Chapter Twelve
I’m sure everything is fine…
Ceres
Sara : Am I booking out the rest of my spring, or has your male lead become more marketable? I was going to send you a “I support your bad business decisions, but I cannot work with you on them” message, but my spring is setting up to be annoying, and you know the cure for annoyance?
Sara : Rouge novels.
Sara : I will take the daily content. I will pace myself. I will survive.
Sara : But he’s gotta be described without using the words “modest” and “shoulders” in the same sentence.
Sara : Please.
Sara : I have boundaries.
Even though Rouge is normally so prompt with her responses, minutes pass, slinking by while I look into permits and how to book the local fairground.
Of everything I know about Rouge, that the woman is feral for emails and messages tops the list. She even responds to a decent amount of fan mail, or so she’s told me.
I stalk Amazon ranks, not author newsletters, social media, or PO box addresses. I have too many clients to pay them all that same attention, and—honestly—keeping up with just one author’s billion platforms is too much socialization for me. If I want to know what’s going on, I’ll message her.
And she’ll reply.
Because, again, it’s what she lives for.
She once spent hours cutting up magazines in order to reply to a hate letter in full “I now know where you live” fashion. Because, honestly, how smooth brain do you have to be to put your actual return address on hate mail?
Chaotic dark romance is the brand, and I live for it.
Which is, naturally, why I’m contemplating a world where I only have one project worth fifty grand, one project from my lovely Tempest mid-season, and one Flag Day festival to put together over the next few months.
If the goal is agoraphobia therapy, the more time for breakdowns and panic attacks I have, the better.
As it stands, even though Mars makes existing outside of my box feel somehow more possible, that doesn’t mean he at all plans to come with me when I inevitably hit a roadblock on what I can order online.
No doubt half the shops he wants represented at the festival do not have websites.
And no doubt the other half would think an invitation to unleash your inner flag coming through on their massively outdated website is spam.
In small towns like these where everyone knows everyone else, you have to go in person to the people. That’s just the way it is. It’s practically a genre expectation working against me.
Blowing out a breath, I wait so patiently for Rouge to distract me from my spiraling thoughts and the twisting sensation in my chest.
I’m fine.
I’m so fine.
I can breathe.
I’m safe.
I’m home .
The fairgrounds and permit balls are rolling. If I do nothing else this week, I’m ahead of schedule. So, really, I don’t know why I’m worried.
Dots appear as Rouge types, and relief pours through my body.
Blessed distraction. Blessed comfort zone. Please, please, please tell me you’ve given your guy several inches in the legs and the kind of shoulders readers wanna be thrown over. I need hope for my sanity here.
Rouge : hurts to hear that you have no faith in my ability to market a short king
I sigh, audibly, and slump against my desk. Rouge, why? I was counting on you.
Rouge : 6’1” isn’t even short
Rouge : and i bet he’s working very, very hard on his shoulders
Sara : Are you drunk?
Rouge : do you know what mixes well with chocolate milk?
Rouge : 9according to the internet, which i trust with my life)
My brows rise, and I stare at the 9 typo while I tap my response.
Sara : Carrot cake?
Rouge : vodka
Ah. Well. Not my first choice.
Sara : Surely you aren’t sipping a chocolate milk cocktail right now.
Rouge : chug is a more accurate verb
Sara : Right… Everything okay, friend?
Maybe the partner I assume she wanted to write an off- market book for didn’t like being told he wasn’t marketable.
Some people get upset over nonsense and make it everyone’s problem.
I’ve seen relationships like that before.
I spent my childhood mediating a relationship like that, and I’ve spent some of my adulthood editing books where I’ve had to fix relationships that felt like that.
Some authors really don’t quite get the balance between toxicity that is acceptable in-genre and just plain ew.
Rouge : okay?
Rouge : am i ok?
Rouge : totally
Sara : Convincing.
Sara : Are you safe?
Rouge : physically or emotionally?
Sara : Both, friend…
Rouge : what are you supposed to do when the person you love with your entire heart likes the most important person in the world to you?
and to make matters worse, the person who’s most important to you is deeply in love with someone else even though they don’t even know it.
so, basically, no one is happy, and there’s nothing you can do to fix anything. what do you do then?
I read the question five times, yet I still don’t understand. What does she mean “what do you do”? What she’s supposed to do is obvious.
Sara : Write a book about it.
Rouge : wrong genre
Sara : Start a new pen name.
Rouge : you don’t edit other genres
Because other genres are boring. Guy likes girl.
Girl is too stupid to notice. Something happens.
They get together. Something happens. They break up.
He creates a grand-gesture expectation instead of a simple-but-consistent one.
You know, like talking about the problem before resorting to breakup .
They live happily ever after.
Somehow.
And then the story ends before we learn whether or not Jack and Jane have therapy in their future.
Snorefest.
Yawn.
No thanks.
I do not want to read about a guy who likes a girl while the girl likes a different guy and that different guy likes a different girl. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.
I want to read about a guy who says, Oh? You want to break up with me? That sucks. Since you’re chained to my bedpost and all.
These are the reasons why I don’t “do” romance in the real world. If I want to be disappointed, I’ll buy off Temu. And if I want to continue my mild-mannered reading habits, I need to not be with a serial killer.
Sara : I suppose kidnapping the person you like isn’t an option?
Rouge : it’s not not an option
Sara : Well, there you go. Problem solved. Stockholm your short king.
Rouge : i really would
Rouge : if only my shoulders
Rouge : were of kidnapping girth
Resting my chin in my hand, I stare at the words my dear friend is sending me, with zero regard for even the most basic levels of grammar. I knew there was a reason alcohol never interested me. I just didn’t think it was because it makes you allergic to capitalization and punctuation.
I do not know what to do for my silly lovesick buds.
If Amelia and Rouge are both unwilling to commit a few crimes—or send a few texts—it’s really not like I have some kind of special sauce that makes relationships easier.
I wish people would stop treating me like I do.
I don’t go outside. What part of that behavior screams good with humans or even ideal option to hear your problems ?
I’m not acting with these people. So why am I still somehow an authority on anything?
In the real world, when I run into something I don’t understand, I cave in on myself.
In conversations, I pinpoint what might interest the person I’m talking to, and make a fool out of myself until—bless all— they take up the brunt of communication, allowing me to just listen.
I’m a bad communicator. I become desperate.
And panicked. But I cover all of it with a smile and faux interest when I, so dearly, could not care less and just do not know how to safely run away.
People think I’m a good listener, but I’m only listening because I have no idea what to say in order to abandon ship.
It’s probably insensitive to ask about the book again right now.
Shame Rouge gets the unfiltered, unafraid, horrible version of me.
Sara : Sooo…what I’m gathering is that I’m not booking your project for spring?
Rouge does not answer. Instead, she sends me a Google Doc invite to a book labeled I don’t even know, okay?
Which is, obviously, promising.
I open the document.
And if the comma splices and typos are any indication, I’m pretty much positive that she wrote this drunk.
But…still…
It is enrapturing, from the very first lines.
Sara : Yes.
Sweetly, Rouge sends me two emojis: a thumbs up and a tumbler glass.
So I get to work.