Chapter Twenty-four
The girlies want Pushup Princes just as badly as they want Flag Day.
Mars
My dear, dear, dear brother…really saved this news for our Tuesday meeting?
Really?
He cannot be flagging serious. And, yet, of course he is. Of. Course. He. Is.
I’ve known him my entire life. I don’t know why I let things like this surprise me anymore.
Smiling, I close our meeting agenda book so the crescent moon on the cover can smile up at me. “You’re fake dating Lyra Gold?” Fake . Fake! Because of course it’s “fake.”
Jovey, please. I know you’re a workaholic, but could you leave the tropes in our books where they belong? Real life should be real . You should be real dating the woman you’ve been unknowingly in love with for over half your life.
What are we doing?
Perfectly calm, Jove nods, messing with his pocket knife. “For research.”
Clarifying.
I fold my hands together atop my agenda notebook. “Of course. What else would it be for?” Love? Ha. As if. Let’s not get ridiculous. “I assume you’ve already drafted your fake dating contract?”
Jove frowns, clearly frustrated that he forgot one of the most important steps in his research endeavors. Or clearly thinking, Uh…my what? But. Semantics.
I tut. “Oh, Jovey, Jovey, Jovey…”
“Uh,” he mutters. “Do I…need that? I only have three days before date night.”
“That’s plenty of time. Don’t worry. It doesn’t need to be notarized since you’re childhood friends, not enemies.
” Hahaha. Lucky you! “I know how to whip up a solid fake dating contract, easy peasy.” Unfortunately, I do not know how to write the next chapter of my “book” for Ceres without her peer pressuring me into adding a crime.
But that’s a problem for future Mars. Current Mars just needs his laptop.
So I get it, and then I open it, and then I type Lyra and Jove’s Ultimate Dating Research Contract written by Jove and Mars Rogue .
“Capitalize ‘written,’” Jove says. “It’s on a new line and looks stupid lowercase.”
“Oi, who’s the editor here?”
He pouts.
Sighing, I capitalize it, then I page break and type Rules and Expectations . “Rule one,” I chuckle as I narrate. “No falling in love.”
My dear, dear, dear brother says, “That doesn’t need to be a rule.”
“Whatever do you mean, babe?”
“She can fall in love with me if she wants. She could do worse.”
I laugh, outright. “If you’re gonna do the trope, you gotta do it right. Rule one is always about falling in love, and how it’s not allowed, and rule one is also always broken.”
Jove blinks, then shrugs. “If you say so.”
I do say so. In fact, I insist. I insist all the way through ten pages of a fake dating contract, because if you’re going to be insane, you better do it right.
After the process is complete and our meeting is at an end, I find myself thrust, unceremoniously, into Future Mars’s skin, discovering with horror that he is actually now Current Mars.
And Current Mars still has no idea what to write next in his diary.
Rouge : What if my MMC shows up with a ten-page fake dating contract?
Sara : What is this? A romcom?
It could be, Sara. It could be .
Rouge : No…
Rouge : But it is a slow burn; therefore, I kindly ask that you calm down with your comments.
Sara : My comments are perfectly chill.
Rouge : Insisting that he either choke her or give her a locking choker is not entirely cool and calm of you, actually.
Sara : I’m obsessed with his slow descent into madness, but I need that madness to affect her sooner rather than later.
What about a touch-her-and-die situation?
Could he save her from something and snap at having experienced nearly losing her?
If you refuse to let him kidnap her (yet?
?), maybe someone else could try to, thus shoving him oh-so-tenderly off the cliff of his breaking point.
Rouge : You scare me.
Sara : ^^
Hopeless to please, I open my document and start throwing down words, coming out the other end with something resembling what she’s asked for. Plus extra pining. And suffering. And a substantial breakdown.
Which is not at all reflective of my present reality.
Benevolent as always, she lets me live another day—in exchange for a dozen or more comments that will replay in the back of my mind the next time we meet.
Lucky me.
All things considered, the book seems to be coming along.
Which means I’m going to have an extra book soon.
It’s slower, and less violent, than most Rouge novels, which means that—in accordance with the package I ordered from Whirlwind Branding years ago—I should not publish it under the Rouge pen name.
But I’m also not going to start a new one.
Yet it feels wrong to have Ceres work on something that won’t become anything more than a collection of digital breakdowns.
Right around that thought, it hits me: Jove is working on a Flag Day dark romance .
I snort.
Okay. Yeah. Never mind. I can do whatever I want.
This’ll make some money at least, and it probably won’t be so off-brand that it breaks anything permanently.
Who knows? Maybe it will actually unlock access to the starved minority desperate to see tall girls and modestly-shouldered men in literature.
I’ll check in with Liam, the CEO of Whirlwind Branding, just to make sure before I push any buttons, but I truly cannot fathom that the girlies are gonna be less on board for this than they are for Flag Day.
My MMC is a man doing pushups in order to attain his love’s impossible body standards. That’s gotta mean something to the girlies.
I’ve been at it about a month myself, and I’ve basically lost all feeling in my upper body. The girlies love a man who suffers.
Speaking of suffering…I’ve only done thirty today when I need seventy-two, min. If I don’t get more done, I may not physically be able to space them out in the remaining day, so…
I drop. And give myself twenty.