “Um, actually.” It’s very hard to explain to some guys that the male population in romance novels are perfectly attainable and realistic standards, but also they do not exhibit the bottom-of-the-barrel conduct they’ve decided is attainable and realistic.
In my dark romance field, it’s harder still to explain that the lines are finer, but ever important. Some guys totally get it and do the genre a grand service. But most other guys have subjected me to leaving a hundred comments on every page.
I’m making the odds of reliving those experiences slimmer by removing the chance that narcissistic men will give me self-insert jerk leads who wish the real world would let them abuse women.
Dark romance men might be brutal, but they must also be earth-shakingly in love with their ladies for me to consider a project.
I’m looking for the men who torture themselves as much as they torture others, vying for the attention of their oblivious darlings.
I want the guys who treasure stab wounds from their lady loves, because that attention is the only time something went deep enough for them to feel it in their broken souls.
Desperation and adoration must go hand in hand, frolicking.
It might be safe to say that my expectations for the dark romance male leads aren’t entirely attainable and realistic .
But only because of the crimes. Were it merely off-the-charts obsession, which somehow manages to still respect at least a modicum of autonomy, I’d have a real-life husband already.
Getting away with crimes on top of all that is a bit of a stretch, though.
After all, what man has the left and right brain coordination for that sort of thing?
Don’t make me laugh.
Today, 7:42 p.m.
FROM : [email protected]
TO : [email protected]
SUBJECT : Project pitch
Sara,
They’re next-door neighbors. He’s been obsessed with her ever since she moved in. He’s not a stalker, because stalking is wrong, but he does have an array of security cameras pointed at her house for the express purpose of catching sight of her hair in the sunlight when she’s tending her garden.
(And also, possibly, for the purpose of learning how to be good enough for her, but that’s just because he’s a poor insecure baby who never learned how to talk to people.)
He loves her. Deeply. He can’t express how often his mind strays to her, unprompted.
He reviews his security footage when he misses her, which is often, but that’s not important.
He doesn’t know what to do with his feelings, and since he’s a planner to a fault, he’s unwilling to take a chance on telling her about them without more information.
(Precious little information about compatibility one can obtain via security cameras alone, I’m sure you understand.)
So anyway, he concocts what might be a seventy-two step scheme that starts with only a little coercion and ends with a modest wedding. (Unless she wants a big wedding, but he is presently doubtful of that, given that she seems to be something of a recluse.)
Throughout the story, he struggles with his unhealthy tendencies (insecurity, fear, guilt, etc.), which resulted in the security camera thing and the scheme thing.
She probably struggles to fall in love with someone so mentally unwell when, as far as he can tell, she’s content on her own, and he’s really something of a bomb going off in her perfect life.
Blah, blah, blah. They live happily ever after, the end.
:D
Rouge
I blink at the email Rouge has just sent me and suspect she wrote it in the five minutes since we stopped messaging. It is…terrible. Just utterly horrible. Where’s the plot? What’s even going on?
Guy loves girl. Girl doesn’t know guy exists.
This isn’t a dark romance; it’s a common tragedy.
Today, 7:45 p.m.
FROM : [email protected]
TO : [email protected]
SUBJECT : RE: Project pitch
Rouge,
This sucks.
What if he kidnaps her by mistake around step three in his egregiously long plan? Then we can see his descent into madness over what he’s done as she slowly Stockholms, discovering that his brokenness calls to something deeply messed up inside her.
His commitment is both chilling and comforting, providing a twisted sense of security throughout the ordeal until she—finally—gives in to all his manic charms.
And also he’s so big, she’s so small,
Sara Pond
I barely have to wait for a response. It comes within three seconds.
Today, 7:45 p.m.
FROM : [email protected]
TO : [email protected]
SUBJECT : RE: Project pitch
Why does he have to be “so big”?
Today, 7:46 p.m.
FROM : [email protected]
TO : [email protected]
SUBJECT : RE: Project pitch
Industry standard, I’m pretty sure. The big insane guy and the petite, needs-protection girl is basic genre expectation.
Today, 7:46 p.m.
FROM : [email protected]
TO : [email protected]
SUBJECT : RE: Project pitch
I’m against this.
I move back to our chat thread.
Sara : It doesn’t matter if you’re against it. It’s what the girlies want.
Rouge : The girlies must want more than kidnappings and shoulders.
Sara : They do not.
Rouge : I will pay you fifty thousand dollars if you help me write a bestseller about a guy with perfectly adequate and attainable shoulders and a woman who is, shockingly, not five-foot-two.
My eyes widen, and I blink. I don’t know what’s more outrageous. Her suggesting that such a feat is possible, or the fact she’ll pay me that much money to attempt it with her.
Sara : How tall is she?
Rouge : How tall are you?
A perfectly reasonable height.
Sara : Five-nine.
Rouge : Perfect.
Sara : Not perfect. How tall is he?
Rouge : Six-one.
Sara : Short.
Rouge : I’ve never been so insulted in my life.
Sara : Six-one with no shoulders is a pathetic male lead, Rouge. What are you trying to prove here?
Rouge : Excuse you. I never said he didn’t have shoulders. He’s not an amputee. He’s got shoulders. Great shoulders. They’re just not disproportionately large for his acceptable frame.
Sara : “acceptable frame”
Rouge : Why do you hate me?
I snort and shake my head. I surely don’t hate her at all. It’s just, last I checked, her genre was not romcom.
Sara : You still haven’t told me what you’re trying to prove.
Rouge : Can’t I, after making millions selling books, want a meager challenge? Is it so wrong to hope I can create a bestseller that breaks genre standards and embraces representation for the tall girls who never get to see themselves kidnapped?
Sara : Tall girls are never kidnapped because the male lead would have to break the tall girlie’s legs to get them to fit in his trunk.
Rouge : So I’ll also be breaking genre standards by having a creative male lead. Fabulous.
Rouge : Aren’t you tired of giant men and tiny women and the same boring plot line over and over and over? Modest-shouldered men need hope. Tall women need to see themselves in romance stories.
Sara : Modest-shouldered men should do more pushups. And tall women don’t need to worry that they’ll be kidnapped on top of everything else they have to deal with.
Rouge : I feel the need to remind you that my original story had nothing to do with kidnapping. It was about a pining man, fighting his natural disposition for toxicity.
Sara : Boring. Embrace the toxicity. Embrace it. Become even more toxic.
Rouge : Who hurt you?
What a question.
Sara : No one.
Sara : And that’s the problem.
Sara : Where’s my male lead? Who’s going to set the world on fire for me and marvel at the burn scars it leaves upon my skin?
When you’re capable and smart and outgoing and conventionally attractive enough to pass as acceptable to every Joe Schmo out there, you fall into a pit of deep mediocrity.
I don’t want an average man to love me pitifully to such an extent that he sticks around through our arguments and annoyances.
I want a whirlwind of a man who knows me inside out, prevents annoyances before they happen because he’s in my skull, and loves me beyond my own comprehension, right to madness.
Rouge : You want a fantasy.
Sara : Yep.
Sara : All girls do.
Sara : And fantasies?
Sara : Are not “modest shouldered.”